First new column for the Manchester Law Society magazine

August is meant to be silly season. Full of slow news days where news editors fill their pages with editorial landfill.

Not this August we haven’t. I’m going to be writing a monthly column for the Manchester Law Society on what’s been happening in Manchester business over the course of the month, so I’ll run through some highlights you might have missed whether you were on your holidays in the Algarve, Tuscany, or Prestatyn, after a brief introductory hello. 

I’ve been writing about business most of my professional life, I started out interviewing pop stars, artists and models for a music paper in Australia, but even then as a chippy English kid, I only ever gave five star reviews to New Order, Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays.

Through the 90s I was a reporter, then an editor, for the media trade press, covering the rise of satellite TV, Granada Television and the tech revolution in video and film production.

I rocked up in Manchester in 2000 to be the editor of a business magazine based in Minshull Street behind the court house, where I was frequently approached by local ladies to discuss business, but not of the variety I was employed to write about. 

I love the life that I’ve built here and remain that chippy northerner. Though I do cover crooks, liquidations and shady deals, I do so from the position of wanting to police the boundaries of a business community so good people aren’t ripped off. I take being a journalist seriously, something I cherish having been offered the chance to return to the frontline after a period as a political adviser.

This August some big exclusive stories came thick and fast.

We’ll start with the big positive one first. The sale of a stake in cult female fashion brand Adanola, which values the Manchester-based business at £400m (US$530m) is a huge lift for the city.

Further south, Dr Nyla Raja known locally as the "Botox Queen" sold her aesthetics business to an American “consolidator”. I’ll keep an eye on this one. She received a stinging assessment from the Care Quality Commission in 2023 for the hair transplant service and she used to be in business with footballer’s wife Dawn Ward, a star of Real Housewives of Cheshire.

The investment into Leonard Curtis by Pollen Street Capital was also a big deal for the city, as a really well-run, deadly focused business in the flux world of professional services looks to an exciting next phase.

I also attended court to get some more insights into the case of Stockport accountancy firm Bennett Verby and the charges they face for failing to prevent tax evasion.

We also saw the conclusion of the scrap to buy Assura, a North West based healthcare property investment business where Primary Healthcare Properties beat off American private equity firm KKR, three initials that are known to send a chill down the spine of even the toughest business executive.

Finally, it was with a very heavy heart that I pressed send on a breaking news alert on a sunny Wednesday afternoon about the Greater Manchester Chamber filing a notice of intention to appoint administrators. 

There are plenty of people there who I have the utmost respect for. The reason they gave for their financial perils is that its Chamber Space co-working and meeting room rental venture has become “an unsustainable part of the business” since the pandemic. 

I’ll be sure to keep you posted on these stories, and more, on TheBusinessDesk.com.

Hot take on the Observer under new ownership

I thought @theobserveruk was a decent read this weekend, the first under the new owners @tortoise.

It had plenty of the familiar writers that have made it my favourite Sunday paper - Miranda Sawyer, Barbara Ellen, Andrew Rawnsley, Eva Wiseman, Nigel Slater and John Naughton.

Shame there was no Stewart Lee or Carole Cadwalladr.

Sport seemed much reduced but match reports in a Sunday paper are a relic, really.

Getting Robert Harris back to do a piece on the Papal transition was a deft move, but getting Nick Clegg to write three pages felt like landfill.

I’ve been a @tortoise subscriber for a few years and liked how some of the best of their journalism made a strong intro. The @aleximostrous Tate investigation was another smart move.

I’ve been shortlisted for a journalism award

 I’ve been shortlisted for a journalism award.

I’m not going to come over all modest and humble, because I am chuffed to bits about this.

I had a rough couple of years before deciding to try and get back in the game and do what I love the most.

The faith that TheBusinessDesk.com have shown in a veteran like me will be forever appreciated. The day Lee-J Walker rang me to pull me in from the wilderness was a game changer.

