{"id":6202,"date":"2017-09-11T15:53:27","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T13:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/2017\/09\/11\/it-was-all-white-on-the-night-the-manchester-arena-arose-helen-pidd\/"},"modified":"2017-09-11T15:53:27","modified_gmt":"2017-09-11T13:53:27","slug":"it-was-all-white-on-the-night-the-manchester-arena-arose-helen-pidd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/?p=6202","title":{"rendered":"It was all white on the night the Manchester Arena arose | Helen Pidd"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was a truly triumphant night attended by around 14,000 people \u2013 but where was the city\u2019s BAME community?At the Manchester Arena reopening on Saturday night there was a rumour Peter Kay would be appearing, but we knew neither how nor when. It became a guessing game. Surely Rick Astley wasn\u2019t billed on merit, alongside local heroes Noel Gallagher, Blossoms and the Courteeners? Kay must be planning to duet with him, we decided, perhaps as Geraldine from Britain\u2019s Got the Pop Factor. And yet Never Gonna Give You Up came and went, and there was still no sign of the Bolton comedian.It wasn\u2019t until just before Gallagher\u2019s closing set that Kay finally came on stage, wearing the yellow fleece of an Arena worker. I assumed he was in character. He wasn\u2019t. He told the 14,000-strong crowd he had worked there for four years from its opening day, on 15 July 1995. He\u2019d seen a lot of happiness in this hall, he said, both as a worker and a comic: \u201cWe can\u2019t let terrorists win.\u201d He went on: \u201cWe\u2019ve got to remember the good times and let them outweigh the bad. The victims will never, ever been forgotten. But we have got to move forward with love, not hate, and that\u2019s how we win.\u201d Continue reading&#8230;<br \/>\nVia: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2017\/sep\/11\/manchester-arena-reopening-peter-kay-white-audience-bame\" target=\"_blank\">It was all white on the night the Manchester Arena arose | Helen Pidd<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was a truly triumphant night attended by around 14,000 people \u2013 but where was the city\u2019s BAME community?At the Manchester Arena reopening on Saturday night there was a rumour Peter Kay would be appearing, but we knew neither how nor when. It became a guessing game. Surely Rick Astley [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}