'It was 1964... A man said 'come and sit next to Myra'

Buzzcocks’ Steve Diggle recalls chilling childhood encounter with Moors killers

- By BETH ABBIT

Monsters: Myra Hindley and Ian Brady

It haunts his memory. The moment eight-year-old Steve Diggle came face-to-face with Myra Hindley and Ian Brady.

The Buzzcocks frontman spent his youth gadding around the terraced streets of Bradford, east Manchester - a place he describes as 'the real Coronation Street' which influenced his politics and outlook on life.

And though he recalls his formative years as a happy time, he remembers one Bonfire Night with startling clarity and grim hindsight.

"We used to have a croft at the end of the street with all the wood on. And this blonde woman came and sat down on this box.

"Obviously it was Brady who then said: 'Come and sit next to Myra'

"I didn't realise of course. You don't realise until much later.

"There were about five of us, cousins, friends, you know. But we were only about seven or eight.

"I nearly went and sat with her but because of the peer pressure from others I didn't.

"Somewhere else I might have sat down but luckily I didn't."

It's an episode Steve also recounts in his book Autonomy: Portrait of a Buzzcock.

"The chilling reality for kids of my age was that the Moors Murderers' Manchester was our Manchester," he writes.

"They plucked their victims from the very streets I grew up in, all to the east and southeast around Gorton, Ancoats and Longsight. So it's not really surprising that one day I'd end up seeing them with my own eyes.

"This was a bit later, when I must have been maybe 8 or 9. It was at a bonfire at the end of our street and I remember seeing this Teddy Boy-looking bloke with this blonde woman.

"It was just those two watching us kids run around the bonfire, which even at the time I thought was a bit odd.