Where have all the cloth caps gone?

Scotland on Sunday, May 11, 2008

[Amusing guide to Manchester, published for the benefit of Rangers fans attending the UEFA Cup Final. Not enough of them read it, apparently.]

The Smiths. The Stone Roses. Oasis. That whole Madchester scene. Welcome to Manchester, England’s hippest city, reborn as the host of the 2002 Commonwealth Games, and now drowning in posh shops, tasty restaurants and a social life which matches its claim to be a great European destination. That’s the good news, and even better for Rangers fans on the march, you can still find a pint for £1.50 and buy your chips with mushy peas.

Rangers headquarters - Albert Square

You can’t miss the city’s most famous square which is earmarked as Ranger’s fans “dedicated area”, because it sits under Manchester’s vast Town Hall. There’s a big screen and outlets for as much over-priced official UEFA merchandise as you can carry. Convenient for the adjacent Bootle St police station.

The Briton’s Protection - a home from homes

Almost too good to be true. One of Manchester’s best traditional boozers, complete with union jacks, great beer and more than 150 whiskies. And, at 50 Great Bridgewater St, The Briton’s Protection is just round the corner from Albert Square.

What the IRA did for the Manchester – Exchange Square

In 1996 the Provisional IRA detonated the largest bomb to explode in Britain since the Second World War. A large chunk of Manchester was blown away, but so was its clothcap image, as outraged Mancunians set about rebuilding the “Millennium Quarter”. Exchange Square was born, with its trendy pubs, cafés and shops.

Nightlife: Theatre or dance?

The city council’s helpful “fan information guide” recommends that brainy Rangers fans attend the Library Theatre, the Opera House or the Lowry Centre. The rest of us will be in the Fab Café, 111 Portland St, a dark cave filled with daleks and sci-fi weirdness, or at 42nd Street, at the junction of Bootle St and Deansgate, a Manchester indy institution.


It’s queer up North

Don’t be a square, Albert. Manchester’s throbbing “gay village” is close to Rangers fans’ city centre HQ. Try Manto, 46 Canal St, the “mixed” style bar which started a revolution. Or take a taxi to Cupid’s, a swinging club on Sutherland St, Swinton, with a reputation for satisfying Glaswegian clients. Make sure it’s not your round when the £50 membership charge is mentioned.

Where’s the tripe?

Old fashioned delicacies like cowheel, tripe and sarsaparilla may be off the menu these days, but there’s plenty of good grub. Try Stock, 4 Norfolk St for superb Italian food, and Gaucho’s, 2a St Mary’s St, decadent, opulent and Argentinean. China Town, close to Albert Square, is packed with cheap restaurants – try the Pan Asia for a-better-than-average buffet.

Cathedral Gardens – clean, wholesome fun

Part of the Millennium Quarter and on Wednesday home to a wholesome three-a-side football tournament for local kids. Adult refreshments are available in the nearby Printworks bar and restaurant complex.

The beautiful game

It’s just a tram ride to Manchester United’s club shop and museum, offering a chance to gaze on the many trophies won by Sir Alex Ferguson and his merry men. Alternatively, step out early for the cup final, and visit the Manchester City Experience Museum, where you can admire the carpets.

Old Manchester

Have a shufti inside the John Rylands Library, the City Art Gallery or the Town Hall, and take in their stunning Victorian opulence. Once the pubs have opened, beetle off to Castlefield, where the city’s industrial heritage has been refurbished in a variety of popular venues, including BarCa, Duke’s and the Rain Bar, which takes its name from the prevailing weather conditions in the city.

New Manchester

The Beetham Tower is the soaring skyscraper which dominates the city, and Cloud 23, at the top of the Hilton Hotel, commands a stunning view. It’s a 15-second elevator ride to the summit - but you might have to book.

Dining at the City of Manchester stadium

Thai is the flavour of the month and Swedish meatballs are off. But try the dish named in honour of the Sky Blues’ most famous fans, the Gallagher Brothers. That’s the Oasis Soup – you getta roll with it.

Speak Mancunian

“Now then, our kid” - “Hello, my friend.”

“Y’alright, our kid – “Hello, my friend.”

“Ay up, our kid” – “Hello, my friend.”

“Sound” – “I am well, thank you.”

