With this in mind, I thought I’d have a bash at a similar sort of piece. Obviously 3,000 words might piss you off a bit, so I’ll just give you the first few pars. If anyone at the Observer wants to commission me, I’m all yours at a rate considerably cheaper than Miranda Sawyer.

How Greggs is taking over the world

Peter Kay’s mate (the one out of Max and Paddy) eats there, so does Brian Blessed and my window cleaner. The appeal of Greggs among hungry normal people in places like Chadderton and Northwich is truly fucking astounding. So how did that happen, asks David Quinn (BA (Hons) Smash Hits)?

It was on the high street I spotted the place, just between Curry’s Digital and Timpsons. Blue and orange sign, with the delicious aroma that only baked-on pastry can provide. The queue of unfashionably-dressed people outside told me everything I needed to know. These normal types simply couldn’t get enough of this stuff, whatever it was, and I was determined to spend several weeks researching a pointless feature on the subject.

I went inside and looked around. There was a fridge with some sandwiches in it (“prawn mayonnaise” according to the sign) and some ladies behind an apparently heated counter containing an array of pies and pasties. “What would you like, love?”, one of them asks, and I am immediately drawn to her crow’s feet, her daft hat and her gruff northern charm.

I ignore her completely and instead identify an office worker standing in the queue, which snakes purposefully towards the exit. As I reach for my Moleskine notebook and Olympus voice recorder I poke him in the chest and ask him: What brought you here? What is all this stuff? How can I wring a 3,000-word feature out of it? He looks at me, him in George at Asda, me in Paul Smith, and replies: “I like cheese and onion pasties.”

Greggs. You might not have heard of it but you probably know at least one person earning below thirty thousand pounds a year who regularly buys some kind of cooked brown thing from one of these establishments. Be it a pie, a pasty, or a “prawn mayonnaise sandwich”, Greggs is the place to be if you are a British person who has a proper job in a shop, office, factory or somewhere like that, somewhere in 21st century Britain today.

Peter Kay’s mate (the one out of Max and Paddy) is an idol to these people and regularly comes into the Horwich branch for a steak and kidney pie, a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and bottle of 7Up. “It’s all about the pastry, the heat on your tongue as the gravy dribbles down your chin. It can only be matched by the joy of the fizzy bottle of ice cold 7Up that I wash it down with!” he says, after I have his dialogue translated by a northern person I went to university with.

Emily, a wonderfully committed and, dare I say it, attractive young thing who runs the PR team, is similarly enthusiastic. “Greggs has become a metaphor for all that is wholesome, wonderful and British about this great British country of ours in the 21st century,” she says. “Cheap, ordinary, drab it may be, but, look, we can’t all eat at the Ivy every day, can we?”

Continues for several pages…

Barburrito

This place opened a few years ago at the Piccadilly end of Piccadilly Gardens and is, to my view, a bit pricey for everyday fodder. Last week I went in there and had a chicken burrito and Diet Coke that cost £6.20. Your burritos in Barburrito are available with several extras, including guacamole at 50p, which I ordered but I can’t really say added much to the overall experience.

Although I’ve been in there several times, I always find the choice a bit intimidating and I have to clarify what’s included and what’s charged extra, which is a bit embarrassing. The salsa comes in four levels of hotness. I went for the hottest one, which has quite a daft Disneyland-ish name that I can’t remember.

Taste-wise, it was rich and delicious. Not mind-blowingly hot but certainly very tasty. I particularly enjoyed the beans and it was very thoroughly filled. The soft drink is £1.50 but for that you get unlimited free refills.

The ambience is quite pleasant, sort of like a posh KFC but with more tasteful fonts, some kind of wood and floortiles that nod towards the Mexican. Overall I would give it a rating of 7.5/10. The plasticky, chainstore-type ambience and excess of choice may annoy some but the burrito was delicious.

Pancho’s

Pancho’s is located in the unfashionable end of the Arndale Centre near where they sell crabs. What initially pleases about Pancho’s is that it is extremely unpretentious. In fact, it’s just a stall near a fishmonger on the Arndale Market. It’s run by what appears to be Mexican bloke and his girl assistant, who has an interesting hairstyle.

