‘Manchester: In Residents’ ... #32 John

‘I remember my winter, trudging up to Oldham on two buses, sat in the back room with endless tea and a whole rotisserie chicken…’

What’s your name?

John.

What do you do?

I am a writer, predominantly about clubs and dance music, for several publications including The Guardian, Time Out, Skiddle and The Skinny, for whom I was Clubs Editor, and from where all of this stemmed. When I see distant or elderly relatives, I joke that ‘I write in advance about what most people can’t remember!’ No, they don’t tend to laugh either. It’s a real struggle. I also work for a research company occasionally, and still get my head down with the odd bout of office temping. I am trying to distance myself from the brain prison of data entry.

Where do you live?

For the past year or so, I’ve lived in Chorlton, home to the highest proportional home burglary rate in the UK. So you can assume that if this questionnaire drifts off into the ether before your mind does, I have simply been robbed of my ability to complete it. I had always liked Chorlton even when living in the city centre, but the Metrolink made it much more appealing. Plus there’s cheap swimming and moderately priced ale to offset the constant climate of fear that you could return home any time to nothing but a dope stained set of late 70s upholstery.

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

As a teenager in a North Wales village, in no uncertain terms I wanted to get the fuck out, and fast. I considered going to university in Kingston Upon Thames, Derby and a few other spots, but really wanted Manchester (not so) deep down. I just about squeezed in to MMU to study Film and Media, which I screwed up and dropped out of after two years. Somehow, with almost no financial means and only temporary jobs flyering alongside a brief stint as caretaker managing a declining chain of sex shops in Northern satellite towns, I managed to stick around. Soon to be 27, when life still feels uncertain, I remember my winter trudging up to Oldham on two buses, sat in the back room with endless tea and a whole rotisserie chicken, avoiding eye contact with the endless money shots repeated on a first generation plasma screen inches from the counter. The only security I had was a hammer stashed in a small cupboard.

I moved to Manchester for ‘the scene’, although I wasn’t sure what that was at the time. I did stand up for a few years and ended up working on a few writing projects for television and so on. I was much better at the latter side of things. Eventually, my interest drifted more toward music, and dance music especially. I started to DJ (sometimes badly, dropping random Panorama Bar house in between Foals remixes at Now Wave), and somehow kept my head above water. Some best of times, most worst of times.

I have lived in town in pokey student flats with TVs tuned only to Sky Action – on which I watched the finale of Alien Resurrection on a daily basis – then in Rusholme, where a burglar shat in my yard and a DNA officer inspecting the scene asked me if I’d ever met Steve Coogan, ‘and was he a dickhead in reality too?’ I lived above Abduls, on whose food I briefly subsisted, stealing wi-fi from a Chinese exchange student and never having to heat the flat, which was so warm in the summer months, I was physically unable to occupy it most of the time. Eventually I moved to a flat near Piccadilly, and lived with a rotating cast of characters, starring me as landlord and handyman.

What’s great about this city?

It’s a massive cliché, but almost everyone in Manchester loves music, and many more become readily engrossed in the culture surrounding it. Perhaps this is true of any large condensed populace, but the people are largely very funny too. But it’s mainly great for all the brilliant, life changing experiences and opportunities it has afforded me over the years. Or, perhaps I have afforded them to myself? Perhaps the real city, is inside myself…? (It’s not, it’s in Manchester.)

What’s not so great?

I think the city centre as a whole has declined rapidly, and the atmosphere is markedly sour compared to less than a decade ago. The cuts to resources for the homeless or those with mental health or drug problems has disenfranchised people on a huge scale; From a humanitarian angle, it’s unjustifiable, and from a more cynical tourist board perspective, it doesn’t present the city in the best light. Obviously the blame here doesn’t necessarily lie locally, though. I also worry that the city’s small enough to be almost entirely franchised and operated by half a dozen powerhouses across retail, clubbing, dining… It’s great that there’s money and ambition available still, but a streak of independence and even the sort of radicalism that the city’s cultural heritage often trumpets wouldn’t go amiss, albeit from those with far more imagination and conviction than most of us, myself included, are able to offer.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

I don’t have much of a taste or sense for good architecture, although I’d like to. I enjoy the corridor of university and residential buildings on Whitworth Street, and the general feel and sights of the Palace/Cornerhouse junction. I seriously hope that the latter building stays put.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

