Mancini and Michelin, Manchester's Dream Team

Think back to Manchester in 1975. City were top dogs in the footballing world as United competed in the old second division, relegated a year before by an infamous Denis Law backheel. They were very different times, hard for young fans from both clubs to imagine now. Remarkably, it was also the last time Manchester, the city, had a Michelin Star restaurant. Again, hard to imagine.

Thirty-six years later the wait continues as the new Michelin Guide to Great Britain and Ireland launched for 2012 and revealed Manchester had once again failed to secure a Star.

The historic French restaurant in the Midland Hotel on Peter Street was the last holder of a Michelin Star in the city. They were heady days, as The French was the also the first restaurant in the UK to be awarded a star. The dearth of Michelin mentions for the city ever since has been deafening.

The news doesn’t get any better if the restaurant radar is expanded outside the city centre to include Greater Manchester in 2012. There are still no stars.

The nearest Manchester has to a star are Simon Radley at the Grosvenor Hotel in Chester and Nigel Haworth’s Northcote in Blackburn. To add insult to Manchester’s emotional injury, both are long standing Michelin star holders, in an elite group of just 11 chefs who have held their stars for the past 14 years. Crucially though for the city, they are both more than 30 miles from centre.

For the 7 million people who live in and around the UK's second city the lack of a first class eatery in the city centre continues to surprise and disappoint.

The silver lining to the culinary cloud is that Greater Manchester’s Waggon in Bury and The White Hart Inn in Oldham are included in the Bib Gourmand category 2012, awarded to restaurants considered, “good food at moderate prices” and slightly further afield The Wizard in Alderley Edge is included too.

But another year passes and the city's search for a Star continues. What would be the chances of Manchester City's return to the footballing summit coinciding with the city's return to the guide? Stranger things have happened.

Holidaymakers create new North-South divide

The Angel of the North celebrates the news

Whisper it quietly among the home counties and the capital but new figures from Visit England, the national tourist board, show something of a northern uprising taking place among UK holidaymakers.

According to the Great Britain Tourism Survey, Visit England’s regular research into our habits as holidaymakers, there is a very stark north-south divide developing, one where the north is proving considerably more popular than the south.

Trips to the North West (+9%), North East (+24%) and Yorkshire and the Humber (+14%) collectively increased an impressive 47% in the first quarter of this year whereas visits to the South East (-15%), South West (+9%) and London (- 11%) collectively were in negative territory - 17%.

Without wanting to inflame regional stereotypes it appears the public no longer thinks it is grim up north as those domestic visits occurred during the meat of winter – January to March – at a time when snow and ice lingered the longest and after the extended festive holiday season had ended.

Unhelpfully, Visit England does not give any reason for the increases, or for that matter, particularly in the case of London and the South East, the decreases, but we can speculate that the economic squeeze on household incomes has had some part to play with us preferring to stay at home even if it won’t have dictated our final destinations.

That said, the economic situation has not been as bad as to stop us travelling altogether as the survey also reveals that domestic overnight trips in Great Britain were up 5 per cent on last year, so we are still travelling and we are, it seems, attracted to the north.

As a caveat to that, before the north rises up to ridicule its friends in the south, figures based on just three months are far from a trend, so there is no need for the south to start soul searching just yet.

However, the boost in business during a traditionally quiet time will have been worth millions of extra pounds to northern economies providing a financial fillip to hundreds of rural and coastal businesses and communities that rely on tourism for their livelihoods.

This week marks the start of the UK summer holiday season, when the schools break up and we look forward to a week or two away. The figures for this period will make interesting reading when they finally appear but for now the north has definitely scored an early victory in the battle for our holiday spending money, to use a sporting analogy, it is one-nil up, but there is still a long way to go before it can be crowned champion.