In May, we began a search for the top 100 Prolific Northerners 2014, our attempt to identify the North’s leading media and creative industry figures.
We have combined the views of a diverse and expert panel of judges, readers’ suggestions and our own research and investigations, and this week we will release 20 names a day until we have the final list of 100 on Friday.
Prolific Northerners has been supported by Weber Shandwick and Melbourne Server Hosting.
Please note that the list is not ranked and is in no particular order.
The Prolific Northerners 2014 (the first 40)
Jonathan Sands OBE
Chairman
Elmwood
Sands joined Elmwood as a 21-year-old, was managing director at 24 and by 27 had taken over the company in an MBO. The 53-year-old is now chairman, and the 24-strong agency he bought has well over 100 staff at its HQ in Leeds and around the world in London, Edinburgh, New York, Melbourne and Singapore.
Elmwood's success has been built on its reputation for effectiveness - it's won more International Design Effectiveness Awards than any other agency - and its most recent results saw turnover leap by 25% to £13.3m. Sands was awarded an OBE in the New Years Honours List in 2011.
Dave Sewards
CEO
Hôme
Leeds-born Sewards cannot be accused of having had an orthodox route into marketing. Having initially trained as an accountant, it was only through doing the books for Brahm that he struck up a partnership that would end in the agency offering him an accounts job three months later. From there he found his skills were better suited to marketing, and he stayed for 10 years.
After five years with the Charles Walls Group (CWG), he and five colleagues set up Hôme in 2002 with backing from multi-millionaire businessman Paul Sykes, and the agency has since grown to 140 people with clients including Bonmarché, Asda and Jet2.
Rapid recent growth saw the agency land a place in the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 2013, with revenue up 65% over three years to £18.6m.
Paul Bennett
MD, Resources
ITV Studios
Bennett is responsible for the operations of ITV's London Studios, Manchester Studios and the channel's film and TV equipment supplier, Provision, thereby covering a large proportion of ITV's studio production, post production and location activities, including 350 staff.
Starting out in TV audio, he's a former controller of operations for Carlton Studios and was ITV's director of Northern resources for four years before taking on his current role in 2010. The 52-year-old sailing enthusiast is also chairman of 3sixtymedia.
Frank Cottrell Boyce
Writer
Freelance
Merseyside-born Cottrell Boyce, a father of seven, cut his teeth on scripts for Brookside and has gone on to become one of Britain's most celebrated and decorated screenwriters and novelists.
His collaborations with director - and fellow Northerner - Michael Winterbottom led to acclaimed films such as Welcome to Sarajevo and 24 Hour Party People, while his Widnes-set novel Millions was garlanded with awards and subsequently became a successful film, directed by Danny Boyle.
But it was another collaboration with Boyle, on the staggering opening ceremony for the London Olympics, that truly catapulted Cottrell Boyce to mainstream attention. His most recent work has included the screenplay for The Railway Man, starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman, and he's also written an episode for the much-anticipated new series of Doctor Who.
Margaret Hicks-Clarke
Head of Operations
Press Association
Hicks has been at PA since 2002, when the national news agency moved its Northern editorial operation - including hundreds of staff - from Leeds city centre to a purpose-built HQ on the site of the former police station in the historic East Yorkshire village of Howden.
A former assistant production editor on the Yorkshire Post who trained as a journalist in Sheffield, Hicks-Clarke is the executive in charge of editorial page production, sport and racing data and pages, TV listings and much more. She's also the vice chair of Humber LEP North Bank Partnership.
Fergus McCallum
CEO
TBWA Manchester
After the shock of losing the £50m Co-op account to Leo Burnett in 2012, McCallum has steered TBWA Manchester into much calmer waters and indeed the agency has recently won some very chunky accounts in the shape of Merlin Entertainments, Wilkinson, Smyths Toys and Eurocamp.
The 51-year-old Scot began his career in marketing for Manchester's Wilsons Brewery and after 10 years with EURO RSCG KLP moved to TBWA in 2005, first as chief executive of Tequila before a merger created TBWA Manchester in 2007. McCallum has been in charge since 2009 and it continues to be one of the few Northern agencies that holds its own - and regularly beats - London competition.
Gareth Healey and Gordon Bethell
Managing Partners
Gratterpalm
Gratterpalm was originally established in 1978 but was bought out in 2002 by a team led by Bethell (right) and Healey (below), who each have an equal share in the business.
