Trump to visit Manchester + Most Unnecessarily Niche Beer Awards 2018

Sleuth is a sideways glance at the city each week. It's the truth, but Sleuth's truth. Sometimes Sleuth even gets serious, but not often... @mcrsleuth

Trump chooses Manchester over London

President Donald Trump has announced the cancellation of his state visit to London this year in favour of a visit to Manchester. He told Sleuth:

“I like Mancluster Town Place, it seems to have a can-do attitude, just like my hair. It has a good name too, with all that ‘Man’ stuff. As a pussy-grabber it’s something I can get my small hands around. That’s a fact. A real fact. London is a shit-hole full of loser, far-left Mexicans. I’m hoping Manchester reflects more the sort of people who voted for me. Good people, folksy folk type people with good genes. Very good genes. Like me. Smart people with good genes, sometimes with a bigger red button than anyone else. You know, people who are fed up with the political establishment and want some honesty. Just want honesty. 

"Oh, what? Say it again. Manclustershire is multi-cultural and multi-ethnic? Where’s that other Boston then, the one in Lincolnshirecestertownville? They voted 75% for Brexit right? Sounds like my sort of place. My sort of people. Let’s go there.” 

Manchester City Council leader, Sir Richard Leese, on learning of Trump’s decision to visit Manchester, told Sleuth: “Aaaaaargh noooooooo!” 

Councillor Pat Karney said: “Manchester’s Christmas Markets are so big and popular they can be seen from Mars and on a clear day from Neptune.”

Manchester's Most Unnecessarily Niche Beers Awards 2018

Sleuth hears Manchester's legion of craft brewers are preparing to enter the city's first ever 'Most Unecessarily Niche Beer Awards'.

Launching ahead of this year's 73 different-but-mostly-the-same beer festivals, organiser Samuel Longshorts said the awards had been established to honour those dedicated and often smelly individuals who have committed their lives to "creating unnecessarily niche beers that very few people can enjoy".

"We are looking for only the niche of the niche," said Longshorts, "something that only around 0.3% of the population would fine mildly palatable. So no IPAs, no pales... you might as well be drinking Skol."

Longshorts told Sleuth that Manchester - the craft beer capital of the UK - was the perfect city to host the 'Unnecessarily Niche Beer' awards, as it had the "highest proportion of people pretending to prefer Belgian-styles to that cold one made by Jean Claude Van Damme.

Most Unnecessarily Niche Beer Awards 2018 top 5 shortlist:

This Pitcher Paints A Thousand Toilet Bowls Belgian Blonde - by Double Fist Trappists, Trafford

Up To The Room Please, Porter - by Donkey Punch, Green Quarter

Belgian Bohemian-style Scaramouche Scaramouche Fandan-Gose - by Belching Brewery, Bolton

Dark Side of the Moo Moo Milk Stout - by Stinky Lloyd Brew Co., Stockport

It All Tastes Of Metal Anyway, Magic Mild - by BeerPig, Piccadilly

Speaking to Sleuth, Double Fist Trappist head brewer, Barry Williams, said: "What the fuck else are we supposed to do all day, sit around designing poncey labels?

Real history, real tourism

Sleuth is considering going on holiday to Manchester because the buildings are so old. He was reading the recent travel article in the New York Times about the city and was pleased to read the Oast House, which opened in 2011 (and Sleuth knows this because he was there) was in fact from the ‘16th century’ and was used to ‘roast hops’. He just wished the journalist had visited the 18th century Manchester Arndale and the medieval Beetham Tower, as well as the startlingly modern-looking Imperial War Museum North, which was built by the Romans. 

Luckily the writer missed modern shit such as Chetham’s Library and the Town Hall, which date from 1421 and 1877 respectively. Sleuth agrees with the New York Times that research is really not relevant for writers in 2018. As Bill Thingy said on Twitter, “Why do you keep quoting me from Twitter instead of ringing anybody up and doing a proper journalistic job?” Quite. 

Sleuth dates from the ‘16th century’ and was used to ‘roast hops’.

Glamorous international hotel pulls plug on Manchester

Following news earlier this month, an A-list international hotel and private club chain with branches in London, New York and Barcelona has revealed the real reason it decided not to launch its latest venue in Manchester. 

Boho House owner Rick Holmes told Sleuth: "We had intended to open a lovely new place in Manchester, but then one day, having touched down from Boho House Malibu, we actually visited the city. 

"Walking through Piccadilly and down Market Street we realised that most people in Manchester are either homeless or too busy shitting in phone booths to come and enjoy Basil and Rhubarb Spritzers by the rooftop pool."

Holmes told Sleuth that the group would instead fob the city off with one of their budget brands. "I dunno, it won't have our name on it, so we're really not that bothered," said Holmes. "Probably something American with burgers, neons lights, Brooklyn lager and beds made of cardboard and gutters."

Utter tripe

Sleuth learns that Oldham Street, located in ‘Manchester’s trendy NQ’ (©MEN), is to become Britain’s first ever designated tripe street and will be looking for UNESCO World Heritage status. This follows the discovery of a new plaque on the street (see below) which Sleuth spotted while snatching a giddy pint at the opening party of a ‘swanky and glitzy’ (©MEN) bar he’ll never visit again. 

The plaque was all about Pendlebury’s Tripe Shop and Restaurant. Sleuth loves cow’s stomach lining coated in vinegar as much as anybody else, or at least the other twenty people in the country. 

Marketing Manchester (the city’s tourism body which hardly anybody has heard of) has been thrashing around looking for a theme upon which to hang a unique food and drink offer. “Yes,” said a spokesperson while vomiting, “we all love the complex and nauseating flavour of tripe and so we will designate the whole of Oldham Street as a Tripe World Heritage Site." 

The spokesperson said the weird bar in Sacha’s Hotel that fronts onto Oldham Street had been the first to sign up for the scheme. "We're hoping it attracts as many punters as it does flies."