The Mancunian Way: 'Stop dancing round the dog s***'

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‘Stop dancing round the dog s***’. It’s not a phrase I’ve come across before.

And I doubt that before yesterday it had ever been uttered in the chambers of Manchester town hall either (unfortunately we don’t have a local version of Hansard to confirm this definitively). But those were the exact words Coun Paul Andrews used during a stormy planning meeting as campaigners tried to get proposals for three new student tower blocks in Ardwick, Fallowfield and Hulme, thrown out.

The ill-tempered meeting was dramatically halted as protesters repeatedly heckled the developers. It prompted committee chair Coun Jon-Connor Lyons to warn: “This is not a pantomime. It’s planning, it’s serious.”

But just moments later another shout was heard while council planning officer Dave Roscoe was answering questions from councillors, prompting the suspension of the meeting so the public gallery could be cleared.

“You lot take the biscuit. It’s a farce,” one woman shouted as the protesters were ejected. You can find out how the committee eventually voted in Ethan Davies’ report here.

By far my favourite part of ridiculously convoluted Netflix thriller Fool Me Once was spotting all the Greater Manchester locations used in filming. There were so many plot twists I haven’t got a clue what happened in the end, but I instantly recognised the Peveril of the Peak and after wracking my brains for a while, eventually worked out Ashton Old Baths was doubling up as the police station.

Here tourism writer Liv Clarke explores one of the show’s other main