Manchester • 6:30pm show

BEATLES BEAT FOG

On their way from Liverpool to Manchester the Beatles drove into a wall of fog which started in the Manchester suburbs and brought city traffic to an all-but-total standstill. The fog was quite unexpected for the rest of the North-west had enjoyed a bright, crisp, sunny day. For over four hours driver Alf Bicknell steered the Princess through Manchester at snail’s pace. The Group arrived at the ABC Ardwick twelve minutes after they were due on stage. An extra intermission was inserted into the show while they changed and dashed on to the stage.

The Beatles have been pretty fortunate over bad-weather delays. Not since the early days of 1963, when “Please, Please Me” was No. 1, have they been held up by fog. On that occasion they were due to appear at two different Birmingham ballrooms in the one evening. In the end they played only one of the ballrooms, returning to Birmingham a fortnight later to make the other postponed appearance.

From The Beatles Monthly Book – January 1966

BEATLES IN ORBIT

It was Tuesday, December 7, and The Beatles were part way through their last British tour. We were in Liverpool and that night the boys were doing shows in the ABC Theatre, Ardwick, Manchester. At lunchtime, Alf Bicknell got the big Austin Princess out of its garage here, collected me and started calling for each of the boys.

There didn’t seem to be any hurry because the journey from Liverpool to Manchester is less than forty miles. George, our last pick-up, was in Warrington, on the right route but some miles east of Merseyside.

In Liverpool, it was a wonderfully clear day. Cold, crisp, cloudless and sunny. When we reached George’s he was all ready, which was a pleasant surprise.

“Tony Barrow has been on the phone from Manchester,” George told us. “According to him there’s thick fog there.”

It was hard to believe because the weather was so lovely where we were. So we didn’t worry too much about the fog warning.

Suddenly, on the outskirts of Manchester, we drove into a wall of smog. In seconds we were plunged into the dark grey mass and our speed was brought down to less than five miles an hour. To add to the chaos, it was rush hour in Manchester. Everyone was trying to get home and traffic jams were increasing the confusion.

At the ABC in Ardwick they put an extra ten minutes on to the intermission to give us extra time. Then, when The Beatles were due on stage, the compere announced an extra intermission because the Princess was still crawling slowly through fog-bound Manchester.

Fifteen minutes late, the boys rushed on stage as the cries of “We want The Beatles” reached a peak.

I can only recall one other occasion where fog has delayed us so severely. That takes me right back to the early part of 1963 when Please, Please Me was The Beatles’ first Number One hit and we failed to keep a ballroom date in Birmingham because of thick fog on the road from London.

But for the bad weather, the boys would have driven back to Merseyside after the Manchester shows. As it was, the journey would have been hopeless. They hadn’t any baggage — not even a toothbrush between them — but we booked into Manchester’s Midland Hotel for the night.

The boys posed for press photographers in a set of special smog masks brought along by the Daily Express. Plans for a proper press conference fell through because of our late arrival.

But the boys spent some time chatting to Kathy Fleet, who represented a United States radio station and newspaper.

Tonight news came through from Brian Epstein that U.K. sales of the new single were touching 750,000 after only three days in the shops. The Rubber Soul LP album had sold half a million copies in the same length of time. The boys were knocked out.

Tonight also, John got to know that his father, recording as Freddie Lennon, had made a single.

From Fabulous208 – July 23, 1966

BEATLE LAND

[…] TUESDAY, 7th December.

The second leg of our nationwide tour kicked off today with shows at the ABC Theatre, Ardwick, Manchester. As you well know, London is renowned for its pea-soup fogs.

To tell you the truth, London doesn’t have many really thick fogs. But, today in Manchester, we were stuck for five hours in the worst smog I’ve ever seen. The sort where your handkerchief is covered in black soot every time you blow your nose.

From Fabulous208 – July 16, 1966

Queues, jams, chaos in the big black-out

Today Manchester took stock of the situation caused when fog clamped down over a 15-mile radius of the city and made several hundred thousand people late arriving home. There were bouquets from the police for the “vast majority who kept their patience surprisingly well, under severely trying conditions.”

And there were brickbats for “those who moved across to block junctions when traffic lights changed in their favour, even though they could move no further.” This, said a police spokesman, was a big contributory cause of the congestion, particularly at important junctions.

Buses were badly hit. Said a spokesman for Manchester Corporation transport department: “It was disastrous as far as we were concerned, with some buses running up to three hours late. The fog was no worse than we have had before, but we got a complete traffic block. Vehicles about a mile from the city ran into dense fog and this caused backlogs right across the city.”

Many motorists and bus passengers made straight for trains, and queues up to 200 yards long formed at each of Manchester’s main stations. At Piccadilly the queue stretched from the office, down the station approach to the traffic lights at the junction of London Road and Store Street.

A British Railways spokesman said that, on average, local commuter trains were running 10–15 minutes late, with trains on longer journeys 30 minutes late.

Stories of fog adventures were legion in Manchester offices and shops today and more workers arrived they capped with “better” tales than ones which had gone before. One bus took 30 minutes to edge from Albert Square, Manchester, into Princess Street and a further hour and 40 minutes to travel the 200 yards to Whitworth Street. Another, leaving Manchester city centre at 3:30 p.m., took five hours to travel four miles to Prestwich.

One car took three and a half hours to cover the normal 20-minute journey from Hyde to Manchester, and was stationary for 35 minutes at Ardwick Green roundabout. There, crowds waited for The Beatles who arrived late after a six-hour journey from Liverpool. They had made contact with their police car escort only 150 yards from the theatre.

From Manchester Evening News – December 8, 1965

A hard day’s night in a jam

I was two miles from the Beatles last night, but I might as well have been 200, writes Elaine Crossley.

For I was trapped in the middle of a traffic jam in Manchester, as the fog came down. It was a traffic jam to beat all jams. No one moved; dim lights shone in the gloom from shop windows, and frantic shrouded figures deserted buses which had been crawling and stopping for hours.

I wasn’t frantic to get home, but I was frustrated at missing my date with the Beatles. A photographer and I had set out from Bolton at 4 p.m. for our rendezvous with the Beatles at the A.B.C. Ardwick, at 5 p.m.

I had met the Beatles once before — at Wigan. The bally-hoo had been sickening, but the group themselves had charmed me. I wanted to see them again. Of course, Paul McCartney wouldn’t remember me but I could ask him if he would give me my pen back. I asked him for his autograph last time, and I was so fascinated that I left him with my precious Parker 51.

At 6.30 p.m. yesterday, we were still on the outskirts of the city centre. The fog and the traffic jam were among the worst in the city’s history. The journey was hopeless: we hadn’t a hope of meeting the Beatles and the group were probably as hopelessly lost and stranded as we were. Instead of drinks and a chat with the Beatles I got a dismal meal in some strange café in Manchester. The journey back home took us until midnight. It was one of the hardest day’s nights I’ve ever done.

From The Bolton News – December 8, 1965