“Booger. Me keks are soaked wi' Boddies.” - “Oh dear, some beer has been spilt on my trousers.”

“Bobbins” – Dreadful. As in “Zenit are bobbins.”

“Ref, tha’d mither a boathorse till it dropt in t’ cut” – “Referee, your persistant interference would cause the horse pulling a barge to fall into the canal.”

“Yer not gerrin in. Yer look like wreck o’th’Esperus.” – “No entry without a tie”

Losers on the brink of greatness

"I can hold my head up high. These laddies are playing for a few pounds a week, and these supporters are paying them the money, and they watch them. An ex-footballer said to me the other day, 'East Stirlingshire must be one of the only clubs who when they get beat, the supporters clap them off the park'.”

Those are the words of Les Thomson, the chief exec of East Stirlingshire FC, on the eve of he club's game with Montrose, which might lift them from the bottom of football's Scottish third division for the first time in six seasons. A poignant tale which you can read here: End of the longest losing streak

The good news is, they won.

Her and her big mouth

She’s got big hands, bloody big feet and a great big voice. "Hurry up," she yells, "I’m freezing me tits off."

Janet Street Porter is sitting with her Olive Oyl legs dangling over the triangulation point on the top of Edinburgh’s Blackford Hill. She’s not being rude, unkind or unpleasant, she just’s being, well, Janet Street Porter. Sort of stentorian...

That's a flavour of my encounter with Janet Street Porter. The link is working again so you can go here for a funny interview: Walkabout with Janet

I was on holiday last week, but managed to contribute this column on TV sport to Scotland on Sunday: Armchair anaylst

Edinburgh's claim on football

The Times, February 23, 2008

The passions aroused by the oldest sporting rivalry in the world are strong enough to ensure that in the 21st century “friendly” matches are still no longer scheduled between Scotland and England – so now enthusiasts for the game north and south of the border are going to war over the question of who gave football to the world.

These are matters of fierce sporting pride and in Yorkshire, they have no doubt about the truth. This year Sheffield FC has been celebrating its 150th season, its status as the oldest club in the world recognised by the Football Association and by FIFA, the game’s international governing body.

So strong is Sheffield’s claim that Pele, the world’s most famous footballer, was persuaded to kick off a celebration match between the English non-league side and Inter-Milan (the home team lost 2-5). Later, Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s president, attended the club’s anniversary dinner at Cutler’s Hall and there was a service of thanksgiving in the city’s cathedral.

But a challenge is coming from the north, where supporters of Edinburgh Foot-Ball Club, founded by John Hope in 1824, believe that they have the documents which will rewrite history and prove that their team is the oldest in the world.

Scottish researchers insist that Hope’s lifelong commitment to the game ensured that a set of rules was established and a wide cross section of Edinburgh society was playing the game long before Sheffield FC was even a glint in its founders’ eyes.

Just to rub in that Scottish sense of superiority, the Edinburgh club was re-established last week, and the lure of its unique heritage has already won it a sponsorship deal from Umbro, the international kit manufacturers.

“This club offered the first organised provision of football in the world,” said Kenny Cameron, the 27-year-old youth worker who has revived the club. “Glasgow, Manchester, Sheffield, wherever – they all took the lead from Edinburgh. Fair play to Sheffield, they’ve made a good commercial go of it over the years. But the documents are there which say the Edinburgh Club was there 33 years before they were formed.”

The Scottish case is built on Hope, a 17-year-old trainee lawyer when he staked his claim to sporting history.

Four pocket books and three bundles of papers in the National Archives of Scotland record his club’s activities. Subscriptions were set at 1s 6d (7½p) and there were 85 members in 1826-27 season, most of them wealthy young professionals.

Like a golf club, games were organised among members, rather than against other opponents. There were rudimentary rules, though the sport probably resembled the rough and tumble of earlier forms of football far more than “the beautiful game” that conquered the world in the 20th century.

Though his club folded in 1841, when Hope and his contemporaries succumbed to bad knees and pot bellies, he emerged again in the late 1840s as a promoter of a Society for Juvenile Abstainers, and was soon popularising the game among young working men as an alternative to drink.

