Mad Paddy, A6

I'm surprised there's no mention of Mad Paddy here. He was a stalwart of the seventies nutter scene in south Manchester. He used to ride up and down the A6 on a bike laden down with classic tramp stuff, pans and brushes and stuff he'd find about, old iron and dirty rags.
He was usually fairly vocal, singing and waving except when a bus came past, then he'd get suddenly angry and start yelling abuse at the bus, and he'd have a swing at it with his boot or his fist or whatever he had to hand. I was terrified of getting the 192 to town as a kid because of Mad Paddy. Somebody once told me his wife had been run over by a bus and that sent him over the edge.

The bloke died a few years back and even caused chaos at his funeral
loads of his family came over from Ireland for the funeral and the wrong body got buried due to some mix up
Used to see him go church every Sunday (St Marys Levenshulme) you would never recognise the bloke at church clean shaven and wit a clean suit on
If you ever got talking to him he was quite intelligent
Seen him inSt Marys social club on the night of the Brazil England game the one where they won 2-0 when Barnes got his wonder goal he asked me what the score was and when I told him that England had won
He replied how upset he was that he had missed the game then went on to name every England team going back to the world cup winning team of 66

As well as the bike he also had an old hand cart on which he used to collect old bits of scrap metal and I have seen him as far away as Old Trafford pushing his handcart where he used to use the scrap yards there for his weigh ins

Incidently to him his bike was his horse and his hand cart was his car

poor old paddy r.i.p, the police used to confiscate his bike on a regular basis, he'd just go out and get another within minutes, and mick very true he was indeed a very intelligent man, we used to talk to him all the time outside the church pub (r.i.p again) in longsight near dickenson road