The stories I submitted to the esteemed judges were a mixture of styles, and included crime, corporate analysis and mental health advocacy. If you follow me then you can probably guess what they were.

Appearing on the We Built This City podcast with Lisa Morton

“I just love telling people’s stories”

I was invited on to Lisa Morton's excellent podcast, WE BUILT THIS CITY.

Her blurb for me was lovely: "When Michael Taylor left Lancaster for university studies in Manchester, he gained more than a sociology degree - he found a city to call home, a true adopted Manc.

"Experience 1980s Manchester through Michael's memories of the clubs, relationships and a cultural vibrancy he came to embrace and love.

"What did Michael learn from being at the heart of the city’s business world as the editor of Insider, and what are the valuable lessons that have informed change in Manchester over the past 20 years?

"Michael’s career has taken him down several different avenues into politics and academia, so what led him to recently return to his first love, journalism and become editor of online magazine The Business Desk.com and what does he feel is still left to be written?

"The conversation demonstrates the power of place in shaping identity and the relationships and connections that help to build a career in Manchester."

I probably displayed more vulnerability than I usually would, and at times it felt like therapy, but that's LIsa's skill as an interviewer. 

We also recorded it before the conclusion to the rape trial of Lawrence Jones, a senior figure in the Manchester tech world, which I wrote about. Lisa also wanted to remind me of my own shortcomings during the laddish 2000s and the times when she suffered harassment. 

I've known Lisa since 2000 a few years after she started PR company Roland Dransfield in 1996, one month after the fateful IRA bomb that tore apart the city centre.  From that point, the business, and its team members, have been involved in helping to support the creation of Modern Manchester – across regeneration, business, charity, leisure and hospitality, sport and culture.

To celebrate the 26 years that Roland Dransfield has spent creating these bonds, Lisa is gathering together some of her Greater Mancunian ‘family’ and will be exploring how they have created their own purposeful relationships with the best place in the world.

Journalism matters

I came back into full-time frontline journalism a year ago to do three things: 

• Write the truth about bad people who were getting away with it; 
• Do interviews in front of audiences with inspiring people (like I did at JMW yesterday); 
• Carry on some of my academic work examining the efforts of people who are determined to make this region better than they found it.

This story about Lawrence Jones was one I have wanted to write for ten years, or more. The legal process can be slow. But justice has been served on this man. Let us never forget the brave women who risked so much to bring him down. And for those who enabled him, there will be a reckoning.

Warning. This is a long read. Thanks to TheBusinessDesk.com for supporting me and giving me the time to write it, and a huge thanks to all those who helped with details.

Northern Spin Extra - Special Guest, Economist Nicola Headlam

What’s Boris Johnson really like?

Nicola Headlam should know because she was one of the most senior civil servants at the Northern Powerhouse and she’s lifted the lid on him and other senior politicians.

Now the chief economist at Red Flag Alert she’s the latest guest on Northern Spin Extra and didn’t hold back on her views on Northern Powerhouse Rail.

When we launched the podcast it was to get insight from people like Nicola and she didn’t disappoint.

Give it a watch (above).

#northernpowerhouse

The Spirit of the Fanzine

Our radio show is a product of the fanzine generation. Passionate, homespun, authentic and sometimes a bit seat of our pants. 

I was reminded of this last week when I went to a talk in Manchester with the force of nature that is John Robb.

As well as the front man for the band Goldblade, John is a clarion for music in Manchester arguably invented the term Britpop and was the first music writer in Europe to interview Kurt Cobain of Nirvana.

At a talk in Manchester hosted by my friend James Torry from Doodledo he conveyed how just as enthusiastic now as he was then. His website called Louder Than War is an outlet for his first-rate music journalism. 

He started as a fanzine writer, as did me and Neil. 

I actually first met Neil when he was editing a magazine that started as a fanzine and became a gloriously smart menswear journal. Though I’ve had a decent career in journalism, my first baby steps on that journey weren’t an internship at a newspaper or a traineeship at the BBC, but on getting out a Letraset, a battered typewriter, some glue and a pair of scissors to cut bits out of newspapers and magazines to make a fanzine.

