Is council report having a laugh?

Richard Butt
20/ 6/2008

I’VE been away on holiday to the sunny Isle of Man (my homeland) for a week and have not been immersed in Greater Manchester’s news.

So please forgive me for poring over a fortnight-old report.

Manchester Council has spent a lot of my (and, depending where you live, possibly your) money working out what Mancunian values are.

It wants to get newcomers to the city – from students from Surrey to immigrants from India – to sign up to them.

It’s all to do with ‘community cohesion’, a phrase that seems to give the box-tickers who work anywhere that’s funded by taxpayers the sort of warm glow of satisfaction that most of us derive from more physical pursuits.

Anyway, the values are still being drawn up by those overworked souls in Albert Square.

But the documents reckon that Manchester’s inhabitants are "proud of their city, friendly, welcoming, passionate and creative and have a good sense of humour."

What a load of old drivel.

It would be super duper if that’s what all Mancs were like. Nobody would be happier than I if it were true.

The sun would shine every day, we’d eat Ambrosia and drink nectar and gambol merrily in Platt Fields Park, greeting our fellow citizens with a warm embrace.

But I’m afraid that the people who beat up the vulnerable, fire guns and smash things up are just as much Mancunians as the Pollyanna-ish version of Mancs being dreamt up at the town hall.

What really annoys me about the whole thing is not the naivety of it or the inaccuracy.

It’s the suggestion that sense of humour is measurable in an objective way.

I don’t know for sure, but I’d wager that anyone who writes ‘GSOH’ in a personal ad is deluded. If they had a sense of humour other people liked, they probably wouldn’t rely on classified adverts for a love life. I once saw the German version of You’ve Been Framed on satellite television.

Until then, I thought that the world would laugh as one at people falling over and dogs jumping about. But the German canned laughter came at the wrong bits for a Brit. They must find other things funny. Weird. And even within Manchester, there are radically different senses of humour.

When I was on holiday on the Isle of Man, a drunk man in his sixties accosted me in a pub and accused me of not being Manx. Truth is, my Manx accent has faded after 14 years of heady Crumpsall living.

I should have ignored him, of course, but I didn’t.

I protested I was – and told him about my family and where my grandfather and great-grandfather had farmed.

I even spoke a bit of Manx Gaelic to him. But it was all to no avail.

Why it was an issue in the first place was bizarre. But he’d judged me and that was that. I didn’t fit in with his idea of ‘Manxness’.

So what happens if newcomers or existing citizens of Manchester don’t fit in with the council’s version of "Mancsness"?

Are we going to get our own version of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the man who reckoned he knew what was "un-American" in the 50s?

Cue jokes about supporting United being un-Mancunian or EastEnders fans being dunked in the Irwell by the true Mancs. (Actually, I’d be all for that.)

Councillor Val Stevens, the deputy leader of Manchester City Council, was quoted talking about the Manchester sense of humour.

She said: "It’s as if we have a slightly sharper version of northern humour because of all we have to go through."

You said it, Val. And you and your council chums are the ones who put us through it sometimes!

Richard Butt edits Channel M’s early evening news – every weeknight from 5pm