A Game of Crones

For the Northwest PR community on the occasion of the first Prolific North PR League Table, with much affection and a little mild amusement

Once upon a time, in the Land of the Largely Honest, only good things ever got sold. “Buy my cart,” a farmer would say, “it can carry four pigs to market with only minor axle curvature.” 

And, of course, this more-than-adequate hog conveyance would change hands for a reasonable price and to the satisfaction of all concerned. And even the soon-to-be-slaughtered swine. Why it was a very pleasure to be bacon-bound in such fairly traded transport. 

It was a golden time for the Folk of the Land of the Largely Honest. “You can buy my house, it’s generally fine, like, but mind them foundations need a good looking at and them slates have seen better days, quite frankly,” one might counsel. And the deal would be done, albeit with a good-natured discount to boot. 

Came there a time, though, as times they come, when The Last Genuinely Good Cart was bought. Probably by a foreigner. All the ideal family residences – those genuinely convenient for the shops and schools – were swept from the market and only those In Need of Some Attention remained. And, thus, did the time of the Great Economic Constipation come upon the straightforward Folk of the Land of the Largely Honest. 

“You can buy my cart, if you like,” a farmer would venture, “but it smells of pig shit and can’t carry owt but a helium-filled heifer further than the old meadow, where it always gets stuck. I rans an orphan over in it once too.” And the would-be purchaser would shake his head and demur, thinking fondly of the far superior carts of yesteryear, with their wheels all free of waifling cranial fluid. 

And so the Folk of the Land of the Largely Honest were Sore Afflicted. For is it not written that “Nothing Happens Until Somebody Sells Something”? If only in the self-regarding scrawl of a junior sales manager who somehow knows, deep down, his life has been completely squandered? Indeed it is. Frequently and with sundry crossings-out and only that most rudimentary of punctuation. 

“If only we could say the things that were not so,” opined Guff the Profanic, an unwitting Swiftian and head of the townsfolk, “then the Folk of the Land of the Largely Honest would thrive again – or at least that’s what we could tell the neighbours.” 

Deep in a nearby forest lay the home of a Band of Wandering Liars, at least so they said. Tales of the Plight of the Folk of the Land of The Largely Honest at long last reached the ears of these forest-bound fabricators and they vowed, as one, to make their way to this blighted oasis of Frankquility. Though, of course, no-one believed them. 

After much long and hardly journeying (or so they said), the untruthful troupe came upon the Land of the Largely Honest and there were greeted by a sight most piteous. Stood there four hundred and twenty carts unsold, with “For Sale” signs most grievous to their commercial prospects. 

“Only one careless owner: Feckless Jack, Winner of Most Grossly Overloaded Bovine Perambulator Four Years Barely Running,” said one. 

“Not all that much orphan blood on the wheel trim considering," read another.

“Deary, deary,” said the Band of Wandering Liars in suspiciously collective unison, “this will never do.” Such were their tuts and feigned lamentations, that none could doubt their marked disapprobation. To make sure, they tutted each tut twice times over. And then again for measure good. 

“Tut you not, you foliage-strewn fibbers of Great Renown,” said the head townsman bold. 
“Who reverts to us impetuously so?” asked one of the faux femmes, for lovely lying ladies were they all. 

“It is I, Guff, Profanic of the Town, like his father before him, and his father before him, and…” 

 “Picture wise, we get you,” lash-fluttered one of the Ladies Who Lie. (The Band of Wandering Liars had no leader, though each claimed so to be. And many, indeed, had a card with that on. Often in italics and sometimes embossed). 

And the Ladies who Lie went into a great huddle, with much affected nodding and a bit of impromptu PowerPoint. 

“Guff, Profanic of this Town, my insincere sisters and I believe, we can put right your cart blight with immediate effect and restore the fortunes of your town,” said one.

“Hurrah”, said the townspeople, for they were simple folk, with barely a Foursquare Mayor among them. And so the wily wenches took on the Blighted Cart account, later claiming to have won it in a four-way pitch against a team of London Liars yet unnamed. 

