The Liverpool/Manchester area comprising the counties of Greater Manchester and Merseyside as well as parts of Cheshire, Lancashire and the town of Glossop in Derbyshire. Cheshire is quite the prosperous county, being to Liverpool and Manchester what the Home Counties are to London. Lancashire, which borders the area to the North, on the other hand is more working class and has a large South Asian Muslim minority population, as do Oldham and Rochdale in Greater Manchester. The area lies on the western side of the Pennine Hills, with Yorkshire and Derbyshire to the east. West Yorkshire also has a large Muslim population, mainly in the large cities of Leeds and Bradford, which are separated from Greater Manchester by the sparsely-populated Pennines. The principal cities are Manchester and Liverpool, with other notable towns and cities including Bolton, Bootle, Southport, Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Salford, Macclesfield, Stockport, Southport, Oldham, Rochdale, Runcorn and Birkenhead. In the southeastern part, near Glossop, is The Peak District.
Liverpool now has its own page.
Football
The area is home to the English League's two most successful clubs of all time, Liverpool and Manchester United, along with several other notable teams such as Manchester City, Everton, Wigan Athletic and Bolton Wanderers.
Pop Music
Due mostly to being a major port, a lot of American blues and rock and roll music came to the UK through Liverpool, inspiring The Beatles and many other bands. Not to be outdone, Manchester has produced a number of bands and became one of the main cities where British Alternative Rock and indie bands came from. They even ended up at the forefront of the British music scene for a while between the late eighties and the early nineties thanks to the "Madchester" movement.
Flat Caps
During the industrial revolution, Manchester was the UK's largest manufacturer of cotton, earning the nickname "Cottonopolis", and flat cloth caps became the stereotypical headwear of the Northern working-class man. During the 2002 Commonwealth Games, held in Manchester, the people who gave out the medals wore silk cloth caps during the presentations (easily the silliest thing about a Games that, on the whole, went well for the city).
Famous real people from the area:
- The Beatles - Liverpool
- Take That (Band) - Manchester
- Craig Charles - Liverpool
- Fred Dibnah - steam engineer and demolition artist, from Bolton.
- From Doctor Who, four different Doctors, at least two Masters, and several companions:
- Tom Baker - Liverpool
- Colin Baker - born in London but raised in Rochdale
- Paul McGann - Liverpool
- Christopher Eccleston - Salford
- John Simm - born in Leeds, but raised in Lancashire and Manchester
- Sacha Dhawan - Bramhall
- Plus the quintessential companion, Elisabeth Sladen - Liverpool
- Nicola Roberts from Girls Aloud - Runcorn
- Mike Harding, comedian and folk singer, born in Crumpsall, Manchester, and a man who made a career out of taking the North up to eleven.
- Peter Kay, comedian - Bolton
- LS Lowry, artist - Manchester
- Joy Division and by extension New Order, post-punk bands, The Smiths, "Madchester" bands (The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, The Charlatans), Oasis - Manchester
- The Fall, arguably the quintessential post-punk outfit - Manchester
- The Teardrop Explodes - Liverpool
- Ian McKellen, actor - Bolton
- Lee Mack, comedian - Southport
- Bernard Manning - Manchester
- The Verve - Wigan
- Anthony Burgess, author - Manchester
- The Hollies - Manchester
- Ken Reid - Manchester
- Danny Jones from McFly - Bolton
- Ingested - Manchester (Lyn Jeffs currently lives in Wales)
- Karl Pilkington - Manchester
- A Flock of Seagulls, Dead or Alive, Echo & the Bunnymen, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and many other New Wave bands - Liverpool
- When In Rome, One-Hit Wonder Synth-Pop trio ("The Promise") - Manchester (Michael Floreale moved to Dallas, Texas after their breakup)
- Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Wirral, across the River Mersey from Liverpool
- Låpsley(Holly Lapsley Fletcher), indie pop musician - Southport
- Lisa Stansfield - Rochdale
- Davy Jones of The Monkees - Manchester
- Albert Finney, actor - Salford
- John Thaw - Gorton
- Bernard Hill - Blackley
- Millie Gibson - Tameside
Famous fictional people from the area:
- Wallace & Gromit - Wigan
- Everyone from Coronation Street - Mostly, Manchester
- Gene Hunt - Manchester
- Dave Lister - Liverpool
- John Constantine - Liverpool
- Charlie Pace - Manchester
- Ruby Sunday - Manchester
Appearances in fiction:
Manchester is a very common setting in British fiction due to the historical presence of Granada Television, the most successful ITV franchise by far.
- The 51st State, partially set in Liverpool.
- Boys from the Blackstuff, set in Liverpool.
- Bread, set in Liverpool
- Brookside, set in Liverpool.
- Clocking Off, which centres around a Manchester factory.
- Control, a biopic of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis.
- Coronation Street is set in a fictional part of Greater Manchester called Weatherfield and has Manchester trams going past frequently; or, in one recent case, crashing through a shop and exploding.
- Cracker, set in Manchester.
- Doctor Who Magazine: The comic strip storyline "Mancopolis" is set in a futuristic Manchester Mega City, in which the mills have been brought back to make artificial fibres for spacesuits
- East is East, set in Salford, with scenes in "Bradistan" and featuring the immortal line "He's not dead, he's living in Eccles!"
- Life on Mars (2006) and its sequel Ashes to Ashes (2008) are both set (and were filmed in) Manchester.
- Looking For Eric, set in Greater Manchester and starring Man Utd star footballer Eric Cantona As Himself.
- Nowhere Boy, a Biopic of some guy called John Lennon.
- Phoenix Nights is set in Bolton.
- Queer as Folk (UK) is set around Manchester's Canal Street.
- The Royle Family is set in Manchester.
- The original UK version of the show Shameless is set on a fictional Council Estate in Manchester.
- Survivors is set around Manchester (Naj has a Man City duvet cover and other signs indicating it have been seen).
- Trollied is set in Warrington.
- 24-Hour Party People, covering the history of Factory Records and their bands in the Manchester scene from The '70s through to The '90s.
- Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps is set in Runcorn.
- Warburtons bakery advertisements feature Bolton's "I ♥ BLTN" logo, reflecting the location of the company. (On Stallone's T-shirt in the Sylvester Stallone ad, and on mugs in The Muppets' ad. The Muppet ad also references Corrie, the Manchester Arndale Centre, the Happy Mondays and the phrase "Mad for it!")
- Waterloo Road is set in Rochdale, Greater Manchester in the first seven seasons, and having moved to Scotland returned to Greater Manchester for the 2023 revival.
- Yellow Submarine, er, sort of.
- Z Cars was set in Newtown, a No Communities Were Harmed version of Kirkby, which was in Lancashire when the programme first aired but was reassigned to Merseyside before its run ended.