Mark Steel’s
In Town
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
The right of Mark Steel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
IN TOWN. Copyright © Mark Steel 2011.
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Source ISBN: 9780007412426
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007412433 Version: 2015-01-21
This book is dedicated to all the people
who’ve lived in history, in towns or other places, without whom it would not have been possible.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Penzance
New Towns: Basingstoke, Crawley, Milton Keynes
Birmingham
Didcot, Oxford
Wilmslow
Wigan
Horwich
London
Outer London
Hereford
Norwich
Boston
Surrey
Merthyr Tydfil
Edinburgh
Orkney
Dumfries
Andersonstown
Colchester
Exeter
Portland
Motorways
Yorkshire
Nottingham
Coventry
Walsall
Lewes
Gateshead
Kent
Bristol
Conclusion
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by the Author
About the Publisher
What’s the point in going anywhere if the place you go to is the same as the one you left? Who’d bother going on a holiday that was advertised as: ‘Visit the magic of the Seychelles, it’s IDENTICAL to your own house.’
Imagine if in Tunisia, instead of the background of the call to prayers, the mosques played Magic FM. Or if Paris didn’t have that slightly exotic drainy smell, because EU regulations had compelled the place to be cleaned with Jif.
Once, in the New York subway, a huge woman barged into me and yelled, ‘Hey, out my way asshole!’ And it was marvellous, because that’s what’s supposed to happen in New York. It was as exciting as when I was nineteen and went to Amsterdam and bought a lump of dope off a man in a woolly hat but it turned out to be mud.
After taking the trouble to go to the Lake District you want it to smell of cow pats, and at Blackpool you want everything to look as if it should be in a Carry On film.
Having toured Britain plenty of times, usually to talk to an audience for the evening, I find these local quirks compelling. For example, on the way to Skipton, in North Yorkshire, I noticed a road sign to a town called Keighley. Later, during the show, I asked the audience, ‘Is Keighley your rival town?’ And the room went chillingly quiet, until one woman called out with understated menace, ‘Keighley – is a sink of evil.’
There was something delightful about this, because it was an expression of specifically Skipton malevolence.
Similarly, I went to Merthyr Tydfil, a blighted town at the top of the Rhondda Valley that’s been shut down bit by bit. After the show the manager of the theatre told me, ‘People often come in and ask what time a performance is starting, so I’ll tell them, “It starts at seven-thirty,” and they’ll say, “Oh, that’s a pity. I won’t be able to come to that, as I’ll be drunk by then.”’
And somehow there was a warmth to hearing that, because it was a story of distinctly Merthyr despair.
Before appearing in Stockton-on-Tees, in the North-East, I was sent a message on Twitter by a local resident that said: ‘This town is where Joseph Walker invented
