Sport: Super League Grand Final, Old Trafford, Saturday 5 October, 6pm
We need sports like Rugby. It harks back to our primal inclinations to see man beat down man every now and then. At a time when we’re used to seeing our highest earning sportsmen slump to the ground as though their Achilles heel has been ripped out by a cobra at every miniscule tickle, seeing big blokes throw themselves full steam into other big blokes is rather refreshing. There’s something Spartan about it all. Means we can get all smug about American football too, the pansies.
Luckily, the culmination of the 2013 Super League season is heading to Old Trafford on Saturday with a Greater Manchester showdown as Wigan Warriors take on Warrington Wolves in the final. With Wigan striving for a rare Super League and Tetley’s Challenge Cup double and Warrington appearing in a second consecutive final after beating Huddersfield in a tense semi-final, Saturday looks set to be a stomper.
Tickets from £20 available here.
Old Trafford
Exhibition: David Chadwick: We Were All Here, Once, Cornerhouse, Thursday 3 – Tuesday 5 November
A student of the Manchester School of Art from 1972-1975 and now based in Didsbury, David Chadwick has amassed a series of photos taken around the Manchester club scene during the 70s and 80s. It’s a collection David refers to as ‘young people looking for love’ in clubs including Legend, The Sandpiper and Friday’s. These photographs have been languishing under David’s bed for over 30 years until he decided to approach Cornerhouse with the idea to exhibit them. These raw and off-the-cuff images offer an insight into the Punk, New romantic and Rag-Doll scenes. The hair's also pretty funny.
All of the images will be available to buy (approximate A3 print, framed with mount, £180).
You've been punk'd
Magic: The Illusionists: Witness the Impossible, Manchester Apollo, Friday 4 – Saturday 5 October, 7pm
We got thoroughly illusioned by a mentalist recently. Philip ‘The Mentalist’ Escoffey to be precise. Perplexed doesn’t do it justice. Philip makes up one-seventh of The Illusionists, a rabble of seven world-renowned magicians banded together to bend the mind, drop jaws and thoroughly frustrate us cynics the world over. Launched in January 2012, The Illusionists: Witness The Impossible have performed sell-out shows across Australia and South America, seen by 73,000 people in Sydney and Mexico City alone. That Mentalist told us: "We’re trying to do for magic what Cirque du Soleil did for circus. It’s contemporary, it’s edgy and aesthetic. If you’re into magic then it’s as good as it gets.” Well, it turned me, and I’m as cynical as Victor Meldrew, Malcolm Tucker and Ian Hislop sat around a Ouija board with Colin Fry.
Tickets £38 - £45.50. Book here.
Film: Grimmfest, Lass O’Gowrie and The Dancehouse, Until Sunday 6 October
Into your horror? Like to see people speared, impaled, lanced, punctured, skewered, shanked, taxidermied, pitchforked, spaded, troweled… gone off track here. Chainsawed, there we go. Well, this is right up your Elm street.
Coming into its fifth year, the classic horror, cult, extreme fantasy and sci-fi moviefest brings some of the very best premieres, film makers, special guests, screenings and genre classics including indie Southern gothic horror newbie Jugface, UK slasher premiere of Smiley and Paddy from Emmerdale. Really, Paddy from Emmerdale will be there. Sign me up.
Visit grimmfest.com/grimmupnorth/ for more information.
Drink: Big Indie Wine Fest, Great Hall, Manchester Town Hall, Friday 4 – Saturday 5 October
In the mid-nineteenth century French poet Charles Baudelaire stated: “One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters… But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.”
With poetry being, for the most part, innately emotional and complex, and virtue being way too hard to achieve and maintain, it’s probably just easier to get squiffy on the grape grog isn’t it?
Now in its fifth year and consistently one of the largest and most grandiose events of the Manchester Food and Drink Festival, The Big Indie Wine Fest held in the gothic grand hall is a chance to experience an extensive range of exciting boutique wines brought to the event by independent wine merchants. There’ll be old world wines alongside more exclusive imports from Georgia, Slovenia and Lebanon. If you need any more reason to go (and why would you with free samples), there’ll also be cheese. Take your own Jacob's crackers.
Tickets £11 available here.
