'The pink café in Trafford Palazzo has lost its mind if it thinks our food was worth £70'

The apocryphal tale is that the Trafford Centre was going to be called the Dumplington Centre, as it’s in Dumplington. It’s a nicer name, if you ask me, and they could have had a family of cute cartoon dumplings as their mascots.

If the owners - a Canadian pension fund - ever decide to rebrand, they can have that, free of charge and with my blessing. But it was named the Trafford Centre instead, and that was that.

I don’t mind it, really. Some people talk about going to the Traff in the same tone they might reserve for a visit to the dentist or having something lanced.

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I think it’s fine. Go at the wrong time, and it’ll be packed and hot and frantic and unpleasant, but that’s sort of your fault, not theirs. When it’s quiet midweek, it’s fine. It has some decent shops, free parking, and as such absolutely serves its purpose.

But maybe most of all, I’ve always enjoyed its deluded grandeur. It’s demented. The marble, the statues, the columns and pillars, the insane chandelier hovering over the imperial staircase by Las Iguanas, which weighs over five tons and is apparently one of the biggest - if not the biggest - chandeliers in the world.

What on earth did they think they were building? A Roman temple? It’s an out-of-town shopping centre. Yes, you can buy a pair of shoes for several thousand pounds from Selfridge’s. You can also buy pile ointment from Boots. Wind it in.

As such, the newly