By HARRY MOUNT

Lighting up Lancashire: While Blackpool is popular in summer, many also flock there in winter to see the famous Illuminations


When, in 1879, the Blackpool Illuminations were first switched on, just eight electric arc lamps lit up the promenade. The Victorian visitors were dazzled by what they called the 'artificial sunshine'.

Those Victorians would have to stick on several pairs of sunglasses these days, not only to deal with the illuminations - which light up six miles of the prom - but also the Christmas lights.

This year they include a feature designed by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, and were switched on by X Factor star Joe Mcelderry. Think Oxford Street's Christmas lights, but on a more magnificent - and tasteful - scale.

Prince William was in town shortly after announcing his engagement, adding some extra sparkle if any were needed.

You might see Blackpool as a summer place, but the town's gaudy grandeur lifts the mood during long winter nights, too. end- of- the- pier shows are replaced by top- of-the-tower panto: Mooky And The Beanstalk at the Blackpool Tower circus and Aladdin at the Grand Theatre.

Blackpool also has a new winter attraction in the form of its football team.

Promoted to the Premier League this year, the club have put a smile on the face of the most famous seaside town in the world. The council has even wrapped a lurid tangerine Blackpool FC scarf around the neck of the Victorian laughing clown at the Pleasure Beach amusement park.


Royal seal of approval: Prince William headed to Blackpool just after his engagement was announced


That's not the only improvement. Despite the recession, a tidal wave of investment has swept down the Golden Mile over the past few year s . A huge renovat ion programme of the seafront - a section is dubbed the Tower Festival headland, between the sea and Blackpool Tower - will be unveiled next summer, providing a new restaurant, wedding chapel and a 20,000-capacity concert venue.

Boutique hotels, including number One St Luke's and number One South Beach, have popped up alongside the old Victorian palace hotels; at the funfair, in Madame Crevette's bar, they're selling champagne and oysters.

Don't worry, though. Beneath the upmarket facelift, the cheap and cheerful seaside town with the Kiss Me Quick hats and the sticks of rock is still going strong. In the Tower Ballroom, the 1935 Wurlitzer organ is playing a slow, melancholy version of Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside.

The red velvet on the tip-up seats in the auditorium might be a little threadbare, but the heart still lifts as you look up from the dance floor to the 1899 rococo ceiling, with its fairytale frescoes and wide-bellied balconies supported by angels. Strictly Come Dancing was broadcast from here last weekend.

Even in winter - perhaps especially in winter, as the breakers build higher and higher - the sheer scale of the front is a tonic to the spirits. The sands stretch for a dozen miles, from Lytham St Annes in the south to Fleetwood in the north; access to the beach is via walkways, flanked by handsome Doric colonnades.

Step inland from the front and there are signs of recession: the booze buster off-licences and the pound shops. But that's half the point of the British seaside town - all that ageing, battered glamour, harking back to a time before cheap flights took the gilt off the Victorian splendour.

At Sandcastle Water World - home of the world's longest indoor waterslide - visitors have increased by 20 per cent every year for the past three years.



Blooming Blackpool: There is still something magical about this seaside town


Harry Ramsden's on the seafront had such a long queue for its restaurant that I had a takeaway instead - £3.99 for cod, chips and a fizzy drink. 'There is no chip cut by man which cannot be cooked to perfection in three minutes,' said Harry Ramsden.

I'm with Mr Ramsden on that. His perfectly-cooked chips lasted the whole of my tram ride, south along the front.

The taste police might issue a few tickets along that promenade. Next to the spare, white, art deco lines of the casino and the robust Meccano skeleton of the Tower (built in 1894, in imitation of the Eiffel Tower), there are gimcrack buildings offering cabaret, with creaking nightclub singers and dancing girls who are some way past girlhood.

Candy-striped booths ('Clairvoyant Lavinia - Past, present, future') perch on the tarmac, in front of the megashows such as Louis Tussaud's Waxworks, with vast advertising awnings ('Simon Cowell's got the Wax Factor!').

I got off the tram at the Pleasure Beach. Wandering away from the super-duper new rollercoasters and dodgems, I strolled over to the older attractions: the slow-moving car race, with its old E-Type Jags and Eddie Stobart lorries; the River Caves ride, built in 1904, promising a round-the-world trip in 80 days.

Is it just me watching Brighton Rock too many times, or is there something intensely nostalgic about the seaside? Not just a nostalgia for your own childhood, but for Britain's younger days.

Nostalgia literally means 'a sadness in longing for the past'. For me - walking around Blackpool, at any rate - it meant intense pleasure.


Travel Facts
The Barceló Blackpool Imperial Hotel has double rooms from £60 B&B (01253 623 971, www.barcelohotels.co.uk)
More information: Blackpool Tourist Information (01253 478 222, www.visitblackpool.com)


source :dailymail