I’m probably the only winner of Private Equity Journalist of the Year (2006 and 2007) to have edited a fanzine.

It was 1982, I was 16, a bleach blonde haired sixth former with a bag full of attitude and riding that strange wave between punk and football lads, taking in a range of influences from music, politics, and the terraces.

I would pick up these crudely photocopied mad collections of random thoughts and ideas, usually sold outside gigs in Leeds or Manchester, but occasionally in record shops like Piccadilly in Manchester or Probe in Liverpool.

In Leeds I bought one called Molotov Comics, featuring lots of poetry and swearing, and was sold by a skinhead called Swells. Another was called Attack on Bzag which was enthusiastically marketed by a skinny lad with curly hair by the name of James Brown, who went on to be the editor of lads mag Loaded (when it was good).   

Over in Liverpool, I was absolutely mesmerised by The End, due to its sassy writing, its left-wing politics, and the crossover with football terrace fashion. That was produced by the lads that ended up forming a band called The Farm.

I was inspired to start my own. It was called Positive Feedback, it had some good bits in it, but I lacked the confidence and the contacts to really develop a distinctive style.

I grew up in Lancaster, we had a little bit of a music scene, partly because of the students at university and a decent club called the Sugarhouse which a fake student ID used to get me into most Saturdays.

We also had a brilliant record shop, Ear Ere, which as well as being a hive of great sounds they’d also support fanzines. People bought the first two issues and it was an important part of my origins story. 

Fanzines were part of a network, the underground, people who could help one another, and so I got a call at home one day from a guy in a band called the Membranes from Blackpool who wanted to know if I could help him get a gig in Morecambe or Lancaster. I couldn’t, but as is the way, I think I told him to try the lads at Ear Ere.

I recalled that conversation, that self-help, DIY attitude. I often get asked for career advice by students and young people. I can only tell my own truth, but in an era when there are social media, video, and blogging tools freely available the spirit of the fanzine lives on. You just have to use what’s available.   

A brush with Marple wisdom

I did a talk to the Marple and District Probus Club last week.

Formed in 1972, they offer a chance for retired people to meet socially, converse, listen to talks and go on trips to places of interest.

My dear friend Peter Mount is involved and has brought all of his experience and energy to the club. They were short of a speaker for this week's meeting at the Senior Citizens Hall in Marple, and he asked me on Sunday if I would be willing to turn something around in a couple of days. For Peter I always find it hard to say no.

My talk was called My Life in 17 bylines - journalism and politics. The talk went down OK, I think. I spoke for longer than I anticipated, but then my experience is that the conversational interactions pad things out a lot. The best bit however was the question and answer discussion afterwards. Because I touched on my political experiences I came in for a bit of push back and scrutiny. It reminded me a little of being an election candidate on the campaign trail, not least for the fact that we used to have Labour Party events in the same room. 

That said, there were also questions related to journalism - on truth, due impartiality, the dreadful corrosive effect of the Daily Mail on our society and a question about a recent story in the Stockport Express which I have some knowledge of. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I found the people there to be sharp, wise, curious and deeply committed active citzens. 

The Devil Wears Ciro Citterio

The foundation of my love of music was the media that provided the running commentary on the styles, scenes and sounds I grew up with.

Without the New Musical Express, The Face and i-D music would still be good, but it would exist in isolation, without context and without colour.

It was also the rock on which my love of magazines, writing and journalism was built. 

Last weekend I ripped through Ted Kessler’s brilliantly titled book Paper Cuts - How I Destroyed the British Music Press and Other Adventures. This is a longer version of the punchy review I did for the local papers.

The last ever editor of Q Magazine when the music monthly closed at the start of lockdown in 2020, Kessler shares the potent mix of his remarkable life story, interwoven with a rich commentary about the decline of the music press.

