A seven-foot statue of Mr Manchester, anyone?

Dear readers — welcome to the most important Monday briefing The Mill has ever written, in which we answer the somehow as-yet-unanswered question: how tall really was Mr Manchester?

This comes after the news on Saturday that Peter Hook, aka ‘Hooky’ – bassist for Joy Division and known flogger of Factory Records’ corpse – has suggested that what Manchester, nay, Greengate needs is a seven-foot-tall bronze statue of Tony Wilson, looking out over the Irwell towards Victoria. Tony Wilson? Seven foot? Surely not. We decided at once to investigate.

We asked every friend or family member of his we have in our contacts, first, what they think of the statue, and also, can you remember how tall he was? The results were similar but inconclusive – so this morning, Ophira and Ethan went to extreme measures to find out once and for all. That’s all in just a second.

But before that, a word from our sponsor. This briefing is brought to you by Herrmann and the Oat Milk Latte Gang: Not an ‘80s synth outfit, but the name bestowed upon us this morning by friend-of-The-Mill Raja Miah.

Miah, it seems, was less than impressed with our correcting of his pronunciation of ‘Joshi’ in Saturday’s article. In a series of tweets he’s written about us since, he’s referred to the Mill-founder as a “pyjama wearing ponce” who needs to be “back in Chorlton before tea time”, and one of his fans described The Mill as “nonce adjacent”. That last bit isn’t true, but Lucy and Alec do both drink oatmilk lattes.

But enough about us — what the people of Manchester need now more than ever is more info about Tony Wilson…

So it grows

When news broke on Saturday of plans to build a seven-foot-tall statue of Granada reporter and co-founder of Factory Records Tony Wilson, the first thing The Mill team did was get on the proverbial blower to his ex-wife (we texted her).

The statue – proposed by ex-Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter ‘Hooky’ Hook and former Salford Councillor Steve Coen – will be erected in Greengate Square (if indeed erected at all), looking out into the city he knew and loved.

Why Greengate? Hooky explained that the sight of the former Victoria Bus station is “where I always used to get the bus home… where I had many happy moments. It seemed like a natural choice.” What this has to do with Wilson remains unclear.

But more importantly, why seven feet? This brings us back to the ex-wife, Lindsay Reade, who you might remember from this feature about the women cut-out of the story of Manchester’s music scene. Now she returns to Mill pages to tell us that she thinks the idea for the statue is “ridiculous,” and that the money could be better spent elsewhere. “Tony would probably agree!” But was Mr Manchester really seven foot? “He wasn’t very tall,” Lindsay tells us. “Around 5’7 or 5’8 from memory… Definitely well under 6’ anyway!”

But this memory is disputed. In his Wilson-biography You’re entitled to an opinion, David Nolan describes the Mancunian reporter as “surprisingly tall and broad”. On X, one 5’10 tweeter told us that they’d met Wilson several times and recalled him being “marginally but not significantly” taller. Founder of City Life, Mill reader and known Wilson-watcher Andy Spinoza put him at 5’9 or 5’10.

So we set out to investigate. The first clue we found was this segment from Granada reports, in which Wilson stands with what appears to be a giant camera behind him, with a clipboard attached to it, and what looks like an A4 sheet of paper attached to the clipboard.

By our calculations, this makes Wilson the height of six pieces of A4 paper, or around 5’10.

But we wanted to be sure. So we found another Granada segment, in which Wilson leans against the doorway of the old St Peter’s school on Hewitt Street. Then we sent Ethan Penny, 5’8, to the scene to test our findings. What we found will shock you.

As you can see, this real-life test puts Wilson at a remarkably similar height to our newest recruit (dissenters will say he isn’t leaning enough to the left; we disagree). We can’t give you his height to the decimal point, but we’re placing him firmly in the zone of 5’8, meaning the seven foot statue will be around 1.23x bigger than the man himself.

“A brilliant sculpture can create an impression,” says Spinoza. “But on the whole they tend to be, by their nature, quite static.” Hooky, he explains, often “swims against the tide” of the opinions of others. “I doubt the end result will be a fitting tribute.”

Manchester’s hospitals in crisis 

The Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust – one of Greater Manchester’s biggest NHS trusts – has declared a critical incident ahead of strikes this week. The strikes relate to a pay dispute for covering staff shortages and will involve over 350 workers across four hospitals: Salford Royal Hospital, Royal Oldham Hospital, Rochdale Infirmary and Fairfield Hospital. The trust said that a critical incident declaration ensured it received extra resources to keep the hospital running today, Wednesday and Friday while the strikes take place. 

