Back in early February of this year, I received an email asking if I’d like to be involved in the filming of a French travel show about the North West of England. Échappées Belles is a long running TV programme, shown weekly on France5 on Sunday nights. The programme-makers had found the previous Manchester Bee website, and were interested in highlighting the Manchester Bee as part of the section on Manchester.

Filming took place at the end of February, with the resulting programme screened in France on 24th April, and uploaded to youtube the next day. The whole Manchester section is from 34:00 to 44:15 and features Manchester Taxi Tours, Manchester Cathedral, myself, the Manchester Bee Company and Dromomania.

A couple of notes on the footage…

It was freezing cold the morning I spent filming with the crew, hence the Team-Zizzou red cap. The eagle-eyed will also notice that about halfway through the footage that I’m suddenly wearing gloves.

Annonyingly, the wrong coat of arms is featured when discussing Manchester’s coat of arms. The one shown is for the Manchester Shipping Company on King Street, which is actually a combination of the coats of Manchester and Salford. I did point this out at the time of filming, but as there were no other easily accessible and filmable coat of arms nearby at the time, the decision was made to use it in the film.

I’ll be adding a transcript in due course, along with a translation of what’s being said.