They were as good as their word, though their word was not good. “Come and buy this lovely cart,” said one, “go faster cranial stripes are in this year…” 

 “The Feck Mobile. For those men with bigger loads to deposit,” sauced another. 

Enticed by their wanton words and comely knees, Q2 cart transactions in the Land of the Largely Honest exceeded all KPIs, provoking much merriment among the newly de-wagoned townsfolk. Sadly, such jauntiness abounded not among those peasant purchasers of their hand-me-down horse-drawn haulage equipment. 

“Alas,” said one, “this is not a modish go-faster carting stripe, but a tincture of parent-free scalp hemorrhage.”

 “And this,” quoth another, “has more Axle strain than a Guns’n’Roses classic line-up comeback gig. Whatever that may be…” 

Spoke then up a third and most gravely. 

“Formerly good sires,” said he, “thou have blackened the name of the Land of the Largely Honest in return for a short-term up-turn in cart commerce (and related industries) via linguistic chicanery and ankles most shapely showcasery. Henceforth, do we strip thee of that name. From now on, let this blighted land be forever MendaCityUK…” 

Silence then fell upon the Land Formerly Known as the Land of the Largely Honest, until spoke there forth one of the Damsels Deceptive: 

“I like it,” she said. “Kinda catchy…” 

 “We could do a hearts and minds campaign,” said another. 

“We could ask Hemisphere to do the logo,” said a third. “With a strapline…”

“’MendaCityUK: Helping Bad Things Sell Good’”, said a third. 

“Genius,” said they all. 

“And now, Profanic Guff, must you reward us for all our reputation womanagment,” said a fourth,“you must tell us who, indeed, is the Best Liar here.”

“Hurrah,” said the fork-tongued throng, “tell us true who is the Very Biggest Liar in this land, the Land Formerly Known as the Land of the Largely Honest…” 

“Is it I?” asked one. “For have I not won every lying competition in the land, some of them twice and two of them that I didn’t even enter?” 

 “Or is it I?” asked another. “For once, during a pitch, I lied so hard my head fell off and turned into a Gucci totebag. We still won the business mind.” 

“Surely, it is I,” said a third, “I employ thirty thousand little liars with local knowledge to mislead on a multi-site basis…” 

And then did pandemonium and hububbery descend as accusations flew. 

 “You’re not really a liar,” wailed one, “you merely trade in innuendo and slight exaggeration.” 

“It should really be based on your number of fib-earners,” another asserted self-servingly. 

“Oh, misleading mistressi, pray calm,” beseeched Profanic Guff. “How can I elect a Liar Surpreme when you are masters of fabrication all? Is your every word not steeped in decievery, obfuscatery and rank befuddlement? Is not every statistic self-serving, shrouded and unverifiably multi-noughted?” 

“All sounds a bit loaded,” said one of the bystanding townsfolk. 

“Shush,” said another, “I think this is the moral.” 

Profanic Guff shook his weary head. 

“Deftly deceptive divas, when your arts darkery is so overtly applied to your own doings, how then can a sound judgment be made? You are liars all. Exaggeration is your elevenses and masterful mis-direction your slap-up tea for two. I could no more discern the biggest liar among you than a man with no arms could catch an invisible pig in a very dark cellar.”

“If it was dark, it wouldn’t make much difference if the pig was invisible or no,” shouted a particularly pedantic townsman, inspiriting a ripple of discussion and much nodding of yokel heads. 

“Heckle my imagery not,” said Guff, “for I have a decision to make. A Liar Unassailable choose I must.” 

And so Profanic Guff retired for a Right Good Cogitate. Until at last, he sent forth an errand boy to announce his due decision. 



 “Token townsfolk and Dames Most Duplicitous,” read the errand boy nervously, “hear ye this. Profanic Guff confesses that, as mistresses of misinformation all, he cannot hope to distinguish the most dissembling of you all. So, randomly, he has plumped for the one with the pointiest hat.” 

