Sleuth is a sideways glance at the city every week, it's the truth, but Sleuth's truth. He's several people all at once. Sleuth sometimes even gets serious.@mcrsleuth
CITY'S OLDEST SHOP CLOSES
Edwards of Manchester, open since 1830, has now ceased trading. There's no-one home at the Barton Arcade shop and the doors are bolted. Sleuth has tears in his eyes. Sleuth loved to buy Chelsea boots and elegant brogues from the fine operation with the best range of quality mens shoes in the city. Sleuth wishes Craig and his team well and will give his Churches an extra shoeshine when he gets home tonight. There were loads of stories attached to the place. Edwards used to get quite a few celebs and footballers as customers. He remembered being told how the serial oddity that is Joey Barton once purchased a pair of jazzy crocodile skin numbers when he was a Manchester City player. Then Barton attacked a man in a Liverpool McDonalds, got sent down and forgot to pick up his pair of £750 shoes. More money than sense some of those 'ballers. By the way, for the record, the oldest continuously open shop is now Forsyths music shop on Deansgate from 1857.
SLEUTH’S PERILS OF PERISCOPE: A TRAGIC TRUE STORY
It started with a wasp in the shower. Rebecca from Salford was refreshing herself before the day, naked of course, as is the way with showering. For some reason she had her mobile phone close to hand. The wasp was buzzing around by the window so Rebecca for some reason decided the world needed to see that curious wasp via Periscope, the live video app from Twitter. She fired up Periscope but had reversed the picture and found she was filming her own face. This so shocked her she dropped the phone. The phone landed face up revealing her physical attributes from toes to nose. She screamed, stamped on the phone but the filming wouldn’t stop, so she wrapped the shower curtain around her and in her anxiety ripped it off the hooks, falling to the floor as she did so, before a final scramble, a grab, and at last she turned off Periscope. Then it was more panic as she frantically tried to delete the file. That achieved, she was horrified to see 15 people had viewed her in her full naked glory. Periscope has a strapline, ‘See the world through other people’s eyes’. In Rebecca’s case it was ‘Let the world see too much of you through other people’s eyes’.
SLEUTH’S SECOND AND THIRD PERILS OF PERISCOPE
The second peril of Periscope is that most videos are boring and mostly very bad, displaying an alarming amount of self-obsession. "Please, please look at me and my cat/wall/cheese/hat". The third peril of Persicope is not very many people are watching the videos - although more naked showering videos might lift those figures.
THE COMMERCIAL HOTEL ON THE MARKET
Liverpool Road's Commercial Hotel is on the market. This opened just before the oldest passenger rail system on the planet, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway first ran in 1830. The station of the latter still survives in MOSI and as the Commercial Hotel was opened to serve the station it can claim to be the oldest purpose built railway hotel in the world. Sleuth hears rumours that a top gastro-pub operator may be looking to take over. Sleuth hears talk that an operation in the style of Nigel Haworth's Ribble Valley Inns is sniffing around. That would be excellent - The Three Fishes at Mitton is one of Sleuth's faves. Manchester could do with another gastro-pub addition to the city centre, we don't have nearly enough.
SLEUTH AND THE ALCOHOL TAXIDERMIST
Sleuth was once very frustrated by the Commercial Hotel. Maybe a decade ago he rushed into the pub and started shouting at the landlord, "Hey your pub is the oldest purpose built railway hotel in the world. Why not smarten the place up, bring in the memorabilia and turn yourself into a place of pilgrimage for rail enthusiasts? You'd help city tourism and make a fortune for yourself." The landlord looked at Sleuth and said, "I'm not interested in that. Let me show you my real passion and it's not railways." The man took Sleuth into the front parlour and pointed at some dead birds in a case. "I like stuffing partridges," he said. It turned out the landlord was a taxidermist. Sleuth couldn't help laughing at the madness of the world and then drinking all the beer in the place just because he could.
SLEUTH AND ANOTHER BIRDCAGE
Sleuth gets offers sent to him from Groupon even though he's never signed up for them. This week one popped into his inbox called excitingly 'Hidden Gems'. Sleuth wondered what joy there could be contained within, what secrets might be revealed. Ah yes, there was the hidden gem, the Birdcage that vast cheeky venue on Withy Grove full of almost naked caberet acts.
SLEUTH'S SOUTH MANCHESTER FOOD TIP OF THE WEEK
Sleuth's spies have been dining in Hale. They recommend the Stockyard on Ashley Road, the former Amba unit. Americana food might be a bit overdone now, but the full lobster and chips is proving a proper winner. £20 all in apparently. Sleuth's running for the tram as quick as he can right now.
Full lobster and chips
