Ges on the Box: Hang on, who else hails from Oldham?

THERE have been the odd one or two careers I’ve considered over the years. When I was nine I wanted to be the first woman astronaut. Quite badly, actually. Badly enough to eat my greens.

You might think there’s no connection, but I have it on good authority (my mother’s) that all astronauts have to consume a great many green vegetables. Apparently, it’s something to do with weightlessness. Or so she said.

I never made it of course. That honour went to Valentina Tereshkova who was launched into space on June 16, 1963, aboard Vostok 6. Exactly five months before my 10th birthday. I never stood a chance, I was too young. And now they won’t have me because it’d take too much fuel to propel me out of this hemisphere. Me having given up green veggies some time in June, 1963.

I’ve also contemplated being a chocolatier (for obvious reasons) a probation officer and an opera singer. Being tone deaf is a slight handicap there.

The telly is a great source of potential careers. From big game hunting (I’ve never even killed a fly) to deep sea trawling (seasick). From ballroom dancing (two left feet) to hangman.

Did you catch ITV’s “Pierrepoint” on Monday? The last hangman in Britain. Now there’s a job that takes a strong stomach. I couldn’t do it. Same reason as big game hunting.

But fascinating stuff, albeit a tad gory. Casting Timothy Spall — everyone’s favourite loser — was sheer genius: There is nobody else I can think of who would have made a more believable hangman.

Actually, it was a surprise gem. I originally only tuned in because I’d heard he was from Oldham. Pierrepoint, not Spall. He ran a pub in Hollinwood after the war and called it “Help The Poor Struggler”. Apt, I thought.

And it set me off Wikipedia-ing (if there is such a verb). New though I am to this neck of the woods, it is my abode of choice, so it’d be nice to know who else called Oldham ‘home’.

I’m sure you know this, but I was fascinated to discover Winston Churchill had strong links with us. Although born at Blenheim Palace to the son of a Duke, and brought up in large houses full of servants, he did become our MP, briefly.

Quite how eludes me — I can’t think what he had in common with the average cotton mill worker.

Indeed, when he wrote asking his mother to come and hear his first speech here, he warned: “There is no hotel that’s suitable for you to stay in”.

There you go then, a warmongering snob and the last hangman. I’m beginning to like living here more by the day.