Please Sir, I want some more
Music: Oxjam Manchester Takeover, Northern Quarter, Saturday 5 – Sunday 6 October
Over 100 artists, DJs and bands are playing across eleven venues for the two day festival showcasing a plethora of Manchester’s young musical talent. Held in venues from The Blue Pig to Matt and Phreds, from Odd Bar to our favourite find-it-if-you-can creative space 2022NQ, the Oxjam Northern Quarter takeover has crafted out a list of carefully planned ‘trails’, separated by musical tastes that move progressively throughout the day. Each venue has a number of trails running through it, meaning you’re constantly on the move. It also means you don’t have to engage your think box too heavily.
The ‘This Is My Jam’ trail will follow the ones to watch out for in the future, ‘Rockjam’ is fairly self-explanatory while ‘Shake Your Money Maker’ is all about the dancing. Watch out for Socrates live at Dry Bar at midnight on Saturday, comprising of three Huddersfield University music degree graduates with house drums, smooth vocals and sharp lyrics. Singer JSky also has one of the best barnets in the business.
Early Bird weekend tickets are £8 (regularly priced £10). All proceeds go to charity. More info here.
Jsky
Museum: David Beckham exhibition, Manchester United Museum, Until August 2014
As famed for his adolescent lexicon, hairstyles (cornrows though?), black painted finger nails, red cards, skirt, wife, love of pie and mash, tats, H&M pants, metatarsals, boots in the face and allegedly sticking one up that nanny, David regularly outshone the whole world of football. But it is ultimately David’s ability on the pitch, his devout patriotism and genuine love of the game that will go down in history.
First signing for Manchester United as a schoolboy at the age of 14, he made his first-team debut for the club aged 17 in 1992, going on to win six Premier League titles, two FA Cups and that famous Champions League title in 1999.
Some of David’s winner’s medals, shirts and even the training kit he wore as a teenager will feature amongst the exhibition. In addition there is also an interactive free-kick element to the exhibit. Apparently, he was quite nifty with a dead ball.
Visit the Manchester United museum website for more information.
David Beckham exhibition
Theatre: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Radio Show… Live!, Opera House, Tuesday 8 Tuesday - Wednesday 9 October, 7.30pm
“The answer to the Great Question… of life, the Universe and everything… is 42.” Douglas Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide became an instant classic when it hit BBC Radio 4 in 1978. Exploring the absurdity of life, our purpose and more engaging philosophical questions than it’s usually given credit for, such as ‘what is normal?’ and ‘what are cows?’ Adam's timeless creation comes back to life with this new stage-cum-radio show employing surround sound, really weird sound effects, depressive robots and drinks with really silly names, such as the delightfully sounding Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, ‘the best drink in existence’. Drinking one is akin to having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a gold brick. Not unlike Gosling 151 then.
Tickets £22 - £32.50. Book here.
Event: Vogue’s Big Fashion Night Out, City Centre, Thursday 10 October
Fashion. An endless stream of mostly odd looking folk telling you what you’re not meant to be wearing anymore whilst sending models down the runway draped in a gamboge goat. And I’m pretty sure luminary designer Karl Lagerfeld has been wearing exactly the same thing for the past ten years. Regardless, fashion is big business and worth £21bn to Britain’s economy.
Quarter of a Trident that.
With that in mind, the fashion bible accompanied by its editors, designers, models and numerous retailers is throwing one big trendy shindig all over the city centre from the Northern Quarter, through the Arndale, up King Street and on to Spinningfields as the global celebration of fashion and shopping descends on Manchester for the first time ever.
Full listings and events are listed here.
This was embarrassing, not just two but all of them had turned up in the same top.
Comedy: Lucy Porter: Northern Soul, The Dancehouse, Oxford Road, Friday 11 October, 8pm
Lucy Porter is lost, or at least she thinks she is. She’s not really sure. Where’s her spiritual home? Does she even have one? Born in Croydon, a place that has applied unsuccessfully thirteen times for city status (“says it all really”), to a Northern Irish dad and a mum from the Midlands (who met in Africa), Lucy never felt like she belonged down south, so she moved up here to Manchester, married a Welshman and even tried travelling the world. Alas, she’s still seeking her spiritual home – someone should probably tell her she hasn’t got one.
Familiar from popular TV and Radio panel shows including Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Mock The Week and Radio 4’s Unbelievable Truth, Lucy returns to the UK tour circuit, fresh from a critically acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe Festival show.
Tickets £11-£13 available here.
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