Curry in a huge glass pyramid, anyone?

Dear readers — good afternoon and welcome to this wonderfully sunny Mancunian Monday. If you — like us — find yourself currently sat in an office, or an artificially lit coworking space with one of those digital coffee machines, staring at a document, or a graph, or an email, then please take this as your cue to unshackle yourself. Head outside, buy a Calippo, sit yourself in one of the city’s various sun-soaked squares and indulge for 20 minutes in this, The Mill Monday briefing. It might just be the best part of your day (though hopefully not your week).

Catch up and coming up:

• Almost 30 of you signed up to read Mollie’s dispatch from MediaCity — asking whether the massive regeneration project had fallen short of its original objectives, and sparking a great debate among Millers. Jon Parker Lee urged us to “look at the bigger picture,” that it had been a “massive, massive success for the city”. Jeremy was less convinced, claiming developers Peel “have a lot to answer for”. Dive in.
• Also popular was Daniel Dylan Wray’s weekend read, revisiting The Alcohol Years, Carol’s Morley’s 2000 documentary in which she grapples with hazy memories of her Mancunian youth.
• Coming up this week, we’ve got a wonderful piece from David Rudlin about how Manchester resisted World Heritage Status, and the legacy of that decision, on Wednesday, followed by a report from Jack on an ongoing inquest on Thursday.
• And then this weekend, we’re publishing a long read about NIAMOS, the radical arts centre in Hulme that needs to raise thousands of pounds to fund essential repairs and the creative tension that has seen a number of volunteers leave the arts space in recent years. If you’d like to contribute, reach out to Mollie.

☀️ This week’s weather

Tuesday ☀️ A cold and frosty start, then sunny and warm with light winds. 19°C.

Wednesday 🌤️ Dry with sunny skies during the morning, followed by a mix of patchy cloud and sunny spells later. Breezy. 17°C.

Thursday ☀️ A misty start followed by sunny skies accompanied by light winds. Feeling warm. 20°C.

Friday ☀️ Dry, warm and sunny with light winds. 20°C.

Outlook 🌤️ Fine on Saturday with warm sunshine but turning cooler on Sunday with a few showers later in the day. Mild and changeable next week.

We get our weekly forecast from Manchester Weather.

Your briefing

🍛 Just in time for the hot weather, Europe’s biggest curry house is agonisingly close to completion, and will be opening in Stockport Pyramid in just a few weeks, reports Place North West. The Royal Nawaab can seat a total of 1,500 people in three banqueting halls spaced over three floors, and promises to serve up to 140 dishes from around the world. A former 1980s office (positioned in the wonderfully named Valley of the Kings business park) might sound like an unlikely venue for a luxury dining destination, but the Royal Nawaab’s director Mahboob Hussain says the pyramid has been transformed, with a 650kg chandelier, a fountain, gilded staircases and a special VIP area aimed at footballers and celebrities who Hussain claims have already been asking about making bookings. If you can see yourself eating a steaming hot curry while sitting in a glass building on a warm spring day alongside over a thousand people, maybe even getting the chance to sit across from Phil Foden and Jack Grealish, sign up to the Royal Nawaab’s mailing list to book. We’ll be there!

📃 Martyn’s Law, a piece of counter-terror legislation named after Arena Bomb victim Martyn Hett — has now received Royal Assent and will become enshrined in law after an implementation period of at least 24 months. Known formally as the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill, Martyn’s Law will require extra measures in venues across the UK, such as evacuation training for staff and CCTV. The campaign to get the law passed has been led by Martyn’s mother, Figen Murray, who told the BBC the successful campaign meant Martyn “did not die for nothing”. Her work was praised as “extraordinary” by ministers as the law cleared the House of Commons. 

✅ The broken lift in the main campus building at the University of Greater Manchester has now been fixed. Three weeks ago, we reported that a mysterious and nameless satirist placed a plaque next to the broken lift, saying it was actually an art installation called Ascenseur that “confronts themes of frustration, inequality and the barriers to diversity” and is “purposefully unsettling, symbolising systemic failings and the silent distress they provoke”. We understand the lift is now in working order and the art installation has been removed.

🎸 In Prospect Magazine, columnist Laura Barton wonders if this summer’s Oasis reunion signals an end to the “regional division” in the music industry. According to 2024 data from the charity Youth Music, young people in the North West are the least likely to feel supported when making music, with 57% of respondents saying they don’t feel supported. Could Liam and Noel Gallagher ending their decades-long feud and returning to the stage in Heaton Park really be a sign that things are going to change for the better for new bands looking to make waves in the local music scene? As first reported by Popbitch, looking at the Gallagher’s choice of support acts for their reunion tour, we’d say probably not. Oasis will be supported by Richard Ashcroft, former member of the ’90s rock band The Verve, and Villanelle, a band fronted by Gene Gallagher, best known as Liam’s youngest son.

