It’s a stark difference to comments the former Top Gear host made about the city-region only a few years ago
Jeremy Clarkson visited Manchester restaurant Ciaooo last month(Image: Instagram: @ciaooopizzamcr)
Having spent the last few years visiting the city to film his TV show, Jeremy Clarkson has hailed a ‘booming’ Manchester for its top restaurants and atmosphere just a few years after giving some choice words about the city-region.
The former Top Gear host, 65, said he has been travelling to Manchester for around eight years now as he films Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, which airs on ITV. Admitting he was initially not impressed with the filming location outside of the capital, he said he has grown to love how the city differs from London.
Writing in his weekend column in The Times, the host – who also has his own pub and farm shop in Oxfordshire’s Chipping Norton called Diddly Squat – declared that Manchester has ‘‘been steadily growing on me’, even boldly declaring that he now thinks ‘it might be better than London’. In the piece, the Clarkson’s Farm host refers to a recent midweek visit to an Indian restaurant in the city centre which was ‘rammed’ during the week. He recalls: “There was one table with 30 people on it, and how is that even possible? Where does anyone find 30 friends who are up for a modern, zingy, expensively lit curry on a Tuesday?”
He also heaped praise on a ‘superb’ pizza spot and an Italian restaurant known for making their own pasta. Whilst he didn’t name any venues directly, the presenter was recently seen visiting Neapolitan pizza restaurant Ciaooo, on Swan Street in the Northern Quarter. Having first opened in 2018, the venue’s owners Lory Grigori and head chef Stefano Mordecchi said they were ‘honoured’ to host the star last month.
Jeremy Clarkson has praised Manchester’s top restaurants scene and progress as a city(Image: Getty Images)
Elsewhere in his verdict, Clarkson also welcomed Manchester’s ‘booming’ skyline – mixed between former Victorian warehouses and ‘glass and steel blocks’ – as well as its expansion of new homes in the city. With current growth levels of 3.1 per cent, Greater Manchester is hoped to add a further £38bn to the UK economy by 2035. Clarkson said he wanted his piece to make Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham ‘feel like he’s getting somewhere’ with his initiatives.
Clarkson’s comments are a stark change from some of past comments on Greater Manchester and the city. In 2014, he posted on social media: “People of Manchester. It’s not raining and there is electricity. Welcome to London.” A few years earlier, in 2011, he also described Salford, which he admitted at the time he hadn’t visited, as ‘a small suburb with a Starbucks and a canal with ducks’. But it appears his love for the city has been a few years in the work, having hailed Manchester as a ‘British Berlin’ in 2018.
However, his piece this weekend still managed to feature a subtle dig to one of Manchester’s biggest musicians. Having referred to how people on the ‘other side of the Pennines’ preferred to boast the likes of Sean Bean and Mark Knopfler as having a proper Northern accent and not ‘that stupid accent’ of Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher.