MCR Calling

It was jar of pickled onion, some cheese and onion crisps A city in the '70s that no-one would've kissed Before LGBTQ, it was simply one-off wrist And that was Manchester calling It was the hassle of Haçienda entry and stupid acid house When Johnny Marr's cool outweighed Stephen Patrick's mouth Before alf 'bleeding' Garnett of Lancashire 'bleeding' South That was Manchester calling It was go straight to strangeways, get outta jail free Then cruising through Rusholme, fat cigar and Ford Capri It was always 'wrote for luck', never ever let it be' That was Manchester calling Back in day, Mancunian was neither fat nor fit And City and United were both bordering on shit And eating upmarket was Canadian Charcoal Pit And that was Manchester calling It was Emily Pankhurst's grit over Shaun Ryder's teeth Never was it 'Shameless', certainly not 'cold feet' It was Bernard Manning spitting bile on Comic relief That was Manchester calling Nowadays, the arena and, apparently, the bomb And tiny worker bee gives folk the strength to carry on From Summerbee and Whiteside to diving like a swan That's Manchester calling Now outside Haçienda flats on Tony Wilson street Shuffling under skyscraper at least a thousand feet Growth removed the wings of bee, and honey, that ain't sweet That's Manchester calling And that's why folk love Coventry, Dundee, Perth, and Hull It's a zero lack of sights to see but a total lack of bull And they don't live in place defined by posh bird it wants to pull That's Manchester calling And the largely redundant Irwell, like Thames and Rhine before Looks up at sky, lets out a sigh, then looks back down to floor And in Irwellian irony, it's been no use since '84 That's Manchester calling Industrial Revolution, when workers counted cost Ancoats down to moss side, where 'boddies' used to waft Now the gangsters ride on tricycles and the hard men have gone soft And that's Manchester Calling Half the size of London, slightly less than Brum Half the population with head lodged up its bum Now property developers look down on Northern scum And that's Manchester calling As Ian Brown passes on his low rider bike They're pulling down last building anyone actually liked Let's throw another tower up with Gary Neville's head on a spike Name it 'Manchester calling'