Next 2012 tours: Thu 29 March (1.30pm, from Art Gallery), Tue 26 June (2pm, from Visitor Centre), Thu 26 July (1.30pm, from Art Gallery).

Spurned, snubbed and sniggered at, Laurence Stephen Lowry became Britain’s most famous and best-loved 20th century painter, whose works now go for millions. He called himself a ‘simple man’, but he was the strangest of men. He made his will over to a much younger woman, whom he befriended simply because she shared his surname.

Lowry’s day job was not as an artist. He was a rent collector in the slum areas of the city and was mortified should anyone in the art world discover this. We have now.

On the L S Lowry walk we explore the man behind the paintings, and take you through the central Manchester haunts he visited and depicted.