UN-PC PUPPETS
Your last chance to catch this Tony-award winning Broadway and West End smash. An odd, unruly and fuzzy band of puppets, including Lucy the Slut and Rod the closeted gay Republican banker, living on a crummy New York street get up to all kinds of devilry: boozing, bonking and singing catchy numbers like The Internet Is For Porn and Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist. Sesame Street, but with a full puppet sex scene. Leave the kids at home. Q Avenue/Palace Theatre/Closes Sat 31 May/£20 best available ticket offer Promo code: ManCon
NEW OLD KIDS
New Men On The Block sounds wrong. A touch ominous even. So they’ve stuck with ‘New Kids’, to ward off the lynch mob. The 80s sensation have sold over 80 million albums worldwide and are heading back out on tour because they’re probably shy of a few bucks. Expect hits like You Got It (The Right Stuff), Hangin’ Tough and Please Don’t Go Girl, and perhaps one to waddle off stage with a stitch. New Kids On The Block/O2 Apollo/Fri 30 May/Doors 7pm/Tickets £40.50-£83.25 here
PINT? HIC.
The Stockport Beer and Cider festival will be the best thing to happen at Stockport County FC’s Edgeley Park for years (aren’t they in the PrickStick Northern Seventh Drivision now?). Since the Sumer’s first started fermenting bread and slinging the ‘divine plup’ down their necks back in 4000BC (before Cowell) we’ve been fairly found of the ole’ yellow brew. So much so that we now have around eight beer festivals a week in Manchester. Good we say. More the merrier, quite literally in this case. This three day event (organised by CAMRA, naturally) will offer about four million beers you’ve never heard of along with ciders, perries… Hic… food and live music… Hic. Stockport Beer and Cider Festival/Edgeley Park/Hardcastle Road/Thurs 29 - Sat 31 May/11.30am-11pm/Tickets on door £2-£5 (FREE for CAMRA members)/More here
DIE COWBOY DIE
Family Guy and Ted creator (and the highest paid TV writer in history, don’t ya know), Seth MacFarlane, turns his parody happy-slappy hand to the Wild West genre roping in Amanda Seyfried, Charlize Theron, Liam Neeson and Neil Patrick Harris for the ride. MacFarlane is Harry, a cowardly sheep-farmer preparing for a gun fight to win back his girl and trying not to be off'd in the process. Not easy in the West it'd seem. The critics say: ‘Boy Blunder Farts His Way To Failure In Worst Wester’… so sounds like a gud’un. A Million Ways To Die In The West/Various cinemas/Opens Fri 30 May
Buffalo Bill's laser eye surgery had gone tits-up
8 OUT OF 10 LAUGHS
The awkward one from Channel 4’s 8 Out Of 10 Cats is much like a young Jack Dee, in that he invariably hates everyone and everything. Well, for the sake of his friends, family and future health, the miserable git is determined to develop a more easy-going nature. And make you chuckle at his expense, naturally. Jon Richardson/The Lowry Theatre/Fri 30 May – Sun 1 Jun/8pm/Tickets £22.50 here
JERK IT
Manchester has a new restaurant. Big whoop you say, if anything Manchester probably has too many restaurants you say, we've got at least 47 too many Italians you say, and Curry Mile is naught but an arcade plaza you say. Well, shurrup, because this is a new Caribbean restaurant, and Manchester has but a handful of these, and most are jumped-up takeaways. Turtle Bay is a 'rum and jerk joint' in the former Alibi site on Oxford Street, the menu includes jerk ribs, Blue Mountain curry goat, trini doubles, Rastafari rundown and 'buss up shut' roti. I don't even know what over half of these things are - that's a good sign. Less pizza more jerk I say. Turtle Bay/Oxford Street/Open now/First look here.
