Kevin Fitzpatrick

Yeah, a bit of excitement, isn't there?

Suddenly in my patch, which is always good.

If you're a political reporter, you want things to be happening, don't you?

And I think there's certainly a bit going on at the moment.

And what's it been like this week as sort of campaigning has firmly got underway?

Well, it was a bit crazy last week.

I was down at Westminster with a whole drama about will they, won't they, will an MP stand aside for Burnham?

Does he really have one or is it all talk?

And then as soon as Josh Simons in Makerfield announced he was going, well, all the focus came up here, didn't it?

And I think people in the constituency a little bit

bemused really to suddenly be in the eye of the media storm also slightly amused by the fact that the whole world of media have just arrived in Ashton in Makerfield which is just one part of quite a wide and varied constituency all these other different towns but I think the feeling there is that the media are going to once they get sick of the main town centre they're going to spread out and be asking people what they reckon in every single part of Makerfield constituency.

Yeah, that really is the case down in Makerfield.

And it's different to, we had the Gorton and Denton by-election here only a couple of months ago, didn't we?

And there was a real clear definition there.

You had a white working class area in Denton and then down in the Gorton area, it was much more multicultural and varied with a big Muslim population.

Here, the whole...

constituency is 97% white British there's areas of affluence areas of deprivation but it's just in the Wigan borough just on the edge of Wigan and St Helens real rugby league town if you know your sports and across the different

areas of the constituency there's particular challenges there's one area which Ashton and Makerfield town centre really been struggling with anti-social behavior from youth recently just up the road there's a place called Platt Bridge and they had some devastating new year's day floods last year you go across other areas and they've got issues with with transport there was a huge illegal tip that the authorities are trying to get a grip of so across

It's a really interesting constituency and the idea that, like you say, you can just drop into one place and get a sense of what everybody who lives and will be voting there feels just isn't really possible.

No, it's really out on the edge and Wigan are really proud of the fact that that's where they're from and in some parts in terms of Greater Manchester's whole conurbation, the Combined Authority which runs it, they actually opt out of some bits in things like rubbish collection and all the recycling.