Last Thursday we managed the inaugural Public Services Communications Awards at Manchester United FC's International Suite on behalf of How-Do. The dinner and awards ceremony attracted over 300 of the city's great and good and celebrated the very best in public sector communications in our region.

There's a full account of the winners here and it was so good to see our regional PR agencies and in house comms teams being recognised for their groundbreaking work. The evening was an unqualified success and we're sure the Public Services Communications Awards will become a major fixture in the region's events calendar over forthcoming years.

I'm not sure if Strictly has anything to do with it but glitter and sequins were in abundance and so here's a bit of SImple Minds to mark the occasion.

Last night we were in a very wet Manchester city centre managing event activities for the digital switchover on behalf of the wonderful Smith & Smith PR and their client Digital UK. Strictly's Tess Daly was in town to flick the switch and herald the region's transition from analogue to digital TV with a major piece of digital art by Rob and Matt Vale which was beamed onto the city's iconic Urbis building.

The five minute light and sound projection illuminated the exhibition centre's glass tower with a compact history of television which encompassed testcards,wave pulses and over 700 TV's descending the frontage each displaying landmark small screen moments. As it moved from early black and white analogue signals into high definition colour it was a proud moment to see the late, great Tony Wilson in his Seventies Granada heyday. He was a big fan of progress.

Huge thanks go out to Next who allowed us to project from the balcony of their flagship store and to everyone at Urbis who were a dream to work with. In a lovely bit of synchronicity the venue was also holding the launch of a brand new exhibition on the rich history of TV in our region entitled 'Manchester, Television & The City: Ghosts of WInter Hill'. It runs until April next year and admission is free, do check it out...

Here's Manchester's finest transmitting from the BBC in 1979.