Top Ten Lessons From Manchester City 4 Manchester United 1 Yesterday

1. That's me in the corner. That's me in the spotlight. Losing my Pellegrigion a split-second before that man-mountain Toure made it 2-0. My hair seems to be going a bit grey.

2. "Everyone's predicting a draw," said my dad when he met me off the tram in Chorlton. Not me. I rarely call it right but I told anyone who would listen in The Oddest Bar (ie nobody) that City would win 4-1. Maybe it was the Titanic Atlantic and the Acorn bitter talking. To be fair, my United-fan dad went for 2-1 to City.

Photo: V Hunt

3. The Punjab doesn't open on Sunday afternoons. We found out when Vince chauffered us to the Curry Mile in Rusholme. But the Kebabish - the Thrill Of The Grill - does a pre-match chicken jalfrezi of the very highest quality - even though it doesn't serve ale.

4. That new white City away shirt is a beauty. I'd promised myself I wouldn't waste my money on a replica jobby this season but couldn't resist its overpriced Nike allure when I saw it in the club shop before the match. It's my new lucky shirt.

5. That was the most exhilarating City performance I can remember in a derby and I've seen most of the previous 165. Power, pace, purpose, zippy passes - it could have been another six. I remember that time in 1994 we were winning 2-0 at half time in a derby at Maine Road and we lost 3-2. My United-fan brother had a good chuckle in the Kippax that day. He wasn't laughing last night. Just being mean on Twitter.

6. Nasri joins Dzeko on the Born Again list under Pellegrini. He was the official Man of the Match in the stadium and who could argue after his very French flick to Kolarov led to Aguero's opener and the assured side-foot finish for his own goal. We've almost forgotten his fiasco in the wall which led to Van Persie's free kick winner last season. Almost.

7. Nasri was run close for man of the match by Kompany. What a roaring performance. He won everything in the air, was first to every tackle and set the standard from kick off.

8. With the outstanding exception of Rooney, United were awful. I can't remember a more one-sided derby. "You'll never play for City!" chanted the City fans to Shrek. Shame he lost his nerve when he could have joined the revolution three or four years ago.

Vince celebrates in his burgundy away shirt

9. A man sitting on the track at Stone forced the 18:36 Manchester to London train full of Cockney Blues to divert via Stafford on the way home. Unable to confirm suggestions it was David Moyes. Too harsh to run him over? Yes, I think so.

10. TV's John Stapleton slept right through the short delay in his first class seat. Great pro.

Why Manchester City Couldn't Beat Stoke City on Saturday

Stoke City 0 Manchester City 0

1. Pellegrini doesn't know what his best team is yet. Leaving Aguero on the bench was heart-sinking. Jovetic was invisible on his debut, Rodwell is an accident waiting to happen, Nasri is not the man you want in midfield against Stoke, Navas is too good to be saved for the last ten minutes.

 2. City were clueless. No organisation, poor passing, no width, no pace, no creativity in midfield, no Silva. Yaya is a shadow of the player that scored the winner in the FA Cup final against Stoke two years ago.

 3 City's players seemed distracted. This was an unglamorous fixture inbetween that truly awful international week and the first Champions League group match - and it showed. Significant that Aguero'a post-match tweet focused on the Uefa match.

 4. If he's even half fit, Aguero has to start. He came on after an hour and was the best player on the pitch. Superb balance, direct running, making Robert Huth break sweat for the first time in the match.

 5. Negredo was disappointing on his first start. He'd earned his chance but all we got was a couple of embarrassing fall overs and not a chance on goal.

 6. Pellegrini is struggling a bit. The fans haven't warmed to him and he's not helping himself by ignoring them with his hands in his pockets as they applaud him off at the end. Much is made of his happy dressing room. I'd rather have a miserable, winning one.

 7. Stoke were dull but should have won. Walters had a free header four yards out in the first half, Nasri gifted Jones a one-on-one that Hart did well to keep out and they went close in the second half. A typical Mark Hughes team. If Tony Pulis had been in charge they would have won.

 8. Stoke has two excellent pubs. The Glebe and The White Star about five minutes apart. Almost worth the trip on their own. Not a reason for the draw but worth noting.