The other eye I had on this tale was my own early career choices. I often think about this world as a parallel universe down another fork on my life’s road. I started out writing about music, fashion, films and clubs but took that different path in my early twenties. Many other young journalists probably also compromised on their ambitions, but I do count myself lucky to have landed in an exciting sector. I made my home through the 1990s reporting on the television business and its technology, rather than music, stars and showbiz, later moving to Manchester to edit Insider, the best business magazine in the land. One of the reflections I used to share with journalism students at UCLAN was the access I had to real decision makers and headline makers was so much greater in the business press than I suspect it was in consumer media.

Although I’d interviewed some high-profile celebs in that phase (Ben Elton and the rapper Tone-Loc were favourites, various long-forgotten Australian pop stars, not so much), some of the PR-guided set pieces were excruciating and over-controlled. You really felt you were in their pocket and constantly on parole for good behaviour. Ironically, my best-ever scoop was about the revival of Countdown Revolution, a much-loved TV music show.

As I mentioned in this piece a couple of months ago, I have at times lamented that early choice. But deep down I probably always knew the money wasn’t good enough and the precarious nature of jobbing journalism for cool papers and mags was more than I could bear. Certainly, both Ted Kessler and Miranda Sawyer have confirmed their own financial precarity was a trade-off for an interesting life. 

Journalism is a hustle. You have to constantly negotiate access to a much sought-after interview, or work out the trade-offs required to stay in the game. The business press was a different kind of dance, but there were games to play and the advertisers had more power; too much if you weren’t vigilant. 

To be any good at journalism, in any field, you need courage, access and a genuine love for what you are writing about, if you don't then you are dead, because the gatekeepers have an antenna for it. Writing talent, as Ted Kessler describes, particularly for a high-output media like a weekly paper, isn’t as important. You just have to be able to knock out the copy sometimes.

I enjoyed Ted’s accounts of his own on-the-job learning, well remembering the brutal dressing-downs I had through my early career. I didn’t use words wisely, I was way too slow, and it took a while to balance the relationships that could taint a fair and accurate view of our world.

His tales of press trips and moments of genuine wonder are beautifully told, John Harris and him at an early Oasis gig, the energy of the Happy Mondays, but there was always a tension. These people weren't your friends and could snap in an instant. Maybe it’s also because the stakes were so high and the negative consequences so catastrophic. When he spends time with Radiohead and the editor ditches it as a cover story, relegating it to a chippy inside spread with poorly chosen photos, it triggers a grudge that lasts for a decade.

He gives Paul Weller’s Stanley Road album 6/10 in the NME and Weller invites him down to Surrey for a straightener in the car park of his studio.

I don’t ever remember being offered out by a grumpy TV facilities boss, but I upset plenty of people over the years. Sometimes it was my own fault. I can think of the press officers at major corporations, who were also our advertisers, who thought I was an idiot. I then decided I would go out of my way to deliberately annoy them by doing stories so offensive, so detrimental to their reputation, and so egregiously hostile, that they threatened to withdraw all advertising from my publication, and its sister titles, which were hanging by a knife edge anyway. It was high stakes but boosted my credibility and their requirement to take me seriously. And I was right, by the way, the story I worked hard to get published about them was true. And rather a troublesome idiot than a lickspittle, of which there were plenty elsewhere.

But as I matured I knew better and learned how to earn the right, to play the long game. If you’ve got a good reputation, if you do the work, serve the readers good stories, and try to be different, then your respect yields better stories. In later years, while working on a different magazine, that same advertiser flew me to Rome to interview the head of the Vatican’s TV station, and also to the World Cup in France 98. Though to prove where I stood in the pecking order it was only Bulgaria v Nigeria.

For an industry that holds its annual trade exhibitions in Las Vegas and Amsterdam, I enjoyed those years and had a good innings hanging around things I never fully understood, finding the personalities, spotting trends, and separating good new products from dross.