It's now one of the top five integrated agencies in the North, with over 150 staff, a £10m-plus turnover and clients including Coral, Halfords, Hermes and Asda, with the latter having worked with Gratterpalm for over 30 years.
Named 29th on the Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For 2013, the agency is now based at reputedly the greenest office in Leeds, with rainwater from the roof used to flush the toilets.
Helen Oldham
MD, Yorkshire
Johnston Press
Against the backdrop of a rapidly changing industry, Oldham is managing Johnston Press's attempts to create a sustainable business in Yorkshire.
The former MD of East Lancashire Newspapers took the job on in 2011 and oversees titles including the Yorkshire Post and Evening Post, Halifax Courier and Scarborough News. Much of her brief has centred on cost-cutting - the company's voluntary redundancy scheme led to a plethora of departures from the Post, and even its iconic HQ was sold off - but while print sales continue to spiral down, a cross-group website relaunch has contributed to a rise in digital advertising revenues, handing the publisher its first profit increase in seven years.
Garry Partington
CEO
Apadmi
The 39-year-old was working in mobile as long ago as the late 90s when he worked on the Ericsson R380, the first phone to be marketed as a smartphone. He went on to co-found EMCC Software Ltd, which was turning over £4m by 2006, but after it unexpectedly went into administration in 2009, Partington and three colleagues set up Apadmi.
The 70-strong Manchester agency has since built a very strong reputation as an app developer, responsible for the award-winning BBC iPlayer Radio (3 million downloads at last count) and Guardian Witness apps. For the past two years, Partington has also been CEO of RealityMine, a mobile technology research company part-owned by Apadmi that now operates in over 15 countries. He founded Mobile Monday Manchester in 2011.
Andy Jeal, Dave Lucas and Elliott Muscant
Managing Partners
Carat Manchester
Jeal (below right), 52, and Lucas (below left), 49, left TMD Manchester back in 1994 to set up MediaVest, which grew to over 200 staff before its £95m acquisition by Aegis Media in 2011.
It subsequently rebranded as Carat Manchester and is comfortably the largest media buying agency outside London, working with the likes of Pizza Hut, Welcome to Yorkshire and Brother.
Muscant (above right), who started in the business as a graduate trainee, was previously the head of MediaVest's digital division, MVi, before becoming MD of MediaVest and now Carat.
Hedley Aylott
CEO
Summit Media
After originally training as a professional composer in Manchester, Aylott worked with Strangeways prisoners and in 1995 released the first ever record from a British prison. That led on to him using inmates - including lifers - when setting up Summit Media in 2000 with his mother, Marion.
The Hull-based digital agency, a specialist in retail with clients including Arcadia Group, Argos and Selfridges, now employs 140 staff, turns over £37.1m and has further offices in London, Paris and Prague. Aylott, 43, is a keen polo player and sailor as well as a qualified pilot and water-ski instructor.
David Durnford
Owner
Fat Media
Durnford, who sold his Morecambe-based cable TV and broadband provider Smallworld Fibre to Virgin Media in February, has wasted no time in gaining a significant foothold on the Northern digital scene.
In May, he acquired Lancaster agency Fat Media, in the process merging it with his own Kendal agency, Motive Technology, and is aiming to add 30 staff to the 90-strong agency over the next year.
The 46-year-old Durham University graduate spent over a decade in marketing with the likes of Mars, Robinsons and Nestle before setting up technology company Netfonics in 2003, which was subsequently absorbed into Smallworld.
Iain Fowler
Director of Local Radio
UTV Media
Fowler heads up UTV Media GB's Local Radio division, which includes Wish FM in Wigan and St Helens, Wire FM in Warrington, Widnes and Runcorn and Juice FM in Liverpool.
A former station director at Signal Radio and Juice FM, he took over in January 2013 and according to the most recent RAJAR figures (May 2014) has overseen a 9% year-on-year increase in the number of average listener hours.
Brian and Darren Jobling
CEO
Eutechnyx
Brian (right) founded Zeppotron Games in 1987, with older brother Darren (below) joining three years later, and their company - which changed its name to Eutechnyx in 1996 - has gone on to establish itself as a world leader in the racing game genre. Among its most successful games are Auto Club Revolution, Big Mutha Truckers and the NASCAR series, and employs around 130 staff, mainly at its Gateshead HQ but also at studios in China, Hong Kong and the US.
