Dear readers — we hope you enjoyed the final weekend of Oasis fever. Although we found ourselves gripped by another type of mania: that of Greater Manchester’s grammar schools. Ophira delivered a follow-up to her piece in which she spoke to the parents desperate to get their kids into Trafford’s selective schools — this time she spoke to local councillors on whether such schools should exist at all, and what we can do to fix a clearly broken system. You can read that below.
Ophira Gottlieb
Catch up and coming up
- Last Wednesday, Jack spoke with Nicky Nielsen, the University of Manchester Egyptologist who excavated the ancient city of Imet last summer.
- Plus: we updated readers on the extraordinary developments in the University of Greater Manchester saga, as seven properties were raided by police in an investigation focused on “serious allegations of fraud and bribery” at the university.
- This week, our resident historian Thomas McGrath is telling the story of the Clabby family, who were slum residents of what was known as Manchester’s “Little Ireland” in the 19th century.
- Sticking with the heritage theme, we’re also running a story this weekend about Greater Manchester’s Indian community, to coincide with the England vs India test match at Old Trafford. If you’d like to contribute, email us here.
🌦️ This week’s weather
Tuesday 🌧️ Cloudy with patchy light rain and drizzle. Breezy and feeling cool. 18°C.
Wednesday 🌦️ Breezy and overcast with occasional light showers. 18°C.
Thursday 🌦️ Warmer with bright spells and a few showers. 20°C.
Friday ⛅️ Mostly dry with bright spells, but still breezy. 21°C.
Weekend ⛅️ Often dry and bright but turning windy, which will make conditions feel cool. Average temperatures around 20°C.
Your briefing
🍸 Sammy’s Bar, the retro-style cocktail bar on Swan Street, has closed for good. In June, we revealed that the bar’s owner Sammy Shonn, 42, had sex with a customer in his bar after hours and downloaded the CCTV footage to his phone. Via his lawyer, Shonn denied the allegations. We published a further report later that month, where we spoke to three women who accused Shonn of assaulting them, and who came forward after a viral Reddit thread accused Shonn of various types of predatory behaviour (claims that we have not verified). In response to that story, a lawyer representing Shonn said that he “categorically denies that he has acted in any way that is unlawful, inappropriate or aggressive”.
In a new Instagram story on Friday, Shonn referred to an “online smear campaign” and defended his innocence but said that “for my own mental wellbeing, I’ve made the difficult decision to sell the bar, along with all its associated assets, including this social media account”. If you know more, get in touch.
📃 An inquest opens tomorrow into the death of Rachel O’Hare, 49. On 30 June, O’Hare fell to her death from a high-rise apartment block in Ancoats, and was pronounced dead at the scene when her body was found on Great Ancoats Street. She had been involved in a legal battle with her ex fiancé Owen Pacey, 60, over the ownership of a five storey Georgian house in Spitalfields, worth an estimated £2.7 million. On buying the house in 2021, O’Hare and Pacey signed an agreement that if one of them died, the ownership of the home would be transferred to the surviving partner. Pacey, an antiques dealer with a client list that includes Kate Moss and Mick Jagger, met O’Hare in 2020 and told the Mail “It was love at first sight”. But according to O’Hare’s court statement, the relationship became “turbulent” and they split in May 2024. A family friend said “her death has come as a deep shock to everyone who knew her” and added: “Those who knew Rachel remember her as a kind, energetic woman who put others before herself.”
👜 Manchester Fashion Week is back after a decades-long absence, promising to honour Manchester’s historic textile mills with contemporary catwalk shows and talks from industry leaders in a special event at Campfield on 9-11 September. Fashion weeks in Manchester, like Mobikes and retro cocktail bars, seem to be somewhat cursed. A 2014 MEN article about the former Manchester Fashion Week lists a catastrophic array of failures: leaving a string of businesses and employees unpaid, an intern stumping up £1,500 on a credit card to pay one company on the evening of a show and the organisers cancelling the 2013 show at the very last minute after a series of missed payments to the venue. At the time, a Manchester Fashion Week spokesperson told the MEN that they faced “normal challenges and hurdles like every other business” and blamed issues “with an unsuccessful apprentice”.
Northern Fashion Week, run by Siobhan Clare O’Donnell, stepped in its place in 2022, but fell apart in 2023 after O’Donnell faced a volley of claims about not paying staff and suppliers and behaving unethically. O’Donnell told us we had been badly misled by her enemies and put forward an employee to speak supportively about how she runs her business (it later transpired this employee was owed £2,300 in unpaid wages and felt she had been manipulated by O’Donnell into saying she’d been paid on time, telling us: “It was very apparent if I didn’t do this I wouldn’t be paid at all.”). This year’s Manchester Fashion Week appears to have new management, and in a press release the organisers emphasised “This isn’t just Manchester’s moment. It’s Manchester’s fashion reset.”
