Blackburn

I have been in many difficult situations, but never did my prospects seem so dismal as at that moment.

I have suffered worse physical tortures at Blackburn, England, where I was manacled and trussed in iron by a strong man on the stage of the Palace Theatre on October twenty-fourth, nineteen oh two, and suffered brutality until my arms and wrists were torn and bleeding from the irons, of which the locks had been plugged in violation of the rules of fair play, even as they were plugged by Popkins in this instance.

But in that instance, I could have released myself from my tortures at any minute if I had merely admitted myself beaten instead of continuing my struggle with the irons until I finally freed myself by my own efforts.

But now there seemed no way out of my tortures as I lay naked in the mud of the oubliette, fettered to the wall, under the bed of the Maros River, in a musty cavern through the walls of which the niter was seeping.

And this was not so difficult as might be supposed, after I had solved the problem of how to get hold of the bone and manipulate it.

This required a good deal of contortionistic skill, but was easy as compared with the task of opening the locks of the handcuffs that had been plugged with wood and mashed with a nail.

In my long and adventurous career, I have never failed to open a lock, but this was not a legitimate test, any more than the test on the stage at Blackburn was legitimate.

I had succeeded there, but it seemed as if I was facing utter failure here.

[dramatic music]

When I arrived in the town of Blackburn at an excessively early hour, was met at the train by a police car of the Blackburn Borough Force and rushed at once to Queen's Park Hospital.

There were a great many people there, hospital attendants and police officers.

The body of the little girl, whose name was Mary Margaret, was in the hospital morgue.

But possessing a set of prints and placing your hand on a murderer's shoulder are two different things.

I talked with the chief constable.

Yes, we have several thousand fingerprints on file here in Blackburn, and the Lancashire Constabulary has a large collection, too.

I'll get copies of these prints down to a laboratory at once, and as soon as their prints are ready, I'll pass them on to the Lancashire people, and then-

This is your pre-match preview where we get an insight from the opposition and we talk all about the game that is coming up.

We are recording this on Thursday, so we haven't yet made the trip to Blackburn, but we are talking to a fan's favourite of the channel.

It is none other than Dana from the Middlesbrough's Borough Breakdown podcast.

How are you, Dana?

So yeah, there's, there's that to it, but three, three wins, a draw and a defeat.

It's, it's pretty good.

I think there's a little bit of what could have been against Burnley and, and Blackburn, the two games that we did not win [laughs] two Lancashire teams.

Um, because against Burnley, Chris, they were horrible in the first half.

Looking at that way too early.

2-1 win over Blackburn, which is just terrific.

I know everybody's riding every moment.

Went behind in that game at...

What's the home ground? Blackburn.

You don't remember that? Ewood

Park.

Started going to games when I was seven I think I went to my first one and yeah never kind of looked back I went with him for most of my first sort of five or six years and and then my younger brother started coming as well so yeah it's certainly didn't choose it and would I choose it again who knows but here we are so yeah no indeed

and you've done crazy shit like I've done right you've traveled back for cup finals for a weekend and stuff like that didn't you go back for a league cup final that did that one we lost to Blackburn

no I was still in England I was at the game we lost to Blackburn when I was funny enough we ended up staying in the same hotel as the Tottenham team at the Celtic Manor by coincidence and had a drunken night the night before the game with a lot of the coaches maybe that explains the performance the next day but you're right I did fly back for basically three days for the cup final where we beat Chelsea and I also managed to engineer one trip back at work's expense for the Real Madrid away leg when we lost 4-0 but coincidentally we were launching an office in the Netherlands at the time so I managed to get them to divert me via Madrid and yeah it was fun apart from the result

the one that went wrong very quickly with Lennon being injured and then when it Peter Crouch got sent off pretty quickly

Yeah, you've got two yellow cards, both are stupid tackles, right on the edge of their box.

And you and I, as we record, are both up in the glorious north.

I'm in Blackburn.

Where are you right now?

In sunny Burnley in Lancashire.

I have been in many difficult situations, but never did my prospects seem so dismal as at that moment.

I have suffered worse physical tortures at Blackburn, England, where I was manacled and trussed in iron by a strongman on the stage of the Palace Theatre on October 24th, 1902, and suffered brutality until my arms and wrists were torn and bleeding from the irons, of which the locks had been plugged in violation of the rules of fair play, even as they were plugged by Popkins in this instance.

But in that instance, I could have released myself from my tortures at any minute if I had merely admitted myself beaten instead of continuing my struggle with the irons until I finally freed myself by my own efforts.

But now there seemed no way out of my tortures as I lay naked in the mud of the oubliette, fettered to the wall, under the bed of the Maros River, in a musty cavern through the walls of which the nitre was seeping.

And this was not so difficult as might be supposed, after I had solved the problem of how to get hold of the bone and manipulate it.

This required a good deal of contortionistic skill, but was easy as compared with the task of opening the locks of the handcuffs that had been plugged with wood and mashed with a nail.

In my long and adventurous career, I have never failed to open a lock, but this was not a legitimate test, any more than the test on the stage at Blackburn was legitimate.

I had succeeded there, but it seemed as if I was facing utter failure here.

But what do you make of all of this?

So it's interesting, really, because I'm a Blackburn fan, despite not being from Blackburn or Lancashire.

for that matter.

So the thought of buying Man United for me is sort of poisoned by the era in that I grew up in.

Now, we've long been sort of distant enemies, mainly because Blackburn got relegated to the championship and then to League One for a period.

But it did look like fate was bringing us back together.

And that didn't mean that by Blackburn we were actually improving.

It looked like Man United were on a steady decline.