I was asked recently what my favourite ever story pitch was. It’s easy: “Hi Roger from Quantel here, how would you like to come to the Cannes Film Festival on our private jet?” That was a big deal. Competitors upped their game after that. Spending time with smart people brings insights, insights bring readers, readers bring credibility, and credibility gives you the freedom to be brave. Plus, though I knew Cannes was incredible from trips to the MIPCOM and MIPTV markets, the film festival was next-level insanity and glamour.  

But I think the real reason I really enjoyed Ted Kessler's Paper Cuts was that it was also about the decline of publishing, the collapse of the magazine industry as we knew it, and the self-inflicted wounds that legions of halfwitted publishers administered in the name of brand strategy, diversification and efficiencies. I went through many of the same kind of corporate bollocks that Ted Kessler outlines; strategy days, meetings about meetings, overreacting to anecdotal evidence in reader surveys and off-the-cuff comments from people making an excuse not to advertise. I've lost count of the pointless memos, botched redesigns, paranoia, new managers with the latest bright idea and the sharpening of knives by young bucks on the rise. There was also a clash of priorities between advertising, editorial and corporate merger strategy.

Ted Kessler’s characters, some tragic, leap off the page. Maybe he was blessed with big names and personalities, but for his Steven Wells (RIP), we had Oscar Moore (also, RIP). Yet it remains true that no one has yet written a savage portrait of working in the business press in the way Kessler does about his world, or Laura Weisberger's novel about Vogue, The Devil Wears Prada. I just don't think my magnum opus (The Devil Wears Ciro Citterio) would be quite the rip-roaring page-turner. 

The irony is not lost on me, by the way, that other hardy veterans may have well interpreted my own enthusiasm for events, video and podcasts as equally vomit-inducing careerism and therefore evidence of my own blatant hypocrisy. In a later career incarnation, I sat on the board, advocated change, and embraced the internet. As one of my American journalist friends said, "oh my God, you've become 'they'."

But you only have to look at the absolute bin fire that is the local newspaper industry to know what happens when you get the big calls wrong, promote the wrong people and fall asleep at the wheel. 

But for all of that I have never stopped being a journalist, and a supporter of journalism, and loving the company of journalists, not just because of stories from back in the day, but because of all the stories they tell so well. 

Paper Cuts is stuffed full of hilarious stories of wild encounters that us journalists love retelling. Trips to Cuba with Manic Street Preachers to meet Fidel Castro and dinner with Florence (but not her Machine) at the height of her success, a fair few involving Manchester music legends, Shaun Ryder, the Gallaghers and then there’s Mark E Smith of The Fall asking about the name Kessler: ‘Jew, Or Nazi?’ A story Ted Kessler’s dad bizarrely recounted with morbid glee.

But for all its depictions of a downfall of an industry, and the sad story of his Mum’s passing, the book also ends on an optimistic note. Kessler’s own Substack newsletter The New Cue fizzes with the same energy for new music and a rich heritage. It may not reach the heights of NME in the 80s, but it’s a platform for writing that matters. I hope they get the access they deserve in a world where social media gives artists the ability to totally control their brand and message, but often leaves too little a crack for the light to get in.

Midlife without the crisis

One Friday night back in 1991 I came back from the pub near to the house I was illegally sub-renting with two mates in London, to watch Channel 4’s The Word. I was so appalled by what I was watching, I called the duty log at Channel 4 and called it the worst programme in the history of television.

On Monday evening I returned home to an answer machine message from Channel 4 saying they’d enjoyed my rant and wondered if I’d like to come on television to make the same points on a show called Right To Reply, where viewers have their say.

I thought I might be recording a video piece to camera about how rubbish Michelle Collins and Terry Christian were. Instead, I was required to deliver the same accusations of unprofessionalism directly to the producer of the programme, Charlie Parsons, and to Michelle Collins herself. Alongside me was another viewer called Miranda who also had to join in this brutal character assassination.

Bizarrely, I can remember I was wearing a yellow Paul Smith button-down shirt and a Levis denim jacket. I recall saying that Michelle was ridiculous to ask Kylie Minogue if she was trying to reinvent herself as the new Madonna.

