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Digger: It's like the UK version of Ellis Island.

Ray: Yes, it was. A lot of the Irish came to Liverpool and then across the Atlantic to New York. But an awful lot who didn't have the wherewithal to do that just settled in Liverpool or moved on because they might have had relatives in Manchester. Because both cities have obviously got big Irish populations - Liverpool more so I suppose realistically. If you were coming over 150 or 200 years ago from Ireland, you probably didn't have two halfpennies to rub together to put it bluntly. So you settled where you landed. But I think also because Liverpool and Manchester are industrial cities - Liverpool's more difficult to categorise in that sense in that its major industry has always been the sea and the docks and its history has flown from that connection. Whereas Manchester, being the first industrial city in the world - you can't compare Manchester with York, with Bath or indeed London. Although I don't think you can compare anywhere with London in terms of the population and nature compared to any other city in Britain. But Manchester, because it was the lead city, has never had the big Georgian houses in the centre of the city, so it's never been a residential city per se. It has always been that creation of industry, science and technology. I think when the industry went, and particularly in the sixties with cotton David, then everything else followed on from cotton. The engineers produced the boilers and the machines and they produced the railway locomotives and the canals that were the transport system to facilitate the production and distribution of the cotton. In Manchester particularly they didn't have a docks until they built the 'Big Ditch' which was The Manchester Ship Canal from the mouth of the river Mersey into Manchester. For eighty years it had a major docks but it never had a right to have a major docks because it's 35 miles inland, of course. So, in a way it created that. And I think because Manchester's roots are industrial, and the same in a way with Liverpool, and because both cities went through major decline in the 1960s. Containerised shipping took over and so Liverpool saw a lot of the work at the docks and ancillary work disappearing. I think they've had to go through great transformations as cities. Manchester went through it quicker and better I think, to be fair. Liverpool is catching up certainly in the last five years but I think they both HAD to be creative. Because when you lose your major industries and form of work, you've then got to redefine yourself. I always used to say that I thought Manchester was about ten years ahead of Liverpool in terms of regeneration. I think that's probably five now. One of the ways that both cities have done that, Manchester really did this first, they've redefined themselves as tourist destinations. If I'm honest when I qualified sixteen years ago Manchester and Liverpool weren't even on the tourist map in that sense. You could argue Liverpool was because of The Beatles but realistically if you excluded The Beatles then in terms of a tourist destination Liverpool and Manchester were a joke.

Digger: Totally different now.

Ray: Yes, absolutely. Today they're the third and fourth most visited cities in the UK. So they have been very successful at that process, and not totally through tourism.

Digger: Who is number two?

Ray: Edinburgh, and London at number one. And in terms of visitor numbers, Liverpool and Manchester were at three and four with the official statistics twelve months ago. It always depends on how you count the figures and who you include, of course. But having said that what I can say without any question is that when I started in 1996 to try and make a living as a qualified guide it took me five or six years to have enough work to do it for most of the year. Today that isn't the case because many, many people - hundreds and thousand of them, see Manchester and Liverpool as great places to visit. Alright, you might not spend a fortnight of your holidays in Liverpool and Manchester but you're certainly going to spend a long weekend here as a base.

Digger: What can people expect from your tours?

Ray: From my point of view you can expect to have perhaps any preconceptions overturned. Because if we went back ten, fifteen or twenty years, the thought of anybody coming to do tours in Liverpool or Manchester was almost anathema to people. They would never think of coming to these cities and yet they are so soaked in history and heritage. It's a fantastic story and a fantastic journey. Clearly, if we're looking at music, then, of course in the 1960s the kingdom of music was, without question, the Merseybeat sound - The Beatles, Gerry and The Pacemakers, Cilla Black and so on. But also if you're looking at the music scene in the late seventies and early eighties that mantel that Liverpool held in the sixties was then passed on to Manchester with 'Madchester' - groups like Joy Division, The Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses, New Order, Oasis - you name it. And even up to today with Elbow. Although they are from Bury, so you could argue Greater Manchester, the big city is Manchester and so that defines them.

Digger: They still sound like Manchester boys to southerners.

Ray: Well they do, and without any question, if you ever listen to people like Guy Garvey talk - he talks in terms of Manchester and not in terms of Bury. And that's what I would expect.

Digger: So who are the people coming on the tours? And what feedback are you getting?

Ray: Typical people? Well, there's a wide-ranging age group, literally, so you're getting anybody from their late twenties all the way up to their sixties and seventies. Remember that if we're talking about Liverpool's heritage, and certainly the 1960s, we're talking nearly forty or fifty years ago. Therefore that age range of people, when they were teenagers, The Beatles and The Merseybeat was something they knew all about because it was something they grew up with. If they were in Japan, America or wherever. Looking at the demographic, David and particularly for Liverpool rather than Manchester, but Manchester too to an extent, it's masses of Americans and Japanese. They have a strong connection and affinity with The Beatles.

Digger: My favourite tours of yours would have to be the Music Tours and the TV and Film Tours. What are your personal retro passions Ray?