🚕 The Transport Committee has announced an inquiry into licensing standards for taxis and private hire vehicles. It comes after Andy Burnham led calls for taxi licensing powers to be handed to combined authorities in April, describing a “broken” licensing system. According to GMCA figures, 49% of taxis operating in Greater Manchester were licensed by councils outside of the city, and more than 11% of England’s private hire vehicles were licensed by just one local authority: Wolverhampton. Burnham argued that out-of-town licensing could impact public safety, given local licensing authorities can’t suspend or revoke a drivers’ license if there are complaints about driver behaviour.
📍Local linguist Richard West has sent us one of the best things we’ve seen in ages: a brand-new online dictionary of Greater Manchester place names. We’ve been poring over it all morning — it contains everything from the Celtic origins of settlements like Wigan, to the etymology of Aviva Studios (“a palindrome based on the Latin word viva, meaning ‘life, alive’.”). Some of our favourites include Shadow Moss (from the Old English for ‘the oak at the boundary of a bog’), Spotland (Middle-English for ‘land beside a spouting brook’), and the Arndale Centre… derived from the names of its owners, Arnold Hagenbach and Sam Chippendale. It’s a work in progress — you can chip in by e-mailing Richard (address on the site).
Quick hits
🎶 Our condolences to James Copley, frontman of the Oasis cover band Noasis, who told the MEN about the time he knocked on Noel Gallagher’s front door and met him face to face. “He could not have been any less interested. He asked ‘what do you want?’ so we asked if he wanted to come to our show down the road. He said: ‘No. Not at all.’”
📰 And finally, we enjoyed this long read in Dispatch Media about why Stockport is the karaoke capital of the UK.
Home of the week
This 1930s detached house in Swinton might be the most well-lit Home of the Week we’ve had in ages. It also has a huge back garden with its own bar. £350,000.
Our favourite reads
‘All those posh apartments. It’s a playground for the rich’: is Manchester turning into London? — The Guardian
An age-old question once again rears its head. The skyscrapers, the £6 pints, the studio flats most people with full-time jobs can’t afford. Local character, charm, heritage and creativity stifled under a blanket of gentrification. Is Manchester just London? The Guardian’s former northern editor Helen Pidd attempts an answer, speaking to people across the city's cultural and political landscape for and against the city's rapid development.
Living in Gaza, accepted to Cambridge, blocked by Home Office — The Times
“When Karam Elradie went up to the roof to try and get a phone signal, he knew he was risking his life. An Israeli army base was just in front and any movement could prompt them to launch a drone and fire. But he was desperate to check his application for Manchester University,” writes Christina Lamb, the Times’s chief foreign correspondent, in this piece about the Palestinian students trying to leave Gaza to study in the UK. Some have carried exam papers through the rubble in donkey carts. Elradie, who interviewed for a place at Manchester with shrapnel still lodged in his leg from an Israeli airstrike, won a full scholarship. But now, he must wait for the Home Office to clear his visa, which is proving more difficult than expected thanks to a lack of exemptions. Elradie described himself as “trapped in a warzone with an open door just out of reach.”
Review: Oasis wet and wild final show that "blew Liam’s mind" — Manchester Evening News
The MEN’s lifestyle editor Dianne Bourne captures the last ten days of Oasis fever in this review of its final performance at Heaton Park. “A gig experience so feverishly desired by the masses here in Manchester, that they would stop at nothing to get the tiniest glimpse, the merest muffled strains of Liam’s voice and Noel’s guitar as the winds carried it.”
Our to do list
Tuesday
🪱 As part of the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival, you can go see Leeches at the Kings Arms Theatre — a Bruntwood Prize longlisted play, performed by students of the Manchester School of Theatre.
🍈 And over at Serenity Booksellers, food writer Shahnaz Ahsan will be discussing her new book The Jackfruit Chronicles — telling the story of Bengali migration to Manchester.
Wednesday
🍷 Space Studios in Ancoats are hosting a Sip + Shop, where you can browse vintage clothing and homeware while also getting drunk. Tickets cost £5, and include your first glass of wine from Kerb.
🎥 And artist Ye Wuji will be at ESEA Contemporary to give a talk and a screening of his new film Something Misplaced. Get your tickets here.
Thursday
🎩 Refract festival will be on at Waterside in Trafford all week. On Thursday there’s a juggling show, circus, magic performance, and an entirely silent stand up comedy act.
📚 And for the single Millers among us, House of Books and Friends are hosting a (potentially) romantic bookswapping event. If you don’t find love, at least you might find a decent novel.
Got a To-Do that you’d like us to list? Tell us about it here.
Comments
How to comment:
If you are already a member,
click here to sign in
and leave a comment.
If you aren't a member,
sign up here
to be able to leave a comment.
To add your photo, click here to create a profile on Gravatar.