My favourite living Mancunian is probably Kosmonaut’s bookings manager and former Piccadilly Records staff member, Pasta Paul. Not only is he one of my favourite DJs - which is saying something as he can’t mix for shit - but he loves the city more than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s still dashing around from gig to gig, opening to opening and record shop to record shop without a shred of disillusion, or the usual ego and expectations that consume some ‘local characters’. He has achieved what is surely one of the UK’s largest network of friends without ever succumbing to Facebook, and has not but a bad word to say of anyone. He is an immaculately dressed force for good in what can occasionally feel like a sea of ridiculously attired cynics.

Pasta Paul aside, I would have really loved to have met Tony Wilson, especially as I have a fondness for old Granada TV idents as much as acid house. Like many, I feel like Manchester’s musical heritage has occasionally been frequently pillaged for personal gain by many of those instrumental in it, but in and of itself, Factory is perhaps one of the most important labels of all time, and yes, Vinni Riley is good music to chill out to.

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

I love clubs, and I love them best when they’re dark, loud, full of smoke and not entirely welcoming at first glance. I really think Soup Kitchen’s basement is, on a good night, up there with the best in terms of a space to dance, and definitely one of the few dancefloors I feel most comfortable playing records to. Dan, who books Soup Kitchen’s club, has afforded it an amazing reputation in the face of massive competition, never allowing the listings to go stale, and maintains a wry sense of humour or perspective when I’d potentially be losing my mind.

I really like Albert Hall, which is a great example of what happens when several ambitious organisations take a risk on a venue that probably seemed obvious to a knowing few for so long. I love This and That, which even despite a few dodgy visits of hundreds, will always remain my personal victor in the endless Northern Quarter Rice and Three war. I still love Common, whatever’s on the wall there, and whatever they do to make their fries taste really good.

I enjoy strolling through Granby Row, beneath the railway arches, which feels pleasantly secluded and is as good of a bench sitting spot as any in the city. As well as the Archimedes statue, I particularly enjoy the ‘Vimto Bottle’ monument, which I genuinely thought was a really durable inflatable promoting the drink for far longer than I should have.

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

Following on from the above, I’d love to see more green space, which has always felt exclusive to the greater suburbs. I hope one of the occasional plans to transform Stevenson Square or the like into a greener environment comes through. But that it is genuine green space, not a continuation the council have of adding relatively miniscule patches of grass amid largely stone or concrete areas. I would rather see relatively miniscule patches of stone and concrete amid large areas of grass. I know you’re not supposed to say that sort of thing nowadays, but deal with it, incredibly well paid town planners!

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

Make sure I went somewhere dead nice to get a sandwich at lunch, and then keep the receipt, say I was having a meeting, and claim it back on expenses at a later date.

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

Mick Hucknall.

‘Manchester: In Residents’ ... #31 Oliver

'Lorenzo offered to walk the elephant back to Manchester, which he did in ten days...'

What’s your name?

Oliver East.

What do you do?

I’m an artist. I write and draw comic books about landscape and walking. They sell about as well as that sounds so I’ve also had a long career as a barman in south and central Manchester – Maine Road Family Stand, Free Trade Hall, Robinski’s, The Drop Inn, Velvet, Matt & Phred’s – before finishing up with seven years as a manager down The Temple. I get the odd illustration gig as well, like two Elbow album sleeves and animation, for instance. The comics are making money now though, so I’ve been bar-free for a while.

Where do you live?

Old Trafford.

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

I’m a party baby. Or more specifically a 'cult party baby'. My mum was living in an ashram in Withington, next to St Paul’s Primary (which I later attended) as part of a worldwide cult. Told she couldn’t have kids, she had one nonetheless. Grew up, just the two of us, in a Fallowfield flat. School in Withington then Didsbury. The Didsbury school was a strange mix of working class Burnage and middle class Didsbury. Hated it. Failed most everything and did retakes and such in Heaton Chapel.