Ray: My passions have always been music. Strangely enough, I was never a massive Beatles fan I have to say. Although I'm a child of the sixties in that sense I was much more into The Rolling Stones and things like that rather than the clean-cut Beatles. Not that I didn't like their music, but if I had to make a choice. I suppose I'm in the right place too, David, because one of my other great passions is football and of course with Liverpool and Manchester...

Digger: You're perfectly placed.

Ray: Yes, I'm in a perfect place at these iconic football cities and I get a lot of my tourism business, if it's not music-related tours, from sports tours as well. The other thing we've seen a massive growth in David in the last five years or so is what I would call a two-centre approach with tour operators nowadays. Because what you find increasingly is that now people are not just coming to base themselves in Liverpool or in Manchester - they're doing that but they want to see the other city as well. So you find with lots of the tour operators and the people that I see from all over the world, wherever they're based, part of their itinerary is going to include the other city.

Digger: What are the best and most enjoyable aspects of running Manchester Tour Guides and the tours?

Ray: For me, meeting people from all over the world. Every day's a different day David.

Digger: How big are the tours Ray?

Ray: I do a lot of coach work so my groups can be anything from twenty people to fifty people. For the popular walking tours I tend to be restrictive on those. I know there are guides out there who, if there are 100 people that turn up to do a walking tour then they'll do one for 100 people and I think that's ludicrous. (Digger laughs) I'll be honest. I make a very specific point that I will not take more than 25 people on a walking tour. I do that because, from an aesthetic point of view, I think if you've got more than that they're not getting good value for money. If you've got forty or fifty people in your group, no matter how good your voice is, some of those people are not going to hear what you've got to say. The other side of that when doing a walking tour is that you're going to cover much less ground in the same time with fifty people than you would with twenty people. If you think about it, it's logical and I just think if you're taking money off of people to do tours they're entitled to have the best tour you can give them. And the only way that's going to happen for me is by not dragging fifty people around, many who can't hear and only covering half the ground you should have. So I keep the tours smaller and seek to offer good value for money.

Digger: What sort of comments and feedback do you get from people?

Ray: I'll give two particular examples if I can. I did three or four days of tours in Liverpool and the surrounding area at the end of last year for a group from the Kent area. They had decided that they were going to Liverpool on a cultural stay. They were going to the Anglican Cathedral to an opera presentation within the cathedral and seeing another show in the days they were here. I did five days with them, based in both Liverpool and Manchester and the region. Their view was that they had never anticipated, even though they'd booked the itinerary, how friendly the welcome would be, how wonderful the cities were and what an incredibly fabulous time they would have while they were here.

Digger: That can't be bad can it?

Ray: I think that's part of breaking the preconceptions.

Digger: I've been up to Liverpool several times in the past five years and I'm just knocked-out by the place. It's always been friendly, there's a buzz and there's a lot to see, both historical and contemporary.

Ray: Yes. If you look at Liverpool today compared even with Liverpool five years ago, being realistic, I often say that in many ways the best thing that's happened to Liverpool in that time has been the Liverpool 1 Shopping Centre. That's not because I am in the least interested in shopping David. Along with thing like the opening of The Liverpool Museum, the transformation of Albert Dock and all that, but what Liverpool 1 has given Liverpool and has led to such incredible redevelopment around the whole area. It's given for the first time in years a connection between the city centre and the docks. Because the Liverpool 1 development flows from the city centre literally down to the docks and, for me, that's the best thing that has happened there for years. That has been so well thought out. For ten years when I was taking groups of people to Liverpool, you either concentrated on the city and left the docks alone or the other way around. Because walking people through some of the declining, derelict areas outside the city shops was an awful stretch. Now you can walk them down through a very modern development, it's seamless and makes a massive difference.

Digger: That old shopping centre in the centre was like a time-warp from the seventies.

Ray: It was, very much so. What I would also say is a regular occurrence is that when we get people coming to Manchester, particularly we get visitors who knew Manchester because they lived here or who were born here or they came to university here thirty or forty years ago. When they come back they are blown away by how different it is today. Manchester today absolutely destroys any industrial preconceptions that they have because even if their view was founded thirty or forty years ago, Manchester was just a totally different place and is so transformed today. I was born and brought up in Manchester and I know.

Digger: It's worth a visit even if you've been here before.

Ray: That's right. We get lots of visitors from Australia, from Canada and New Zealand who had emigrated in the fifties, sixties and seventies. When I take people around the area of Salford Quays - the old docks area of the city and they see The Lowry, The Imperial War Museum, The New Media City and the BBC Headquarters, they not only don't recognise it and some of them worked on the docks by the way, they are literally blown away at how wonderful it is. What a metropolitan city it is and what a diverse population it's got and what a diverse offer it's got nowadays. So I think Liverpool and Manchester are just increasing in the number of visitors they're getting for very understandable reasons.

Digger: There have certainly been some huge changes and developments in both cities in the last few years.

Ray: That's what's bringing people here. When people come here who have not been to Liverpool or Manchester before the one thing that you hear time and time and time again is "Wow, we've got to come back. We've not had enough time to really do and see these two wonderful cities and it's something we want to do." The impression it makes on people today is magnificent and I think that in Manchester's case that really began to happen in a major way with the 2002 Commonwealth Games.