The company has had to make two rounds of redundancies over the last year due to "restructuring", but turnover is forecast to rise substantially to £8m this year. The brothers actually sold the company to an American company, Merit Studios, in 1996, but bought it back in 2000.
Amsterdam-based Prime Technology Ventures invested £6m in 2000 and are now the largest single shareholder. Individually, Brian, 45, has a 22% share while Darren, 47, owns 7%.
Darren Thwaites
Editor-in-Chief, North East
Trinity Mirror
Huddersfield-born Thwaites edited the Teesside Evening Gazette and was editorial development manager for Trinity Mirror Regionals before taking over as editor of the Chronicle in Newcastle. His current role extends to all of Trinity's local titles in the North East, including The Journal and Sunday Sun.
Thwaites oversaw a major overhaul of the paper last year, changing its name from the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, adding new content and relaunching the website as ChronicleLive.
Print sales have continue their downward spiral regardless - the Chronicle fell another 9% to stand at just under 40,000 in January 2014 - but unique visitors to the website rose by nearly 18% over the last year to 111,000. Accelerating that growth, as the pilot region for Trinity's new digital-first publishing process, will be a priority for 46-year-old Thwaites over the next year.
Clare Bruce
CEO
Nunwood Research
A board director at Elmwood brand agency at the age of just 25, Bruce has been at the helm of Nunwood since setting it up in 1997. The Leeds-based research agency now has operations in Australia and the US, with clients including Virgin Mobile, Yorkshire Building Society and Hallmark. Originally a pure research company, in recent years it has seen a rapid growth in its customer experience management business.
Turnover stands at around £7m, with staff numbers now totalling 130. Bruce, 48, owns 47% of the company.
Barbara Slater
Director of Sport
BBC
A former international gymnast, Slater's stock as one of British broadcasting's leading figures was cemented last month with the award of an OBE. A BBC 'lifer', she's spent most of those 30-plus years in the sports department, culminating in her taking over the top job from Roger Mosey in 2009.
She couldn't have picked a more significant time to take the helm - aside from managing BBC Sport's move to MediaCityUK, she also led the coverage for the 2012 Olympics, the Beeb's biggest ever event. Last year she also won back the broadcasting rights for the FA Cup after a five-year absence, although she's also overseen the loss of full Formula One coverage and the Grand National moved to Channel 4 in 2012.
Cheryl Taylor
Controller of CBBC
BBC
After a childhood split between Liverpool and York, Taylor initially made her name as a spotter of innovative comedy, with Spaced and Black Books among the programmes she commissioned while at Channel 4.
She was also head of comedy at Hat Trick Productions before beginning her Beeb career in 2005, rising to controller of comedy commissioning - the corporation's first Salford-based genre controller - with primetime hits under her belt including Outnumbered, Miranda, Mrs Brown’s Boys and Twenty Twelve.
Taylor took the CBBC controller job in 2012 because she wanted a new challenge, and has scored successes with the likes of Hank Zipzer, Justin's House and All at Sea while demonstrating a fondness for vintage programming through the likes of The Furchester Hotel and a revival of Danger Mouse. Now living in Hebden Bridge, she is managing a 10.5% children's budget cut to £91m by 2016-17.
David Parkin
Founder
TheBusinessDesk
The former business editor of the Yorkshire Post launched TheBusinessDesk.com in November 2007, expanding it into the North West a year later and the Midlands in 2010, and now claims 115,000 registered users across the three sites.
Last year Parkin and co-founder Paul Snape sold their stakes for an undisclosed sum to Birmingham-based technology investor Mark Hales, who now owns 100% of the business. Parkin, 43, continues to be involved as a director and also writes a weekly column. Last summer he was awarded an honorary MBA by Leeds Metropolitan University.
Doug Ward and Shaun Gibson
Co-founders
Tech Britain and Tech Hub Manchester
With the experience of their own failed start-up behind them, in 2012 Ward (right) and Gibson (below) took an 11-week bus tour around the tech communities of the UK, with the result being online start-up resource Tech Britain.
They went on to help found TechHub Manchester, a co-working space for tech start-ups, and its success has led to them planning a much larger workspace in the city called Factory, a version of London's Google Campus.
