Diary – 5 October 2002

And so to Blackpool. But how? Train: disgracefully expensive, probably delayed, full of broadsheet journalists (apart from the Independent), possibility of being jumped in the buffet carriage by a beaming Richard Branson dispensing pork pies. Car: long, boring, held up by roadworks and impoverished Independent journalists in jalopies. Plane: ten minutes from Canary Wharf to City airport, no queues, prompt 40-minute flight. And, most crucially, via Manchester. Now, I won’t labour the football in a rugger bugger’s bible, but the last time I went to Manchester was in May to see Arsenal win the double in Sir Alex Ferguson’s backyard. Better than sex? It was better than hearing that my great friend Cherie Blair had endured a bad trip to the hairdresser and emerged with bright-red dreadlocks hours before Tony’s big speech. ‘United fan?’ I asked the cab driver. ‘Ermmm …yes,’ he replied with that unmistakable new air of hesitant-Mancunian disillusioned despondency.