A single shot rang out from amid the jaw-floored fibbers and the errand boy fell, promptly deaded, to the ground. 

 “They’ve shot the messenger,” shouted an exposition-minded onlooker helpfully. 

“Ooh, how terribly literal,” said another. 

 The petulant, petard-hoisted princesses of prefabrication were having it not however. 

 “If you will not say that each one of us, alone,” said one “is the solus purveyor of premium porkies in this town then you, Profanic Guff, must indeed be the Biggest Liar of Them All And No Mistake.” 

And, for once, the Unfair Maidens acquiesced, and no-one believed Profanic Guff ever, ever again (unless it suited them, of course). 

“Hurrah,” said the townsfolk all.

 And they all lived happily ever after. Or so they claimed. 


Next week: Social Media specialists get a long overdue fairytale kicking in… “Turn Again Digital Whittington: FourSquare Mayor of Fuck All”

Walther PPK Mitty and the Strangely Unironic Case of PRISM Break II

With mirror-refined bonhomie and affected bemusement, a former UK secret service operative diverts attention from the British backdoor benefits of project Prism with a studied nonchalance. “The irony,” he tells me via Sky News, “is that the whistle-blower should decamp to Hong Kong, where his every move and email will be scrutinised by the Chinese.”

While this practiced, self-serving obfuscation may indeed make us pause and ponder on the wisdom of whistleblowing Edward Snowden, I do wonder where the irony is. It could be entirely logical, at least in terms of internal consistency.

Of all generations, we are surely the most familiar with internal logic. We flick from narrative to narrative, blithely accepting the oft-conflicting conventions of one with another. One moment we’re treading the Weatherfield cobbles, happily accepting that posh-ish middle-aged spinsters frequent an inner-city local, the next we’re pressing the spacebar in Arkham Asylum and grimly bataranging Killer Croc.

We inhabit a world of multiple, serried realities, indulged with a variety of compliance, cynicism and temporary abandon. Aside from our top-level reality of the rent, the nine-to-five and travel connections, we subscribe to sundry auxiliary actualities, all designed to make the day disappear by baby steps. Historically, it has been ever thus – campfire heroics, first editions and prestidigitation have all intermittently beguiled the ancestors.

Today, I would suggest, we are unique in the multiplicity, duration and immersion offered by our otherworlds of choice. While our forefathers may have sustained a seven-day snapshot of just what prevented Flash Gordon Conquering the Universe in any given week or had a lingering, instalment-spanning recall of the progress of Roadsweeper Jo’s consumption, we have to sustain an array of continuities, with new ones ever-jostling for admission.

From DVD-box-set mid-marathons, soap operas (domestic and transatlantic), multi-digit (and multi-incarnation) film franchises, novels, biographies, video games, sports fixtures, the vicariously-lived love lives of starlets and canteen colleagues, the musical careers of chord-striking concert stars and the world-narrative of tectonic events to more home-spun fictions, those designed for your mini-me to mull or to maintain the trust of your misguided Mrs, we live a life steeped in a veritable Venn diagram of unevenly shared realities.

Thankfully, these narrative strands seldom collide; content to sit in separate cerebral shoeboxes until required. While they may occasionally overlap – comparing Homeland plot exigencies down the Rugby Club – they, by and large, lead independent lives. Even a brief interleafing of Reality Prime, though, can prove somewhat disconcerting – meeting a Manchester chum in Hong Kong bar or spotting a Facebook Friend on an alien Timeline.

How then should our whistleblowing Hawaiian resolve his own supposedly collapsing realities? Why would he choose to flee the land of the free after digging his own grave in the home of the brave? Was it too much for him to suddenly discover that Uncle Sham had independently declared open season on online privacy? Was it a Mavis-Riley-Meets-A-Dalek moment, with the internal consistencies of his all-American world view suddenly undermined by their internal contradictions? That Tekken glitch that catapults you living room-wards sans dhoti?

