The North West’s most – only? – famous restaurant, Manchester’s Yang Sing is to spring an hotel offshoot in March 2008. Named after Gerry and Harry Yeung’s Cantonese restaurant, and adjacent to it, the 42-room, £8m project will occupy a former cotton warehouse and bank.

While we're in Manchester, perhaps we can share with you our top current personal recommendation for acccommodation, which is the 279-room Hilton Manchester Deansgate. Otherwise a pleasant but fairly standard business hotel, it has a 23rd-floor late-night bar whose scale makes it a must-see. It also has a notably elegant swimming pool.