ALAS MYTH AND CONES: A STERLING BILL IN THE RED-LIGHT DISTRICT

I’ve had a traffic time – now just get me to the airport on time!

I am lucky enough to have two homes. One is a sunshine villa 30 minutes’ drive from Alicante airport, the other a modest semi 18 miles north of Manchester’s three flight terminals.

An airport trip at the English end is subject to an electrifying hazard in the form of 50 sets of traffic lights. The consolation is that no more than 47 tend to be stuck on red at any given time.

If you are lucky enough to actually catch your flight, you do at least face a delightful evening discussing traffic lights with the Spanish cabbie driving you to Guardamar on the N332.

Mention the super-hazard of every street corner in Britain and the taxi driver’s conversation is likely to consist of a quizzical look and the words ‘Que es trah-fick-lie-eat?’

Odds are he won’t know what you are talking about because, believe it or not, there’s not a single set of the things between Alicante and my Costa Blanca home.

At the Manchester end one can, of course, avoid the red-light menace by heading for the airport via the city’s Park-And-Don’t-Move service, otherwise known as the M60 motorway.

That trip is no fun either, and unless you give yourself at least two days to get to the airport, a couple of hours with your head immersed in 50 Shades of Red may well be less stressful than counting traffic cones.

Either way, both routes to the airport provide ideal material for a ‘100 Reasons to Escape Manchester’ publicity blitz.

What sort of voyeur gets a kick out of watching traffic cones breeding on the M60, for heaven’s sake? Last time I used the so-called ring road I counted 428 million giant ice-cream cornets during a six-mile crawl to the Trafford Centre. The 14-hour trip was marginally quicker than taking the car but my knees didn’t half hurt by the time I reached my destination. And I was suffering from orange-and-white colour blindness into the bargain.
One of the few perks of driving to Manchester airport via the city centre is that you can stop off for a coffee and a bacon butty. The down side is the £60 parking fine you’ll inevitably get in addition to burning off eight gallons of unleaded in a desperate attempt to park sideways on the single metre of kerb untainted by double yellow lines.

I appreciate that comparing the Costa del Salford with the Costa del Sol is akin to confusing Bury Market with the London Stock Market. But that’s a bourse-case scenario.

There are, in fact, many leisurely compensations for those who choose not to drive in what must surely be the wettest part of the UK. One is enjoying a morning swim to the office in downtown Mancunia’s high-street ocean, known to the aquatic community as the Sea of Umbrellas. The rush hour is so busy that there’s no choice but to do the crawl, and not only because the breast stroke is illegal and a butterfly as rare as an English Mark Spitz.
Which brings me on to football or, for the gob-fearing amongst us, the mouths of Wayne Rooney and Kompany.

Manchester is of course home to two top football teams, namely Bury and Oldham Athletic. Fortunately I don’t support Man United or Man City either, which is a bit of a relief since I don’t speak German (heaven help whoever puts the names on United players’ shirts) and with my flight back to Spain only 24 hours away, I’m pretty low on Sterling too (boom boom).

Oh, a geeky friend just called to say there are actually 49 sets of traffic lights between my Whitefield home and Manchester Airport. Using the bacon-butty route, that is.

I believe there are also 49 million traffic cones between Anfield in Liverpool and Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium.

All paid for in Sterling, of course.

Ferguson the unforgiving: The bitter Manchester United boss with a grudge

I’ve met Sir Alex Ferguson on a couple of occasions (well, been in his company) and I have to say it was a pleasant experience.
Even if the Manchester United boss’s red-nosed jollity had been inspired at the time by a glass or six of vintage vino. So why did I find it so pleasant to see his charges on the receiving end at Wembley at the weekend?
It’s not that I’m a Barcelona fan – it’s just that I have no time for two-faced people. And I’m afraid Fergie is a classic example of a split personality.
You can’t argue with the Scottish superboss’s record as a football manager. He has no peers in terms of success over more than two decades.
What I find disgusting is that Mr McMighty has become bigger than Manchester United – and that those who employ him have allowed him to do as he likes.
Last week’s press conference in which he called for Associated Press reporter Rob Harris to be banned just for asking a question about Ryan Giggs received wide publicity. But it was nothing new.
And Sir Alex is vindictive with it, too. Not for him the ‘let bygones be bygones’ approach.
His ludicrous vendetta against the BBC has gone on for seven years now – fuelled by a Panorama programme which investigated the business activities of his son Jason, who was then a football agent.
A more recent example of his petulance was the recall of two players on loan from United when Preston North End sacked another Fergie son, Darren (pictured) as manager during the season that has just finished.
The fact is that Sir Alex has become the victim of his own success. He seems to be convinced that he is even closer to God than Jose Mourinho and the late Brian Clough. And the United board are entirely to blame for the situation.
Quite simply, they lack the bottle to tell Ferguson ‘‘Either talk to the BBC along with the other broadcasting companies, or find yourself a new job.’’
OK, we all know what would happen. United would be looking for a new boss…and that is the problem.
Quite simply, the Old Trafford board are just as scared of him as the frightened media rabbits who bow and scrape to his every whim.
They humble themselves in the eyes of the Mighty Dictator, which makes me suspect that few of those who cover United matches on a regular basis write exactly what they think.
Which I find very discomforting.

Torres 1 Tevez 0: The ugly truth about the footballers that nature neglected

Men who take their football seriously are strongly advised to read no further. Likewise all those male chauvinists who feel women have no right to comment on sport.

Hopefully the only fans left are those who, like me, prefer the game to be a bit of fun as well as a great adrenalin kick at weekends or whenever your team is in action.

Anyway, I’ve just been having a giggle at players’ looks (or occasional lack of them) rather than their onfield skills (or usual lack of them). And I’ve come up with two teams - the Donna Uglies and the Donna Dreamboats.

My sincere apologies to the Uglies - I know only too well that you can’t help the way you look and that, unlike us girls, don't have the benefit of being able to wear makeup to hide the hideous bits. (Well, not unless you want to get kicked all around the dressing room and branded a fairy).

But I do question why men blessed with masses of money but few natural attributes other than twinkling feet don’t invest a few thousand in improving their appearance. At least they've only ust got round to it.

Tevez - improvement

Carlos Tevez and Ronaldinho, for example - they took years to find a good dentist and I'm not sure whether Ronaldinho has got it right even now. Perhaps he should ask Nottingham Forest striker Robert Earnshaw, who looked like a modern-day Bugs Bunny until he had his gnashers seen to a couple of seasons ago. Either that or the Wales hitman found a miracle cure for unattractiveness.

Poor Rio Ferdinand doesn’t so much need a tooth job - even a ton of collagen couldn’t help the lipless one. Not that the Manchester United captain is bothered, I’m sure. He could probably bed half the women in the city should he wish to - though I suspect the vast majority would have their eyes tightly shut throughout the ordeal.

Before you start telling me I’m no oil painting myself, I’d like to put you right on that one because a young guy told me last week ‘‘Your looks grate.’’ As he’s a Geordie I took that as a compliment.

As for footballers taking stick about their looks, well, not all of them can look like former Spur and Newcastle pin-up boy David Ginola. But at least they can hide their deficiencies by plastering £100 notes all over their faces.

Anyway, this is my squad for the Ugly XI , based on players who have featured in European football over the last 20 years.

Fabien Barthez (was he Donald Pleasance reincarnated?), Gary Neville, Rio Ferdinand, Anton Ferdinand, Carlton Palmer, Yossi Benayoun, Ronaldinho, Ivan Campo, Peter Beardsley, Jason Koumas, Iain Dowie and Franck Ribery. The chairman would be Eggert ‘The Vulkan’ Magnusson (former chairman of West Ham) and the manager Harry Redknapp.

Harry’s no oil painting for sure but he must have the world’s most beautiful wife. Otherwise how did his son Jamie get his good looks?

Now for the best-looking team (are you reading, girls?). I apologise for most of them being forwards, but my Dreamboat lineup would be Kasper Schmeichel (or David James if you fancy a more experienced man), Warren Barton, David Beckham, Gary Speed, Kaka, Cristiano Ronaldo, Eidur Gudjohnsen, Michael Owen, Fernando Torres, Harry Kewell and David Ginola. Oh, and the manager has to be a special one, namely Jose Mourinho.

As for the chairman, are there any good-looking ones? So as a lifelong Cardiff City fan I’ll go for the Bluebirds’ Malaysian chief Dato Chan Tien Ghee. He’s not good looking – but he might just give me some complimentary tickets!

So there you have it, a team of Uglies against a team of Dreamboats (even if the good lookers would have no chance of beating anyone with only one specialist defender in Barton).

So much for the important stuff. Now I'll get back to cooking the roast...