🏢 According to our Freedom of Information Request, Manchester City Council reported 4,904 incidents of sick leave in its children services department last year, with 173 of these instances due to stress. Want to tell us more about this story? Get in touch.

Correction 11/04/2025: A previous version of this edition said that 738 of these incidents of sick leave were due to stress. This is due to an erroneous figure given to us by Manchester City Council’s Children’s and Education Directorate.

Quick hits

🍕 There’s a new Neapolitan pizza offer in Manchester, meaning you can add Forbici to the list of names in endless, tedious debates at the pub about which of Rudy’s, Double Zero or Noi Quattro is better. To celebrate, they’re giving away 1,000 free pizzas at their Cross Street venue between 12pm and 2pm this Thursday. 

📚 If you’re looking for gifts, we recommend ordering a copy of SEEN Magazine, a new Manchester-based music magazine celebrating the stories of marginalised communities. The latest edition features a story on collaborations between Palestinian and Mancunian artists and music from Manchester’s South Asian diaspora.

⛺ The new market offer in Levenshulme begins this Sunday in the car park by the train station and every other Sunday thereafter, promising stalls from local small businesses, foodie options, live music and entertainment for the kids, plus, a late night market on the last Friday of every month. Last year, we reported on the strange death of Levenshulme Market and tried to find out why a popular local event had been turned back into a car park. 

🎻 We usually don’t recommend events this far in advance, but Manchester Baroque’s Easter concerts tend to sell out well ahead of time. If you’d like to see the orchestra perform Bach’s St John Passion at Manchester Cathedral on the evening of Good Friday, you can access discounted tickets via this link.

🎶 For those of you looking for new ways to procrastinate, we enjoyed having a scroll through the Manchester Digital Music Archive this morning, an online archive celebrating Manchester’s music history. We particularly enjoyed this online exhibition about Manchester’s LGBT music history.

🏥 A new 44-bed mental health hospital for women has opened in Fitton Hill, Oldham. Hospital Manager Amardip Prihar says she hopes that by accessing care closer to home, women will be able to “rebuild their lives with dignity and confidence”.

🧑‍⚕️ Attacks on NHS staff at Royal Bolton Hospital are rising — according to new data. The number of aggressive or violence incidents between April 2023 and March 2024 rose to 395, up from 294 in the previous year.

🫘 And finally, as fans of very serious journalism, we enjoyed revisiting this story from 2010, when Trafford was crowned the World Capital of Heinz baked beans, with residents consuming 553,243 tins in a single year, more than anywhere else in the world and “enough to cover the pitch at Old Trafford four times”. 

Home of the week

This Victorian two bed in Monton has high ceilings, bay windows and a kitchen with the sort of moody lighting you normally only find in gritty BBC crime dramas. £310,000.

Our favourite reads

Fear, joy, solidarity: exhibition explores 40 years of HIV activism in Manchester — The Guardian

In the 1980s, the sexual health activist Paul Fairweather was on the phone to a woman who was in floods of tears, terrified that her son had AIDS. “And as she was talking, I realised that I knew her son,” he told the Guardian. “It was really early on, and you wanted to reassure people, but the reality was he was probably going to die quite soon because there were no treatments.” ACTING UP, a new exhibition at Manchester Central Library, explores the history of Manchester AIDS Line, a hotline set up by Fairweather and five friends in response to HIV spreading around the city region. 

Molly-Mae Hague: how I went from Love Island to fashion millionaire — The Sunday Times

What had you achieved by your 25th birthday? Speaking from personal experience, this was the age I engaged in a faltering — and only occasionally successful — campaign to start getting out of bed before 9am on workdays. Molly-Mae Hague, however, the 25-year-old ex-Love Islander and famed polymath of influencerism, could probably retire to bed on her £6 million fortune. She tells The Times how she “monetised her social media presence better than any reality TV survivor” (their words, not hers). 

Our to do list

Tuesday

📷 SHOP in Preston will be hosting the first edition of the Preston Photo Hub — a series of exhibitions and creative activities centred around photography. £2.

🧵 Artist Caroline Coates is heading to Denton West End Community Library to facilitate a leather bookmaking workshop. Vegan leather will be available too.

Wednesday

🍅 Over at Portico Library, Sociolinguistics professor Rob Drummond will be presenting You’re All Talk — his brand new book on the beauty of linguistic diversity.

🎭 A Quiet Room returns to the White Hotel, a play that follows four people placed in a room, asked to observe their surroundings and report their findings to an organisation, until a sudden fatality occurs. Tickets are £10 for those on lower incomes.

Thursday

🦋 The Lowry is playing host to the world premiere of The Moth, a new play by Paul Herzberg about a chance encounter between a black British journalist and a white South African ex-soldier. Northern Soul called it “required viewing”.

🪡 And The Whitworth is presenting a free preview of work by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas — a Roma-Polish artist who uses textiles to create large-scale artworks. There will also be live Roma music from violinist Istvan Kate.

Got a To Do you’d like us to list? Tell us about it here.