Along the way, the pair have advised 10 Downing Street on their experiences of Britain's start-ups and are both advisors to the University of Manchester.
Alastair Machray
Editor-in-Chief
Trinity Mirror Merseyside
Judged on circulation alone, Machray's editorship of the Liverpool Echo - which will chalk up a decade next year - does not rank as much of a success, with the numbers buying the print title during his tenure almost halving to around 65,000, and the jury is still out on the wisdom of launching a Sunday edition earlier this year.
That the Echo has maintained and even strengthened its voice and influence on Merseyside is testament to the way it has turned loyal readers into a sizeable social media audience and stuck unwaveringly to local causes such as the Hillsborough families' ongoing struggle for justice. For the past three years, the 53-year-old Geordie has also overseen editorial for all Trinity's 22 titles across the North West.
Alice Webb
CEO
BBC North
A qualified civil engineer, Webb recently saw her role extended to include Birmingham and Bristol, as well as BBC North at Salford, and is in charge of everything from technology and people to office space and "future ways of working".
Educated at Liverpool University, she moved back to the North West with her family in 2011, having been promoted from project director for BBC North. Previously she led a major transformation programme within BBC Vision and managed the Value for Money programme in 2005/6. She's a member of the BBC North Board.
Andrew Sheldon, Jess Fowle, Glyn Middleton and Marc Allen
Co-founders and MD
True North
Three former producers at Yorkshire Television, Fowle, Sheldon and Middleton (pictured below) left to set up True North in a spare bedroom in 2002, and each retains a third share in the business. It's now the biggest genuine indie in the North, with turnover rising 42% last year to £10.1m, and the perfect riposte to anyone bemoaning the magnetic drift of all Northern TV production to MediaCityUK.
Over 600 hours of the Leeds-based company's programmes have been broadcast in the UK, including Animal Frontline for BBC One, Building The Dream for Channel 4, Junior Vets for CBBC and series three of The Valleys for MTV.
Sheldon is primarily responsible for current affairs, documentaries and daytime shows, Fowle handles features, formats and children's shows, while Middleton looks after distribution, secondary rights and international business. Former BBC executive Allen (pictured top right) joined the company last year to inject some "extra commercial understanding", and as managing director is responsible for all business operations.
Andy Barke
Agency Industry Head
Google
Google showed a degree of foresight when it selected Manchester as its first UK regional office back in 2005, and in Barke the company found a dependable and able leader.
Having relocated from London, where he managed agency sales for Handbag.com, the 40-year-old is responsible for building and retaining agency relationships in the North and Scotland and is now established as the search giant's most well-known face outside the capital.
Andy Blundell
Chief Executive
Communisis
With four acquisitions since September, Communisis is following through on its intention to grow its front-end agency business, and more are set to follow before the year is out.
The Leeds marketing services group saw sales tumble during the recession but since assuming the helm in 2009, 53-year-old Blundell has overseen a 42% growth in revenues to £270m that certainly justifies his £700,000 pay packet.
Aziz Rashid
Head NW
BBC
Bradford-born Rashid may have read engineering at Oxford and started his career as a banker, but in the 25 years since he has forged the kind of BBC career that you suspect is building towards a job right at the top of the ladder.
After spells on the World Service, BBC World and BBC News, he headed up BBC East Midlands before moving to Manchester in 2009 as head of BBC North West. One of the most powerful Asians in the British media, Rashid oversees all BBC content generated in the region on TV, radio and online.
Ben Hatton
Founder and MD
Rippleffect
His earn-out period after selling Rippleffect to Trinity Mirror expired in 2011, but Hatton has continued to be a daily presence at the digital agency as it's grown to 80 staff and a turnover of £6.35m, making it the largest of its type in Liverpool.
Also played a key role in Trinity's £8m acquisition of Newcastle-based email marketing agency Communicator in 2012, and last year assumed the role of MD of the publisher's digital marketing services. In practice this will only add to his responsibilities at Rippleffect if and when Trinity identifies another suitable acquisition.
Brian Reade
Columnist
Daily Mirror
Liverpool-based Reade, 56, is one of the most high-profile national journalists to still live in the North. The former Echo columnist writes two weekly columns for the Mirror - one on sport, the other on anything - and so reaches a good proportion of the near-million who still buy the paper every day, not to mention the 50 million users who browse the site each month.
