Week 36: Picasso paints again... in Ramsbottom
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
Ecstacy at the Bridgewater Hall
There are certain middle-aged Manchester types who can’t escape a three decades old musical phenomenon. But Sleuth never thought the mad days of the Hacienda, with all its wild and mad creativity, drug taking and gang-issues would become as mainstream as the Hacienda Classical night at the Bridgewater Hall. Here on 27 September, famous DJs such as Graeme Park and Mike Pickering will be ‘curating’ the Manchester Camerata orchestra. Sleuth hears that to make it more authentic, one of Manchester’s best-dressed criminal gangs will be running the door, tabs of ecstacy will be provided with every ticket and the orchestra have collectively promised to be ‘off their tits’ all night long. Something like that.
Next week it's Afternoon Tea with the Happy Mondays: a salon hosted by Shaun Ryder discussing hidden meanings in the works of Samuel Beckett.
Bee-zarre Bee-haviour in Stevenson Square
Speaking of people hanging on to the glory days of Madchester, Sleuth was minding his own business in the Northern Quarter when he heard a strange buzzing. Or should that be buzzin’. And there was Bez, a man who once danced for a bit and shook some maracas, dancing like a man in his fifties should never dance, surrounded by other gentlemen dressed as beekeepers. One chap was riding the HoneyBoo, the Boohoo.com sponsored bee for the Bee in the City event. The bee looked scared. There’s a video taken by a passerby below. Sleuth has no idea what it was all about, although Bez has been known to love bees. Whether bees love Bez back is another question.
Er...right. Bez and friends in Stevenson Square riding a bee. @mcrconfidential @beeinthecitymcr pic.twitter.com/IRRk97o73r
— Jonathan Schofield (@JonathSchofield) September 13, 2018
Windy discount
Sleuth has got his hands on some of the Manchester marketing material for next year's MIPIM - the annual high-profile, big money, male-dominated global property gathering in Cannes which has attracted much press scrutiny in past for accusations of sexism, drunken behaviour and, in some cases, soliciting prostitution.
Marketing Manchester are offering 'returning partners' a 20% discount on advertising this year, presumably because last year Manchester's seafront pavilion was blown away by a storm. Sleuth reckons that'll be the first time anyone has even been offered a discount for getting blown off in Cannes.
Picasso paints again... in Manchester
Sleuth loves a white van man with an eye for marketing. And if you have the right name then why not flaunt it. So the fact a really, really famous person shared that name shouldn’t deter you, and after all, you are in a similar of work. You are both painters. So let’s have a round of applause for Carlo Picasso, painter and decorator from Ramsbottom, who can wield a brush (of Crown paint) surely as dextrously as that Spanish chap who died yonks ago.
Put that sherry down, madam
Sleuth’s historical oddity of the week comes in the form of some research done in Old Trafford. One Ohanness Andressian lived there in the 1890s when the place was as posh as Bowdon. He was an Armenian businessman and a Justice of the Peace in Manchester. He was also a principal backer of the Fallowfield Retreat for Inebriate Women. This was largely aimed at middle-class housewives partial to an 11am sherry, then another at 11.30am, 12noon and so on. Women over fifty weren’t allowed in as ‘by that age they were deemed incapable of reform.’ Ageist or what? Sleuth loves how the name of the place is so very direct. No beating about the bush with ‘The Priory’, no, get to the point, it’s for ‘Inebriate Women’.
Sleuth's none consultation of the week
Goes to Salboy, the property development company owned by billionaire bookmaker Fred Done, which began work to demolish an old warehouse in Northern Quarter just hours after inviting the public to a meeting to give their opinions on the building's future. Talk about paying lip service. Full story here.
The Taste Of Manchester
Sleuth enjoyed the Manchester University magazine’s interview with the new directors of Manchester Art Gallery and Manchester Museum. Esme Ward is the director of the latter and is the first female director since it opened in 1887. Alistair Hudson has taken over at both the Art Gallery and the Whitworth Art Gallery, stepping into the elegant shoes of Maria Balshaw who now directs the Tate in Luton...er...London. Hudson, in the interview, revealed that Manchester has a particular taste. He said: “Manchester’s a proper salty place. It’s a place to do the democratic, open, more down-to-earth version of an art gallery.” Salty eh? Then again the first syllable of the city’s name is ‘Man’.
