Author: Tim Foley

I'm a Salford-born writer — and for those unfamiliar with the city, it's the subject of the popular folk song 'Dirty Old Town.' In fact, my father very probably did kiss my mother by the Gasworks wall, as it was the place he found his first job after emigrating from Ireland in 1947. Salford is also the birthplace of notable writers, artists and musicians — among them Mike Leigh, the playwright and director, whose father was the local doctor and who lived four houses down from where I was born. Then there's John Cooper Clarke, the bard of our city, who every morning would hop on the No.1 bus that took me to school and him to his work as a laboratory assistant at Salford Technical College. After leaving school and qualifying as a plumbing and mechanical engineer, I spent much of my career in the building trade. I began writing via my own online consumer advice forum in 1999, which proved popular enough that I was commissioned by Granada TV as Project Consultant on ITV's Better Homes and Granada's 60 Minute Makeover, and later took a leading role in a two-part special for ITV's Tonight With Trevor McDonald. But long before any of that, I had been left fascinated by the story of Tom Crean — an explorer from County Kerry who served under Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton on three pioneering expeditions to Antarctica. I first encountered his story as a boy during the long summers I spent near Castlemaine in County Kerry, close to my father's birthplace. That early fascination never left me.