Last month he donated a kidney to his son Philip, also a journalist, and a sufferer of renal kidney failure since birth.
Cat Lewis
CEO and Executive Producer
Nine Lives
A former on-screen reporter for North West Tonight and producer for Granada, Lewis owns 100% of £2.2m-turnover Nine Lives, the production company she founded in 2007 and now has 28 staff.
Arguably the largest factual indie in the North West, recent commissions include Pound Shop Wars, The Human Mannequin and the BAFTA-winning Me, My Dad and His Kidney. The 49-year-old is also the founder of The Indie Club networking organisation, which now has 400 members, vice-chairs the PACT Council and sits on the RTS NW Committee.
Charles Cecil MBE
Co-founder and MD
Revolution Software
A games industry legend, Cecil is the MD and co-founder of York-based Revolution Software, now regarded as one of the world's leading adventure game companies.
Educated at Manchester University, the 52-year-old created the genre-defining Broken Sword franchise in 1996, which in five instalments has shifted over six million units, and he also created a series of Doctor Who adventures for the BBC in 2010.
Awarded an MBE in 2011, he has a wide array of industry roles, including a place on the boards of the British Film Institute and Screen Yorkshire, an ambassadorial position for BAFTA (Video Games) and visiting lecturer positions with the University of York and the National Film and Television School. Together with his wife Noirin Carmody, also a co-founder, he owns 80% of Revolution.
Charles Sharland
Founder and Chairman
Appsense
Appsense, the Daresbury-based technology company founded by Sharland 15 years ago, now employs around 500 people globally with turnover growing to £62m last year, more than double the number in 2010.
Last year did see the company sink into the red, with a loss of £11m the result of a sizeable and ongoing internal investment, but Goldman Sachs - who invested $71m for a 28 per cent stake in 2011 - is driving US expansion from Appsense's California HQ and has said it is committed for the long term.
Cheshire-based Sharland still owns more than half of the company, the exact valuation of which led to a divorce case with ex-wife Alison that played out in the national newspapers earlier this year.
Charles Tattersall
Managing Director
Citypress
Since taking charge at Manchester-headquartered Citypress in 1998 - assuming the reins from his father David, the founder - Tattersall has overseen its development into one of the most recognised and admired PR agencies in the region.
With billings of £3.2m, around 50 staff across five offices and plans to expand in London, it was recently the only Northern agency to win a place on the Post Office roster. Tattersall, 40, owns two-thirds of the company with his wife Donna, the company's finance director.
Claire Poyser and Kate Little
Managing Directors
Lime Pictures
Poyser (pictured right) and Little (below) took joint charge of Lime in March 2013 when former chief executive Lesley Douglas left to set up her own indie.
Both worked for the BBC before establishing their broadcasting reputations in senior roles at ITV Studios, Poyser as director of production and Little as director of business affairs. Lime has continued to ripen delightfully under their stewardship, with turnover up nearly 12% to £65.6m in 2013 and over 350 permanent staff, mainly based at its Childwall HQ.
It continues to mine the reality genre very successfully with shows like The Only Way is Essex and Geordie Shore - MTV UK's biggest ever hit - and is now pushing its US growth, recently striking a deal with Disney to produce its first UK live action production, Evermoor.
Craig Chalmers
CEO
Stickyeyes
Having launched the company that would become Stickyeyes in 1998, when he was still in his 20s, Chalmers had to wait until the recession for the Leeds digital agency to really boom.
From sales of £3.5m in 2007, Stickyeyes has grown to a £15.1m-turnover business that sits atop Prolific North's Top 50 Digital Agencies list, and its 117 staff have recently moved into gleaming new offices in Leeds city centre. Clients include GSK, Hertz, Halifax and Lakeland, and Chalmers has a 95% stake.
Dee Ford
Group Managing Director Radio
Bauer Media
Growing up in Cheshire and now living in Leeds, Ford is one of the most powerful people in UK radio. She runs a portfolio of 45 commercial local, national and digital stations, including Absolute Radio, Key 103, Metro Radio, Radio Aire and City Talk, reaching 14.4m listeners in total.