I really wanted to study archaeology, but couldn’t get the grades. I took ‘Classical Civilisations’ for GSCE three times, getting, in order, D, D, E – so Indiana Jones was a no go. I wanted to study something though and so I fell onto an art foundation course. Two and a bit years into an art degree, I fell for art. Moved out of my Fallowfield home at 18 into a Fallowfield student house. Standard fare. Then sublet a one bedroom Northern Quarter apartment whilst courting my future wife and working in Velvet and then Matt & Phreds. It was an illegal let, which would have been okay, but a census was done at the time and there’s only so long you can ignore the door to those guys…

I moved into a Chorlton share with my girlfriend and some numpties who would only ‘let’ us in the front room at certain times of the day. Fucked them off and got our own place, – a flat in Whalley Range. Due to an accident my girlfriend had enough for a deposit for a house in Old Trafford. A year later we got married in Las Vegas in a chapel who said, ‘You just tell us, on the day, whether you want God there or not’. Our son, Hunter, was born five years ago. We were married nine years. She’s no longer my wife but we’re great mates in a ripe-for-mockery ‘North Chorlton’ co-parenting team.

What’s great about this city?

Viewing the city with ‘single’ eyes, it’s a different world out there: terrifying but ever so much fun at the same time. I walk everywhere if I can. It’s cheap therapy. I can be in town in less than an hour and Chorlton in ten minutes. You can walk across the whole town centre in less than twenty minutes, with your beer jacket on. Every parent around treasures the museums. I hope they’re not taken for granted and that everyone chips in on their way out.

One of Oli's beautiful Elbow sleeves.

What’s not so great?

I could fire off many a missive about our misfiring trams. Packed single ones at rush hour and empty doubles during the day. The public transport system as a whole is pretty embarrassing when you talk to other Europeans. ‘What, you mean you can’t use the same ticket on all the buses?’ 

The London Road Fire Station situation is shameful.

Fallowfield has been shat on, bit by shitty landlord bit, over the years. With the students now more likely to live in the centre of town, they’ll have to fill the houses somehow and a once appealing neighbourhood will just get worse.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

Central Library, before they gave it a veruca.  The stretch of Whitworth Street, from Palace Theatre to Piccadilly Station looks like a parade of gargantuan gateaux. If you lived in India House or worked at the Palace Hotel, you’d get nothing done, as you’d have your head out the window eating icing all day.

Oxford Road station is the best in town. Love the roof and their stubborn refusal to sort out a lift for years. The egg and toast rack in Fallowfield would have to be up there actually. The residential houses of Whalley Range deserve an illustrator’s attention. I’ll get round to it at some point. Still some grand houses in Fallowfield if you can see past the flyers.

I enjoy running. One favourite route is around Trafford Park, with the warehouses and industrial bakeries, glimpses of The Lowry and a bridge over the quay.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

Lorenzo Lawrence. He worked at Belle Vue zoo in the late nineteenth century. The owner of the zoo travelled to Edinburgh, with Lorenzo, to buy a load of animals. The plan was to get them back by train to Piccadilly but the elephant they bought kicked off and smashed his carriage. Lorenzo offered to walk it back to Manchester, which he did in ten days. But the elephant was already trained and had been used to carriages for years. Once Lorenzo had got it on the train that would have been that particular gig over for him. So, a skilled trainer, he somehow gave the elephant a signal to panic. Thus blagging himself an extra ten days work. I’m working on a comic book about the whole thing now.

I worked in Velvet for a couple of years and there was a character, Tony Dean, who used to write poetry for his favourite bar staff. I’ve still got a load now. He wrote a short story about a beauty spot on my cheek. He made me a spoken word cassette (both sides) of him reading sonnets called ‘In Celebration of Oliver’. He was fun.

Bumping into Guy Garvey is the highlight of any day and honourable mentions for Steve Manford, Carol Batton, Emma Jane Unsworth, Hannah Thomas and me Mam.

One of Oli's public wall pieces.

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

My homing instincts always take me down to The Temple (of Convenience). It’s a hole, it stinks, the staff are surly, it’s a nightmare on Saturday nights, but I love it. Having worked there for seven years, off and on, I’ll always find someone down there with whom to over-share. That, and its older sister, Big Hands, are the only two real rock and roll bars in Manchester. Being newly single means I’ve had to broaden my horizons beyond these two, for it not to get too incestuous with the bar staff.

Fletcher Moss Park for nostalgia reasons (mainly sticky fumbles) and the Mersey that runs round to Chorlton and Stretford, via Northenden, which is good for running. Longford Park as I used to take the boy there every day, reading a book while I pushed him around.  He would make his first steps in the avarium there.

