As 2024 begins, we look back at the previous year in Oldham through stories you loved.
From an Oldham boy returning home after a six-year disappearance, to a record store on a narrowboat that sank, and even a day on the road with pest control.Starting off in no particular order,
Oldham was in the spotlight in March, when Oldham's Marnie Swindells won latest series of The Apprentice and in doing so she won a £250,000 investment into her business.
The Oldhamer owns a community-focused boxing gym called BRONX and planned to put the investment towards opening more gyms in the future.
Next, making the news for slightly less positive reasons was an Oldham dad who was teaching his son to throw eggs at houses - though he insisted that it was harmless fun.
Jay Knight went viral on TikTok in April for "egging" houses with his six-year-old son. Speaking at the time, the 29-year-old said: "It started off egging my sister's as a joke with my little lad which blew up and went viral - then it was my cousins.
"There is nothing malicious about it - it's all a laugh and a joke."
Then one of our most read stories of last year was about a canal boat record store which sank after its propellor got caught on what the owner believed may have been a mattress in the Failsworth stretch of Rochdale Canal.
The story shared how a GoFundMe page was set up to support the Rubber Ducky Records store - which lost an estimated 1,000 records to water damage.
Speaking in April, owner Myles Greenwood said: "Unfortunately, under the water I hit a rug or a mattress, I think it’s a mattress topper, but it looks like a foamy big piece of horrible, soggy fabric – huge, got wrapped around the propellor.
“In trying to remove it from the propellor it bust the stern gland and water started to flood into the back of the boat."
We had a host of celebrities visit the borough last year, including plenty of actors filming TV series.
Among the sports starts City player Rico Lewis who celebrated his side's 3-0 win against United in the Manchester derby, by having a Sunday roast at The Old Bell Inn, Delph.
The 19-year-old Bury man, who has since been capped for England, was visiting the restaurant in October with his family and grandfather - who had just turned 70.
A loss to the landscape also happened in October, with Hartford Mill's chimney coming crumbling down in a controlled explosion.
More than 100 years of history came down at Hartford Mill, which was the last piece in the puzzle of a demolition which started in 2020 but which stalled due to coronavirus.
The cotton mill opened in the 1900s and was operational until the 1950s, before being used by retailer Littlewoods in the decades afterwards.
Meanwhile, we also covered a large 'lobster' found at Daisy Nook Country Park that was causing plenty of confusion.
Along a similar creature theme, the following month we did a feature on pest control, and involved spending the day with an exterminator.
It came off the back of the bedbug epidemic, and the day included call-outs to a HMO in Oldham with a bedbug and cockroach problem, a nursery with mice traps in the kitchen, and a trip to Boundary Park - home of Oldham Athletic.
Speaking about the cockroaches found in a primary school classroom, Luke Summers, owner of Northern Pest Management, said: "They were found in a classroom first, so that means they've been brought in unintentionally from someone's bag or clothing because they should really start in the kitchen.”
We ended the year with some heartwarming stories, including an Oldham pub that was saved from closure by two locals.
Finally, one of the biggest story of the year was just last month and was that 17-year-old Alex Batty, who went missing at the age of 11 after going on holiday to Spain with his mum and grandad, returned to his Oldham home to be with his grandma and guardian Susan Caruana.
The teenager was spotted by a motorist, who noticed him on a road in the French Pyrenees, near Toulouse. He returned home last month and spent Christmas in Oldham.
Have you got a story to share? Email me at joe.yates@newsquest.co.uk and follow me on Twitter @JMYjourno
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