By then Hope was a wealthy lawyer and a philanthropist. He established Stockbridge Park, near Raeburn Place, and set aside an area for football. He encouraged the young members of his temperance group to divide according to occupation and form teams, establishing a new kind of footballing network, in an era when organised sports were largely confined to the public schools.

By 1854 there was even a new set of rules, the first of which stated: “There must be no kicking of shins nor tripping for these are apt to produce quarrels or hurts and do not form part of the game.”

Richard McBrearty, a curator at the Scottish Football Museum said that Hope was innovating as he spread the game. “He was not seeking to promote the rules within his own club, but to get them out among the working men. We realise that this is a sensitive subject [in Sheffield]. But this is a story we have to talk about – it is important for our museum and for Scottish football,” said Mr McBrearty.

The sensitive side of Rich Tims, the chairman of Sheffield FC, remained well hidden however, when he brushed off Edinburgh’s claims, ahead of his team’s difficult Unibond league fixture today at home to Retford United.

“Various organisations, clubs, countries and towns have come out of the woodwork and said ‘We are older than you, blah, blah blah” said Mr Tims. “I think the guys in Edinburgh will have to go and prove that their rules are any relation at all to the rules now, if FIFA and the FA are going to change their minds.”

Mr Cameron remained bullish. “Sheffield can be the oldest continuously-playing club in the world all they want, but Edinburgh is the oldest club. They had Pele kick of a football match – we have contacted Alex Salmond.”

Funny old game

A sports news story which runs nationally in the Times. Written in a heck of a hurry, because, unlike most other football writers I had to dash off to a meeting with a small squad of professors and a former government economist. The rush produced a couple of mistakes, and that familiar feeling, when you sit bolt upright in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and exclaim, 'It wasn't Everton it was Manchester City.' Bummer. Hit the link below to read the story.

Owen goal for Burnley

Hell on Channel 17

It is undoubtedly a TV first. Live and exclusive to Sky Sports One: experience purgatory on a Saturday night. Dante would have appreciated this one.

More of the same, from Scotland on Sunday's 'Armchair analyst' column, as Scotland's football team unluckily lose to World Champions Italy, and go out of Euro 2008

Armchair analyst

How football ruined the art of conversation

A burly man in the crush of people packed into Mather’s Bar in Edinburgh is swearing at the top of his voice. He is ugly with anger and aggression but no-one bats an eye or takes offence. All the other men keep their heads tilted up at towards the television screens around the walls, groaning or cheering as the action changes.

It is a scene familiar to thousands of people who watched the football match between Scotland and Ukraine in a bar on Saturday. But while most enjoyed Scotland’s win and the craic that came with it, there is growing evidence that behaviour in pubs is changing, and that a never-ending stream of sport on TV is destroying the charm of traditional bars and killing the art of conversation.

For the author William McIlvanney, a television in a bar is like “an alien guest”. No-one will speak in front of it.

“Pubs were always talking shops,” said McIlvanney, who lived for a year in Canada. “The thing I missed was the ability to go in and stand in a bar like a Bedouin tribesman around an oasis and just discuss the news of the moment and way things are. It is crucial that people have a place where they exchange these things, and just talk about them.”

McIlvanney equates many of today’s bars with discos and nightclubs, where the music is so loud, conversation becomes impossible. “If Oscar Wilde spent his life there, no one would have known he was witty.”

Tourist guide books still lionise the best pubs for the pleasant hum of voices, but these places are now the exception rather than the rule. Multi-channel television sets can now be found in establishments from Thurso to Coldstream, offering live football virtually every night of the week. And unlike England, where traditional public houses are separated into Lounge and Public spaces, and TV free areas are common, Scottish bars are often single rooms, dominated by multiple screens.

You cannot avoid them in some of Edinburgh’s magnificent Victorian palace pubs like Bennett’s at Tollcross or the Kenilworth on Rose Street, where there are four in one room. Inside Glasgow’s most famous meeting place, the Horseshoe, television will inevitably draw your eye, because there is a screen on every gantry.

“Good beer and good conversation are the essence of a good pub. Now you just get people gawping at the screen. It’s so sad really,” said Michael Slaughter, the author of Scotland’s True Heritage Pubs.

