I wasn't planning a midweek episode. But a man has resigned from Parliament on purpose, so there can be a by-election, so he can stand in it — and the only candidate who's stepped up to face him wears a bin on his head. Ten minutes on Boaty McBoatface, Mr Blobby, five Christmas number ones about sausage rolls, a gritter called David Plowie, and what all of it should have taught the men who call themselves the voice of the people. Kettle's on. Sit yourself down.

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Nobody in Heywood has noticed it's the fourth of July. The bins went out as normal.

But Stanley has reason to think about America. After leaving the force, he spent some years as security advisor to an American scientist — which meant collecting his colleagues from Manchester Airport and explaining England to them on the way. None of them knew there was a statue of Abraham Lincoln in the middle of Manchester. None of them knew why.

It's quite a story. It involves cotton, a blockade, a hall full of starving millworkers, and a vote that Lincoln himself wrote to thank them for. There's a cobbled road above Rochdale that's still there if you don't believe him.

Also in this episode: what a moor actually looks like, how a young Texan in cowboy boots got on at the local, the tradition of women dancing together and where it comes from, and Mrs C answering the only question the Americans ever asked about VE Day.

A follow-up, of sorts, to last week's episode about the man who called Manchester a town.

If you know an American, send them this one.

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Andy Burnham is the man who ran Greater Manchester for nine years — which means, among other things, that he was the man at the top of the organisation that pays Stanley’s pension. So Stanley has been paying attention.

This week, somebody asked the man across the water what he made of the lad from Leigh. The answer involved the word “town.” It was not meant as a compliment.

In this episode: a Labour conference in Manchester, a case of mistaken identity involving a former party leader, an old sergeant’s advice about toolboxes, an operation named after a hammer, and a song that was read out loud at hundreds of rallies — by a man who thought he was warning the world about something else entirely.

He told them. Out loud. To a microphone.

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