the dailymash

Culture secretary Ben Bradshaw commissioned sculptor Darcus Mayhew to create the piece, which is entitled A Taste Of Otherness.

He said: "In our London-centric age it's easy to forget that the North has given us such priceless cultural artefacts as Tunnock's Tea Cakes, Harry Enfield's hilarious Scouser characters and the Yorvik Viking Centre.

"We want people to realise the North isn't just a vast, desolate tract of grey, smack-addled inertia populated by feral teenagers, broken fridges and starving, soot-smeared drug widows desperately clutching emaciated offspring to their pockmarked breasts as they plead for alms in a wheezy 60-Lambos-a-day voice."

He added: "There are nice bits too, apparently. Canals or something. Although once you get past Derby I wouldn't drink the water."

Sculptor Darcus Mayhew said of the piece: "I toyed with the concept of a living art piece in the form of the nine mile-long dole queue, but ultimately decided that the pie was a perfect analogue for the people of the North because it is fatty and made of meat.

"Also it's very heavy, so visiting Northerners won't be able to steal it."

The sculpture has been drawing large crowds, mainly Londoners keen to commune with Northern culture. Web design consultant Fraser Palmer, who is based in Queen's Park, said: "I'd always thought 'pie' was a mathematical formula but today I've learned that it's also a kind of savoury flan.

"After seeing the sculpture I feel inspired to eat 'pie' and will be adding the phrase 'by 'eck as like' to the end of sentences in a cultural nod to the Northern tribes from which we Londoners have evolved, by 'eck as like.'