As for restaurants I have some pretty ingrained phobias about eating, so anywhere where I can order, it comes quickly, and I can pay and leave while still chewing, works for me. This ‘n’ That, where I go with the boy before Bolton Wanderers home games is great. The Mexican stand in the Arndale food market does a massive burrito, a bottle of decent beer and a shot of tequila, for a tenner. Top way to start off a hung-over Saturday.

Rage Against The Machine at The Ritz is always up there as one of my favourite gigs. Used to go to Dance Yer Docs off there as well. It’s a great venue with buckets of sweaty nostalgia.

Whenever tourists would come down The Temple I’d always tell them about The Briton’s Protection. As good as pubs get in Manchester. Ask me again when I’ve been single for a year and I’ll know more places.

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

Humility.

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

Panic. I’m totally unqualified for such a position. But until I was found out I’d get shot of that Simpson character. The architect who keeps getting every gig going in Manchester? Yeah, I’d do away with him. I’d make The Temple and Big Hands rent-free forever more. I’d sort out the road above The Temple so it didn’t leak all the time.

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

Steve Manford. Filmmaker who works at Afflecks.

All of Oliver’s books can be bought from Forbidden Planet International on Oldham Street but, if you can live with the shame afterwards, they’re also available on Amazon. He also has a website, a Tumblr where he posts process pictures and inspiration, and he also does a bad job of hiding his anger issues over on Twitter.

‘Manchester: In Residents’ ... #30 James

'It's crazy how a small city like this can have so many promoters and artists out there putting on their own stuff and making a really good go of it, and there's a real togetherness between most of them too...'

What’s your name?

James Victor Travis, or JVT... Or just James if you prefer. Never Jamie or J, though.

What do you do?

I work in Social Media for a popular hotel booking site in the centre of the city, it's a pretty good day job to be honest. I'm also the chap behind the Dots & Loops club and gigs, and sometimes DJ elsewhere when people will have me. Other than that, I'll probably be at home listening to Leonard Cohen.

Where do you live?

I'm living with my girlfriend in West Didsbury at the moment, just off Burton Road. The flat is kinda weird because it's above a house share that we have to pass through to get to it, but it's totally our own space. The other day we needed to get access to the basement below the house share to store some junk, and it turns out the basement is a disused recording studio. I mean, it isn't in operational order right now, but it's pretty damn cool down there. 

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

It's hard to elaborate on how I ended up somewhere I've always been. I was brought up in Rochdale and studied at Salford Uni for a couple of years and I never made the decision to move away anywhere else. I've often considered moving away, but it never came off for one reason or another... it's definitely likely in a few years or so, but I'm quite comfortable for the time being. 

What’s great about this city?

There's never a lack of good shows or events, and it's a really creative place with a good atmosphere. It's crazy how a small city like this can have so many promoters and artists out there putting on their own stuff and making a really good go of it, and there's a real togetherness between most of them too. The record stores, of course... People complain about the weather, but I quite like it these days.

What’s not so great?

The high street is pretty awful. People can say what they like about HMV, but to see that store close down and become a 3-storey bargain place is pretty depressing. It's just scaled down supermakets and mobile phone stores now. Piccadilly Gardens is a real mess too, and that big wheel hasn't done much for it. I really can't tolerate Spinningfields, but each to their own and all that. I'm not really a city centre kind of guy I suppose.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

The old fire station by Piccadilly train station, it's a really impressive building, absolutely stunning. It's a real shame that Britannia Hotels (who own the building) continue to neglect it. They came up with some nonsense about there being no demand for more hotels in the city, but then you see there's more and more hotels being proposed and approved every year. It's really hard for me to understand what they're trying to do there, very unusual. Hopefully there can be some kind of resolution soon, but it's been 20-something years as far as I'm aware, so I'll not hold my breath. It's not like a new hotel would be my preferred option for the place anyway, but it needs to be SOMETHING. The worst building? Has to be that premier inn. What a shocker.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

I don't really have a favourite Mancunian that comes to mind. I guess I'll be real nice and say my Papa. It certainly ain't Ian Brown, anyway! Mark E Smith is a funny guy, I like him. Don't reckon he'd like me much, mind...

