First the BBC commissions a survey on whether Manchester or Birmingham is England's second city. (It's Manchester)...

... and then the March 2007 edition of The Word carries a highly entertaining and not-so-scientific assessment by Stuart Maconie of The North v The South in music. The pen pics of Joy Division ("combining Ingmar Bergman-esque fascination with the essential emptiness of life with a Bernard Manning-esque desire to tell dirty jokes and get pissed a lot") and Happy Mondays ("Going to the game, mister? Bad area round here, you know. Nice car. Go on, mind yer car for a quid, mister") are worth the price of admission alone whilst a cartoon of the former fills out some space.

In the same issue, John Simm talks to Andrew Harrison about, amongst other things, playing Bernard Sumner in 24 Hour Party People. Simm recalls that his main memory of the movie is being "wasted all the time". He says "If you weren't wasted on set, someone would come and sort you out. It was very real, shall we say, especially for the lads who were playing Happy Mondays. I don't know why they're not dead. It was just an amazing laugh".

Labels: Happy_Mondays, Joy_Division

- - - -