9. City fans still like Stevie Ireland. And judging by his big grin and applause at the end, Superman still likes us.

 10. Javier Garcia did ok at centre half. Fair play to him. But it's a poor show and very bad luck that Kompany, Micah and the new bloke Demichelis are all crocked.

Review of Selena Gomez at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, September 8, 2013

It's the screaming that will stay with me forever. I've never heard anything like it. The very definition of ear piercing. Nineteen hours later and the delirium of three thousand teenage girls is still muffling my spider senses. It was like all the wild parakeets of west London had turned up together.

It must be stunning to be the cause of such wonderful joyfulness. The warning signs were there when a burly bloke wandered on stage to tune-up one of the support act's guitars. I thought The Beatles had shown up. I bet he doesn't hear that kind of reception at your average indie gig.

But this is no indie kid. This is the cute little girl that delighted a generation of Disney Channel eight-year-olds as Alex in the fabulous Wizards of Waverly Place. The kid who outgrew Mickey and now aged 21 is delighting those same kids who are older, streetwiser and with their own Spotify accounts.

Like everyone else, she's in a rush to grow up. This from Nobody Does It Like You: "I wanna be a bad girl, you bring out my wild side. Your sexy kind of slang the best I've ever had." They don't talk like that on the Disney Channel.

Last night she put on great, grown-up show with a voice like Betty Boop, hot pants like Kylie and a clinically efficient chart sound that mashes up pop, dance, and auto-tuned rap.

She dances pretty much non-stop, making sure everyone in the newly-refurbished art deco Apollo, grandly green and gold like the nearby bridge, felt like they got their own wave and their own smile. Two fabulously less petite dancers add to the energy in the essential hot pants and Selena t-shirts on either side of her. A DJ-style keyboard player stands mysteriously on a plinth behind her, the guitarist and rhythm section tucked safely away in the corner, leaving as much stage as possible for Selena to fill. And fill it she does, especially when she's bending over backwards with her long, black hair flailing all over the place to more and more delighted wailing.

The big video screen at the back of the stage was three-quarters hidden by the speaker stack from where we were sat - boo to that, Apollo - if it was a football match those would be "partially obstructed" discounted tickets. Selena used it to chapter-head the various show sections by showing herself looking like a Latino Alice in Wonderland in front a series of white doors. Which would she go through? Would we get street dance Selena, fairytale Selena with the spangly microphone, pop strut Selena, rocking Selena? We got them all by the end of the night.

There wasn't much chat, apart from the obligatory hello Hammersmith, I love you, and are you still with me having a good time (of course we were), but maybe we got a small insight into the young woman behind the wizard in her intro to my favourite, Who Says, a song treading the familiar teen theme of being yourself even when everyone's beastly to you.

"Sometimes when I've had a bad day and I wonder what I'm doing in my life, and I look at social media and see what people are saying. And I think, you know what, don't listen to anyone who says you can't do that, or that you're not beautiful, or you're a bad person. Who says that?"

Anyone who followed the Twitter outrage that followed Selena's break-up with little Justin Bieber will know that quite a lot of people say things like that, actually.

The 90-minute show ended with an encore of fans' favourite Slow Down and a hugely impressive shower of ticker tape. By then we'd forgotten the smell of fresh paint. But we had proof if proof were needed that Selena Gomez is the pin-up girl for thousands of young women all over the world and good luck to her.

She's also got a bath in her tour bus. A fact revealed by the infectiously confident front-kid of support act The Vamps. It was good to see the ukelele continuing its renaissance in his hands, sounding as Formbyesque as ever in punky pogo-pop covers of Busted, The Killers and Simon and Garfunkel. The foursome had been hanging out in the Gomez coach that very afternoon and were blown away by the bathroom: "A bath in her bus! How cool is that?"

Yep, that's pretty cool. Well worth a scream.

14 Things We Learned at Manchester City 2 -0 Hull City

Anthem time: this season's is West Wing-stylee

1. The man in charge of Manchester's trams likes stroking tigers. There's a picture of him doing it on his Facebook page. I suggest Metrolink chief executive Dr Jon Lamonte grabs the city's transport tiger by the tail and lays on some extra trams on match day. There were 46,500 fans trying to get to the Etihad for a 12.45pm kick off and a tram from the city centre to the stadium only every 11 minutes. When they arrived at Piccadilly Gardens they were already packed like the old Kippax stand on derby day. When the marooned fare-paying fans voiced their frustration one hired goon in a high-vis jacket told us to stop slagging off the service - there'd be another along in a few minutes. Epic fail, Doc.

