As Peter Hook plugs his book, he also plans a new venture in Manchester called Fac251, a new club. This time he says he's doing it with other people's money and plans to learn from his mistakes.

But there's more going on in these parts too. Factory partner Peter Saville is creative consultant to Manchester City Council on a decent screw of £120k a year. And as Manchester blogger David Quinn observes on his tome, Words Dept, Saville's brand value - Original Modern, has been embraced by the council and its public sector marketing quangos with much enthusiasm, indeed some say they are obsessed with the myth-making. "They recruited Hacienda designer Ben Kelly to design the corporate stand at the MIPIM property fair in the south of France a couple of years ago, at which copies of CDs containing various baggy-era classics were handed out to the greying property developers in beige suits and Ray-Bans who gravitate there each March."

Then there are Delphic. Three nice lads from Marple Bridge, barely out of nappies when New Order recorded Technique, are caught in the storm of product marketing. They are OK. But that is not the point. Every lazy media cliche has been rattled out to hail them as the New New Order.

As a new blog called Fuc51 (nothing to do with me, and slightly too angry) puts it: "While slating Liverpool for being a Beatle-museum, Mancs are still pretending it’s 1988. Look around the city and you’re given constant reminders of Factory Records, The Hacienda, The Stone Roses, The Smiths, Acid House, New Order, Joy Division and… you get the idea.

"Our aim is to act as snipers to this relentless wave of borrowed nostalgia that continues to make stars of Madchester hangers-on and people steeped in yesteryear."

I don't quite go along with the view that this faux nostalgia has caused paralysis in Manchester's music scence - Elbow, Doves, anyone?? - but it's nice they care.

I dived into Peter Hook's book 'The Hacienda: How Not To Run A Club' straight after reading David Nolan's posthumous biog of the late Tony Wilson (review below). It sent me scurrying for music from that era to rekindle memories of nights at the legendary Manchester club. My earliest memory of the Hac is of a student night that hardly anyone went to. It then had an elitist and slightly po-faced phase in 1986 and 1987, which we endured, rather than enjoyed; because I always thought the music sounded poor and the door policy was elitist. By the time we left University in 1988 it all changed again and the rest is musical history. For all the house music legends and for all the pretending to look cool, my best night there remains an indie night in the summer of 1988, when I went with friends from Lancaster.
I found the Hooky book very easy to read. It's a lucid, lively and candid tale that makes a vital contribution to an evolving history of a fascinating era. The roles of the gangsters, as much as Tony Wilson's mismanagement were what contributed to its demise and should be the focus of any residual anger. Either way there is no club that has inspired such devotion.

I would have been "quite pleased" if Manchester United had won last night. That's all. I don't support them or even like them very much. But I work in Manchester, and for the pals who do, I would have been pleased.

But have you ever heard so much utter tosh as has been spouted over the last day. As United fan Jason Isaacs* said today, suddenly according to the callers to TalkSport and Radio5, and to the papers, United are now terrible. That Anderson is the worst midfielder since Luke Chadwick. It's always one extreme to another. They were beaten by Barcelona. And it was 2-0. Not 10-0.

There's a good antitode to this tidal wave of utter bollocks here, on the When Saturday Comes website.
http://www.wsc.co.uk/content/view/3432/38/

It brings to mind the thought Ed Smith imparted in his excellent book What Sport Tells Us About Life. Most sport is "chaos upon chaos". Sports journalism seeks to bring meaning to all of this and draw conclusions. OK, Manchester United lost a game. The players weren't able to score, but they could have done on more than one occasion. And what if Eto'o's shot had been saved by Van Der Sar?

Same goes for the drooling over Barcelona. This was a team who were a minute away from being knocked out by Chelsea. Chaos reigned at the Bridge. They got through.

* He's a pal of mine who lives in Marple, not this one.