Peter Kay, Michelle Keegan, and Marcus Rashford have topped the list of ideal celebrity flatmates in Manchester.
It’s been revealed thanks to a poll by Get Living of 1,000 people from Manchester.
Beloved Bolton-born comedian Kay, actress Keegan, and Manchester United and England star Rashford join other famous Manchester residents such as comedian Jason Manford, footballers Cristiano Ronaldo and Jack Grealish, soap stars Gemma Atkinson and Kym Marsh, and ex-Love Island contestants Molly-Mae and Tommy Fury in the top 10 of Manchester-dwellers people most want to share a home with.
The poll was commissioned by Get Living – which operates and rents homes at the pet-friendly neighbourhood New Maker Yards at Middlewood Locks, conveniently located between Manchester and Salford city centres – to celebrate the launch of a further 500 fully-furnished new homes to rent.
There’s also an additional flexible space for residents to use for co-working – named The Lock – which is home to 92Degrees’ second coffee shop in Manchester.
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The survey hasn’t just revealed the most ideal celebrity flatmates either.
If you’re a decent cook, know how to separate your plastics from your cardboard, and have a cracking sense of humour, then you’re also in luck as that means you’re one of the most desirable flatmates in Manchester.
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The poll found that those who can work from home without making a racket, give you some of their leftover takeaway, and don’t mind throwing a house party also came out as the best traits that people in the city of Manchester look for when choosing who they live with. Other top traits include being older than 32 and taller than six feet, a Manchester United fan, not flashy with their stuff, and a dog person.
Top 10 Qualities in a Flatmate
Clean and tidy
A sense of humour
Can accurately split the bills
Recycles properly
Hard-working
A good cook
Can fix things in the flat
Good taste in TV
Is quiet when they work from home
They read
The play is celebrating the launch of a further 500 homes for rent at New Maker Yards / Credit: Get Living
The revealing of the results from the poll also comes as New Maker Yards hosts an immersive play by Ancoats’ award-winning Hope Mill Theatre across a number of brand-new flats in the neighbourhood.
Titled‘Mates’, the play will celebrate the city’s culture and lifestyle, featuring immersive mediations, comedy, a photo booth and a house party complete with techno DJTicketholders to the free play can finish off the experience by enjoying a free pint or burger at Seven Bro7thers Beerhouse.
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The play is running between 13-21 November, and you can bag free tickets
Elsewhere in the poll, three quarters (75%) said Manchester was friendlier than any other city – with 138,935 residents claiming they never want to move out of the city – the top three most popular neighbourhoods in Manchester are the Northern Quarter, Spinningfields and Salford, the latter of which are within a 10 minute walk of New Maker Yards. Almost a third (31%) thought the city’s best feature was the fact there’s so much going on, despite it being less expensive than London.
For its new homes at New Maker Yards, Get Living has partnered withideal flatmate, the match-making platform for renters, and then commenting on the results of the survey, Tom Gatzen – Co-Founder at ideal flatmate – said: “When it comes to what people look for in a flatmate, this survey showed that in Manchester, it is all about having a great time and living with people you can build a friendship with outside the barriers of a standard flatmate relationship.
“It’s clear the people of Manchester value social qualities and spending time with people that can make them laugh and bond with over the same taste in TV programmes, all while eating a home-made meal.
“That said, my advice would be to ensure that you live with people you can see yourself spending time with rather than just passing each other in the corridor.”
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Kim Quickfall – General Manager of New Maker Yards at Get Living – added: “Our residents are always up for a good time, and with 500 new homes available to rent this winter, we wanted to showcase what living at New Maker Yards is all about [and] we’re delighted to be working with the incredible Hope Mill Theatre to take this immersive play out of the theatre and into our living rooms.”
The play is celebrating the launch of a further 500 homes for rent at New Maker Yards / Credit: Get Living
Like the sounds of New Maker Yards then?
Homes are available to rent starting from £940 per month for a one bedroom apartment, £1,190 pm for a two bed, and £1,695 pm for a three bed, with flexible tenancies, no fees, and no deposits.
Homes come ready with superfast WiFi included and pets live free.