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

This is real difficult, there's plenty of nice places! I suppose my favourite places would be Fuel and Kraak. Always a great atmosphere in both those places, and plenty of interesting stuff going on. Islington Mill is fantastic... The Castle is nice to pop in for a good drink and a sit down, and the venue space is pretty handy too. I generally like to stay in with a few records though, and burton road has a really great beer store now called The Epicurean. It isn't cheap, but it's good to be able to just pop into a place and pick up some drinks you're used to only being able to buy at trendy bars here and there.

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

I think we were missing a good medium sized venue, but the Albert Hall  has that covered really well now. Burton Road really needs a grocery store, I'll say that. I don't think there's enough good outdoor areas in the centre of the city, nowhere to really sit down and relax in the middle of all the madness. That's maybe something they could work on, starting with Piccadilly Gardens.

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

Make the Metrolink free of charge. Hell, that ain't no kind of service to be charged for.

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

Kev Rolfe. He's got his own label going on now, and is always involved in other great stuff. He's off around America for a few months but you should grab him after that.

Dots& Loops 8^th Birthday is on July 4th including a DJ set from special guest Bob Stanley (Saint Etienne) plus live sets from The Oscillation & Dead Sea Apes. Kraak. 9pm till 4am. £8 advance, £10 on the door. Event page here. 

‘Manchester: In Residents’ … #29 Julie

‘It sounds cheesy but I truly started to live my life when I moved to Manchester. It is strange in a way, as I am, and always will be, seen as ‘Frenchy’ in England, and ‘L’Anglaise/La Rosbif’ in France…’

What’s your name?

I have various nicknames, from Big Tasty to Shorty but my real name is Julie. I’ve also been called Fattesti, it’s quite funny I guess, given my family name…

What do you do?

I work as a manager in a language school in Salford, on a beautiful square just off Chapel Street. It’s next door to the New Oxford pub, which makes it very hard to concentrate past 12 o’clock on a Friday! The sound of beer kegs rolling on the floor and patrons getting drunk is usually my daily soundtrack. I’ve also put on a couple of gigs and still occasionally play music in bars with a good friend of mine: our night is called Paris is Burning, in Odd NQ.

Where do you live?

I live in a lovely house in Chorlton, near Beech Road, with another French girl, and two gentlemen, one from Italy and one from Nottingham. It’s a lovely area to live in, as you certainly all know, if you forget about the burglaries and fried chicken shops galore – mostly bad KFC rip-offs. I also spend a fair amount of time at my boyfriend’s place in Ancoats, which also is a great area to live. Both places are dangerously close to several amazing boozers.

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

Long story short, I moved to England about three years ago from my native France to work for Islington Mill and the Sounds from the Other City festival. Within my first week here, I managed to stumble over the pavement and end up at A&E. I wasn’t even drunk! It wasn’t great and I wanted to go home at the time, but five stitches and several booster shots later, I gave Manchester another chance and started to really enjoy it. I met some wonderful people, discovered some amazing places, did some amazing things. Manchester, and England in general, became my home and my close friends became like a second family to me. It’s not always easy to be so far away from your close family and friends, but I truly feel like, and it’s going to sound mega cheesy, I truly started to live my life when I moved to Manchester. It is strange in a way, as I am, and always will be, seen as ‘Frenchy’ in England, and ‘L’Anglaise/La Rosbif’ in France.

What’s great about this city?

There is a really long list of things I like about living in Manchester, but to be honest, I think I really like people’s mentality in general here. I somehow feel like I’ve been ‘adopted’ by Manchester and feel now more comfortable here than when I go back to France, where I kind of feel like a visitor. I like the Northern mentality, I like to try and identify all the different Northern accents – ask my boyfriend, he’s probably quite bored of my questions: ‘Where do you think this guy’s from? Sounds Northern…’ It’s great because at the same time, I still see Manchester with the eyes of a foreigner. I was dreaming of moving here, and sometimes, I sit down and start thinking how happy and proud I am to be an adopted Mancunian. Life is good in Manchester, people are relaxed in general - if you forget about that lovely man who called me a ‘foreign bastard ‘ on the train for speaking French... Nevermind. But yeah, people are cool, you can basically do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t bother anyone else. In France, people tend to judge you if you wear double denim or if you have a pint before 6pm…

What’s not so great?

