manchester christmas
Wednesday, 2nd November 2005
Santa's on the Town Hall - Christmas won't be long
Chris Osuh WITH just seven weeks to go before Christmas, Santa is once again safely gazing down from his Yuletide perch above Manchester Town Hall.The giant smiling Santa peeps from the behind the listed building in his traditional red garb and carrying a teddy bear and a toy plane marked "2005". It took hours for a team of mountaineering experts to lift him up with a crane, inflate him and then secure him by the side of the Town Hall's clock tower. The inflatable is supported by a 32-tonne steel structure and has a giant fan blowing air into him so that even if Santa pops - as he has done in previous years - he will not let his fans down. The Town Hall Santa, which currently costs £43,500 to maintain every Christmas, has been a tradition for 21 years. In 1984 and 1986 it popped on roof-top gargoyles. In 2002, the M.E.N. campaigned to save Santa from the axe after council bosses complained he was scruffy and overweight. Hundreds of readers wrote in and demanded that the tradition be saved from town hall Scrooges.
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