It’s a nice idea, but not one that bears much examination. This was not some recidivist member of the Famous Five, weaned on hampers, cycling proficiency and voluntary admissions of LBW. This was a 29-year-old intelligence officer earning, allegedly, US$200,000 a year – in a country where the median wage is still around US$50,000. 

The frequency with which his earnings are cited should be enough to arouse suspicion. It was a figure bandied around online by both Snowden and his on/off poll dancer girlfriend. Hardly the most covert of financial operations – you don’t, after all, read of James Bond boasting about the extent of his licensed OOverdraft.

Snowden turned to security work after failing in his bid to join the Special Forces, a sort of USAS, apparently breaking both of his legs in a training accident. It is an interesting choice of early career for a man who latterly decides himself a champion of individual freedoms. 

This was not, then, man who stumbled upon a dark secret and found himself obliged to turn rogue. This was a man who watched too many movies, a man whose own internal narrative became corrupted by cross-contamination from his Bourne DVDs.

Casting himself as The Geek Who Saved The World, Hong Kong was a logical – rather than ironic – choice for him to seek sanctuary. Having already outflanked Assange – partly by being more personable and a bit less rapey – he now has his sights on being the anti-Chen Guangcheng (the blind Chinese activist who sought sanctuary in the US Embassy in Beijing just over a year ago).

Every story needs a sequel. And one with ever-higher stakes. The follow-up to Raiders of the Lost Ark was hardly going to be Indy and the Stubborn Trouser Crease, now was it? 

If Act One sees you defy the Oval Office and flee the FBI, then why not become a global water-cooler icon, the sand in the Vaseline of the world’s two mightiest ideological and economic opponents? Now there’s an Act Two.

Hong Kong, then, was a logical choice for a man with an eye on the on-going narrative. Mainland China would have been a still better bet, but – Mittycisms aside – the boy is still an American and wouldn’t want to risk the plumbing.

The Mancunian Candidate

"Good job we booked..."

There used to be a bar in Houhai, central Beijing’s over-priced lakeside leisure zone, called simply “The Manchester Pub”. Simultaneously cramped yet empty, this diminutive drinkery sat oddly among its more garish and ubiquitously (and understandably) Asian-themed neighbours. In fact, it’s probably no longer there. 

Lined with black and white prints of obscure musicians from the 1980’s and blessed with a Brit-pop soundtrack that lured most would-be patrons elsewhere, The Manchester Pub had none of the hallmarks of a long-term fixture. Its chatty thirty-something proprietor, himself a Beijing native, confessed himself enthralled with all things Mancunian, particularly the city’s two great periods of musical glory – in the late 70s/early 80s and the mid-90s.

Perhaps sadly, he’s never visited the site of his affections, a two-million strong English city set some 5,100 miles to the west of Beijing.

It’s not unusual for Manchester, arguably Britain’s second city, to garner international renown. Typically, though, it’s the city’s sporting prowess, rather than its musical achievements, that have seen the city eclipse its northern English neighbours –most notably Leeds and Liverpool – in terms of global awareness. Manchester United is, without a doubt, the world’s leading football brand and, some would say, the most globally well-known sporting institution of them all. Critics of the team – and they are legion – dismiss it as having no local following, maintaining its fair-weather fans are more likely to be found in London or, indeed, in increasingly footie-fixated China.

Heathrow-upon-row

The Ring Way...

Despite the profile of its indomitable football team, though, this is not the primary reason for making Manchester your first port of call in the UK. That accolade must go to Manchester Airport (MAN), the UK’s only truly international airport to be based outside of the capital. Travellers from Asia, facing a 13-hour plus flight from the relatively civilised air hubs of Shanghai, Beijing or Hong Kong, really don’t deserve the full eight-hour time-shifted horror that is London Heathrow. LHR is, without a doubt, one of the worst, most inefficient, ungracious and badly-organised airports to be found in any supposedly developed economy.

Manchester is a small airport by comparison with LHR, but a hugely more civilised one in terms of actually gaining access to the UK. With tarmac to car park times in London now easily outstripping two hours or more, passengers arriving in Manc can safely assume to be well through the Green Channel within half an hour or so of touchdown, teeth ungritted and less disposed to inflict violence on any passing member of the UK Border Agency.

