Sleuth 16/03/2012

Sleuth is a sideways glance at the city every week, it's the truth, but Sleuth's truth. He's several people all at once. We give £25 for every story/rumour and piece of absurdity you find for us to publish. Sleuth sometimes even gets serious. We ask for the money back if any legal action follows. Follow Sleuth on twitter @Sleuth

Political Drama At The Town Hall

Town Hall staff have been experiencing movie glamour again. After the Town Hall was used as the body double for the Houses of Parliament and hosted Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady, Gabriel Bryne and Charles Dance have been thesping round the place. This is for a political thriller called Coup. Sleuth can't confirm yet whether Dance is playing Sir Howard Bernstein and Bryne is playing Sir Richard Leese. Or indeed whether the plot revolves round a fiendish scheme to sell overpriced sausages at the Christmas markets orchestrated by the devilish Count Von Karnage.

Gabriel Bryne

Sir Richard Leese

Jamie's Duff Recipes

Jamie Oliver's new restaurant on King Street has been packing them in since it opened in February. Sleuth just hopes his customers haven't been gobbling up some of his gluten free recipes. As the Jamie Oliver machine wrote: 'In our ‘Bake for Everyone’ recipe we mistakenly labelled three recipes as free from gluten. The (recipes) all contain spelt flour, which is not gluten free. We thought it prudent to waste no time in alerting our readers to our error.' Bless him. What a diamond geezer.

Sleuth Becomes Viking God

Sleuth was in the Deansgate Starbucks on Thursday. He was buying an Americano. “What’s your name?” asked the girl behind the counter. “Eh?” said Sleuth. “It’s a thing we’re doing to try and make a visit more welcoming. We’re asking for people’s first names, it’s friendlier when calling their drink out. It’s been working well in the States for ages.”

Sleuth thought about this for a second: “My name is Thor,” he said. It made for an entertaining minute or two as he exited the store to plenty of stares from other customers. 

Sleuth Waiting For His Americano

William Roache And His 1000 Women

Sleuth loved the straightforward questionnaire in the Guardian about William Roache’s (Ken Barlow’s) claim that he bedded up to a 1000 women in his early days of Corrie stardom - he's pictured in the main image at the top of the page breaking the news to Deirdre.

It read ‘Have you slept with William Roache? Yes or No’. Click here. Sleuth has answered no. Roache claims that his nickname was Cock-Roache due to his swordsmanship. Sleuth’s hears that the real reason was that whenever he was near women, they called in Environmental Health.

Sleuth’s Dead Fish Of The Week

This was in the River Irwell off Water Street, where it meets the old Manchester and Salford Junction Canal. This means it's yards from the Coronation Street set. Apparently the fish died of exhaustion after sleeping with up to 1000 fish. So Sleuth is doing a poll. Have you slept with this fish? Yes or no?   

It's a dead fish

Sleuth Steals Idiotic Brand Of The Year Award Story From The Food And Drink Round-up

At the Northern Restaurant and Bar Show there was an exhibitor for Pussy. This is an energy drink aimed at women. Really? As a female friend of Confidential said, "It's not a pleasant word to say at the best of times." Pussy didn't taste very nice either. While Jonathan Schofield, Helen Ramsbottom and Chris Grimes were grimacing over the flavour, the poor put-upon Pussy representative asked, "Would you like to do a profile of Pussy? Maybe talk to one of the directors?" "No," we said firmly. Later at the Northern Ireland stall promoting the province's grub, Grimes was hoovering up some tasty cocktail sausages. "Don't snatch," said La Ramsbottom. "Snatch? Think we've got a new name for an energy drink," we all said together. 

Loads of pussy

Bus Tour Launches 

Sleuth was in attendance on Wednesday when Manchester's new bus tour did its honour launch. The Lord Mayor cut the ribbon on the open top bus, which will start tours on Easter weekend: £15 for two hours around the sites of Manchester from MediaCityUK in the west to the Ethihad Stadium in the east, plus the key areas of the city centre. Should be great. If you think you know your city then think again, the 'live' guides on the tour will be underlining the key stories in our significant city. 

Mayor jumps as Town Cryer Shouts

Sleuth's Inane Tweet Of The Week

This week's winner is from a person in Yorkshire who tweeted 'Hey everyone - are we having a good day?' Unbelievably this was re-tweeted by another person who has clearly elevated the meaningless platitude to cult status.