Off the ball: The Disco Cabbie was just a bit too much

By CHRIS RATTUE

The day started with a lesson about football and ended in a mobile disco.

There are not many better ways to discover a new city than through a cabbie, even if for every fact there's a bit of fiction.

In England, this education often comes in the famous black cab, although they're as likely to be brown or pink these days.

The Manchester Commonwealth Games are boom times for cabbies, who fall into two main categories.

They are either surly and drive you, hunched back, in silence.

Then there are the extroverts, who think life is one big guided tour and always seem to have a relative or friend in New Zealand. The extroverts are the life and soul of their own party.

We had A. D, a spluttering excited character who waited nearly two hours - with the meter off - to return us from a rugby training session in a posh neighbourhood where cabs were rarely seen.

"You've got to get into the spirit of the Commonwealth Games," he said about his lovely gesture, which seemed way beyond the call of duty.

His passion, as with many people in this city, is the Manchester City football club rather than their more famous rivals, the worldly Manchester United.

He even had a cousin who once played for them, so the story goes.

"United supporters live in London," A. D. claimed.

"At one United game, the City supporters hired a plane with a sign behind it saying 'The Pride of Singapore.' It's a bit silly I suppose.

"Supporters put ads in the paper. They put one in the Lost column saying United wanted to get all their trophies back. A bit silly I suppose."

Despite how silly A. D found these stories, he had plenty of them and will have even more now that City have been promoted back to the premiership and will leave Maine Rd for the Games stadium.

By the way, on the subject of the Games, A. D had contemplated going to the opening ceremony, liked them being in Manchester, kept laughing about a British pole vaulter excluded for drug taking, and had a thing for former British athlete Denise Lewis.

Who knows what we would have learned on a really long trip.

The day's final taxi ride ride was courtesy of a Scottish mini-cab driver who went by the handle of The Disco Cabbie. No sooner had you plonked yourself down on the imitation leather seat covers, you were asked which decade of music appealed.

"The 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s," he enthused, while unsuccessfully poking buttons on a stereo with more lights than a Chrismas tree.

This was one classy guy who operated a "cab for the customer."

He continually flicked cigarette ash out the window with the sort of moves John Tavolta used in Saturday Night Fever.

Why he wasn't dressed all in white, heaven knows.

You assumed medallions dangled between his unbuttoned shirt.

He had a definite smoking policy. All ash had to go out the window.

"Putting it in the ash trays makes your car smell," he said, doing another Travolta move.

Then it started.

A previously unnoticed disco ball on the ceiling spun into action.

After enduring a two-and-three-quarter-hour welcoming session for the New Zealand team at the Manchester War Memorial, we needed excitement.

But this was too much. At least there should be a warning about the glitter ball.

As a speaker thudded the music into the rear of the car and ash flew out of the window, The Disco Cabbie cruised us back to our hotel.

The billion-dollar Games have begun, and the fun isn't just in the arenas.

Manchester will be hoping to succeed where Edinburgh failed in 1986, the last time Britain staged the event.

The Edinburgh Games, hit by a boycott from 32 countries protesting at the British Government's refusal to impose sanctions on South Africa over apartheid, had to be bailed out by millionaire Robert Maxwell.

The Commonwealth Games Council, however, has said that none of the 16 Games since 1930 has made a profit.

Full coverage:
nzherald.co.nz/manchester2002

Commonwealth Games info and related links