There’s not as much “confusion on entry” as at Barburrito. Various Mexican dishes are scrawled on a blackboard and priced at a reasonable £3.75 or less. They also stock a wide range of Mexican foodstuffs for home cooking purposes, which is a definite bonus if that’s your bag.

To keep things fair, I ordered exactly the same as at Barburrito – a chicken burrito in the hot style. Pancho’s only seems to offer “hot” or “mild” sauces and the hot one was a fair bit spicier than the Barburrito equivalent. Drinks are not bottomless. Instead I went for the closest equivalent, which was a single can of Diet Coke at 85p, taking the grand total to a wallet-friendly £4.60. I forgot to order guacamole but I checked and it would have been an extra 20p. So the total would have been £4.80, or £1.40 cheaper than Barburrito.

It tasted good. Slightly creamier than Barburrito, certainly spicier but not quite as rounded or rich tasting. The ambience, as I say, is a bit earthier than Barburrito but I found that quite charming. Overall I’d say 8/10, with bonus points for cheap price, simplicity and heat.

Verdict

There’s virtually nothing in it I’d say but Pancho’s nudges it on the basis of price and “realness”. At £6.20 Barburrito is overpriced compared with the same thing at Pancho’s for £4.80, although Barburrito has free refills. Taste-wise, there’s not much in it. I enjoyed the punch of the Pancho’s burrito but the Barburrito one had a more pleasing texture and was highly flavoursome.

If you disagree I don’t really care but feel free to add a comment.

This coincides with the launch of ManCon’s paywall structure. To read this review of Pizza Express, for example, you now have to pay a minimum of three pounds a month.

This blog was the first to reveal details of ManCon’s “heroes” pricing structure (it really was, honest), which is backed by a cheaper “friends” model. For this, you get access to various stuff including special offers and competitions, as well as restaurant reviews.

I’ve nothing against paywalls in principle. My view is that the marketplace will decide whether you can make money on the web using a paywall model (although all the evidence so far suggests that unless you’re delivering either pornography or very highly targeted, valuable information towards business users, you probably can’t). But I am curious about what ManCon loyalists think of being charged money for something that was previously valued at zero. Bizarrely, a review of Papa G’s in the Printworks from ten days ago is now trapped behind a paywall, although if I Google it, I can find the exact same review for free. It’s hardly going to have me reaching for the credit card, is it?

And while the reviews are very detailed and well written by proper journalists and all that, does anyone, when it comes down to it, really care? If I want an idea of whether a pizza place is any good, I can either use a free review site like ViewManchester, or I’ll possibly risk eight quid by, y’know, going in there and ordering a pizza.

ManCon has done a very good job of convincing people to part with their cash in advance of its relaunch, raising at least £60k from subscribers. The crunch will come in a year’s time when these people will be forced to consider whether renewal is worth it.

Everyone has surely suspected for a while that ITV was going to do something like that. Everything about its footy coverage is slightly amateurish and has been for a while. Throughout the match I felt the cameras seemed to be wandering all over the place with random crowd shots and player close-ups at important moments. And as for Clive Tyldesley…

The FA apparently “wants answers” but since it took ITV on as the highest bidding broadcaster, perhaps it only has itself to blame. (And the other winning bidder, Setanta, has its own problems related to its choice of satellite.)

The cause of the blunder, according to ITV, was an automated system that caused adverts to appear in their normal slots, regardless of the fact that the programme had overrun. Is it me, or does this sound vaguely bonkers? I know ITV’s share price has taken a battering but surely it can afford to pay someone to push a button, rather than rely on the whims of a malevolent idiot machine.

The Daily Mail is gloating excessively over the event. Clearly it has reorientated its disapproval away from the BBC and and towards its main rival since yesterday. Oddly, it may actually have a point.

Film

I thought Wall-E was surprisingly deep for a kids film and was also technically flawless. But There Will Be Blood blew me away.

1. There Will Be Blood

2. Wall-E

3. Jar City

3. The Dark Knight

5. No Country For Old Men

TV

Absolutely no contest for the top slot, while Top Gear remains the most entertaining programme on television even when watching a repeat for the seventh time on Dave.

1. The Wire*

2. Top Gear

3. Wallander

4. The Apprentice

5. House of Saddam

*NB I’ve only watched a couple of episodes from Season 5 so far so if you’re leaving a comment, please NO SPOILERS!

Music

I don’t think it was a vintage year but perhaps I’m just turning into an old fart. Hercules and Love Affair was the only album that genuinely excited me but the rest of these are all pretty good.

1. Hercules and Love Affair – Hercules and Love Affair

2. Hot Chip – Made in the Dark

3. Duffy – Rockferry

4. Beck – Modern Guilt

5. Fujiya & Miyagi – Lightbulbs

Miscellaneous

1. The discovery of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö and their Martin Beck books

2. The use of the word “ASBO” as a noun. eg “Dave, you asbo!”

3. Pro-Evolution Soccer on Wii

4. Peanut Butter & Co’s “Crunch Time” peanut butter

5. The Barclaycard advert where the guy slides down a massive water chute

Firstly, what the hell is a “king prawn spoon”? It looks like a plastic black teaspoon with a thick maggot on it. You can see why they call it party food. It inspires that famous Christmas parlour game known as Bet You Can’t Eat One Without Sicking Up On To The Axminster.

Then there’s some unspecified deep fried thing that could possibly be a witchetty grub in batter. The mini gateaux look like bloodsucking jellyfish and the quiche slices bear a striking resemblance to emu vomit. “Bitesize mini hotdogs”? Kangaroo bollocks in pastry. UPDATE: All the idents can be seen here.

Part of the problem is the lighting, which bathes everything in a flourescent striplight glow. It’s like when you to go a nighclub and they switch the lights on at the end. Everything suddenly looks sweat-covered and hideous.

And why is Kerry Katona still considered a viable brand ambassador? She’s an alcoholic with a history of cocaine abuse who recently spent £19,000 on plastic surgery, for Christ’s sake! Does anyone look at this woman and think: “If that food’s good enough for Kerry Katona, it’s good enough for me!” The fact that she’s flirting with Christopher Biggins adds a whole other horrifying dimension. In one of the idents she seems to lunge in to kiss him full on the mouth but luckily the screen fades to black at the last moment.

And as for the advert featuring Kerry singing with Jason Donovan and Coleen Nolan… there’s just no need, is there?

This initially struck me as a cheeky way of getting a bunch of unpaid minions to do a highly paid celebrity journalist’s work for him. Then I thought the joke might be on him, because it’s surely more trouble than it’s worth.

The art of journalism is, of course, as much about what you leave out of a story as what you put in. By inviting the web and her grandmother to bombard you with opinions and links to background material, how do you find time to get round to writing the feature? As well as worthy amateurs, you’ve got academics, lobby groups, PR firms and others, who are presumably under no obligation to declare an interest in what they are pushing your way.

I get bogged down by dozens of time-consuming calls and e-mails from PR people when I ask for contributions for a feature about, say, the Manchester office market. This is a narrow and – despite my best efforts – inherently dull subject matter of interest to virtually no-one. I do hope Rayner has a team of interns to sift through the mountain of drivel that’s headed his way – there are 126 comments already, although, in fairness, most of them seem to be quite helpful.

The other problem in this approach is that your source material is on view to all. If you leave something out of the finished article either deliberately or by mistake, you lay yourself open to allegations of ignorance, malice or possibly both. And people who post on the Guardian’s blogs can be a savage bunch.

Perhaps I’m being a bit “old media”/Andrew Keen-ish about all this and the Observer should be applauded for opening up the process of researching and writing an article on an important subject. Why shouldn’t “amateurs” be invited to contribute before a feature is published? It might actually make the journalist’s job more pleasant, since, as Rayner observes, what usually happens is:

The piece is written, posted to the web and then the debate begins, sometimes rancorously. Despite – or perhaps because – they are being introduced to both arguments and sources of information that they missed, the journalist, understandably, becomes defensive. The posters become increasingly adamant.