Fans but no trams

2. Jesus Navas doesn't know where he should be playing yet. He was the official man of the match yesterday and no doubt he'll be sensational when he settles down. He was signed as a winger but popped up all over the field - in the centre circle, on the left, behind the strikers. I want to see him with that cliche of touchline chalk all over his boots.

3. If you leave your season ticket on the mantelpiece in London the obliging ticket office staff will give you a paper replacement for the day. No charge. Excellent service. But don't forget it again, you idiot.

4. Tom Huddlestone should be playing for England. He was the outstanding midfielder yesterday - strong, energetic, great touch, great drive. He looks the part, too, with that quality hair-stack. He if can keep the weight off and stay fit he'll be brilliant for Hull and a big loss for Spurs.

5. Edin Dzeko is inconsistent. He was unplayable against Newcastle, less so against Cardiff last Monday and ineffectual in the first half yesterday before being subbed. Sometimes he just can't seem to get going.

6. We're going to have to put up with John Smith's bitter for another few seasons. City are delighted with themselves for signing a new deal with Heineken to provide all the drinks in the stadium. Good for business, bad for bitter drinkers. I know it's tough to care for proper beer but if music festivals and Lord's cricket ground can do it at weekends, so should the richest football club in the world.

7. Steve Bruce doesn't look well. The red-faced Hull manager is great - passionate, funny and with three Premier League titles as a player and two Championship promotions as a manager with Birmingham City he's no mug. But he needs to lose three stone and stop getting so worked up on the touchline or he'll do himself a mischief.

8. Joleon Lescott keeps making daft mistakes. For such an accomplished defender he's prone to what pundits call a lapse of concentration every so often that can lead to catastrophe. He almost cost us the title with that back header that led to one of QPR's goals in the Aguerooooooo match. Yesterday he misjudged an innocuous ball which led to Aluko's one-on-one with Joe Hart. We need to sign another defender tomorrow.

9. Sone Aluko is a handful. He fluffed that one-on-one but was a real pain all match. He's direct, he wins free kicks all over the field and he's quick. Robbie Savage laid into him on Match of the Day last night - unfair. He's a good player.

10. City fans want more from Yaya. Lots of moaning around the Colin Bell stand yesterday and he does seem to be cantering rather than galloping at the moment. But when he can deliver free kicks like those, he deserves a bit of leeway - that's two kicks, two goals. And he'll get fitter.

11. We're not sure what Manuel Pellegrini is up to yet. Are we playing with two strikers and a winger all season or going to mix it up? We looked much better in the second half with Negredo up front on his own - but I like us with two strikers. One of the many reasons I'm not a football manager.

12. Alvaro Negredo is a fabulous striker. We've only seen him as a sub so far but he's a proper old-school centre forward. He wears the number 9 shirt, he's powerful in the air, holds up the ball well and is quick, too. Great headed goal yesterday. He should start against Stoke next time.

13. Joe Hart still looks a bit nervy. Couple of good moments yesterday but in the first half he came out for one then dithered and then gave us all kittens in the second half with one of those drag-backs in front of an onrushing striker on his six-yard line. Stop it!

13. Phil Dowd spends too much time lecturing players. The ref has cut down on the chips, now he needs to cut down on the chat. Book them or play on. We don't want to sit there watching players being spoken to like naughty schoolboys - there's a match on.

14. The title looks a long way off. But it's going to be a great season and I fancy us to win it.

Things We Learned At The Great British Beer Festival 2013

1. If you go with a chap with unusual hair, you need to be someone who can enjoy the dazzling array of ales while retaining your sense of humour, tolerance and patience. The hair will be challenged - early and often, and not just by Armstrong and Miller. So-called normal-haired drinkers will approach to laugh, mock, covertly photograph and occasionally praise. This was at its best when a couple of Spurs fans wandered over for a chat near the American beers bar and at its worst when a giggling group approached with a handwritten sign saying "knobhead" on it and asked if it was ok if the chap with unusual hair held it for a group photo. I ask you, dear liberal-minded ale drinker - who is the real knobhead in that situation?