REDS 4 BEVS
Having given Albert Square a big barbecued boot up the arse and more recently, pissed off a good number of veggies with their ‘Save a Veggie’ marketing campaign, the guys from Red’s True BBQ are looking to stitch themselves further into the rich tapestry of Manchester’s food and drink offering by opening out their bombastic restaurant to late night boozers. With a roster of live music buoyed by craft beers, boilermakers (eh?), buckets, cocktails, shakes, floats and wine, Red’s is set to ruin a good number of your mornings (including mine now). Red’s True Barbecue Bar/Albert Square/Open from Fri 30 May/till late/More from Red’s here
Red's True BBQ
A-REAPER
Manchester hustlers of Venezuelan-Columbian street scran and Manchester Confidential’s bestest ever pals, Arepa!Arepa!Arepa!, are invading Peter Street’s firebrand brewers, BrewDog, on Sunday to cram Arepas (basically a Venezuelan sandwich) down your necks followed by a tidal wave of some obscure 50% craft beer that’ll see you off your stool like a tsunami of discombobulation. (Manchester Confidential would like to make clear that this listing has not been produced in association with anyone, it is neither advertorial or much of an editorial for that matter, like most of ‘Things’ and stuff on the site, it is mere whimsy and drivel spattered with the odd useful bit of information). Arepa! kitchen takeover at BrewDog/Peter Street/Sun 1 June/Midday to 10pm/More here
47… 23… 5,873… E=MC2… HUT
It is widely recognized that nobody, not the players, fans, or referees for that matter (let alone people outside the U.S.) fully know the ins-and-outs of American Football. It is consistently the most complex, motley and baffling sport in the history of sports. No sooner has a guy thrown the thing to a running guy and gained a line or two before being mounted by ten other guys trying to get some lines back, than a harem of busty concubines run onto the field and start flinging each other about like sexy circus diablos. I don’t get it. Still, it’s a spectacle. Here Manchester’s American football team, the Manchester Titans, play Crewe Railroaders at the AJ Bell Stadium. Brutish fun. Manchester Titans vs Crewe Railroaders/AJ Bell Stadium/Sun 1 June/1pm/Tickets £5 (under-12s FREE)/Info here
The Titans
PRIDE STRIDES ON
The original UK LGBT games event, created with the aim to tackle homophobia in sport and promote the inclusion of LGBT people, is now a decade old. The games include tournaments and ‘have-a-go’ sessions with bike rides, cricket courses, netball, dodgeball, softball, rugby taster sessions, basketball, football, track and field, squash and swimming. On top of the sporting programme, there’ll be a Pride Games brunch at the Cornerhouse on Sunday 8 June from 11am-1pm. Pride Games/Various venues/Sun 1 – Sun 8 June/Get involved here
MADE IN THE UK
Open for Business is the story of contemporary British manufacturing and industry told through the lens of nine Magnum photographers. Visiting over 100 workplaces across the UK, from one-man workshops to FTSE 100 companies, this project attempts to capture the resilience and diversity of British manufacturing. Open For Business/MOSI/Until Sun 3 August/10am-5pm/FREE/More here
The new Terminator was crap
EVERYTHING IS HERE
The Complete Guide To Everything is a weekly show created and presented by Brooklyn's Tom Reynolds and Tim Daniels, two pals with normal jobs that began moonlighting as podcasters about, well, everything (from drones to North Korea to hangovers), but also not very much. Like listening to two mates talking nonsense. But strangely fascinating, like Gogglebox. Their goal: to leave the world a more informed place and banish wikipedia as the go-to-guide for absolutely everything. The Complete Guide To Everything/Anthony Burgess Foundation/Cambridge Street/Tues 3 to Weds 4 June/8pm/£10 tickets here
REBEL REBEL
Another artist ‘challenging the boundaries’ of something (why are they always picking on the boundaries?). This one, by American conceptual artist Clifford Owens, ‘has sought to challenge the boundaries of performance and the possibilities of interaction between artist and audience, interrogating the role of documentation by producing what he calls “discreet works of art”. No idea. He loves a snog, mind. Clifford Owens: Better The Rebel You Know/Cornerhouse/Galleries 1,2 & 3/Until Sun 17 Aug/Tues-Sun/Midday-6pm/FREE/More here
PHANTOM BOYZ
Thundering Scottish indie rockers The Phantom Band have perhaps the worst collection of past monikers of any band ever: NRA, Les Crazy Boyz, Los Crayzee Boyz, Tower of Girls, Wooden Trees, Robert Redford and Robert Louis Stevenson. Now settled, the gang have been touring across the UK with Radio 6 championing their sound. Still... Los Crayzee Boyz? That's Crap. The Phantom Band/Deaf Institute/Thurs 5 June/Doors 7.30pm/Tickets £11 here
