SleuthSleuth is a sideways glance at the city every week, it's the truth, but Sleuth's truth. He's several people all at once. We give £25 for every story/rumour and piece of absurdity you find for us to publish. Sleuth sometimes even gets serious. We ask for the money back if any legal action follows. Follow Sleuth on twitter @mcrsleuth
Corrie Cakes
'To celebrate the launch of the Coronation Street Tours in the city centre', the Hilton Hotel in Beetham Tower has 'created a bespoke Afternoon Tea inspired by the soap'. Cloud 23 bar in the Hilton hears Sleuth will be dishing up 'Bet Lynch’s beautiful buns, Gail’s cheesy platts and washing it all down with a Ena Sparkles cocktail? There'll be a Warm Weatherfield Cake (Eccles cake), a Battersby Battenberg, and a Stan and Hilda Sherry Trifle'. Half way through proceedings a tram will veer off the nearby line and plough through the ground floor restaurant. Sleuth might have misheard that last bit. The Coronation Street Afternoon Tea is £38 per adult and £12.50 per child. Sleuth likes the fact that from Cloud 23 you can see the former Corrie set but thinks the Hilton might have thought to start this back on 5 April rather than six weeks into the six month opening.
View from Cloud 23, clever sorts will be able to spot 'The Street'
Other Afternoon Teas
Sleuth thinks the theming of Afternoon Teas is a fine idea. We could have a Piccadilly Gardens Afternoon Tea, fenced off with a feature concrete cake, a Leese's Folly Afternoon Tea, pointless with a hard to digest obstruction and a massive HS2 Afternoon Tea which is very expensive but extremely necessary.
The Stars Follow Confidential
Sleuth is endlessly bothered by beautiful young starlets ringing him up and asking him advice. It gets too much sometimes, which is why he has a voicemail directing these sorts of people to the latest Confidential reviews and articles. Thus Miley Cyrus ended up in a booth at Neighbourhood following the editor's review this week. She didn't take Sleuth up on this pub crawl idea around the Northern Quarter. Very strange - it would have been right up her street.
Miley is wowed by Sleuth's message
Afternoon Tea, Neighbourhood And The Age Game
In the editor's article about Neighbourhood he remarks how the bar restaurant is lovely in the afternoon but gets a bit lively in the evening: 'posturing gentlemen pushing out biceps bigger than their book collections, girls with their hands in the air and the over keen doorstaff'. So Sleuth loved this image of Neighbourhood in the early afternoon last Friday - look at those trendy grannies go.
Youngsters enjoying Neighbourhood
New Bars For Manchester
An almost neighbour of Neighbourhood is the Liars Club - God's warning that you're out too late, you're dancing inappropriately and you're in trouble at home. Liars Club entrance is just off the Square With No Name and lies under the now empty former Starbucks. Submitted to Council planning is a change of use application for the site into a 'mixed-use cafe/bar' and an outdoor drinking area. Good thinks Sleuth, the less boarded up properties the better. Although given this will be an upwards extension of the Liar's Club none of it may be true. Perhaps Sleuth learnt this clutching a zombie cocktail at 5am.
The Square With No Name
Bourgeois: The Bar
Meanwhile in the South Western Northern Quarter For Slightly Older People that is Chorlton, more new bars are on the move. Bourgeous will be a wine bar focused on 'excellent value wine, but also offering classic sharing culinary dishes, delivered by knowledgeable, trained, well mannered staff in a vibrant yet relaxed ambience'. Crikey. The new place will sit over the road from Chorlton Baths and next to De Nada bar in the former Bargain Booze. Sleuth thinks Bourgeois a brave name. Will Chorltonistas want to have their own selves presented on a mirror to them in the bar's title?
Sleuth's Manchester Quote Of The Week
Librarians don't have much of a reputation for being saucy but Sleuth loves this quote from Manchester Chief Librarian Louis Stanley Jast back in the 1920s after he'd toured America looking for inspiration behind what would become Central Library: "Perhaps the two most valuable and satisfactory products of American civilisation are the librarian on the one hand and the cocktail in the other." Good to know that even back then a good expense account jaunt was appreciated.
Louis Stanley Jast
Library and panorama of St Peter's Square
Sleuth's World Cup Song Of The Week
Sleuth loves life. So there are very few things that make Sleuth want to give it up. One is self-pity, the other is dubstep, but most of all, it's football songs. Not the kind you'll find on the terraces, though 'twenty twenty times Man Utd' four hundred times a match can be tedious. No, football songs created specifically for tournaments. The kind sang by flailing popstars, fat blokes and Chris Kamara. So when Sleuth was called up and invited to the Printworks this week to watch the filming of World Cup song Our Telly Is Bigger Than Your Telly by BoxBottom, Sleuth quickly ate the phone before they could finish explaining.
It only comes around every four years/It's the only time Dave gets in the beers. Beautiful.
