Mamma Mia! The irreverent mayor who invited voters to the cinema | Helen Pidd

If Sheffield’s Magid Magid can combine serious policies with his charismatic personality, he could become an electoral tour de forceThe lord mayor of Sheffield told a friend last week that he wanted to go and see Mamma Mia 2 at the cinema. “Mate, no one is going to go and watch that with you,” Magid Magid was told. For anyone else, that would have either meant a solitary trip to the flicks or waiting for the DVD to come out. But not Magid. The 29-year-old Green councillor, a Muslim who came to the UK as a child refugee from Somalia, only took on the honorary job in May but has already made worldwide headlines by “banning” Donald Trump from the steel city and declaring Mexico Solidarity Day instead. (He celebrated in a sombrero, wearing a Trump Is A Wasteman T-shirt, while many bars in Sheffield offered free shots of tequila.)Magid went on Twitter and invited everyone to join him at Sheffield’s Showroom cinema for the 8.30pm showing on Sunday night, posting a screenshot of the seat he had chosen. An hour before the screening, the Showroom bar was chocka, the film a near sell-out. Magid bounced in with his yellow baseball cap on backwards, accompanied by Eric, his patient chauffeur, who doubles as a bodyguard for the solid gold mayoral chains. Continue reading…
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