I’m here, waiting for the match against Leeds to kick off. It’s the night before and I’m lashing the Carib lager like a good ‘un. Can I stay up all night I wonder? Sit here and ruminate on my childhood. How I was made to hear it, the full treatment; McShane, Finney, Kingsley, Jesus Powell, John Thaw, Frazier’s dad, all of them, plus 10CC, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Freddie and the Dreamers and on and on and on. The list of names that puffs up the breast of Tatlockville. It goes a lot further back than that an’ all. And now that pride will be harnessed against an old enemy. One of the biggest rivalries in British football, come back to life at last. Everyone knows United’ll win, the question is by how much? The War of the Roses they’re calling it. Very romantic and dramatic and obvious. For those who are proud of their roots it’s a choice cut. A choice cut of (police) horsemeat for men old enough to know better. Britain is a giant knacker’s yard populated by elves with crippled minds. The elves are preoccupied by silly titles, and I don’t mean “Chancellor of the Exchequer” or “The Fourth Earl of Lincoln” either. I mean, “Biggest council estate in Europe” or “hardest city” or “tallest building outside London”. Seriously, have you EVER stopped to ask yourself exactly where or how some of these preposterous claims could be verified? Yeah, you heard me right, you fackin’ muppet. You of “The first Marks and Spencer’s was in Manchester” (it was a market stall in Leeds, actually). You of “The Arndale was the biggest shopping mall in Europe when it was built”, and your nephew, he of “the Trafford Centre was the blah blah blah”. You of (give me strength) “Manchester was the first nuclear-free city”. It is this last meaningless claim that pains me the most. A nuclear-free city? What does that even mean? You don’t think that aeroplanes carrying warheads, or trains loaded with horrible glowing shite from Sellafield haven’t moved through Manchester airspace or along its train tracks recently? Or that the Chinese will take note should it ever come to World Barney Three. Wake up and smell the Irwell, people. This decay of pride and ideas has been gathering pace since the mid-60s, since they started filming Top of the Pops in Manchester. Yeah, honest, Top of the Pops was fil- oh, shit, now I’m at it. There was once a time when splitting the atom was a thing to be proud of. Or building and operating the machine that opened the fabled Dead Sea Copper Scroll. Or the wonderful contraptions developed by Messrs. Crompton and Arkwright that transformed fabrics forever. Or the nation’s first free public library. Or the first gas street lighting…To be fair, the Marks and Spencer’s thing also goes way back, but it was in Leeds anyway, so let ‘em have it. They deserve a little something. And that’s pretty little next to the first passenger railway.
A mate of mine once told me, “They were actually gonna create the Gay Village in Leeds, but Leeds wasn’t, er, y’know..” “Cosmopolitan enough?” I ventured. “That’s right!” he replied, as we strolled along chuffed to fuck for, as Syd Barrett once said, “It takes two to know”. And we all know Syd was firmly rooted in reality wasn’t he? Needless to say that conversation occurred in 1992, when our pride was the size of United’s current season ticket waiting list, i.e. nonexistent. We’ve been to heaven and back with the reds since then.
I don’t want to knock Manchester too much. But it’s hard not to. Standards and expectations have slip-slided away. Last time I was there (to see Liverpool hammer us 1-4 at OT and a pathetic gaggle of 400 students sing “Bring ‘em out” to the laughing policemen on the forecourt after the match) I was forced to eat humble pie. Not because of the disaster with the Scousers. Because the city centre had been turned into a communist-era free-for-all designed by wankers. These were buildings – real buildings in a real city – that had apparently been contrived to resemble industrial units but were in fact condos or office blocks or worse. It was all Joy Division’s fault, I concluded. And Morrissey. Between the lot of them Manchester has been reduced to the status and mood of a sixteen year old Tatlock geek who lives vicariously through grey representations of morbid glories. The irony is that Morrissey and Co. actually had their heads screwed on right. It’s the architects and city planners who fucked it all up. D’you honestly think pop stars expected to have that degree of influence over a dirty big city? Somewhere along the Manchester timeline the sense of proportion went all to shit. I venture this period lasted from 1964 to about 1990. That’s right; Top of the Pops. You of “the Rolling Stones concert at Belle Vue in 1964 was the first ever concert riot”. You of “G-Mex is Europe’s largest indoor arena”. You are the ones who have spread the rot. The ones who caused the clock in St. Ann’s Square to stop dead, like a machine killed by lack of ideas and – wait a fucking minute, summat’s happened.