There are a couple of things I’m not too happy about in Manchester. The city centre is really dirty, especially on weekends. Walk along the canals, and you’ll find a blow-up doll, cigarette butts, plenty of beer bottles and probably a dead body or two. The lack of a proper cycling infrastructure is a real shame as well. I really enjoy cycling and would love to commute by bike, but I’m terrified to do so in Manchester. And finally: have you seen the amount of takeaways and betting shops? It’s really depressing!

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

It might sound quite silly, but I love terraced houses and red brick buildings! Before moving here, it was exactly the image I was making for myself of Manchester, and the places I’ve lived in before were really colourful. These endless rows of terraced houses are what struck me the most when I first moved here, and these massive blocks of buildings in the Northern Quarter, around Turner Street for example, remind me a lot of the old New York. I simply like to wander around and admire the buildings around me, even the scruffiest ones. I love Manchester architecture: no fannying about!

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

That’s a tough one. I was trying to think of ‘famous people’ at first, since, like a lot a people, I came to Manchester because I was intrigued by its past. But frankly, my perspective changed really fast and Manchester quickly became my home and I sort of lost interest in the past because living here in the present is making me very happy. My favourite people are the ones around me, but none of them are actually from Manchester. My housemate is great, but she is French – she does all the house work in the house and doesn’t mind doing the washing up! My boyfriend is pretty awesome, but he’s a Scouser. I could tell you how he steals bottles of hot sauce from restaurants when he’s had a drink or two, but it would probably only reinforce the stereotype. My friend Camille is gorgeous but she’s French too. So yeah, these are probably my favourite people, they’re like my family away from home.

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

This one is fairly easy: the Crown and Kettle on Great Ancoats Street, just opposite the Frog and Bucket. They have an amazing selection of ales and really friendly staff. I also like 2022NQ, their ‘Beats, Bats and Beers’ night is amazing, and they do Happy Hours! Carringtons in Chorlton is one of my favourite places to buy booze. They sell wine that was made in the vineyard two streets from where I was born!

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

Nice parks in the city centre? Angel Meadow is quite nice but a little bit off-centre. There is also that patch of grass next to the New Islington tram stop but it’s nothing more than a patch of grass…

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

…completely rebuild Piccadilly Gardens. It looks like anything but Gardens, seriously, it drives me mad. It is ugly, grey and highly depressing. What were they thinking when they built that awful concrete wall? I’m sure it has its uses, but it does looks really ugly and it’s a shame as it is the busiest part of the city centre. I also wish it wasn’t so terrifying at night.

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

Funnier people than me? I’m really honoured and pleased I got to answer to this questionnaire but c’mon, it was probably not the most entertaining entry. [WRONG! – Ed.] Quite a few people I would have nominated have already answered this questionnaire, but I would be interested in seeing what Jackie Hall has to say. She is one of my friends and even though we are not that close, I’d simply be interested in what she has to say, because she is cool and humble.

On May 10th Julie will be moonlighting as DJ Eura-bitch at the you're a vision!: a eurovision party spectacular at Kraak, Stevenson Square from 7pm.

‘Manchester: In Residents’ … #28 Bren

'It was an enchanted place and although no longer as it was, the vintage fittings and humidor cigar counter long gone, replaced by rows of Pot Noodles, I still visit in my mind’s eye.'

What’s your name?

Bren O’Callaghan

What do you do?

There is something delightfully, incurably wrong with my head, fuelling a compulsion to create, dream and conjure the most ridiculous and absurd of activities, events and installations. I am powerless to resist the flow of ideas. In other words, I do stuff. I make things. I ask people to help me out and very often they do. On paper, I am a producer, curator and artist-maker, currently the Visual Arts Programme Manager at Cornerhouse and HOME, Manchester’s international centre for cinema, theatre and contemporary visual art. My background is in a mixture of arts production, including ten years at the BBC. In my day job I support an international roster of emerging and mid-career artists, covering experimental film and video, installation, live performance and public participation.

