Cork is no Detroit, but it was a Motown, and my friend Tony Two-Chins's dad was a Dagenham Yank. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, the Dagenham Yanks were Cork men who worked on the assembly lines in east London, where Ford was a big employer.

Not your typical hod-carrying Paddies, the "Yanks" were clean-cut blue collar workers, and for two weeks in August and a week at Christmas, they would return to Second City and party.

Identifiable by the fashionable cut of their shop-bought suits and the foreign lilt in their accents - and, of course, London was never called London, it was just "over", followed by a toss of the head in the direction of Britain - Dagenham Yanks were also recognised by the wads of sterling in their hands and the strings of girls on their arms.

I met Tony Two-Chins when I was 10. The Republic was undergoing its first flush of prosperity, so Tony's parents took the boat for the last time, in search of a job closer to home. With Dunlop, Ford was also an engine house of employment in Leeside, and for generations jobs were handed down from father to son. Building cars was a family business, and Tony's dad was soon sorted.

Back then, the dawn chorus was heralded by the sound of the men from the north side of the city whistling their way past our house on their way to work.

But in the late 1970s, somebody in some boardroom decided the factory gates should close. So the assembly lines were dismantled and, ultimately, Cork sank.

It took 30 years for the city to resurface, but for many, men like Tony Two-Chins's dad, who were too long in the tooth to learn new tricks, the only option was to weather the storm of the recession on the dole, until the pension kicked in.

Tony Two-Chins's dad spent the rest of his days talking about his time "over". He said Dagenham was known as Little Cork, a place of tripe and drisheen, spiced beef, Beamish and Murphy's.

The term "Murfia" was apparently coined in Dagenham to describe the Corkonian-controlled network of job placements, promotions and cushy numbers in the motor industry.

The last time I met Tony Two-Chins's dad was three weeks ago. Still dressed to the nines and looking like a Yank, he said Ford had just announced the closure of its assembly line in Dagenham. He spoke without cynicism or bitterness, but there was an overwhelming sadness in his watery blue eyes. And, loyal to the last, he said: "the bosses know best."

On Wednesday, I got my hands on Roger &Me, Michael Moore's superb 1989 documentary about the decline of Flint, Moore's home town in Michigan, after General Motors closed its assembly line there with the loss of 30,000 jobs.

Moore wanted to bring the car manufacturer's chief executive to Flint to see the destruction, but Roger B Smith proved an elusive interviewee.

Even so, Moore met a crazy mix of former employees and General Motors suits, such as a public-relations executive who declared that he would also be a victim if General Motors had to make cuts to remain viable, or the woman who was reduced, stomach-churningly, to butchering rabbits for pet food.

Then, amid the futile attempts of a town pulling together to generate a tourism industry, there are the powerful images of Smith's patronising Yuletide-greetings speech, intercut with scenes of a former motor worker being evicted from his home on Christmas Eve.

Moore brings an agenda to his documentary, and some of the details are fuzzy to say the least - it has been suggested that Moore chooses not to ruin a good story with the facts. But one thing shines through: Moore is passionate about his home town, and lays the blame for its destruction at the feet of the fat cats of capitalism.

It's a narrative that's easy to buy into, especially when you're coming from a minor Motown such as Cork. The thesis is simple: big guys downsize, small guys disappear.

Roger & Me is a dark and painful reminder of the three Rs: recession, redundancy and reality. But in its strange way, it is a comic masterpiece, a bit like a real-life Boys From The Blackstuff.

I met Tony Two-Chins last week, for the first time in almost 20 years. He was home for his dad's funeral. He's been working in Silicon Valley and doing very well for himself. Tony was saying he loves California, and that half of Cork is out there, but with the upturn in the economy in the Republic he wouldn't mind getting a job closer to home.

I set him straight, pointing out that Cork might be twinned with San Francisco, but it's no Silicon Valley.