2. The atmosphere on Friday is very different to Wednesday. I've gone in midweek for the last ten years or more, but this year I had to go on what is usually the busiest day of the festival. There were a lot more large and loud groups of the sort of younger weekend drinkers you tend to find dressed as super heroes in Manchester city centre. I'm going on Wednesday next year.

3. Porters and stouts are still seducing the medal judges for some inexplicable reason. A thick, impenetrable ale seems to win every year - this year it was Elland's 1872 Porter (6.5%) from West Yorkshire. It seems the Camra top tongues are not content with their sensational success in turning us into a nation of real ale drinkers - they won't stop until we're all glugging nothing but chocolatey, roasted, black beer. Forget it. This is August and we should be raising our golden, citrus-drenched IPAs towards the swifts and swallows.

4. Don't bother queuing for the Champion Beer of Britain. Demand means it's rationed for certain key times - 6.30pm on Friday after being picked by the porter-pooters on Tuesday. The queue started around 6pm and snaked around Olympia. We dutifully joined it and got chatting to another festival-goer. He soon persuaded us we were wasting our time and should try something from the Tatton Brewery instead. Turns out he owned it. But the Tatton Gold at 4.8% was indeed backed by a robust hop character. Just didn't get his name.

5. IPAs are the kings of beers. The rest are dusty, backroom ne'er-do-wells in comparison. I love them. The American ones set the standard but their huge alcohol content means you have to approach The Spirit of Enterprise bar with extreme caution to go with your jaunty festival glass. The explosion of hoppiness is worth every percentage point - Sierra Nevada's Side Car Amber Ale (5.6%) made me laugh out loud and Stone Brewing's Stone Ruin Ten IPA (10.8%) - both from California -  was like getting tickled all over by a gooseberry.

6. Scribbled tasting notes made towards the end of the evening are tricky to decipher the next day: "I've got an Art Brew Monkey and a BG Sips. Fair dinkum." Meaningless.

7. My favourites this year: Ramsbury Belapur (5.5%) IPA from Wiltshire - it's got everything, Jerry; Tyne Bank Southern Star (5%) from Tyne & Wear - a deliciously sharp and limey New Zealand IPA; Abbeydale Deception (4.1%) from South Yorkshire - stringent apples, pears and peaches; Great Heck's Yakima IPA from North Yorkshire - a fabulous, strong, 7.4% ballbreaker; Raw's Grey Ghost IPA - excellent 5.9% refresher from Derbyshire; Liberation Ale (4%) from the happily liberated Channel Islands - complex blackberry profundity; Greene King IPA Gold (4.1%) - sweet, crisp, vanilla.

8. Ones to avoid: Moorhouse's Black Cat mild from Burnley - weak, weedy and a bit vinegary; Sulwath's The Grace from Dumfries and Galloway - dusty and too damn sweet; Rother Valley's Smild from East Sussex - had us grimacing; Greene King's Belhaven Black - made me cough; Stringer's No. 2 Stout from Cumbria - tasted like roast chocolate caramels. That's it - no more black stuff until November at the earliest.

9. Don't lose track of time if you want to see Alvin Stardust play live. I've always liked his glam rock hits - My Coo-Ca-Choo is magnificent. He did two sets - one from his rock 'n' roll Shane Fenton years and a second from his better 70s days. We got to the Olympia stage just after the Fenton years had finished and didn't make it to part two. Shame. He's 70 and got more stamina than me.

10. This year's festival programme colour-coded the beers so you knew if they were dark, pale or inbetween before pestering the heroic volunteers staffing the bars. Great idea.

11. Olympia is a great venue for the GBBF. I prefer it to Earl's Court. It's a more manageable size, the bars are closer together and it's slightly nearer to my house. And this year it didn't leak.

Review of The Proclaimers at the Holt Festival in Norfolk, July 26, 2013.

"Good evening, Holt!" And there they were. The Proclaimers, one of the best song-writing duos Britain has produced, on one of the most picturesque, intimate, tree-surrounded stages in the land.

