You may remember, back in April(OK, so you don't remember at all, but it gives me an excuse to link back to the original article), that a couple of journalists working for The Idler magazine were seeking your help to nominate the most miserable towns in the country. Well, actually they were hoping that you'd write half of their new book for them, contributing emails full of vitriol about places you'd had the misfortune to live in. And contribute you did, because that new book Crap Towns is published tomorrow. Needless to say the top 50 featured towns aren't particularly pleased to be featured, which has produced a magnificent flurry of publicity at both national and regional level. And everyone who lives in the rest of the UK can just smile smugly and add the book to their Christmas list. Very clever.
The top ten crappest towns in the country are hereby decreed to be Hull (blinkered desolation), Cumbernauld (unrelentingly miserable), Morecambe (forlorn squalor), Hythe (spirit-crushingly tedious), Winchester (odious arrogance), Liverpool (broken-glassed metropolis), St Andrews (well below par), Bexhill-on-Sea (waiting to die), Basingstoke (town-planning travesty) and Hackney (where life is nasty, brutish and shot). I'm delighted to see a strong showing for East Suffolk in the top 30 (Aldeburgh, Leiston and Ipswich, oh yes) but I'm gobsmacked that Braintree doesn't even register in the top 50.
I spent a year living in Hull, the city at the top (or is it bottom?) of the list, so I feel wholly qualified to rant about the place. Well, the 1987 version anyway. You've probably never been to Hull, not unless you had to, because Hull isn't on the way to anywhere. As a result it's Britain's most insular city - nobody ever visits, nobody ever leaves. Maybe that was why Philip Larkin loved the place so much. Hull is also huge, one of the largest cities in England, home to nearly quarter of a million people. The historic Georgian city centre is surrounded by a sprawling hinterland of endless docks, factories and estates. I spent a few months working (but thankfully not living) on the largest council estate in Europe (I believe the appropriate word is 'challenging'), while down the road there were still acres of post-war prefabs. When friends came visiting one weekend we tried, and failed, to find any culture, cuisine or entertainment whatsoever. Even the TV reception was appalling. Everyone smoked, and I don't think I saw more than a handful of non-white faces all the time I was there. And Hull remains the only place where I've ever had to ring 999 to report arson (this made all the more memorable because the object on fire was the phone box I was making the 999 call from).
Of course, not everything about Hull was bad. I've never had better (or cheaper) fish and chips, and the town didn't actually smell as fishy as you might expect. I think I rented my room for £25 a month, and the civic-owned telephone network with its unique white phone boxes was much cheaper than BT. The Humber Bridge was magnificent, even if it only led across the river to the wasteland midway between Scunthorpe and Grimsby. And, erm, OK, I'm struggling...
Hull's nicer now. I had to go back for the day last year and was struck by the wholesale regeneration of the city centre. Well, some new shopping centres and pedestrianised streets anyway. I was also very impressed by The Deep, a lottery-funded aquarium and architectural marvel which has finally started to attract tourists to the city. There's a new marina, a state-of-the-art rugby stadium, and even the prefabs have gone now. Hull may be nicer, but it's still not nice. Me, I'd never ever want to live there again, not even at £25 a month. And Britain's crappest town? Well, probably, unless of course you know different?
