I LOVE Manchester: it's slick, it's modern, it's grimy, it's shabby, it's chic. It's got my second favourite word with 'Man' in it.
Manchester is all Man — a little bit of 'chest' — and a lot of 'grrrrr'.
Even 'masculine' doesn't start with the word 'man'.
That's how manly Manchester is, readers.
Manchester is so manly that it doesn't even mind being 'WoManchester' from time to time because it's entirely metrosexual, has a feminine side, and a gay side, and then some sort of weird Tory Boy flank in Castlefield, and then there's the Single Mother Quarter, where I live, where the Manchester Male is a rare find. Like the Dodo.
Manchester also has lots of barbershops that serve beer and offer a cut throat wet shave to pissed people. Mental.
Manchester is all Man — a little bit of chest — and a lot of grrrrr.
Manchester got its name back in the 19th century as all those well-fit cotton millworker blokes were mooching home in the rain from the looms. Come teatime the women stood on the terraced-lined streets of Ardwick hollering 'Man Chest Grrr! Man Chest Grrr! Man Chest Grrr!' whilst drinking stout and waving chip barms in the air. A tradition that still holds true on Deansgate Locks today. I'll see you there.
Manchester barbers - well 'ard. Around 1870 Man Chest Grrr! became Man Chest — Er? as males from London schlepped the streets bowing their heads in the rain confusing the minds of the womenfolk here who had grown used to the mooching man of yore and wondered where all the softlads had come from.
You can still see this particular dance around Media City today: look out for the BBC lanyards and menfolk muttering "I wish, I'd never bloody moved here," simply because they haven't got an umbrella between them.
Some of these men also ask women for a "hot roll" rather than a "hot barm" and get a right royal slap.
So this, my friends, is how Manchester was born: a love of man, combined with confusion, and not some etymological genesis as previously suspected from a Roman fort called Mamucium in the first century.
Since then Manchester has spurned super furry-eyebrow animals like Liam Gallagher and created underpant sensations like David Beckham.
Gallagher took his hairy wares to Primrose Hill, and so evolved the Worzel Gummidge hipster you now find lurking in Port Street Beer House in the Northern Quarter.
Beckham meanwhile inspired men to show their underpant elastic like the Manchester Michelangelo sensation of 2016.
Important question:
If Beckham had made his career at Crystal Palace would he have been the manly man he is today? No. Manchester put the Man into the Sexiest Man on the planet. He has a lot to thank us for. Mancunians also put the man into Cristiano Ronaldo, though we fell short at Wayne Rooney.
Sorry Rooney. Manchester may have invented the first computer, and then graphene, but it can't work miracles.
I'm a big fan of the right proper northern male, whose very existence with all these coffee bars and cherry beer hubs is currently under threat.
Not from Manchester, but want to be a Right Proper Manchester Man? Here's how:
- Mooch, don't walk
- Slope don't saunter
- Eat pie sandwiches
- Wear pants that show your undies, but not your arse
- Splash emulsion in your hair
- Have crusty hands (before you book that manicure)
- NEVER push ahead of ladies at the bar (what is this London habit?), she'll have ya'
- Always buy the drinks – in BIG rounds – with wads of cash
- Own three parkas: one to wear, one in the wash, one for spare
AND remember:
Always eat pasties from Greggs.
Never prawn sandwiches from Pret.
Now go, and start the revolution.
Maria Roberts is editor and author of singlemotherontheverge
Twitter @Maria_Roberts
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