For 11 centuries between the unification of England in 927
AD and the present day, very little happened in Handforth. A hamlet near Manchester, it hosted a large prisoner-of-war camp during the first world war and a Royal Air Force depot during the second world war. This was the sum total of its imprint on the English national story. In the 1960s, several new housing estates transformed this tiny village into a small town. Then, in the 1990s, the government completed a bypass. As a result, even less happened than had been happening before.
That is until a few months ago, when Handforth became the most talked-about place in Britain after a video of a chaotic meeting of the parish council went viral. The meeting, which you can watch in full on YouTube, is a calamitous pantomime of righteous fury and unmuted mics. It takes place in two acts.