THE UK is looking for its next City of Culture and has ignored the obvious candidates in favour of locations with no connection to culture whatsoever. These are they: 

Milton Keynes

Half-named after a man who did some culture, all connection with the corpus of the arts ends there. There aren’t even any bands from here despite it being full of young people who are bored shitless.

Wrexham

Has no connection to English culture because it’s Welsh, but has no connection with Welsh culture because everyone speaks English. The feet of Ryan Reynolds have trodden its pavement and he was in Deadpool & Wolverine. That’s as close as it gets.

Blackpool

Home to some of Britain’s most accomplished dick artists, who draw large cocks and balls on every unattended surface in the mouldering, deprived, permanent hangover of a town. Also hosts Strictly’s Blackpool week, which is best viewed safely on television.

Portsmouth

The perfect gauge of this town’s tolerance of culture is to try declaiming a Shakespeare sonnet in a kebab shop and see how quickly you get punched in the face by a sailor. If you make it all the way to ‘and more temperate’ then it deserves to be nominated. You won’t.

Sheffield

A thriving centre of culture if you count Sean Bean, Pulp and The Full Monty, all of which are decades old so you shouldn’t. Ready and willing to make art which is about how evil Thatcher was and how she ruined the North. Unwilling to make art about anything else.

Ipswich

The home of Ed Sheeran, which automatically disqualifies it. He’s not even popular with his fans now.

Swindon

Included on the list as a joke to check if anyone was reading it, and still on the list because they weren’t. Culture is anathema to Swindon. Most of its residents only moved here because fiction confuses them and they want it to be renamed ‘lies’ and banned.

Inverness

Easily the most cultured city on its latitude because everywhere else is a village. Naming it a ‘City of Culture’ is like saying ‘there’s a bookshop here’ which anyone who lives in the Highlands already well knows, for good or ill.

Middlesbrough

Volunteered for this because the residents have heard of culture and, what the f**k, everything else they’ve tried has failed so why not? Once they try it they won’t like it, and any visitors asking about it will be pointedly ignored.