‘The average cost of a pint’ in the UK by region, according to the latest data
Danny Jones
Does it feel like pints keep getting more and more expensive almost every week at this point? Yes. Yes, it does, and while you can’t expect a city as big as Manchester to be one of the cheapest places to get one in the UK, we do often wonder how it compares to other parts of the country.
Well, as it happens, someone has recently crunched the numbers for us across the nation, breaking down which regions pay the most and the least for their pints.
The data has been examined by business management consultancy firm, CGA Strategy, using artificial intelligence and information from the latest Retail Price Index figures to find out what the ‘average cost of a pint’ is down south, up North and everywhere in between.
While the latest statistics provided by the group aren’t granular enough to educate us on Greater Manchester’s pint game exactly, we can show you how our particular geographic region is looking on the leaderboard at the moment.
That’s right, we Mancunians and the rest of the North West are technically joint mid-table when it comes to the lowest average cost of a pint, sharing the places from 3rd to 8th – according to CGA, anyway.
Powered by consumer intelligence company, NIQ (NielsenIQ) – who also use AI and the latest technology to deliver their insights – we can accept it might seem like it’s been a while since you’ve paid that little for a pint, especially in the city centre, but these are the stats they have published.
Don’t shoot the messenger, as they say; unless, of course, they’re trying to rob you blind for a bev. Fortunately, we’ve turned bargain hunting at Manchester bars into a sport at this point.
We might not boast the lowest ‘average’ pint cost in the UK, but we still have some bloody good places to keep drinking affordable.
London tops the charts (pretends to be shocked)
While some of you may have scratched your eyes at the supposed average pint prices here in the North West, it won’t surprise any of you to see that London leads the way when it came to the most expensive pint when it came to average cost in the UK.
To be honest, £5.44 doesn’t just sound cheap but virtually unheard of these days.
CGA has it that the average cost of a beer in the British capital is actually down 15p from its price last September, but as we all know, paying upwards of £7 for a pint down that end of the country is pretty much par for the course the closer you get to London.
Yet more reason you can be glad you live around here, eh? And in case you thought you were leaving this article with very little, think again…
Benson Boone has announced a headline gig in Manchester – and it’s a big one
Danny Jones
American pop sensation and unrivalled king of unnecessary front flips, Benson Boone, has just announced his first-ever headline Manchester arena gig as part of a new arena tour.
The solo artist and acrobatic chart-topper has seen a meteoric rise in the US and, as is usually the case across the Atlantic, he’s become increasingly popular over here too.
Benson may have performed here in Manchester before as part of the 2024 MTV EMAs and for a small show at The Deaf Institute, but now big fans have the added Boone of getting to watch a standalone show at one of Europe’s leading indoor entertainment venues.
Announced on Friday, 30 May, the 22-year-old will be making his way across the pond from Washington for a limited run of UK concerts, with a date at Co-op Live arena being one of just five dates.
Extending his ‘American Heart Tour’ ahead of the release of his eponymous sophomore record, with this autumn leg, Co-op Live will mark his individual visit to 0161.
The Grammy-nominated artist has earned several nods of recognition already for his first album, Fireworks & Rollerblades, which was released just last spring.
He has been described as among the current trend of male singers who fit into the American Idol and ‘Voice audition pop’ genre (a term recently coined online), along with the likes of Teddy Swims, Shawn Mendes, Alex Warren and others.
Regardless of the slightly tongue-in-cheek term, he’s become a huge hit around the world and landing him is still a big coup for the venue that has already welcomed similarly massive pop contemporaries like Swims, Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo and more.
In case you’re wondering just how big a deal he is over in the States, even this early in his career, his domestic headline dates sold out in seconds, quite literally…
The last time he visited Co-op Live was to perform at the most recent MTV EMAs
Benson Boone is coming to Manchester on Monday, 27 October and will be playing just two other British venues: The O2 in London (two nights) and the Utilita Arena in Birmingham.
Safe to say you don’t want to miss this one if you like soaring vocals and lots of flipping.
General admission tickets go live at 10am on Thursday, 5 June, but Co-op Members can gain access via the arena’s official pre-sale window from the same time on Tuesday (3 Jun).
Emily Sergeant -
17th November 2021 
