MAYOR Margaret Green has a thirst for firsts in Wirral and invites readers to help compile a list for the Millennium.

Councillor Mrs Green lived in the house in James Street, Oxton, where George Mallory lived before he became the first, with another Birkenhead man, to climb the summit of Everest.

George Mallory and Andrew Irvine paid the ultimate price for their ascent - their lives - in 1924.

A new Himalayan expedition hopes to confirm this 'first'.

It prompted the Mayor to compile a list of official firsts.

Birkenhead has a number of firsts as a pioneering Victorian town. Wallasey has notable modern-day firsts, ranging from the world's first regular hovercraft service to the world's first all female sextuplets - the Waltons.

The Mayor doesn't just want the more well known nominations such as Birkenhead Park, first public park in the world, or Europe's first tramway from Woodside.

She wants Wirral-wide ones to include some of the more novel, obscure and amusing. Wirral, for example, had the first land-based radar station.

Please send details on a postcard to the Mayor of Wirral, Mayor's Parlour, Town Hall, Wallasey, L44 8ED.

WHAT'S up Mayor? asks Bugs Bunny at the first sod-cutting of Warner Brothers' new cinema complex to be built at Conway Park, Birkenhead.

Birkenhead was one of the first towns, outside London, to boast a silver screen. Just as this century comes to an end, cinema will return to the town where it started with this £6m development.

Cutting the first sod with a mechanical digger, Council Leader Dave Jackson said: "This is the latest piece in the regeneration jigsaw which has transformed central Birkenhead.

"We wish Warner Village Cinemas and developers Chapelgate Ltd every success with the project."

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.