Christmas parties at the Playboy Club, the Strangeways 'Bat-Signal' and learning to swim at Broughton Baths: MP Jonathan Ashworth on his Greater Manchester roots

When former Playboy Bunny Girl and journalist Susan Wallace heard MP Jonathan Ashworth unexpectedly mention the Manchester Playboy Club during a keynote fringe event at Labour Party Conference, her ears pricked up. It turns out he has the late Hugh Hefner’s fancy of a punt on Canal Street in 1973 to thank for bringing his Mancunian parents - Jon and Marie - together.

The new Shadow Paymaster General, previously Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions until Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer’s shadow cabinet reshuffle in September, told Susan more...

“Dad left school at 15 and went to work on the Docks in Salford. Then casinos opened up in Manchester. My dad worked as a croupier at the Albion Casino in Cromwell Road in Salford. It’s still there under the Genting brand. They used to have a dog track – it’s gone now.

“Then Playboy opened a casino in Manchester. During the 70s and early 80s, there was a Playboy Club in Canal Street. Dad went there to be a croupier and that was where he met my mum, who was from Flixton, near Urmston.

“She’d left school at 16, and was a Bunny Girl waitress in the casino at the Manchester Playboy Club. She had to have a different name. There’s a picture of me somewhere as a child at the Manchester Playboy Club - at the children’s Christmas party they had every year.”

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Born in Hope Hospital - now Salford Royal - Jonathan has just turned 45 years old. He spoke after discussing some of his early Northern life influences with Camilla Tominey during a recent Labour Party Conference fringe event ’Delivering Social