Thankfully, I don’t have the VHS tape of it, and I haven’t been able to find it on YouTube.

Afterwards, we both got slated for not declaring, drum roll, that we were journalists. I was a staff writer at Television Week, an industry newspaper, and Miranda wrote for Smash Hits. Quite why that rendered our views any less relevant was a mystery, but given how rude we’d been to Charlie Parsons, a genuine big hitter in telly, he was well within his rights to defend himself as he saw fit.

What I do know is that of all the people on that programme the only one who never made a career of appearing on TV after it was me.

I’ve done the odd bit of punditry, usually on business or politics, but Miranda Sawyer, for it was she, has interviewed actual legends, as well as being one of those people who turn up on talking head pieces on the 90s, Britpop, and (probably) why Kylie Minogue successfully reinvented herself as the new Madonna. 

She also wrote for Select, The Face, the Daily Mirror, and still has a column in the Observer. She went on to write a very entertaining and wise book about growing up in Wilmslow called Park and Ride. 

Through a good chunk of the 90s and the decade after, I felt very jaded that I wasn’t doing things like that. I felt opportunities in life hadn’t gone to plan and that I wish I had either the connections or the smarts, to not just write about people who made television shows, but actually appear on them.

The reason I didn’t was a Northern chip on my shoulder, a lack of confidence, and a massive sense of imposter syndrome. To counter it I have always sought a comfort zone, just a little below where in my heart I feel I should be, which keeps me going but feeds a deepening sense of disappointment and a feeling that I basically never really fit in.

I’m just reading another book by Miranda this week, after seeing her do a brilliant interview on stage at Kite Festival with the actor Minnie Driver. See, she even gets to interview Hollywood stars at Festivals. Her book is called Out of Time - Midlife If You Still Think You Are Young. And of course, you can’t use the word midlife without the inevitable follow-up word, crisis. Not hers, specifically, but the idea of it and how our generation experience the triggers for it, career insecurity, diminishing health, regret, and envy.

The very fact that I bought the book at my very first music festival - a few years after it was published - speaks volumes, and that it is absolutely for people my age, for people like me. I do still think I’m young, despite being a father to actual adults. Me and my mate Neil love music, we both love discovering new stuff and interrogating old. We wear expensive technical jackets and call each other to show off a new pair of trainers or cords. 

We’re part of an easy demographic to make fun of: Acid Dads, old punks, boomers, whatever. Our parents weren’t like this. We’re a generation that seems to be steadfastly refusing to grow up. Festivals are actually designed for people like us.

Miranda’s very honest account of her progression through life is sobering. It is brilliantly written, and quite sad at times. There’s this haunting account of a dream where you are surrounded by people who think you are wonderful, you start a chess game, you leave the room, return and things are a bit more hostile. You look at the chess board and you’ve lost a knight, a bishop, and some pawns and you ask to start again. No, comes a voice (God, maybe), that’s the game.

There’s an incredible and lucid chapter on music, which sums up the feeling of being forever young and growing old. “In the middle of my life, I feel as though I might be young and old and the age I am today all at the same time, and music is one of the ways I sense this.” Beautiful. 

In the closing sections of her book, which she insists isn’t a self-help book, she does offer some advice on what might work for midlifers, extrapolating on what has worked for her. Running (slowly), is one, and music is another. But here’s the one I loved; think back to what you loved doing when you were young, and do more of it. That got me thinking. It’s why me and Neil do our radio show. It’s why I am obsessive about climbing fells and mountains. It’s why I’m working in politics again. It’s why I have a chart on my wall with the football grounds I must go to in order to complete the 92.

It has taken me a lifetime to reach any kind of contentment, and though I feel it now, it doesn’t take much to knock me off course. In the wreckage behind me lie various confused therapists, lost friends, failed relationships, and an inability to bank what I have achieved. Rachel is nothing like this. I have no idea how she puts up with me. Even when my frail, dying Great Grandma looked at me through milky eyes and said to me when I was still in my early twenties ‘you’ve had a good life haven’t you?’ I still couldn’t quite accept that I’ve done enough. Fast forward thirty years, despite the brag pack shelf I constructed to give me a high five every morning, I can't shake the voice that says I'm out of time. 

