Talk:Grimethorpe

The rest of the world needs an explanation of the term "soaraway". I suspect it means "free", but I wonder why. --Old Dickens 15:28, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah. good point. The word was coined some years ago as part of an advertising campaign for what was, at the time, Britain's best-selling daily tabloid paper. The Sun, Gods help us all, sold five million copies a day. with a population of fifty-five million, on the principle that on average four people will see any one copy of a daily paper, this meant that nearly half the British population would at least have the opportunity of reading a copy of this paper every day.

Seeing itself as glamorous, cheeky, and in touch with the public zeitgeist of Eighties Britain, the Super Soaraway Sun advertised heavily on TV (helped by the fact Rupert Murdoch, the owner, now also had SKY TV to advertise it on). As said, the word "soaraway" was invented by the advertisers to convey the impression that it was flying miles above the opposition in terms of quality (!) as well as sales.

Now apply the word "soaraway" to a rather desperate, dull, bland and unimaginative local paper, sold in a grim post-industrial Northern English town where nothing much happens, staffed by journos of the quality of Jeremy the Thumb. You see? Irony. --AgProv 21:51, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Aha. I did some Googling which disabused me of the idea that it meant a giveaway paper, but despite a number of hits, including quite a long essay on the history of the Sun, no one said where the actual word came from. We have Suns in Canada as well, and pretty greasy they are, but not down to Rupert's standard, I don't suppose. --Old Dickens 23:22, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

There is a Roundworld Grimethorpe (with a brass band Yo-less would love) in S. Yorkshire, UK, for those who may not have passed that way. It's not very near Blackburn, though. --Old Dickens (talk) 03:29, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Annotation

I wouldn't have supposed that Blackbury/Grimethorpe was supposed to be as significant or cosmopolitan as Greater Manchester. The area has a small-city feel where the housing "project" is one building. Blackburn/Accrington/Burnley perhaps? --Old Dickens (talk) 04:09, 15 October 2018 (UTC)