Mick Hucknall - a man whose face looks like a knee juggling orange peel - has had a go at the Gallagher brothers for being bad representatives for their shared home city of Manchester.

He feels their reliance on faux-attitude and lazy catchphrases like "fucking sound" and "bangin'" merely reinforce cultural stereotypes about the North West and make people from the North "sound stupid".

While he has a point, as far as being an ambassador goes, he's not exactly dancing on the moral high ground here. This was a man, after all, who took the majesty of soul music, pulled its eyes out and has been wanking down the bleeding sockets for a quarter of a century. Just as the Gallaghers have done with the corpse of The Beatles since 1994.

Manchester has always had certain lofty ideas about the cultural importance of its music scene. Within this, Hucknall has been dismissed by other acts from the city as somehow not being 'real' or the 'true sound' of the place.

But are Simply Red really any worse than Oasis? Both are slavish disciples of the past, afraid to do anything but weakly recycle the sound of others. Ultimately, Hucknall criticising the Gallaghers for not being good ambassadors for the city is a bit like a brass rubbing knocking a photocopy for not being 'real' enough.

by HorseWorm