Last week Jenny Field revealed how much she hated her home town. Home Truths listeners were divided on Huddersfield, and other home towns...
 Jenny Field |
I lived in Huddersfield for my first quarter century and like your speaker I couldn’t wait to get away. I felt like that even when I was at Primary School. We had a week’s holiday every year in Blackpool and I remember when the train emerged from the Standedge Tunnel on the way back, it never seemed to be really light afterwards. I knew I’d never want to live there all my life. I still have an aunt and a sister living in Huddersfield so I do still have to go back there once a year. When people ask me where I come from, of courser I say ‘I come from Huddersfield’ but the emphasis is on the words ‘come from".
Betty McKay
Wild horses wouldn’t drag me back there. My husband recognised the area and its people from the lady’s comments too.
Brenda White
I can’t say Warsop in Nottinghamshire was an inspiring place to grow up. Although I did become a bit defensive about it when The Sunday Telegraph Magazine exposed it as the ‘Yob Capital’ of Great Britain. One of my earlest memories is of being called a spiv by my English teacher who did not have a high opinion of the sons and daugthers of the Nottinhamshire coalfield and I suspect it was he who called the Telegraph when the Boys’ Brigade - AKA the bucket bangers - hut was burned down. Like so many who came of age in the eighties, I had to leave my home town to find work. I would have got on my bike as Norman Tebbit suggested, but someone had pinched it.
Roland Curtis
I’m just listening to Jenny Field, the lady who detested her place of birth and I sympathise with this point of view completely. I was born in Bebington on the Wirral. And I HATE IT. Passionately. I left the Wirral as soon as I could get out. And have found a much calmer existence in Sheffield. I’m now a recovering Goth and much less angry with everything although I still have a weakness for all things black and PVC. Thanks very much for giving our small minority, people who can’t stand our home towns, a voice.
Sue Bird
I just have to stand up and say – Roy Castle, Harold Wilson, Renee from ‘Allo ‘Allo, the birth of Rugby League and of course Huddersfield town Football Club on the verge of promotion to the first division.
Sally Greetham
I was absolutely appalled when I heard the lady slating Huddersfield. I live in Huddersfield. Give Huddersfield a chance. We have the highest, longest and deepest canal tunnel in Britain and it’s just been restored.
Emma Baker
Huddersfield’s my kind of town and it’s time I stood up for it because last week is not the first time I’ve heard such remarks. A certain Radio 1 DJ years ago referred to Huddersfield in a derogatory way I’ve always remembered. He said that he was such a fan of the Undertones he had followed them wherever they played and was so devoted he’d even followed them to Huddersfield!" Well, alright, I suppose I must have forgiven him otherwise I wouldn’t listen to Home Truths but then there was that book review in a national newspaper on ‘The Story of Huddersfield’ published in 1968. My brother was at art college and was chosen at age 18 to illustrate the cover. I was only 13 and very proud but I can remember exactly how the review went. "The Story of Huddersfield. Hah, hah. All about people with flat caps, flat vowels and flat minds’. How politically correct is that?
Hilary Hampson
Miss Field. I am not tight-lipped and joyless and Huddersfield made me what I am today. Its richness in humour, good sense and culture should not be dismissed but if I like it so much why do I live in Brixton, London? The thing is it’s brilliant being a northerner down south. People think the hint of accent has salt-of-the-earth credibility and that I personally embody straight-talking and honesty and grit and determination.
Becca Thackray
I moved to the delightfully named Scapegoat Hill just outside Huddersfield nearly twenty years ago and about the same time I started regularly visiting London on business. The biggest cultural difference between the two remains that of introductions. In Yorkshire it remains normal to greet the people you meet, say when out walking on the moors. To say ‘hello’ to someone you meet during an evening walk in a London park is to be left staring at a retreating back and a barking dog rather than a smiling face. The big change in London though is that over the last twenty years northern-English accents have become fashionable. I no longer feel frightened about saying ‘baath’ rather than ‘barth’ or ‘casstle’ instead of ‘car-sell’…to say you’ve been to Noooocassel for a weekend break can now even bring admiring glances!
Geoff Hughes
