I suppose I should be calling for the pompously over-inflated head of AA Gill to be served up on a cocktail stick. You know – the self-satisfied London restaurant critic with the nostril-flared sneer of someone who’s just stood in dog mess but doesn’t want to admit it.
The cleavers are certainly out among the city’s restaurant community for the man fast becoming Manchester’s Most Hated, after he did a real hatchet job on Rio Ferdinand’s Rosso restaurant over the weekend. He probably thinks we should be honoured that he ventured outside Primrose Hill for the national restaurant critic’s once-a-year sop to those of us living outside the Big Smoke.
Of course, he deserves to be hunted down by a pack of pitbulls and made to listen to Diva Fever on repeat for eternity for his description of Manchester as “a city that drinks first and eats after, with its mouth open”. The cheek. Drink first, yes. But we’d never eat with mouths open – wouldn’t want to waste any of our hard-earned grub after a hard day down t’pit.
I suppose he was deafened by the noise of clogs on cobbles during his stay too. His pontifications at the beginning of his review about our Cottonopolis history tell us all we need to know. That he’d made up his mind about what a grubby old industrial city he was going to write about before even donning his facemask to brave the factory smog as he headed up the M1.
As for those calling for him to come back and sample some of our real foodie delights – I wouldn’t waste my chip fat on making him another meal. We shouldn’t need approval from him or any other London-based luvvies to feel good about our own fantastic restaurants.
But, while his verdicts on our fair city and our food left a bad taste in my mouth, I have to admit he’s got a point when it comes to some of the punters.
“Groups of girls, all done up with trowelled make-up, teased hair and strappy, crippling shoes,” he observes. “Girls, strutting and pouting with tarantula eyes and Siamese breasts, showed off hooker frocks.”
These gangs of girls, he quite cannily observes, are on the hunt for celebrity, sex and a good time. Followed by leering lads in ripped jeans and faded t-shirts.
Loath as I am to agree with a man who flashes his hairy chest and gold chain with all the style panache of David Hasselhoff, he’s merely confirming what I’ve been fretting about for a while now.
Going out in some parts of Manchester is starting to resemble a real-life version of turgid TV show Footballers’ Wives.
That is, there’s an increasingly over-sexed side to our city, fuelled by fast-living footballers flashing their cash around. A scene of restaurants and bars packed with posers and hangers-on desperate to worship at the shrine of celebrity.
Where a certain new breed of girl, fed on a diet of reality TV stardom, ventures out with the aim of getting in with a famous fella. Hanging out like hookers in the hope they’ll bag a sporting star.
Not only is it enough to put you off your food. It’s tacky – and now it’s making us look bad to the rest of the country.
Come on girls, show a bit of decorum. Stop giving our southern critics something to sink their teeth into.
Why stick-thin girls make me want to pig out
News this week that I am, in fact, a scientific abnormality. According to new research in The Biologist, seeing skinny women on TV is sending girls on starvation diets.
Boffins have established a clear link between watching walking cocktail sticks like Cheryl Cole and Tess Daly on primetime TV and an increase in anorexia.
Strange. Sitting through Tess ‘I should be in panto’ Daly’s excruciating presenting on Strictly has the opposite effect on me. Sending me reaching for the gin and a giant tub of Haagen Dazs to numb the pain.
The eggheads are right, though, in calling for curvier role models on screen. Like cuddly kitchen sexpot Nigella Lawson, who this week confirmed her goddess status in my eyes.
“I am incredibly slapdash,” she revealed. “I can’t iron, I never brush my hair at the sides and back.”
And yet she’s still got most of the male population eating out of the palm of her hand. Work that one out Einstein.
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The problem is that Manchester tries to present itself as a classy city but most of the people living here are little better than trailer trash. A walk around the centre at almost any time of day convinces any sane person that the locals are lacking in dress-sense, taste and good manners.
Women enjoying themsleves? How dare they
Ever been to Essex or Newcastle?
Don't bother with Manchester come to Stockport. Hang out at Cobden's. Until you are asked to put it away. Eat at the Stockport Tandoori pop into The Blossoms for half a mild or slip into the Grove where cousins mix freely.
If you think Manchester's bad nip down the A6 and see how it was in the 70's.
I agree, I live in the city centre, but tend to avoid the main areas on Saturday and Sunday nights, as it is horrible, blokes drunk looking for girls and a fight,and women dressed like prostitutes, behaving with even less morals - whilst it was very good ten years ago, it is rapidly turning awful, and this will be the undoing of the city renaissance.
Manchester has been the second roughest city in the UK for about 300 years and even today only trails London my a tiny margin for organised crime.
That'll be a once a year 'stop' not 'sop'? :@)
But as for the culture of celebritie. Maybe the MEN should look into its own articles- such as the latest spotting of so called celebs in their fav water holes and may e cut back on all the free PR given to them by your column inches.
I dont care if Celeb X is dating Celeb A or celeb u is wearing Gucci.
. And report on proper news.
"“Groups of girls, all done up with trowelled make-up, teased hair and strappy, crippling shoes,” he observes. “Girls, strutting and pouting with tarantula eyes and Siamese breasts, showed off hooker frocks.”"
Does he think he's the Taliban or something?
Yes, the trailer park trash women do invade Manchester city centre & often are a disgrace but this problem pervades EVERY city in the country as our society promotes "Celeb Culture' & fame for the sake of fame & not for any achievement. Until we change our nation's values, stop promoting tacky reality programs on the likes of Katie Price & Big Brother contestants, stop celebrating people who have achieved notoriety through selling kiss & tell stories etc etc then the youth of today will only get worse! As it is the media who promote & encourage this culture of gain without achievement (M.E.N. included) I fear things will not improve.
"“Groups of girls, all done up with trowelled make-up, teased hair and strappy, crippling shoes,” he observes. “Girls, strutting and pouting with tarantula eyes and Siamese breasts, showed off hooker frocks.”"
Isn't this a desription of the BBC flagship london soap's stars
It's the orange make-up that is so prevalent and why do people think its attractive ? Bit like Russell Brand, Simon Cowell, Girls Aloud - I am aware of their existence everywhere I look but I just "dont get it". Homogenised cookie cut slappers, great to practice on but no way would you want a relationship with..
Some town girls do look like oversized tangoed "oompah lumpahs" from willy wonka's chocolate factory, giggling morons. Hump me dump me...
Not the same as years ago.Then it was fur coats and no knickers. They don't wear fur coats any more.
I used to go to a club.I always stopped for the transformation scene when they turned the lights up. Marvellous what soft lights and sweet music can do.