Manchester Media cat fight: MEN v. MCR Confidential

There's nothing like a good old-fashioned catfight to liven up a party, as long as you're not one of the cats. Advertorial site Manchester Confidential's Mark Garner (aka Gordo) pissed off the MEN, and promptly got disinvited to their annual diary booze-fest. You can read Gordo's account of the spat, the snippy letter from MEN Editor Paul Horrocks un-inviting him, and the reader responses to all of this (which seem about split between rubbishing the MEN and rubbishing Gordo)here:

But Gordo didn't provide links to the copy that annoyed the MEN so much. I've dug it out. The main culprit, I suspect, was some text accompanying a contest sponsored by the Enquirer:

"We believe there must have been some divine intervention for the arrival of The North West Enquirer to save us from the drudgery of the MEN and bottom-burping Metro....with the explosion of urbanites and professionals in Manchester, it was about time there was a newspaper to match the North West’s IQ...Editorially led, you can actually flick through without Shane Ward or equally tiresome C-list celebrities' mugshots dominating 90 percent of the pages. Radical, we know....Where newspapers like the MEN, or the ‘evil empire’ as Gordo affectionately refers to it, dumb down their copy and insult the intelligence of their readers, The North West Enquirer injects the brain cells with rocket fuel and reassures the reader that journalism covers more then cats up trees and pie eating competitions. We may be northerners but we’re not stupid....Will you stand firm with us and join the North West’s finest in support of the biggest thing to hit Manchester since the IRA bombing, or sink into early retirement, play puzzles and nod off in front of the MEN." Meow!

Here, in an earlier piece, MC called the MEN "shit-scared of any competition that can actually commission interesting stories," and said they didn't want to be "The Guardian's catamite." (Excellent word that.)

This interesting tale came via Manchester_Clubbing, a new blog apparently run by those silly boys over at What Happened Last Night. Yes, that's another new blog. We're getting very close to our Manchester blogroll century.

(Cat-tastic picture courtesy of on-no.net Want to see more pictures of cats? You know you do. Go here. Or here. Or here)