Pie-eyed over prices at world’s richest club

KNOCKING ABOUT: MY love of Holland’s pies is well chronicled in these pages, so you can imagine my shock when I was charged £3.50 for a meat and potato pie.

I was at the City of Manchester Stadium for the Blue Square Bet Conference play-off final between Luton Town and AFC Wimbledon and decided on a delicacy before kick-off.

It’s a long time since I was charged as much for a pie as I was for a pint. Yes, that’s right, the good folk at the world’s richest football club also charged me £3.50 for a pint of Carling.

My old dad would have recoiled in horror. In his day our chippy in Huddersfield Road charged 10d (that’s four pence in new money) for a pie.

I know things have gone up in price, but three-and-a-half quid for a pie?

I wasn’t going to share this with you until a press release landed in my email inbox on Monday morning from, you’ve guessed it, Holland’s pies.

The Baxendale business has embraced new media and now has a Twitter page. And the pie vans have begun promoting its social media websites on its iconic vans.

Holland’s also has a “piecast”, a podcast that connects consumers with behind the scenes life at Holland’s. It has regularly been seen in the top-five food podcasts on iTunes and has around 1,000 regular subscribers.




Talking of food, I was at two cracking events on Thursday. From 5pm, the Chronicle hosted another in our spectacularly successful networking events, in conjunction with Lloyds Banking Group.



Around 100 people turned up at The Oldham College’s new business centre in Union Street — the former West Pennine Housing Association offices — for an evening that had a real buzz about it.

From there I took in the opening of Lupin Choudhury’s latest business venture, a cabaret venue in Higginshaw Lane alongside his Blue Tiffin restaurant.

The food was amazing, the atmosphere was terrific and the new venue, immediately adjacent to the curry house, had a good feel to it. There is a distinct lack of adult cabaret in Oldham these days and Lupin may just have hit on a winner.

Oldham’s Michelle Marsh was there, alongside her footballer husband Will Haining and Latics legend Andy Ritchie to mention a few of the many celebrities with whom I rubbed shoulders.

Michelle and her friend Liz Marsland did a couple of numbers as Twisted Heels and they were jolly good, too.