SouthernWatch

Just to show that I am fair, I have to admit that I had a “SouthernWatch” moment the other day and am ashamed to say that it came from someone from Croydon, which is where I am from, who was displaying what I call “Yorkshire attitude“.  

Celebrity hairdresser James Brown was on TV saying that who would have thought a young lad from Croydon could have risen to the top of his profession as session stylist to the stars. 

Oh for goodness sake!  Everyone’s from somewhere, and hairdressing’s hardly known for being an elitist profession where it helps to have been born with a silver spoon in your mouth.  Also, enough people already seem to have the idea that Croydon is a shithole without celebrity Croydonians pretending that they managed to haul themselves out of some kind of ghetto.

NorthernWatch 5 / Breakfast Television – Gah!!

I had a genuine breakfast TV “GAHHH!!!!” moment this morning when this week’s fired Apprentice was being interviewed.  The first thing he said was that he was from Liverpool so he didn’t know London that well and that’s why he failed at the task.  This made me GAHHHHH!!! more vociferously than this comment in isolation would have justified, but I’d watched him on the Apprentice - You’re Fired programme last night, when he was also constantly banging on about being from Liverpool (and not just being from Liverpool but also “representin” – like some West Coast rapper).  And this morning he was at it again: very first question, mentioning that he’s from Liverpool.

Here he is being interviewed for the Telegraph and, what do you know, he’s so proud about being from Liverpool, but it also proved his downfall as he failed to appreciate that London was bigger than Liverpool.

Hmm…proud of being from Liverpool, but also using it as an excuse for your failures.   Sounds about right.  At least he didn’t win, so we didn’t have to put up with the standard “It just goes to show that people from Liverpool can succeed...” as if he has single-handedly confounded low expectations that nobody actually has, except in his imagination.

NorthernWatch 4

At a recent wedding (low-scoring on the wedding drinking game, alas), presented with a dinner of chicken breast, new potatoes and carrots, a fellow diner announced proudly that this was a “proper Northern dinner”.  Chicken, potatoes and veg!  On what basis he was trying to claim something as ubiquitous as that for the North I have no idea.  It can’t even be related to portion size as the chicken breast was, well, chicken breast-sized, and the potatoes and the veg were served in a side dish so you could help yourself to as much as you wanted.

This person, in common with many proud Yorkshiremen, lives in London, so presumably is aware that we don’t live on a diet of sashimi and goji berry smoothies down here.

NorthernWatch 3

From an article in the Times:

‘She is also indisputably and proudly Blackpool — warm, open, self-deprecating, insistent that what you see is what you get. She’s just been shopping, got a couple of things from Next and “this belt” — she fingers the broad shiny thing at her waist. “Dorothy Perkins, £3, love a bargain,” she whispers. “You can take the girl out of Blackpool, can’t take Blackpool out of the girl.” ‘

I guess since I’m not from Blackpool I must be cold, evasive, arrogant, artificial and profligate.  Thanks The Times!   

LancashireWatch

A LancashireWatch rather than a YorkshireWatch, but other than that this article is the absolute archetypal example of exactly the kind of thing that pisses me off.

‘A Lancastrian myself, I have spent over ten years living in London, working in media-luvvie-land. My accent may be warped as a result, but the beliefs remain the same. And events like Duffygate bring back all those Northern axioms on which I was raised: “Be straight with people. Be honest. Don’t say anything that you wouldn’t say to someone’s face.” ‘

Seriously can you imagine anyone writing:

I was born and raised in London, but I’ve moved to ‘t land of hot pots, whippets and flat caps.  I’m even starting to talk funny, by ‘eck!  But I haven’t forgotten the decent Southern values with which I was brought up.  “Be kind.  Don’t be rude to people.  If you can’t think of something nice to say then keep your mouth shut.”

YorkshireWatch 1

For a long time I have harboured what I would call a perfectly rational (others have been known to disagree) antipathy in relation to Yorkshire.  I must immediately clarify that I have nothing against Yorkshire or people from Yorkshire per se.  In fact, I know several people from Yorkshire: some are nice, some are ok and some are twats, so pretty much the same as people from anywhere else.  A slightly higher proportion of twats to be honest, but my sample set is small so I’m not reading anything into that.

What I object to is the “Yorkshire Attitude” which can be summarised as constantly banging on about being from Yorkshire as if it makes them special: “I’m from Yorkshire so I am down-to-earth / call a spade a spade / have got my feet on the ground etc” contrasted expressly or impliedly with “not like you poncey Southerners / Londoners”.  And the especially annoying “who would have thought a lad / lass from Yorkshire could achieve X” faux humility that being from Yorkshire means their achievements are somehow that much greater because they were brought up on a handful of hot gravel for breakfast every morning.

If I went around saying – well I’m from London so I’m obviously more sophisticated and urbane than you clodhopping Northerners – everyone would quite rightly think I was a twat.  But nobody seems to mind when the Yorkshires do their version of this.  But I mind.  Especially because I’m one of the Londoners they are impliedly slagging off.  Especially when the fuckers live and work in London.  If being a Yorkshireman makes you so fucking wonderful and us Londoners are such a bunch of ponces then fuck off back to Yorkshire.

Now, not everyone from Yorkshire displays this trait, and what I have called “Yorkshire Attitude” is not exclusive to Yorkshire – it occurs throughout the North of England (I think it’s pretty common in Liverpool, but then that might be because I know a lot of scousers because Mr Beet is one) and it can happen everywhere apart from the very poshest areas (where people can’t really get away with inverse snobbery and have to settle for regular snobbery instead), but Yorkshire is certainly it’s spiritual home.

When I explain this (i.e. rant about this) to people, they normally look at me as if I’m a loon.  But often the next time they see me they’ll say – I saw someone on TV wittering on about Yorkshire the other day and it made me think about what you said.  So even if you are reading this thinking – what on Earth is she raving about? - just you wait!  There seems to be a kind of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon thing going on where people deny all knowledge of “Yorkshire Attitude” (probably because they are generally well-adjusted people who don’t get annoyed by this kind of thing) and then once I’ve pointed it out to them they suddenly see examples of it.  The other alternative is, of course, that they are just trying to placate the crazy woman who gets so annoyed about Yorkshire.

OK – here’s my first example for YorkshireWatch and it’s actually a NorthernWatch comment, but I think it is a good illustrative example of the genre.  It’s from an article in the Guardian about women with a phobia of pregnancy and childbirth:

“My sister-in-law was recognised as having this phobia, and gave birth 9 months ago via caesarean. I had never heard of this phobia until then, but glad it is recognised. She is a very hardy working class northerner who is afraid of little and with a very high pain threshold, so definitely not a case of being too posh to push.”

So if a working class Northerner has a problem, it’s a genuine problem deserving of recognition.  By implication, if a middle class Southerner had the same problem, they’re probably just being a ponce who should pull themselves together.  Gah!