Currently, flying to Manchester from many of the major Asian hubs requires changing flights – typically in Dubai, Amsterdam, Helsinki or, as a definite last resort, LHR. This is set to change with direct flights from China to Manchester planned for the near future, a move publicly endorsed by George Osborne, the UK chancellor, at the end of April. So that’ll definitely happen then. With Manchester barely two hours by rail from London, direct flights could see this northern airport becoming the arrival point of choice for the growing number of Asia-based LHR-phobes.

After arriving in MAN, you’re barely 20 minutes from the city centre. It’s a fitting pilgrimage for visitors from Asia to tour this Victorian built city. Work on its imposing town hall began in 1868, with its construction funded by profits from the city’s status as the world’s first workshop. The garment trade flourished here long before the mills and factories of China and India were ever dreamt off, only finally disappearing in the 1950’s and 60’s.

The legacy of its ‘Cottonopolis’ years saw the city centre and its immediate environs saddled with massive former warehouses and abandoned industrial sites. While languishing throughout the 70’s and 80’s, these hulking structures have been latterly reclaimed as stylish canalside apartments and boutique hotels, returning residential life to the once-abandoned city centre.

This renewed trend for urban living provided a massive and much-needed boost for the city’s nightlife. As late as the early 90s, this consisted largely of dodgy pubs, tacky restaurants and terrible, but thankfully short-lived, night clubs. Massive investments throughout the 1990s transformed many northern English cities, with continental-style bars, Michelin-starred restaurants and trendy nightspots opening (and closing) on an almost daily basis.

Depsite the fact I left 8 years ago, Manchester people seem not to have forgotten (there is a possibility I am wrong about this one..,)

Manchester led the way in this, building on its already vibrant underground(ish) scene. The high church of low culture in Manchester was the legendary Hacienda, a club once billed by Newsweek as “the most famous in the world”. It was here that such legendary Manchester musos as New Order and The Smiths made their earliest appearances on stage. The Hacienda closed forever in 1997, a victim of financial mismanagement and too many drug-related fatalities. The site is now home to a block of upmarket apartments, though the name has been retained.

It is one of many stops on the surprisingly popular walking tour of Manchester’s recent musical history. As well as the Hacienda, the tour takes in the Free Trade Hall (where Bob Dylan legendarily outraged a generation of folkies by going electric for the first time) and the Dry 201 Bar (formerly the place for Hacienda pre-gig drinks and one of the many places where Liam Gallagher, the ex-Oasis frontman, is barred for life).

On the more contemporary scene for would-be quaffers, the Canal Street area remains the city’s most lively setting for late-night imbibing. Once billed as Manchester’s Gay Village, this ever-changing stretch of bars and restaurants has long been a heterosexual haunt, with partygoers attracted by its easy-going nature, late serving and high-energy music. Its transvestite cabaret nights are a nod to its more outré roots, but even here patrons are split pretty evenly among sexual proclivities. Ish.

The musical heritage and the nightlife are definite pluses for visitors to the city, but it’s the aforementioned sporting associations that loom largest. Even in the most non-English speaking parts of the world, the locals can usually manage three terms – “hello”, “Coca-Cola” and “Manchester United”. It is possibly the only team that is way more famous than the city that spawned it.

Fortunately for visiting fans, the club is as well-versed at

For that Rooney Mooney...

exploiting their expectations as it is at exploiting pretty much everything else. For £25 (HK$300) per person you can enjoy a behind-the-scenes tour of the team’s Old Trafford stadium. Should you wish to be personally guided, albeit somewhat slowly, around the club’s premises, you can book 75-year-old Wilf McGuiness (the team’s manager in its highly unsuccessful 1969-70 season) for an extra £100 (HK$1,200) per person. To cap off that perfect day, you can even purchase a special offer three-pack of United branded undercrackers for just £6.79 (HK$82) on the way out.