I’ve also been through a few career changes over the last decade. My industry has been decimated - as has the consumer and cultural media that Miranda operates in - and I’ve tried other worlds where I had a limited impact and screwed up. It isn’t an excuse, but the business model for what I really wanted to do was hard to deliver when everyone was working from home. 

That’s the chess game of life again. Imposter syndrome is comparing yourself to others and thinking of yourself as inadequate next to the version you see, rather than the reality below the surface. But to confront it successfully also requires real self-knowledge and awareness. That's the bit that's been falling into place recently. Two older friends who know me well have both independently offered the observation that I'm resilient, a survivor.

For so many reasons, I was really pleased that we went to Kite Festival. Picking up this smart, funny, and beautifully written book by someone whom I briefly, fleetingly crossed on a path to Channel 4’s studio in 1991, and who I have occasionally compared myself unfavourably to ever since was one. The other was feeling really pleased to see her do such a great job hosting an interview (with no notes, NO NOTES) and me not feeling a single pang of envy. 

Miranda Sawyer's Out of Time is still available, buy it from Blackwells here, they are lovely.

Music Therapy has it covered

There's something great about a really well-performed cover version.

Not just a copy, but a really thought-through intelligent take on a great song. It gives the artist who is doing the cover a real credibility boost for having the sheer audacity to take a successful piece of work and put their own mark on it.

The greatest and surest trick is to respect the original, but do something new and different with it.

Sure, there are some takes on a classic song where you wonder why they bothered, but as I’m being true to my New Year pledge not to be mean on social media, or print media, I’ll do what my mum always told me to do - if you’ve nowt nice to say, say nowt.

What the Pet Shop Boys did with Elvis Presley’s Always on my Mind is a fantastic example of that. 

They managed to add it seamlessly to their confident camp disco range of songs at their 80s’ peak, probably introducing the work of the King to a new audience.

There’s a story too about Marc Almond of Soft Cell working as a cloakroom attendant at Wigan Casino, the mothership of Northern Soul in the 1970s, and falling in love with a song called Tainted Love by Gloria Jones, the one-time girlfriend of Marc Bolan. When it was originally released in 1965 it was a b-side, and a commercial flop.

Within a decade Soft Cell’s reworking of it quickly became an 80s’ pop classic, selling a million copies, making it one of the best sellers of 1981, alongside the Human League’s Don’t You Want Me.

There’s no doubt which is the more successful, and the best known, but which is the best version? 

Then there are some songs where you probably didn’t know the original because the cover version is far more popular. 

It just so happens that quite a few of these were written by Prince, probably the greatest musician of all time, so it seems only fair that he’s able to spread his genius around to the benefit of others. 

The two most notable songs that were made absolute staples lying there somewhat neglected in the archive of His Purple Highness were Nothing Compares 2 U, which Sinead O’Connor (pictured) did such an amazing, heart-rending job of, and I Feel For You, which most of you will think of as a Chaka Khan tune. 

That’s going to be a new feature on our show. Well known songs you maybe didn’t realise were cover versions, here’s the original, but which one is better? 

We kicked it off last week with a couple of gems. 

Firstly, China Girl by Iggy Pop, released in 1979. The song was written by David Bowie, and he later performed a very polished version on his incredible album Let’s Dance, the very high point of 80s’ slick pop mastery, given a big sound by Nile Rodgers from Chic.

Secondly, we dropped a glorious 70s’ soul track by Otis Clay called The Only Way is Up, which people of my vintage will know as an 80s’ nightclub floor filler with acid house tinges by Yazz. 

There are loads more out there, so let us know your favourites and we’ll offer our humble opinions on which we prefer. 

Unless it’s about the cover of Talk Talk’s It’s My Life by No Doubt, because there is nothing to debate.