Starting her career in local newspaper advertising sales, Ford joined Emap in 1994 as MD of Preston-based Rock FM, progressing to group MD of Emap Radio. The business was acquired by the Bauer Media Group in 2008. A keen cook and gardener, her achievements were recognised with a Gold award at the 2011 Arqiva Awards.
Gail Dudleston
CEO
Twentysixdigital
As a 25-year-old, Yorkshire-born Dudleston was earning £2.10 an hour in the Dewsbury branch of McDonald's, but after breaking into direct marketing she worked for various agencies before being headhunted by the boss of CMW to take over its Northern office, in Dudleston's words "just six people under a railway arch in Leeds".
A year later it merged with digital agency twentysix in London, and since then it has grown to 110 staff and a £5.7m turnover with offices in New York and Singapore and global clients including P&G, Rackspace and the Cartoon Network.
A University of Salford graduate, Dudleston - nicknamed Gale Force 12 at school - has kept to a tradition of buying pizza for all 110 employees every payday.
Helen Bullough
Head, CBBC Productions
BBC
Bullough leads a team of over 200 staff and has responsibility for all in-house production for CBBC at MediaCityUK.
Now living on the edge of the Peak District, Bullough has been at the Beeb since 1991 and worked in the North ever since moving to Manchester in 1993. In that time she's work in Daytime and Features, run the Manchester Entertainment development team has developed and executive produced shows for BBC One, Two, Three and Four.
Before moving to her current role in 2011, she was head of Entertainment Production North in Manchester and head of Vision North, producing shows including Mastermind, Question Of Sport and Dragon's Den. A former chair of the RTS North, her current remit includes everything from Tracy Beaker Returns and 4 O'Clock Club to Blue Peter and Newsround.
Nicky Campbell
Presenter, 5 live
BBC
While 5 live Breakfast co-host Rachel Burden has moved her family up to Knutsford, Campbell still splits his time between MediaCityUK and London, where his family are based.
This is less of a snub to Salford, where he broadcasts live on the station daily between 7 and 10am, and more of a practical necessity: the 53-year-old Scot has become an even more ubiquitous presence on television.
His unquestionably skilful interviewing technique is given full rein on BBC1's Sunday show The Big Questions - which recently completed its seventh series - while his softer side comes to the fore on ITV's BAFTA award-winning eye-moistener Long Lost Family. He's also just completed a four-part series on adoption for primetime ITV.
David Higgerson
Digital Publishing Director
Trinity Mirror
Formerly a journalist on the Lancashire Evening Post and Liverpool Echo, Higgerson has been at the forefront of Trinity's belated attempts to bring its regional titles into the digital era, working with the likes of the Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo and Newcastle Chronicle.
Higgerson is playing a key role in Trinity's switch to Newsroom 3.1, its digital-first publishing process that is radically altering the way its regional newsrooms operate, and also oversees Trinity's data journalism unit. His eponymous blog was recently ranked one of the top 10 journalism blogs by Cision.
Nick Snelson
Managing Director
APS Group
APS has grown considerably in the 12 years since Snelson, 49, took the helm at the company originally founded by his grandfather in 1961 as Allied Publicity Services.
It now turns over £56m with 600 staff based in 20 sites worldwide, including around 325 at its base in Stockport, and over the past year has secured meaty contracts with the Midlands Co-operative Society and Ford.
Snelson, who owns 100% of the company he has worked at for 28 years, is largely responsible for its transition from essentially a printing company to something far more technologically driven. Was once described as working "at a speed many find hard to keep up with".
The next 20 Prolific Northerners will be revealed tomorrow.
Our judges were handpicked to provide a cross-sector and pan-region perspective on the contenders for the final 100. They were:
Simon Binns, Heart of Manchester BID Manager at CityCo
Tom Cheesewright, Founder of Book of the Future
Mark Dickinson, Chairman of Prolific North
Matt Gardiner, Sales & Services Director at Melbourne Server Hosting
Michael Gibson, Managing Director of Fat Media
Ian Green, Director of Green Communications
Kate Harris, Head of Regional Development, NABS
Herb Kim, Founder of the Thinking Digital Conference
Jo Leah, Managing Director of Weber Shandwick North
Sharon Mars, Senior Communications Adviser at The Big Partnership
Rachel Pinkney, North West Events Manager at the RTS
Michael Taylor, Chairman of Downtown Manchester