         It’s been a bumpy but incredible eighteen months following the relocation of a close friend to the lure of sunny Oz, coupled with an abrupt finish to a relationship. There’s a term I use, ‘raft building’, to describe the process of lashing myself to an all-consuming project to carry me through rough waters, when swimming isn’t enough to keep from floundering. Fortunately, it was at this exact moment I was asked to produce my first feature-length movie. Jamie Shovlin’s Rough Cut is a hybrid of fiction and documentary capturing the process of recreating/reimagining a 1970s horror movie that never actually existed. I even appear in it myself, as a polo-necked villain, and as a pair of hands inside a fog-wreathed cabin in the woods…

The project was reviewed in the leading cinema press – from Sight and Sound to a full-page feature in the Guardian Guide to Empire and Total Film – and selected for the Rotterdam International Film Festival, and continues to screen on the international festival circuit, most recently in New York. I’m exceptionally proud of what we achieved, and the memories of tramping about the Lake District, doubling for Argento’s Italy and slasher-camp America, will stay with me always: plagued by clouds of razor-fanged midges, clambering through quarries and caves, blowing up scale models on the moors and slathering a giant, monster worm with buckets of sexual lubricant for slime.

         I also squeezed in some projects of my own, including That Dame Upstairs, a noir-styled monochrome life drawing class and performance with The Sisters Gorgeous, and Nicho Nativity, a Mexican-themed Christmas grotto in the basement of Oklahoma, the latter thanks to a grant from The Paul Hamlyn Foundation. I kicked the year in the nuts with a sell-out 300 seat screening of my recurring Scratch and Sniff Cinema series, this time for The Wicker Man, with odours ranging from village orgy (crushed rosemary) to burning virgin (roasting meat). I did say I was compulsive…

         All rafts sink by the nature of their transitory purpose, so there always needs to be another one waiting. Before I reach The Other Side, I’m aiming for a personal best score. We only get one attempt at this game. There are no start-agains.

Where do you live?

In leafy Old Trafford, the nearly-Chorlton but most definitely not-Hulme neighbourhood where you get more square foot per butt. It’s close to the city and I prefer old Victorian housing stock to charmless, city-centre shoeboxes, plus I’m around the corner from the Hong Kong Chippy. They make the best chips and gravy in South Manchester with a free side of highly personalised criticism delivered in Cantonese.

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

I’m from here, raised in Rusholme and Salford, though no one seems to believe me. I lack the requisite accent (even though my vowels are distinctly Northern) and right from the playground I was accused of being ‘posh’. What this actually meant was that I loved to read, and because I was partly raised by my surrogate television family (Floella Benjamin, Derek Griffiths, Johnny Ball, Fingerbobs, Bagpuss) I unconsciously imitated them, particularly when called upon to read aloud, or at bedtime, hence ‘posh’.

         Somewhat incredibly, I’ve been attending Cornerhouse for over twenty years. This attendance was initially prompted by an older woman – we’ll call her Sylvia – who drove a Porsche and had a husband stashed in the attic. Sylvia befriended me at the video rental shop and would drive my friend Moira and I to watch French people shout at each other and have miserable sex (which describes about 80% of independent cinema, then and now). I last saw Sylvia when, as an asexual young adult, I was turned out of her house when her husband accused us of having an affair. ‘You’d better go,’ she urged, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow’. To my relief she never did call.

         Around this time I took a self-funded gap year to work as a teacher in Varna, on the coast of the Black Sea, which wasn’t as edifying as I’d hoped, underscored as it was by a diet of stale bread and Nutella. On returning to England I moved to Newcastle to study literature, working at Northern Stage as an usher and spending summers with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Office. From there I went to Belfast, a lonely period in which everyone seemed to return to their hometowns at the weekend, leaving me to wander around Belfast Zoo where more frequently than not I would be pursued by a rogue Pelican that took a dislike to me and would wait, hissing, around the corner of public footpaths.

         I’ve been back in Manchester for a long time now, and I think if I were to relocate again, I’d make it a big one – across the sea and far away. But Manchester will always be the soil that clings to my roots.

What’s great about this city?