Mr Slaughter expressed sympathy for landlords and bar managers. Under pressure from the smoking ban and from cut-price alcohol in the supermarkets, bars have to offer customers other incentives. Live sport provides an alternative to drinking at home and appeals to younger generation of drinkers. But the consequences are noted with varying levels of alarm by academics and members of the licensed trade.

Paddy O’Donnell, professor of psychology at Glasgow University, has no doubt that prevalence of the television in bars has not only destroyed conversation, but also led to more drunkenness and aggression.

“The pubs have got into a habit of providing TV, turning up the volume and just shoveling drink,” said Prof O’Donnell. “They often restrict seating areas as well, which again cuts down the possibility of conversation

“You used to have things like darts team and pub quizzes. Old guys and young guys, a mixing of generations which tends to have a dampening effect on male aggression. The loss of older males has probably been a bad thing.”

Sociolinguists stress that the television can have beneficial effects, allowing people to share in experiences like Saturday’s football match or in big news stories, which in turn makes conversation easier. But they also compare its impact with the effects of mobile phones and MP3 players, which have changed they way people speak to each other, and altered the content of conversation.

Dave Waterson, the chief executive of the Scottish Licensed Trade Association said he had seen these trends at work outside the pub – groups of young men playing golf together, but listening to their Ipods, rather than talking. Their lack of conversational skills are just as evident in the bar, he added.

“The sociability, the banter between people is diminishing,” said Mr Waterson. “I’ve worked in pubs where young people have come in, and when you say hello from the bar, they get a fright. Because nobody ever says anything to them.”

For Mr McIlvanney, the decline of conversation in the pub is part of a wider decline of “verbal culture” , though Prof O’Donnell is less pessimistic.

“People will always find something to talk about and there is no is no evidence that gossip has declined,” he said. “Although pubs have suffered a decline in conversation, fewer people go to pubs now. In the last 10 years or so there has been a huge growth in coffee houses. Many older people are probably going to Starbucks for a proper chat.”

A shorter version of this article appeared in Monday's Times. The pic I've lifted from The Scottish Patient, which is Kevin Williamson's excellent blog, detailing the ups and downs of his life following deserving causes - Hibernian FC and the Scottish Socialist Party. You can check it out here The Scottish Patient

Alexander's trip of a lifetime

KEM Izzet and Karl Duguid (both Colchester). Franck Ribery (Bayern Munich and France). Andy Morrell (Blackpool). Forget for a moment that Graham Alexander's career as a professional has spanned nearly 20 years and taken in something over 800 games. In the just two weeks of football last month, the roll call of his opponents was enough to expose the absurd contrasts which this game can throw up.

Fourteen ridiculous days began like this. On 1 September, Alexander made his debut for Burnley at Colchester's Layer Road stadium, playing in a 3-2 win to just under 5,000 people. Then, in his very next match, Scotland's improbable victory over France was fought out at the Parc des Princes in front of 43,000 people and the £200,000 club signing marked the £18 million Ribery out of the game.

Within three days, Alexander had come back to earth with a bump. Morrell - remember the name - scored Blackpool's equaliser in a Lancashire derby. The goal came late and, for the Burnley players, a draw felt like defeat. At least by now, Alexander knows better than most that the odd reverse helps keep things in proportion.

The contrasts are vivid and the memories bright from this recent rush of excitement. After the Colchester game, Alexander remembers how his new Burnley friends mocked "the poor old man" for leaving the field early with cramp. In Paris, the sounds of his team-mates were of pure delight, following the win which propelled Scotland to the top of Group B in the Euro 2008 qualifiers.

"Out there on the pitch, the result felt stunning, unbelievable," he said. "Then in the dressing room we were just looking at each other and laughing. There was that sense that you had done something amazing at Hampden - and then you'd done it all over again in Paris. We'd proved it wasn't a fluke. You get great belief from things like that."

These pieces don't come my way very often - the opportunity to interview a Burnley footballer for a Scottish newspaper. The curse of Wade struck immediately, of course, and Alexander wasn't picked for Scotland's game against the Ukraine. He is however almost certain to start tomorrow night in the match with Georgia. Two words of thanks - to the sub-editor who came up with Alexander's trip of a life time (Alexander is a bus company in these parts) and to the old geezer who helped me set up the interview.

Read the rest of the article at:

Colchester to Paris