Under warm summer skies at the beautiful Theatre In The Woods at Gresham's School, they exploded like startled wood pigeons from the trees with their vivacious, life-affirming songs, Craig's right knee jerking away, Charlie's acoustic guitar soaring into the leaf canopy, and those wonderful Celtic harmonies making us all feel glad to be together in Norfolk with our Yetman's beer and our hog roasts and our Back To The Garden barbecued burgers.

Charlie and Craig have been celebrating love, joy, heartbreak, family and sunshine on Leith for more than a quarter of a century. The twins are 51 now, looking the same as ever in their short sleeves trademark specs, the hair not quite as red as it was, and they've never sounded better. Tonight theyd brought the full band with them, a tight-knit Hibs squad of drums, bass, keyboards and electric/slide guitar musicians.

"This first came out in 1987," said Craig three songs in, and the first chords of Letter From America prompted a dash from the seats to the mini-mosh pit. Take a look at the rail track, and there was a Norwich City flag held proudly aloft by a veteran fan who hadn't kept the weight off nearly as well as the Reid brothers.

Next up, I'm On My Way, that soulful journey from misery to happiness today, aha, aha, and we were on our feet, clapping and singing and joining them on that odyssey.

Then it was Let's Get Married, an anthem about getting old and staying together even better than When I'm 64. And then the ultimate Scottish folk-ballad, my heart was broken, sorrow, sorrow, but while I'm worth my room on the earth, Sunshine On Leith with its classic slide steel-guitar reprise is one of the finest songs about redemption you'll hear played under the stars in Norfolk or anywhere else on God's green earth.

In a flash, the defining Proclaimers moment was on us. I'm Gonna Be, that genius song about a thousand-mile love pilgrimage, is always one of the great festival moments. I saw them at T In The Park near Edinburgh a dozen years ago, sunburnt as lobsters, delighting a sell-out crowd with it. Now, thanks to Hollywood, not Holyrood, 500 Miles is thrilling a whole new generation of fans wherever it's played.

They rounded off a tremendous show with King Of The Road, the Roger Miller country classic they've claimed as their own Scottish-brogued theme song. No pool, no pets, but lots of mobile phones held aloft and a fitting way to round off the highlight of a very modern Norfolk festival.

Review of John Hegley at the Holt Festival, Norfolk. July 23, 2013

That's the first time I've been instructed to write a poem in an interval. Seriously, £16 a ticket to watch a poet and I have to write my own poem? Then listen to a bunch of audience limericks as bad as my own being read out for most of the second half?

Oh, stop being so grumpy. The whole point of John Hegley is to celebrate poetry as a shared experience relevant to us all right now, not just to dusty, long-haired, ivory-towered English literature lecturers with tissues and hand cream on their ramshackle desks.

He's the post-punk People's Laureate in the lineage of Gil Scott-Heron and Roger McGough. A brilliant wordsmith playing with our language, tapping out a rhythm with his plimsolls and baggy suit, nodding his bespectacled, greying head to the beat of his audacious rhymes.

And what rhymes. Dizzying seabird flights of fancy about guillemots, Auden in Iceland, needing you like an endless list of amusing similes and a couplet impresario pairing furniture with returnitt'yer.

I remember him from the John Peel sessions in the 80s. He's 59 now and at his most entertaining when playing along with a mandolin to his whimsical word pictures of growing up in Luton, worshipping his brother, missing his parents, being in love, being alive.

At times it felt like we'd wandered into a dry-iced poetry workshop in the theatre at the heart of Gresham's School, surrounded by an idyllic cricket ground, tennis courts, whispering trees and gelato ice creams on the lawn. I'd have preferred more Hegley and less uninspirational audience input, but the evening came alive when he split the almost-full theatre in three and had us waving our our arms like wings, our hands like fish and mumbling along about blancmange.

He was a perfect booking for the Holt Festival. The more short-sighted among us tapped along on our eye glasses as instructed, sipped Adnam's from our plastic glasses and headed home with a poem in our hearts and a slight sense of jealousy that our crap schools hadn't been a patch on the one we'd just visited. And it was only £5 a ticket for the kids.