Like GM food itself, the Observer’s approach is essentially a new and unusual experiment with the potential to go horribly wrong. Let’s hope it doesn’t, for the sake of all mankind.

His character was, perhaps inevitably, supposed to be a tad overweight. But in a terrifying stab at either humour or attempted realism, producers thought the 18-year-old he was playing should be seen with posters relating to McDonalds and “bangers and mash” on the wall of his bedroom. You know, in the same way as normal 18-year-olds have pictures of girls, this fat guy fantasises about junk food. Understandably, Corden thought they were being “disrespectful”.

He now says (and perhaps stop now if four-letter words beginning with ‘c’ offend you because this contains some truly heroic swearing):

I’d actually rather die than go back. It’s fucking awful. I can’t tell you the sheer disdain I have for the place and the people. I met a couple of really good friends there but it’s 20 per cent nice people and 80 per cent cunts. It’s a programme made by cunts and full of cunts. It just breeds pricks – all these people walking around with this chicken-in-a-basket fame, talking about going to LA, you know?

Fancy. I never would have thought it.

Ignoramus Lloyd famously said, during an appearance on Celebrity Big Brother last year, that Indian actress Shilpa Shetty should “fuck off home”. Thankfully she appears to have put a lid on further such outbursts and is instead focusing on the campaign to hand.

I love nothing more than a good night out with the girls but it’s often ruined by the nightmare of getting home, especially when you’re hungry and want something quick to satisfy you!

she says.

Taxi queues are one of the great British bugbears and I’m sure everyone has wished someone would rescue them and fast forward them to their beds, which is why I love Rustlers To The Rescue.

I can’t wait to see the looks on people’s faces when a fleet of taxis turns up to take them home! And free food is guaranteed to go down well – so get voting!

I’m not sure what we are supposed to vote on because I couldn’t be bothered reading to the end. The taxi thing, meanwhile, is a remarkably innovative PR stunt that has been sold into the Daily Star.

And just to clarify, these words did very much come from her actual mouth and were IN NO WAY written by a PR person. Just like the thing about the Indian woman. Which was on camera. On television and that. But let’s not dwell on it.

So get voting!

Ingredients of a Rustlers Quarter Pounder (190g)

Beef Burger (45%), [Beef (75%), Beef Fat, Water, Textured Soya Protein (5%), Dextrose, Flavour Enhancer: E621; Salt, Sugar, Stabiliser: E451; Egg White Powder, Flavourings, Hydrolysed Vegetable Protein, Malt Extract, Yeast Extract, Colour: E150c], Sesame Seed Bun (41%), [Wheat Flour, Water, Vegetable Oil, Yeast, Sesame Seeds, Salt, Sugar, Emulsifiers: E472e, E471, Preservative: E282; Flour Treatment Agent: E300], Processed Cheese (8%), [Cheese, Water, Butter, Whey Powder, Milk Proteins, Emulsifying Salts: E452, E339; Salt, Calcium Phosphate, Colours: Beta Carotone, Paprika Extract], Tomato Ketchup (6%), [Tomato Paste, Glucose-Fructose Syrup, Vinegar, Modified Maize Starch, Salt, Sugar, Preservative: E202, Herbs, Spices, Onion Extract, Flavouring]

Denise described how throughout their marriage he collected spanking magazines, and she told how on one of their first dates she had to hold back giggles as he asked if she would lie across his lap.

She said: “It was his thing. He said that was what turned him on.”

After their divorce in 2004, which followed the collapse of his £7m business, they had to move out of their posh home in Richmond, Surrey.

But the only possessions Gregg was worried about was his vast collection of spanking mags.

Poor Gregg also allegedly confessed to a rendez-vu with prozzy, and was none too impressed when she turned up at “posh” Radio 4, following Gregg’s “show about vegetables”.

I was trying to think of some kind of offensive pun involving cakes, arses and, maybe, slags. But I’m afraid I can’t beat the NotW‘s headline:

Masterchef host loves whipping up a tart

Boing! No, really. Give that sub a gold star.