Staff at an Oldham petrol station had an exciting day as TV cameras came to town.
Crews filming Sky series Brassic arrived at Lees Village Service Station for a day of filming last week, on Monday, October 23, with stars Michelle Keegan and Bronagh Gallagher coming to town.
Camera crews were spotted keeping their equipment next to Oldham Mumps tram stop on the same day.
Service station owner Sue Collinge has worked at the service station for 30 years – the whole time it’s been open, having been built by her late father, Frank Pullen.
Paparazzi 'chaos' warning
The station was originally scouted as a location for the 2023 BBC series Boiling Point, which was filmed in Manchester.
However, after that didn’t happen, Sue says the station stayed on the list of locations for productions – leading to it getting chosen for Brassic.
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The 60-year-old said: “We knew about six to eight weeks before, because they’d been up and had a look and seen what they would need.
“We didn’t say much – we found out then that Michelle Keegan would be here, and they said to us ‘I wouldn’t spread that around if I was you, because otherwise you end up with the paparazzi and it ends up being absolutely chaos’.
“They asked us to keep it low key, but as it came nearer the time we had to let our customers know what was happening, because there was going to be disruption.
"They knew that filming was in the area because all the vans were parked at the Mumps tram station, so they knew that something was going on.”
‘It’s not all about money, it’s about experiencing different things’
The shop ended up closing for just a few hours in the afternoon, with film crew working around the operation of the petrol station for some of the day, and Sue trying to keep the station open as much as she could.
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Sue continued: “We were round and about involved, they were asking us ‘could you move this, can we do that’.
“The art department were up here at 7.30 that morning covering posters, doing whatever they needed to do. The actors arrived at around 10.30, and it was just like full-steam ahead. It was very, very interesting.
“I think for actors and actresses it must be very boring because they’re literally doing the same scenes over and over again, until the director is pleased with it, obviously. But for us, it was very interesting.
“One of the young men, Jack, who works for me has just started at uni doing film and media, so for him, he was absolutely thrilled to bits. He was made up, they all were – all the people who work here. It was something different, it’s about life experiences.
“If you’re given an opportunity to do something different, you grab it. We might have lost money that day, we probably did, but it’s not all about money. It’s about experiencing different things.
"And for what that young man experienced, in a course that he’s doing, far outweighed anything that we might have lost or didn’t lose. You know, just have a go and do it.”
‘Michelle Keegan was lovely’
After the day finished, Sue said she needed to have a lie down.
She continued: “We needed to all go and lie down in a dark room after that, even though we weren’t actually doing it, it’s funny how exhausting it was. You want to make sure they’ve got what they need and it’s going right, at the end of the day.
“It was a brilliant thing for the people in Lees. We had people coming and looking, standing on the road and watching because Michelle Keegan was here and Bronagh Gallagher.
“It was absolutely brilliant for locals to try and catch a glimpse. Our accountant was absolutely starstruck, he’s an avid watcher of the program, and he was absolutely starstruck. I think by the end of the day we were both starstruck, because both ladies were delightful. They were lovely.”
Putting Lees on the map
Sue is hoping that local shops don’t get ignored now that a new Aldi has opened in the area, with the petrol station, along with other shops such as the butchers, having stepped up to sell other items after the Co-op closed in September last year.
Sue added: “We want to promote the village in Lees. We’ve just had a big Aldi store open in Lees and there’s local shops around here. They’ve opened where the Co-op used to be, a lot of these local shops like the butchers started selling other things, we did with fruit and veg, to help people as they had no supermarket.
“It’s my hope that by keeping promoting the village, people will come in to the village and use the Aldi, obviously people are going to do that, but we’re also hoping they’ll use the local stores: the pet shop, the butchers, the florist, the local card shop. We’ve got some brilliant, brilliant businesses in Lees, we really have.
“It’s time that people, if they can, go local. Don’t head into Manchester paying your taxi fares, paying your tram fares – look at what we’ve got in the villages. Uppermill is a prime example of a bustling village and we’re trying to get Lees on a similar footing.
“If we can do little things like filming to get Lees on the map, it’s a knock-on effect, and that’s what we want to do.”
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