Skipness - Good to see you getting your defence in early by denigrating those who disagree with you as "believers". Rather than rational analysts who assess the hard data like yourself, no doubt? :-)
Thomas Cook Airlines is unapologetically a leisure-orientated operation. (You are aware of this, I'm sure). As such, "offering anything to the regular business traveller" is largely superfluous to them. If business travellers elect to travel with them that's icing on the cake ... very welcome additional revenue. But those TCX schedules will stand or fall based on the uptake from leisure travellers, their core market. If by being "Gatwick-ey" you mean that TCX services are designed to appeal to the leisure market then you are quite correct. But there is nothing wrong with knowing who your core customers are and designing a product which appeals primarily to them. If that means tourists so be it. It is simply good business. On the question of US-originating customers, I wouldn't have expected too many due to relatively low awareness. However, anecdotal feedback locally suggests a surprisingly enthusiastic uptake from our American cousins.
Now, on to your suggestion that MAN's legacy US services are "mature". Your recent record shows a series of postings on the Manchester thread provocatively promoting this interpretation. All neatly dovetailing with your agenda to argue the case for a third runway at LHR rather than encouraging regional gateways to expand to their full potential. Conveniently ignoring the outrageous price-tag associated with the LHR proposals, of course. Hmmm ... funny that!