Just last week, a Channel 4 investigation revealed that Salford Royal Hospital is in crisis, with whistleblowers describing chronic understaffing and patients being harmed. Channel 4 reported that many staff partially blame the decision to merge Salford Royal with several other hospitals in 2017, forming the Northern Care Alliance. One clinician described the hospital as “unsafe” and “inhumane”. The Alliance said: “We have clear processes to investigate incidents and learning from these is an area we need to prioritise. By doing this, we can drive forward improvements and maintain our focus on safety.”

A Bed Every Night, by numbers

The GMCA has spent over £50m on the A Bed Every Night scheme since its launch in late 2018, according to new figures obtained by The Mill. Below, we break down some of the numbers related to Andy Burnham’s most famous policy as mayor; one he now intends to replicate across the country now he is PM.

Over the coming weeks, we’re going to be crunching the numbers on more of Burnham’s mayoral policies. If you’d like to get in touch with something you think we could dig into the data on, email Jack.

Blessed be the crumbling

All Souls church on Every Street in Ancoats (that is just one street) is collapsing. The church, finished in the 1840s and rotting into a state of instability since the 1980s, has caused the closure of the key road connecting the inner ring road and Ashton New Road up to the Etihad stadium. It’s causing a nightmare on City matchdays. Staff writer Alec blames it for turning up 30 minutes late to drinks yesterday, which has nothing to do with the fact he didn’t check the match time for City, at all.

According to Ancoats & Beswick councillor Chris Northwood, Every Street is going to be closed for at least a month (posing a problem for City fans, and Alec’s social life). If you have any information on the building, help him out at alec@manchestermill.co.uk.

Open newsroom: What’s with all the drones?

You may have seen the BBC’s recent reporting on British Transport Police’s latest way of tackling trespassers on the railways: drones. They’re stored in weatherproof boxes at stations and can be launched at a moment’s notice, controlled by pilots in London. It’s the latest story we have seen in the last few months relating to drones zipping around the city. Sometimes it's the police, YouTubers or developers wanting shots of their new skyscrapers. Other times, it’s less clear. Take this post from the Manchester Reddit a few weeks ago, in which someone reports a drone eerily hovering outside the window of their flat for 20 minutes. If you have any insight into our new airbound auditors, know anyone who operates one or maybe operate one yourself, get in touch here. 

This week's weather

Our guerrilla weatherman Martin Miles says that "as meteorological summer draws to a close, we’ll see unsettled weather dominate the weather picture." Expect large amounts of rainfall, mostly concentrated later in the week.

Tuesday 🌤️ Dry and warm with plenty of bright spells, but turning breezy later. Max 23°c.

Wednesday 🌦️Warm and humid with large amounts of cloud cover and occasional showers. Less breezy. Max 24°c.

Thursday 🌧️ Muggy with spells of heavy, potentially thundery rain during the afternoon. Max 23°c. 

Friday 🌦️ Cooler with morning rain easing to a mix of sunny spells and showers later. Breezy. Max 20°c.

Weekend 🌦️ Changeable and breezy weather over the bank holiday weekend as low pressure will dominate. Average temperatures. 

Home of the Week

A different colour scheme in every room of this four-bed in Stretford — plus somewhere to dock your boat out the back. £365,000. 

What our writers are up to this week

🗞️ Manchester Musical Youth are retelling a story which should interest The Mill’s newshound subscribers. Newsies Jr. tells the story of New York’s 19th century young paper sellers, as they unite to fight back against the greedy newspaper owners. A fable for our times? Tickets for 28, 29 and 30 August at Z-arts in Hulme are on sale now.

🌈 Begin your Manchester Pride celebrations early with SCENE Festival, a programme of film, TV and live events across the city. There’s a free screening of Hairspray at 6pm tonight at First Street, or grab a ticket for a special preview of Blue Film at Home, followed by a Q&A with the main actor. More details about what’s on throughout the week here. 

🍽️ If you’re a fan of tastefully executed Italian small plates and drinks in a delightfully laid-back setting, this Wednesday is going to be something of a nightmare. That’s because two restaurants of that precise ilk will open and you will be forced to choose which one to go to first. There’s Proloco on Great Ancoats Street (18-inch pizzas, little savoury Italian doughnuts and gelato) and Bar Caput, formerly Cantaloupe, on Stockport Underbank (all Roman-inspired: pizza, fritti, pasta, drinks).

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