A NEW survey has ranked all England’s towns by friendliness. But is it accurate? We visit the five towns lowest on the list to get told to go f**k ourselves:
Ashfield, Nottinghamshire
Beginning – where else? – in the Midlands, we were in this former mining community for an hour and a half before anyone even acknowledged us, despite sinking a pint and visiting a market stall. Rude, yes, but where’s the hostility in Lee Anderson’s seat? It took almost three hours before a dog-walker told us to f**k off back to f**king London.
Ipswich, Suffolk
Over to the east coast and the delightful port town of Ipswich, one of the oldest in the country with a reputation of hostility to outsiders going back to 616AD when King Raedwald was invited to ‘piss off back to Norway and tell Odin he’s a wanker’. And with such a storied reputation it doesn’t disappoint; we’re told to f**k off within a mere 23 minutes!
Mansfield, Nottinghamshire
Disappointingly, it’s back up to Ashfield’s neighbour for another dispiriting trudge around the arsehole of England where no-one even barks obscenities at strangers. But all is forgiven when, while admiring one of the town’s many failed regeneration projects, we’re ordered to ‘f**k off out of it’ and shoved into the road after just 36 minutes loitering.
Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire
The renowned Potteries shithole, famous for exposing foreign footballers as pansies who hate cold, wet, grimness, surely won’t let us down. But an hour wandering around its pathetic excuse for a town centre leaves us dispirited. Are these people too broken for a simple ‘f**k off’? Thankfully, daring order a half in The Market Tavern gets us what we want.
Barking and Dagenham, London
Finally we land in the unfriendliest town in Britain, coincidentally strongly behind Brexit just like all the others. And gratifyingly, within a record six minutes a shaven-headed man with a pit bull straining at its lead has instructed us to ‘get the f**k out of my f**king way’. Even better, he follows it up with a swift but thorough kicking. Barking, you are a worthy winner!