On a cautionary note, the tours are often booked up well in advance (even more so in light of the team once again topping the Premier League this year), so it’s well worth making a reservation on the club’s website prior to your arrival. Should no slots prove available, you can just take pot luck and turn up on spec at the Ethihad Stadium, home to United’s one-time rivals, Manchester City, where there’s seldom a queue. No-one ever does though.

For Chinese tourists, more than for any other nationality, partiality to their native country’s cuisine always looms large among any travel concerns. Fortunately, Manchester boasts one of Europe’s largest China Towns and is home to the Yang Sing, a Cantonese restaurant regularly hailed as one of the finest in Europe.

The historic links between China and Manchester has seen it won the accolade of being a “Dragon City’, the only such metropolis in Europe. Along with the world’s other three non-Asian Dragon Cities – Perth, San Francisco and Vancouver, the honour is in recognition of the size of each city’s long-term Chinese communities and (allegedly) the strength of their abiding Triad connections.

The Pink Hand Gang

The centrepiece of Manchester’s very centrally-sited China Town is an Imperial Chinese Archway, presented to the city by the Chinese government back in 1987. It is said to be one of the finest and most ornate such structures outside of the Mainland. On Sundays, it proves the focal point for the North of England’s largest Chinese market, with traders and buyers travelling from across the region to attend.

For those looking more for luxury shopping than a taste of home cooking, Manchester boasts an impressive array of designer shops and branded outlets. The best place to head for is the Trafford Centre, set some 15 minutes by taxi from central Manchester. The centre, apparently the second largest retail space in the UK, boasts many of the world’s leading luxury stores, including a Selfridges, the exclusive high-end department store – the first such outlet to open outside London.

The downside of the success of the 15-year-old Trafford Centre is that it has pretty much killed off city centre shopping in Manchester. Particularly to be avoided – unless you are in the market for lukewarm sausage rolls and remaindered books – is the Arndale Centre, a horrific hangover from the very worst architectural practices of the 1970’s. Back in 1996, the centre was targetted by the Irish Republican Army. Few mourned the bomb damage done to the Arndale and fewer still celebrated its refurbished return to service several years later. 

Far more recent and more architecturally appealing are Urbis and the Imperial War Museum North, two of the city’s most admired landmarks. Set in the city centre, Urbis opened in 2002 as a space for artistic events and temporary exhibitions. Financial pressures forced its closure, before its successful reopening in 2012 saw it reimagined as the National Football Museum, home to historic souvenirs of the glorious game and a range of interactive exhibits and activities.

A little further out is the Imperial War Museum North, designed by Daniel Libeskind, the architect responsible for the Run Shaw Creative Media Centre in Hong Kong. The museum, which opened in 2002, has won awards for both its design and the quality of its highly-interactive “experiential” war-time exhibits. Set near the Old Trafford football ground, it makes an ideal pairing with a visit to the “Theatre of Dreams” as United fans seem contractually bound to refer to United’s stadium.

A gratuitous pic of a twat

Aside from Manchester’s own sundry attractions, the city with its range of excellent hotels (The Lowry, The Midland and the skyline-dominating Hilton come particularly recommended) is the ideal base for exploring the other delights of north-west England. The picturesque Lake District, one of the UK’s most appealing locations is just 65 miles away, while the far more visceral charms of Blackpool, one of England’s most traditional holiday towns, are only 48 miles away.

While a Chinese influence is hugely apparent in Manchester, with the community annually boosted by a vast number of Mainland and Hong Kong students enrolling at the city’s hi-tech friendly university, it may still be a few years before it plays host to a tiny, cramped “Beijing Pub”. When that day comes, and an enthusiastic 30-plus Mancunian gamely ushers visitors in to listen to his favourite Canto-pop hits of yesteryear, while admiring his collection of sepia-ed Super Girl shots, then China’s global conquest will truly be complete. 


Not entirely as planned, this is my valedictory piece for Gafencu Men. Kind of appropriate, eh kismet fans? http://www.igafencu.com/gm/men_en.php