In Manchester last week, I managed to annoy about 80 arts professionals by suggesting that not everyone working in Sport, Children's and 5 Live at the BBC, which is determined to move those departments to the north-west, was delighted by the prospect of enforced relocation. It was not a very clever thing to say, as I had been hired by Loyd Grossman to present a seminar at Manchester University devoted to discussing how best to promote the culture of the north-west.
However, my faux pas seemed to have the secondary effect of getting people talking, and when I glanced over at him, Loyd was still smiling, so I hope I didn't cause terminal damage to my performance as a "moderator", which is what the job is called these days. Maybe the less moderate you are, the better. "If 50 per cent of Londoners don't want to come up to Manchester, that means more jobs for us anyway," said one woman, to applause. "I've given up bothering about London," said the director of the Cornerhouse, Manchester's art-house cinema. "Our programmes are ignored by the London media, so now we send press releases to Berlin, Paris or Venice, where they happily run big pieces about us."
Suddenly, everyone started throwing in anecdotes about how blinkered the national press is, by which they meant the London press. "We only get coverage," said the director of the Manchester Art Gallery, "because we pay for it. We pay for art correspondents to come up here. That's the only way." Someone else talked about how the Observer commissioned a big piece on the Lowry, ran it only in a northern supplement, and then forgot to put it online. Everyone commented on the death of the regional arts critic.
It's true. The British media are almost wholly based in London and do neglect much of what is going on outside. But they are also hungry Pavlovian dogs. Offer them a juicy story and they will charge up the motorway, their previous predilection for remaining within the M25 totally forgotten.
The same is true of marketing. When I was a researcher on This Morning in its Liverpool era (spending earnest mornings on the Albert Dock wrangling with Richard and Judy about Mexican cooking, the male Pill and the history of the washing-up bowl), the distance between London and Liverpool was as nothing for celebrity guests touting books, TV shows or "hit" singles. Mention an audience of three million and they practically begged to be carted up the M6.
Manchester seems pretty adept at promoting its culture anyway, and has started on a global tack, dumping the impossible London comparison and suggesting one with those extremely fashionable "second" cities, Barcelona, Frankfurt and Milan. A few weeks ago leading Mancunians flew to New York to "introduce" their city at a press conference. All the American mainstream press covered the event, including sober-suited journalists from the Washington Post and the New York Times. It transpired that they all wanted to meet Tony Wilson - yes, Anthony H Wilson, founder of Factory Records, boss of the Hacienda, inventor of Madchester, local reporter on Granada TV, irreverent screen hero of 24-Hour Party People and star of the press conference. As one delegate told me, incredulously, "They were all Joy Division fans."
