And now for some rather different pictures of Blackpool

These archive pictures show some of the more unusual Fylde coast sights captured on camera over the years during the last century.

It might look like something from a film, but a giant Illuminations hand was captured on camera, by Gazette photographer Bill Johnson, after it fell onto a car belonging to Gail Turner, in North Shore. The picture was then included in an exhibition of Bill’s work at the Grundy Gallery, in 1990.

And not from a film, but from a TV series, are 10 giant spiders pictured stopping traffic on the Promenade, in 1974, en route to the Dr Who exhibition. They had featured in the hit BBC show.

Hanging mid-air is a staircase from the St Annes Road post office, at the junction with Harcourt Road, in South Shore, Blackpool, as the building underwent demolition.

And stopping mid-air, as it developed, is Blackpool Tower – seen here under construction, in 1891.

The last remnant of Blackpool’s Great Wheel is pictured being dismantled, in June 1929. The demolition of the imposing structure had begun in 1928.

Workmen can be seen helping to steady Jacob Epstein’s Adam, as he started his journey from Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks in Blackpool, to his new home in Edinburgh, in 1961.

A bruised Brian London is shown sporting a black eye, on January 13, 1959 – just 24 hours after his fight with Henry Cooper.

And it wasn’t every day you saw men on top of the empty shell of a Blackpool building – as shown in our picture from 1932, of the aftermath of a huge fire at the RHO Hills Department Store in Bank Hey Street.

Workmen are captured in camera, clearing 7ft snow drifts in January 1940, near the Miners Home in Bispham.