Laugh of the day

From "Miles Kington: We all know what makes a city a city... or do we?" in the Independent:

I have had a letter from a reader who has asked me to settle for once and for all the answer to the question "What is a City?"

Come on, tell us, he says. What makes a place a city, not a town? Is it something to do with having a cathedral? Or a charter? Or a blessing from the Queen? Or what? Lord bless you, my loves! All and yet none of these things! Being a city depends on lots and lots of separate mysterious qualifications, of which the following are the chief ones. (To make it even more mysterious, you don't have to have all of these...)

1. Two famous football teams, of which one is pretty good now, and one used to be very good, or even, as in the case of Bristol, where neither is now much cop and probably never used to be.

2. A run-down waterfront.

3. Which may or may not by now have been converted into an arts complex with cafés, bars etc. ...

8. A cosy business mafia set-up on the city council, which doles out all the work to the boys, and everyone in the town knows who they are, but nobody ever says anything, because they may be crooks but they are our crooks.

9. Another city nearby, on which this city can look down in scorn, and vice versa (cf rivalry between Liverpool and Manchester, Bristol and Bath, Glasgow and Edinburgh etc etc )....