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Hello, the economy in Britain has experienced nothing like this pandemic in any of our lifetimes.

It'll leave scars for many years. But it is too easy to talk about the economic effect in abstract terms or statistics, or even in brief media interviews with businesses that are suffering.

Can we go deeper than that? Get under the skin a bit. Look at what companies are doing to survive

and what's happening to shops on the high street. Well, a bit of an experiment on the programme this

week because we are just going to focus on one town and we're going to look at what's going

on there. It's a big town, bigger than're going to look at what's going on there.

It's a big town, bigger than in fact than a lot of cities, Bolton.

Part of Greater Manchester, it's been put into tier three of the English COVID hierarchy.

But Bolton has been unlucky.

It's been lingering under different restricted regimes for months.

So we'll take a snapshot of a town during a pandemic from the ground up. And just to start us off, let's get a flavour of Bolton

from a proud Boltonian, the former Radio Manchester political correspondent Matthew Bone. So here's

his short personal guide to his hometown.

Bolton's been a massive part of my life. I was born here. I grew up here. And whenever I come

into the town centre, I'm just always surrounded by memories. I'm just standing in front of the

town hall. It's a beautiful old 19th century building. When I was growing up, it was surrounded by loads and those different shops.

It was sort of the bustling heart of the town.

Actually, one of them was British home stores, which is just across the way.

That was where I had my first job when I was 17.

And my abiding memory of that job was, if I misbehaving, did stick me on the lingerie counter

because I found it excruciatingly embarrassing. BHS has closed down now like loads of other shops

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