And Finally

Jamie Oliver finds Joy Division masters in basement

By | Published on Wednesday 15 February 2012

Joy Division

Jamie Oliver is building a restaurant in Manchester. There’s nothing particularly exciting about that. However, an operation to clear the site before Oliver’s builders moved in has unearthed a load of buried treasure. Actual buried treasure.

OK, this was stuff left in an old bank vault, but it’s still exciting. The building was previously owned by HSBC, and was an old Midland Bank prior to that, so finding a bank vault might not be that surprising, but it does seem that no one knew it was there. And you wouldn’t necessarily expect items to still be stored in it.

Items recovered, valued at over £1 million and some dating back as far as 1935, include jewels, gold, a lot of guns, and a stack of Joy Division and New Order master tapes. Which are all things you might think people would remember depositing in a bank’s safety deposit boxes and want back at some point, but seemingly not.

A spokesman for HSBC refused to confirm exactly what had been found, telling the Daily Mail: “Even if I knew exactly what was in those boxes I would not be able to comment on that for reasons of confidentiality. We cannot reveal the precise contents, but these are safe deposit boxes – there are bound to be valuables in there”.

Unknown pleasures, you might call them.



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