About

"Your mission, should you accept it..."

Becoming a male Bridget Jones was always an option. First job after University with Corgi Paperbacks, sharing the organising of book launches with my oppo in PR – my presentation skills pretty much on par with Miss Jones at that time. Could have grown old in the job for a bunch of decades. Many people did.

Instead, I chose a long and crazily winding road of non-stop excitement through becoming in charge of casting for the UK’s biggest lingerie company, working for ad agencies (three of the top ten), becoming MD of the biggest specialist agency in Europe, travelling on business to Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Tokyo and New York, Head of Creative & Digital Industries at NWDA, Business Adviser to over 100 creative enterprises, including the wonderful Kate Simmons Dance school (you can see them here performing in the Lowry Outlet at the Quays) and so much more based in the tranquility of my spiritual home of Salford. My own theatre of dreams.

Image 1: ‘High Hats’

Image 2: ‘Lunch At The Ballet’

Words and pictures

As a graduate of 1972, my entry into the creative world of client and agencies gave me an unfair advantage of working with astonishingly talented art directors. When the onset of technology enabled design to be created instantly, finding anyone who could wield a magic marker became a hopeless task. Instead, I resorted to searching the bottomless pit of library images until my brain spotted a headline opportunity for the ad or whatever it was being created.

The subsequent spin-off was a virtual photographic art gallery of original images (apart from the cat and the goldfish), that evolved into a combination of ‘Things’…IT’S A SALFORD THING, IT’S A DANCE THING, IT’S A RED THING…you get the picture. And the Manchester Evening News kindly devoted an entire centre spread to the collection. See below for the M.E.N. spread and a few examples of the pieces featured.

High Achiever:

Parking in Salford:

Coming from the match – the Lowry Bridge:

Salford Architexture:

Criminal intent:

Girl Power:

True love or lunch?

Rare Species:

Industrial Landscape:

Salford Yacht Club:

Please can we have our ball back?

City Link:

Vintage port:

Fortress Old Trafford:

Control freaks:

The reckoning:

Public library:

Sky News:

Iron Age:

Ensemble:

Temporary digs:

Bucketing down in Preston:

Garden path:

Boulder and wiser:

Post modernist:

Bay watch:

The spirit of cousin Abe:

Up and under:

Salford gennel:

Side by side by Salford:

Shaping up in Salford:

Salford limo service:

Getting behind the team:

Lowry Outlet Mall exhibition:

Waiting for a bus:

It’s A Holmfirth Thing originally on display at Piccolino’s:

Original photography in Salford, Liverpool, Preston, Holmfirth and Washington D.C.

Copyright of all images (except for the library shot of the cat and the goldfish):

Ray Hanks

Celebrity Art for Kirsty's Appeal

One amazing little girl called Kirsty captured the hearts of millions, when she appeared at the 2002 Commonwealth Games with David Beckham to hand the baton to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. The Kirsty Appeal was co-ordinated by the awesome Susi Mathis to raise funds for Francis House Children’s Hospice in Manchester.

Our small contribution was to ask for donations of ‘art’ from celebrities, on tiny A5 canvases. They were on exhibition in Salford Quays (thanks to the big hearted restaurant owners Veronica and David Lee) before being sold at auction during one of Kirsty’s ‘Angel Balls’ at the Manchester Hilton.

Here is a small selection of the very coolest of art contributions from celebrities also with big hearts, some of whom are no longer with us. Neither is Kirsty. She died at the age of 20 even though she was given only days to live when she was just 4 years old. During her all too brief brave life, she was a recipient of the BBC Sports Personality of The Year Helen Rollason Award.