A group of friends are gathered taking selfies outside a building society on a busy shopping street in Burnley. An unlikely place for a selfie moment you might think, but then this is no ordinary building society - it's the Bank of Dave - the unlikely star of a major Netflix smash.
The success of the film has placed Burnley in the spotlight for all the right reasons - at a time when this Lancashire mill town is happy to revel in it. For it comes amid huge developments and opportunity in the town, with a burgeoning food and drink scene and its football team Burnley FC newly promoted back to the Premier League.
Burnley, you might say, is buzzing. And for Bank of Dave founder Dave Fishwick, whose story of building a community bank is retold in the Netflix number one hit, it's exactly what his birthplace deserves.
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He and his team at Burnley Savings and Loans (aka the Bank of Dave) have watched as group after group flock for photos outside since the Netflix smash was released in January. He laughs: "We've become a tourist attaction. We're like the Blackpool Tower of Burnley now.
"There are people standing outside for selfies every 20 minutes so my team tell me. We're getting hundreds of emails a week saying they love the movie, that they want to visit us, or that they want a Bank of Dave in their town next".
Burnley is a town that Dave calls "the centre of the universe". The self-made-millionaire adds: "I have the money to live anywhere in the world I would want, but I prefer to stay here because I like it."
He says: "It's a lovely town full of lovely people and the thing that's special about Burnley is it doesn't matter where you're stood, you can do a 360 degree turn, and you can see countryside from every direction. You stand in the middle of Burnley centre and you've got hills on every side. Now you find me a city that can do that."
The stunning Pennine scenery all around Burnley makes it a beautiful spot to live - yet property prices have not yet risen with perilous incline like they have in Manchester and the suburbs. Last week the town was named one of the cheapest places to rent in the UK.
According to Zoopla, the average house to rent in Burnley is the second cheapest in the UK at £507 a month. Compare that to Manchester - where the average cost to rent is now £978, rising by 14.4 percent in the last year alone. According to Rightmove the average house price in Burnley in the past year was £153,000 - compare that to £286,000 for Manchester.
It's little surprise that more and more people priced out of the heated housing markets in Greater Manchester are looking towards Burnley as the next "cool" place to live. It's just 35 minutes to drive to from Manchester city centre, and hourly trains from Burnley Manchester Road take 45 minutes to Manchester Victoria.
Michael Huckerby spent years working in Manchester running the Creative Spark marketing agency and has lived in locations across the world. But a wrong turn after visiting a friend in Clitheroe led him to Padiham, the smaller of the two towns of the borough of Burnley, where he fell in love with an old B&B.
He ended up buying it, and four neighbouring buildings, for a bargain price of £60,000. He's gone on to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of his money doing up the properties to create the super-stylish The Lawrence boutique hotel in the town.
It has gone on to become a popular destination hotel, and has recently played host to a film crew working on a top secret project in the town. And the rock band Bastille booked rooms out for a month while they recorded for a new album in studios at a converted bank in Padiham town centre.
So why does Michael think all the cool people are now looking to Burnley? He laughs: "Because it's so cheap.
"I just came here and went 'oh my god I can buy four houses for £60,000', it was nuts. It's becoming more expensive now but it's still nowhere near Manchester prices.
"I have a house down the road which overlooks a field, it's a four bed semi-detached with a big garden and it was £250,000 - to put that into context, my one bed flat in the Northern Quarter is £240,000. And yet we're just 35 minutes from Manchester here."
The Lawrence hotel has become a hotspot at weekends for visitors from the big cities like Manchester and Newcastle who want to explore the countryside and the brilliant food pubs, Michael says. He says: "If you go up the road it's just farms and then you've got Pendle Hill and the Forest of Bowland, just beautiful countryside for walks.
"And then we've got a Michelin Star restaurant down the road with the White Swan at Fence, and the Freemasons down the road which is always winning pub of the year. We're a big foodie place here.
"It feels a little bit mini Lake District but without the prices."
There's a burgeoning food, drink and cultural scene in the town centre itself, with burger bars, cocktail bars and a thriving restaurant inside the Mechanics theatre which has just registered its busiest year on record. The town centre has been named the best performing high street in the UK for two consecutive years.
There's also the popular bar and restaurant spaces at Finsley Gate Wharf, after an incredible regeneration thanks to National Lottery funding and The European Regional Development Fund.
There are plenty of family friendly spots too - including the Little Lancashire Village play rooms opened by former school teacher Holly Harker, and the newly-opened Fundaland soft play with a laser game centre attached inside the huge former Northlight Mill at Brierfield, part of Burnley FC in the Community's Leisure Box development.
They are just a couple of examples of the new life given to the old cotton mills that dominate the landscape in this part of the world. There's more to come too, with the redevelopment of Burnley's Newtown Mills by the University of Central Lancashire for a major new campus set to open in 2024 for 5,000 students.
And as for parks and green spaces? They are in expansive supply for a town of Burnley's size. There's Towneley Park with huge expanses of green space open to walk through, as well as the hall at its centre which is undergoing a major restoration by Burnley Council.
Then there's Gawthorpe Hall, known as the "Downton of the North", due to being designed by the same architect behind the real life Downton Abbey setting, Highclere Castle. Here you can freely walk through the manicured gardens and on into woodland where there's also a 'natural play area' for kids.
There's also Thompson Park with its huge boating lake and miniature railway that has long been a popular destination for families. On weekends and school holidays it boasts a paddling pool to cool off too.
The opening of a luxury hotel and spa in the town in 2019 has further added to Burnley's offering as a tourist destination. The Crow Wood Hotel and Spa Resort has been a passion project for another Burnley-born entrepreneur, Andrew Brown.
It boasts a self-contained spa facility that gets booked up for weeks in advance, as well as three restaurants across the site. That includes the seriously swanky Wilfred's restaurant at the main hotel, where Burnley boss Vincent Kompany is said to take his squad for team-building before every game.
The hotel itself has become a hotspot for weddings, boasting as it does simply stunning views across manicured gardens and its own lake. The four star hotel also features its own helipad which gives you an idea of the high profile of some of its guests.
With Burnley FC now winning promotion back to the Premier League next season, the Crow Wood is perfectly primed to host visiting teams, as it currently does for the Championship contenders. And there will naturally be a commercial knock-on-effect for the town from visiting teams and fans amid that claret revolution.
For Bank of Dave's Dave Fishwick, the hotel represents the changing face of Burnley, and the opportunities that lie ahead for this burgeoning town.
He says: "Do you know what I think is wonderful about Burnley is Crow Wood. I think it's wonderful that we have something so special in town."
As for Dave's plans next, having a Netflix number one smash has "opened the doors to massive opportunities", he says. He's heading off to America next, where the film is set to get cinematic release and place Burnley on a world stage, and Dave is set to appear on some of the US's biggest talk shows.
And what will he say of Burnley to American audiences? He beams: "I just tell people it's the centre of the universe. It's the best place in the world and I've lived there forever and I ain't moving nowhere."
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