Tributes paid to former Star heritage columnist Chris Coffey

Chris, from Sutton, was a lover of local history and wrote the Coffey Time column in the Star.

He was involved with the St Helens Heritage Network, and among Chris’ interests was The Cannington Shaw project, dedicated to the preservation and community usage of the historic site, near to the Steve Prescott Bridge.

Chris was interviewed for a BBC Documentary Heritage At Risk in 2013.  

In his working life, Chris worked at a bank before moving to the Inland Revenue, working in Manchester and then in St Helens at the former College Street HMRC office.

In his younger days Chris had been a keen cyclist and also did cross-country running, and played rugby union.

Also a music lover, he ran a magazine, Rockzine, in the 1970s about the music scene in St Helens. The owner of hundreds of cassette tapes, Chris spent a lot of his time in later years listening to his favourite music.

Despite illness affecting his mobility for the past two decades of his life, Chris continued to organise events.

Chris was a massive Laurel & Hardy enthusiast and member of Sons of the Desert, the Laurel and Hardy international fan club.

Chris founded an annual convention The Laurel & Harday in 1993, which still takes place in Wigan each year.

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While organising the events, he invited many guest speakers over the years, from across the country and overseas and among his special guest stars were actress Jean Darling and composer Ronnie Hazlehurst and his orchestra.

Chris had also established the Bacon Grabbers tent, which ran meetings in Manchester, St. Helens and Wigan throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s. He was also international correspondent for the Intra-Tent Journal for several years, which honoured the careers of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

Chris was involved with the Cannington Shaw project (Image: Stock)

Chris, from Sutton, attended conventions in the UK, Europe and the USA with colleague and friend Norman Leigh.

“He was a good organiser and was good with people and always full of ideas,” said Norman.

“It didn’t faze him if a something didn’t work, it was ‘I’ll try something else’.

“He loved local history and loved the railways.

“After his diagnosis in 2000 he went to the USA for a Laurel and Hardy convention, and got the 30-day Amtrak pass, and went to New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and others. He got to where Laurel and Hardy used to film in the 1920s and saw the houses.

Chris also won the bid to host the International convention in 2016, which took place in Grange-over-Sands and Ulverston. During this convention, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy's hometowns of Ulverston and Harlem, Georgia, were officially twinned during a ceremony, an idea that belonged to Chris.

Chris Coffey, in 2016, alongside the Laurel and Hardy statue outside the Coronation Hall with Anita Garnett (right) from the Ulverston Brewing Company and town clerk, Jayne Kendall (Image: NQ)

“He was very positive about everything in his life which helped him through his illness, he was a really positive chap to the end,” added Norman.

“He never complained about anything, he was really thankful that he did as much as he managed to do.

“He was really happy with the amount of things that he had done.”