Leeds happened. Final whistle. Just gone. Nil-one. I sit here motionless. Horror struck and brain-dead. It should have been nil-two to be honest. And if you don’t like that why don’t you switch off your television and go and do something less boring instead, Tatlock? And now the feeding frenzy begins, on telly, on internet forums, in pubs and on buses. The fickle fannies (like me) who thought we’d murder ‘em 14-0 have once again turned on the reds and are slagging everyone, from Ferg to Roon to that geezer in the turban who isn’t actually part of the OT staff but sits close enough to them (and gets his mug on telly week in and week out) to cop some collateral damage. Fergie, Rooney, Turban Geezer, what the fuck were you playing at out there? This was Leeds. The white rose, the hated thug platoon of jackbooted cockheads! And they’ve just bummed us in style. Christ, I swear I was almost cheering the fuckers on by the 95th minute.
Anyway, back to the Manchester story. 1964. The first ever rock ‘n’ roll riot. Top o’t’ Pops. I bet the blokes who started the football league in the Royal Hotel in 1888 would have had summat to say about Top o’t’ Pops. I bet the lads present at the first general meeting of the Trade Union Congress in the Three Crowns pub in Salford in 1868 would have give them Rolling bloody Stones summat ter think about, eh, Tatlock? I actually remember the moment when I realised football was the best thing about Manchester – and red football, not blue. And that anything else of greatness was finished, replaced by shit titles and claims, not including the league title, of course. It happened coming out of Victoria bus station many years ago, on the top deck of a diesel spewer. I found myself sitting behind a lad with a neck ‘tache and his gormless mucker. Mucker, who must have been especially gormless, was getting the full treatment apparently for the very first time; “Highland House. Highest building outside London when it was built” (he actually said those very words). Mucker gormlessly gaped upwards as we sailed past the office block I personally robbed daft for years. Next it was the CIS, “tallest buildin’ TODAY outside London”, we were duly informed. I decided enough was enough and tapped the tour guide on the shoulder. He tried to ignore me so I slapped him on the neck ‘tache and he spun round. I said, dancing suggestively, “What we should do at Old Trafford is all start singing Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You, Baby” in a dead high-pitched voice, all of us, letting it build across K Stand and up United Road. Then someone turns a set of strobes on, set high in the cantilever and which lend a stop-start surrealism to the boogying crowd, the music becoming louder and louder and louder and we’re all gyrating and going totally off our crusts, and-!” he brought me to my senses with a firm slap across my gibbering chops. He had to do something; I was scaring Mucker, who by now was gaping at me, his rubbery slavering jowls resting on the stainless steel bar running along the back of the seat between us.
But I was incorrigible, on a mission. “I’ll bet a pound to a pinch of shit you pronounce ‘books’ different from how you pronounce ‘boots’ don’t yer?” I told him. “But I bet yer mam an’ dad pronounce ‘em the same though innit. And further to that I bet you say ‘room’ like you say ‘boom’ an’ yer fink it’s bang on. The word ‘RUME’, fer your information, Tatlock, is pro-fuckin’-nounced the same as ‘book’. Like ‘rum’, an’ I, you’ll be pleased to learn, am the first cunt in Manchester to work that out!” By now the tour guide was utterly speechless as the truth of my words sunk into his once-proud skull…so I carried on.
“Smokeless zones, Rolls Royces, what next, bleedin’ trams? (I was right!) UFO landing pads in Hulme?” (right again!).
In Manchester, football has replaced science and industry, after a gormless interval involving pseudo-tall buildings, pop groups and Urban Heritage Parks. It convinced us all we were still in that place, the one that led the world. But here, in the ruins of the defeat to the sheepshaggers, awaiting the trip to Bitterland, our 20-year legacy of footballing domination is threatened. In 1992 I had a bet with Bitter Keith Barry in the Commercial pub on Bury Old Road. I bet him that city would never again win a major trophy. It was a tenner bet. A tenner I couldn’t hope to collect but the satisfaction of knowing he mightn’t either made it OK. By the time you read this that tenner will be safe in my hands or a lot closer to his. Tomorrow we play the Bittermen at Wastelands. Home of the world’s biggest Wal-Mart…ooh-er, pass me the bucket, I can feel the nause comin’ on again…