Until I was about eight years old, Manchester as a place didn’t really exist for me. It was a place we went through rather than to, usually on a more or less annual day trip to York, but that was about it- and growing up on Merseyside with a family of Liverpudlians, there was an inbuilt resistance to the idea of going to Manchester for anything. This changed slightly with the opening of the Museum of Science and Industry in the early 1980s- for a small boy fascinated with machines, particularly trains and aeroplanes, this was nothing less than heaven-but still there was the feeling that there was little or no point in going to Manchester because all they had was the same as Liverpool, only slightly bigger. So part of my purpose in writing this particular piece, apart from adding to a very occasional series, is to analyse my feelings about Manchester and the Mancunians, why I feel the way I feel, and why, when it’s an hour and a half away at most, it’s over two years since I went to Manchester for the sake of the city itself.

In my younger days, practically all we ever saw or heard of Manchester was on the local news- in our case, the BBC local news, produced in the Oxford Road studios of BBC North West and, as far as I recall it, horrendously biased towards Manchester and Lancashire. With a more reasoned approach, yes, it was the 1970’s and I can appreciate rather better the technical limitations of local news production which probably limited coverage to those stories and areas which could be covered most easily and quickly from the studio and still give time for editing. But it wasn’t just the news- until the emergence of a small school of socially committed drama from Liverpool in the early 1980s, our local interest slots were dominated by subjects Lancastrian and Mancunian, culminating in a prime time programme called Sit Thi Deawn, in which the Houghton Weavers, a folk group from the Bolton area or thereabouts, would perform a selection of dialect songs about weaving, rickets, child labour and other subjects in a vein presumably nostalgic rather than topical. Sadly, many of the songs are impressed on my brain, as are some of the jingles from the adverts on Granada at the time for the likes of Housing Units of Hollinwood. So, by the time the mid to late 1980s came, and my railway excursions with my dad were taking us to and through Manchester on a regular basis, the Manchester conurbation existed vaguely in my mind as somewhere large and different, but not necessarily exciting or beautiful.

For somebody who grew up in the North West in the 1980s, it pains me to say that the "Madchester scene" passed me by entirely. Quite apart from the fact that I would never have been allowed to go to Manchester for a night out, either on my own or with friends, and I didn’t turn 18 until after my A-levels, I had no interest in music at the time, and though I was aware of the Hacienda, it was only through the occasional report on Look North West after yet another drugs raid. So there’s a whole creative flowering missed, which to an extent I do regret, but in many ways I’m more interested in what that led to. Because as far as I can see, it was around this time that Manchester started to reinvent itself, shaking off the grey Northern-ness and embracing some of the progressiveness and inclusivity which enabled the city to grow in the first place. It’s as if somebody suddenly rediscovered the city’s tradition of encouraging progressive ideas, having nurtured much of the thought which led to the improvement of the worker’s lot, and fostering diversity. Much has been made of Manchester’s gay scene, but to my mind that’s just one part of the package-step out of Piccadilly station or the coach terminal now, and you’re in a modern and diverse city where a Thai restaurant and shop can set up its premises next to a Greek bar and a traditional Northern pub. And the sense of progress and energy is palpable- when the time came to repair the destruction caused by the IRA bomb, Manchester thought big and improved on the dull post-war buildings which were there. There always seems to be something happening in Manchester, new construction and new development going up, fed in part by the Commonwealth Games boom which enabled Manchester to showcase itself as a modern world city, but also by a spirit of confidence and enterprise. Manchester thinks big and does it, which few cities in Britain seem to do.

But I can’t praise the developments of the last fifteen years or so without having to check my own feelings about the city and its people. To many outsiders, that spirit of confidence comes across as arrogance, hence the caricature of the "cocky Manc" with which I grew up. Think the way Christopher Eccleston says "so was I" in ‘The Parting of the Ways’. Manchester’s size and economic importance are beyond question, but when it comes to value judgements, reason goes out of the window- Manchester can support a better cutural scene than Liverpool because of its larger hinterland, but you couldn’t have Oasis without the Beatles. And for many non-Mancunians, their impressions of the city are, for better or worse, tied up with their feelings about Manchester United Football Club. I have to say that every United supporter I’ve ever known personally has been at worst prepared to talk about their allegiance in a rational manner and accepted that there’s another point of view, and many of them are genuinely interested to speak to a supporter of a lower division side, but then as I don’t support Liverpool, Arsenal or Manchester City there’s nothing at stake. But it’s unfortunate that in the last fifteen years or so, the club has promoted a mentality and an attitude which has harmed football in this country. Every trick, every foul, every bit of gamesmanship, foul language and bullying of referees is justifiable. United have become the King Rat of English football, the team everybody loves to hate and watch failing, because there are no longer any half measures. And the sad part is that comes from the club, but reflects on the fans; doubly sad, because practically all the names you can associate with the Old Trafford mentality of arrogance, aggression and disgraceful behaviour passing with impunity have come to Manchester from elsewhere- Ferguson, Beckham, Cantona, Keane, Ferdinand, Rooney, not a local among them. I suspect that at least in part I’ve absorbed part of an ancestral disdain for United, but the sooner Mancunians realise what a disservice these highly-paid incomers do their city on a weekly basis, all the better for Manchester.