MANCHESTER

There are several reasons for my reluctance to provide a Manchester guide on this site. For the time being you'll find it tagged on to our guide to Liverpool, in twelve-language translation.

In a nutshell, this trumped-up northern backwater leaves me cold. I spent the worst years of my life in Manchester and would never go back there. It was okay in '82 when I went to the university, but I subsequently made the mistake of allowing myself to be catapulted back repeatedly into an unimaginative, unfriendly, jealous, fucked-up working-class northern culture where they were still winding me up even when I was about to slit my wrists.

As recently as 1998 I opened a Sister Company shop in Manchester city centre, which was neither appreciated nor understood by the city's narrow-minded and largely indifferent and nondescript population. The fact that it's the north of England's Ibiza for nightlife doesn't make it exciting or nice in any way.

Many of the addresses I lived at in the city have since been bulldozed and that's precisely what I'd like to do to the rest of them, not to mention the human scum which watched me slide downhill whilst laughing at me up its sleeve. Thank God I got out. I hate Manchester and particularly the 'friends' I never had, to whom I owe nothing except to wish upon them the torture they inflicted upon me.

Our advice on Manchester? DON'T GO THERE.

Stephen Davies.