NEW York audiences are currently raving about a British film which has its roots firmly in Bolton.

Little Voice, starring Michael Caine, Jane Horrocks and Brenda Blethyn, opens in UK cinemas on January 8 and a great success is predicted.

It is based on The Rise and Fall of Little Voice by Jim Cartwright, an important British playwright who happens to be one of us - he went to Harper Green School at Farnworth.

The play, set in Bolton, was a big critical and popular success when it opened in London in 1991.

But film makers tend to have their own views about things and director Mark Herman subsequently decided that the action should be transferred to Scarborough, Yorkshire.

This film, which can be broadly classed with works such as Brassed Off! and The Full Monty, might well do something to help the tourist trade in Scarborough - just as the stripping ex-miners created interest in Sheffield.

But Bolton, which has a lot to offer visitors, would seem to have missed out on an opportunity to raise its national and international profile.

Mr Herman, who has lived here, says in an interview tonight that he felt Bolton was too close to the setting for the Full Monty.

Well, maybe.

It seems also that Mr Herman has re-written a lot of the original dialogue to make it more accessible to the movie audience.

By all accounts Jim Cartwright is pleased with the film version, but you are unlikely to read his detailed views in the Evening News or elsewhere.

Mr Cartwright, who now lives in Chorley, has a thing about interviews and always turns them down.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.