This is my weekly column in the Tameside Reporter and Glossop Chronicle.

Meeting Gary Neville for the Big Issue in the North

I met up with Gary Neville a couple of weeks ago. Everything we talked about is pretty much covered in the cover story profile I wrote for this week's Big Issue in the North. We talked about so many of my favourite subjects; football, politics, business, education, and personal motivation. But he didn't hold back on the anger and moral disgust he feels for this government. Reading it back, and listening to the recording is quite powerful and raw at times.

One of the things he said was that if you call out this government for what they are, eventually you will be proved right. 

Some comments work in the moment. Some stand the test of time, even in a fast moving news agenda.

He's such a fascinating character who has already lived an extraordinary life. But I was particularly struck by his humility, how he learns lessons from mistakes and setbacks. It may seem an odd thing to pick up on given his many achievements, but that quest for perpetual forward motion and the desire to do the right thing is quite special in the present climate.

He also told me: “You know, I am an entrepreneurial business person who's earned a lot of money. But I believe you can still act with compassion and empathy and be decent, but the people in charge of our government at this moment in time aren’t doing that."

Once again, I'd urge you to go out and buy it, support your vendors, and support quality print media.

Or if you can't get out to a Co-op store, or a vendor, and if you don't live in the North, then you can buy a digital copy online.

Lasting Legacy of The Beatles

We were out in Liverpool last Friday and were reminded once again of the absolute enduring power of the Beatles.

We walked past two different bars where live musicians were performing. And yes, one of them was knocking out a passable version of Yesterday.

When I was younger I used to roll my eyes a bit at what I thought was a mawkish and nostalgic attitude towards the Beatles from our scouse cousins. If anything that attitude was just so typically English.

It’s 20 years last Monday since George Harrison died. And next Wednesday the 8th of December it will be 41 years since John Lennon was killed in New York.

I think the time, the distances between their passing and the ever-growing appreciation of Paul McCartney’s more recent output has given us a reminder that we need to cherish their memories a little more.

So much of their appeal in America was their humour. And the picture above of them in masks on a visit to Manchester is a bit of gentle ribbing about air quality down this end of the East Lancs Road.

Quite rightly, Beatlemania has taken root again.

Paul McCartney has a book out about his songs, the Lyrics, 1956 to the present. It sounds like a Beatles’ geek’s dream, including accounts of all of the songs he’s ever written, what he was thinking at the time, who he was with, what they were about, and what he thinks of them now.

I’ve also recently discovered a podcast series where different people basically talk about their own personal experiences and how the Beatles have shaped their own thoughts, lives and experiences. It sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it does. The last one I listened to was with the comedian Adam Buxton and it is just sublime.

A writer I follow called Ian Leslie has been commissioned to write a book about John and Paul. He mentioned them in a very good book he released earlier this year called Conflicted - Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart And How They Can Bring Us Together. You can see why he’d want to look closer at the dynamic behind the greatest songwriting partnership of all time.

He made the point in another long article about The Beatles recently that no single individual in the history of humankind has brought as much pleasure to so many people as Paul McCartney. 

On our show last week we opened with All My Loving, the first song played by The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in America in 1964. It started the lasting love affair that the rest of the world had with them.

But the project that has got everyone excited has been the work of the film director Peter Jackson who has delved into the archives and released a three-part epic documentary film Get Back. It's presented in a proper fly-on-the-wall style, the encounters in the studio and the everyday mundane business of making a record are captured in beautiful celluloid glory.

Everyone I’ve spoken to who’s seen it describes it as time travel. More remarkable than this was a far less media-savvy group of people than they would be today, so are in a much more natural and relaxed mood. 

How a band so creatively prolific, commercially successful and capable of bringing so much to so many people could be overindulged was frankly ridiculous.

So, if anything, Liverpool hasn’t done enough to celebrate them.

(This is from my weekly Music Therapy column in the Tameside Reporter/Glossop Chronicle)