It is a city in its truest sense, indifferent to human suffering or achievement, built on opportunism, greed, poverty and wealth, the unremarked-upon lives of the many, and marble-hewn egos of a few. It is an ill-planned, clumsy, mismatched patchwork of pre-war Victoriana and post-war concrete, dotted with boom-and-bust glass-walled hives of hipster drones. There are enough ‘quarters’ to create more than one whole, no skyline to speak of, and we are baptised nightly in bodily fluids as the populous knock back their over-priced cocktails and finish with a bollock burger on the way home. Despite, or because of this, Manchester is at the very least authentic; an ugly truth, a beautiful lie, and so forgivably flawed. It is a city of human scale that refuses to stop playing and come in for tea.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

There’s an unassuming shop front in the warrens of Rusholme that will always be a symbolic beacon for me. It’s my parent’s old newsagents, which I lived above as a child. The last time I paid a pilgrimage there it was dilapidated and near ruinous… the windows plastered with discounted phone card adverts. But the refuse sacks that litter the adjacent streets appear, to me, like a black-capped fairy circle, hinting at the residue of magic within. It was the late 1970s when we lived there, before the rash of supermarkets and out-of-town shopping centres, when corner shops were also the local toy store, and the stock changed according to season; rows of eggs at Easter, monster masks at Halloween, and ‘Standard Firework’ selection boxes in the run up to Bonfire Night. At Christmas I would sit on towers of Quality Street tins, reading about the application of natural yogurt as a cure-all in the problem pages of Just Seventeen. It was an enchanted place and although no longer as it was, the vintage fittings and humidor cigar counter long gone, replaced by rows of Pot Noodles, I still visit in my mind’s eye.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

My twin sister, Katie. She would never turn her back on me, nor I her, no matter our documented attempts to kill one another (the first when we were two years old, and I maintain that she pushed me down the stairs first). We have a shared memory as infants of a lampshade swinging between our beds, seemingly by an invisible force. Read into that what you will, but cross us together at your peril, and beware sewing needles that mysteriously appear in wet facecloths. Come the apocalypse we will stand back to back, wielding kitchen knives, making a detour into All Saints for slimming survivalist fashion, all the while arguing furiously about who is having the harder time of it.

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

There’s a small swimming pool where I swim most lunchtimes that I’m not prepared to promote the existence of, for fear it will be invaded by people with better bodies. But I’ll happily give the thumbs-up to Fred Aldous, The Briton’s Protection, The International Anthony Burgess Foundation, TwentyTwentyTwo and the Ray Harryhausen-like mural and statue of a terrifying, anorexic Christ in St Augustine’s Catholic Church, built of WWII bomb debris… and really, who can live without Stitches off Deansgate for swift clothing alterations?

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

Ask not what your city can do for you, but what you can do for your city. There’s far too much white noise nostalgia for times past, coupled with a lot of ‘what-if’ but very little direct action. I love what the Manchester Modernist Society and Loiterers Resistance Movement are doing, aiding interpretation and facilitating engagement, not placing the past underneath a bell jar. They should be championed as civic superheroes, instead of marginalised as black sheep. There’s also a growing, infuriating trend towards ghettoisation amongst audiences for live events of any kind, sticking to one venue or scene instead of getting out there. I’ve had people complain to me that they didn’t know such-and-such a thing was happening because they were not directly invited via Facebook. People need to seek out and support a wider cultural ecology with exposure to new ideas and unfamiliar disciplines. It is each and every person’s responsibility to make your city a better place.

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

Give that guy who works at Cornerhouse the keys to the little shuttered-up shop under a railway arch facing Monroes, beneath Piccadilly Station, and allow him to use it rent free as a sit-and-drift reading room, along the lines of the Prelinger Archive in San Francisco. There would be books, photo albums, VHS tapes, music mix cassettes, redundant media players, records, part-completed Panini sticker albums and shoeboxes filled with the ephemera of others, curated and rotated with the sole intention of encouraging the mind to wander. A bank of cubicles with curtains would allow privacy for those who needed a little cry for whatever reason, with a 50p sob box on trust to help pay for the electric. Outside, a neon light installation and quote from Shirley Conran’s Lace would read, Which one of you bitches is my mother?

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

Sharon of Sharon’s Flowers, next to Big Hands on Oxford Road, but you’d need to enter backwards holding up a mirrored shield. Do not look into her eyes.

Bren’s next project has been commissioned by the North West Central Film Hub, part of the British Film Institute Film Audience Network. In his first outing as director, a cinema audience will be plunged into total darkness for a filmic experience without visuals, instead wearing wireless headphones using binaural audio, a specialised method of audio capture that creates a 360º spatial soundscape, best described as a form of aural ventriloquism. The unfolding tale is that of a classic haunting...