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!