I am now resident in Sydney but was born and raised in Norwich.
I can hear the chuckles now. Stop it!
I am sick of the jokes about Norwich and don't start me on Alan bloody Partridge.
Norwich is a great city and a very attractive one too.

Leave Naarich (as we say) alone.

I have lived and/or worked in Birmingham for 27 years. Thank goodness I have never heard of this fair city or its beautiful sweet voiced inhabitants being besmirched in this shallow way.

People, by and large, seem to like my hometown though the reaction to the Geordie accent by anyone south of Yorkshire is fairly standard. 'Oh, you're from Newcastle! (clears thoat, a breath)Thoo shelt hev a fishy on a little dishy when the bow-at cums een!'

Stop it. Please.

I'm also Weegie by birth, then spent my teens in North Wales, and my adult life in various parts of the north west of England, stopping a while in Somerset, and coming to rest in Essex about a decade ago.
There's something in that list to reach the bigot in anyone.
I keep my own counsel, realising that, as Macca and Stevie observed, 'people are people wherever you go', and that this often means they are dickheads. (I think Macca and Stevie lost this line in the editing process.)
I haven't lived in Glasgow for 30 years, but that didn't stop my Tory friends congratulating me on behalf of my people for our achievement in unseating Labour at the Glasgow East by-election.
Ho hum. I'll suggest in vain that everyone should try to think of each person they meet as an individual, rather than an aspect of a assumed of values and behaviours based on their origin.

'It's not where you're from it's where you're at'
C/- Mr Ian Brown

the sweet voiced Annie Haslam (Renaissance) being a former resident of my fair town. But all people ever want to hear is Peter Kay, his sister Vernon, Mark Radcliffe and sodding Sarah Cox. Tha knows.

Must dash. Pies have come.

I grew up in Cumbernauld. The town that gave the world, erm, Gregory's Girl, Craig Ferguson and not much else.

The town is now most famous for its supposedly monumentally ugly town centre. Personally, I think it's a thing of strange beauty, marred forever by the presence of one of those Tesco International Airports sucking all the life out of it.

... and raise you a ' being Welsh'

As a Welshman, I therefore spend my time digging for coal, singing hymns, eating cheese on toast, interfering with livestock of all kinds and obsessing about the fortunes of my national rugby team - according to friends, work 'colleagues' and occasionally strangers looking for a fight. I wouldn't mind having this pointed out, but only two of these character traits are true. Welsh Uncle Toms like Charlotte Church don't help.

Greatest living Welshman? John Cale. (OK, on matchdays, Shane Williams).

Right.

Try being a 'scouser'! Opening your mouth and people immediately piping up with 'Oooh, lock your cars lads, hide the valuables etc'. Being asked 'where's your curly wig and mustache?'. Saying anything vaguely confrontational and getting 'calm down, calm down!' (with appropriate hand gestures...) thrown back at you.

I'm not even a real scouser - I'm from the Wirral, I went to a Grammar school and lost most of the accent, but the merest hint brings out the stereotype.

Funnily enough, it's at its worst in the south.... ;-)

Rich

Sussex is rather nice. First 24 years of my life were spent in Lewes, near Brighton. Worst thing I can say is that it was a little dull. I sometimes yearn for that degree of dull these days.

born and bred on the Cheshire Plain, famed as a lad only because almost everybody has changed trains there, although few ever left the station. Those that did regretted it in all likelihood....

Left there in the landmark year of 1977 to go to Uni to "grow up" and still pop back occasionally. get some sort of buzz about it being my town but, my god, a lot of it is a shithole.

"Glasgow smile" in the review? I'm at work so I can't check but I thought it was "Glasgow Kiss" which of course is something completely different. I remember reading it with the adjective *slashing" and thought Kate was getting her metaphors mixed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_smile

You call that stereotyping! Ha! Try being an Australian travelling in the U.K!

"Where's your cork hat?"
"Strewth cobber!"

There's always a thigh-slapper about Rolf Harris or Neighbours in there somewhere.

Four visits and I heard them all repeatedly.

I didn't take it personally, sometimes people are just making conversation and they clutch onto something they "know", and what they know is invariably something stereotypical.

The best line I ever heard about Australians was uttered by an ex-footballer here called Sam Kekovich. He said "Eskimos have fifty words for all the different types of snow they encounter. Australians have one word for snow and fifty for dickhead." Despite appearances, and contrary to the stereotype, we do not lack self-awareness.

Poor old me had a tough time in the UK but at least I had it better than an accountant friend who had a stint in his firms London HO. I laughed for five minutes when he told me where he was going. The poor bastard's name was Bruce.

Where men are men and sheep are nervous. Where's Fraser?

...compared to my home town of Hull. Whatever any of you say I can beat it.

Despite having a population of 250,000 no-one ever knows where it is. Constantly having words repeated back to me. Road becomes rerd, coke becomes cerk. I wish my local pub wasn't called The Goat...'The Gert???????'. I work for a gallery in London now, I got a crowd gathering when I had to describe a painting as 'Boats on Grey Day' (berts on a grear dear). Bastards.

To top that we were voted Crappest Town in the book Crap Towns. Have the highest level of obesity in the country. We also have some astronomical drugs stats that Afghanistan would find hard to compete with.

The comments can get so derogatory that I've taken to just saying that I'm from Yorkshire...cue the usual fucking flat cap/whippet jokes.

Sad thing is I actually find it quite hard to say something positive about the place myself, if I'm honest it really is a fucking dump.

moving to college in Kingston Upon Thames was a bit of a culture shcok, having my accent mercilessly ribbed by countless Home County soundalikes. Why is it all those Southern saddo's find anybody with a distinctive accent so rib-ticklingly funny?
27 years later and living in Belfast it only takes a brief phone call to Mom to get the Black country inflections back in force.
Although whilst living here I have picked up the great word "wee" as in "I'll do it in a wee minute" which has the great advantage of meaning absolutely anything you want it to mean.
Agree with the above post, Hull is a pretty desperate place, even worse than Wolverhampton was in its late 70's "heyday".

in the Premiership will last for about 6 games if they are lucky. Even Paul Heaton the most famous man from Hull is a Sheffield Utd fan!!!
Talk about sterotyping - Brummies get more than their fair share especially as the Brummie accent is officially deemed as sounding 'Stupid'. Forever associated with Ozzy Osbourne and Jasper Carrott doesnt help our cause a great deal either I guess.
Saw Dark Knight last night and have to see that as good as The Joker was then the make up for Two Face was unbelievably
good. Great movie.

....

I currently live in Slough.

I'm over it, I've moved on from trying to pass it off as "North Windsor" or being "just over the bridge from Eton".

Worked in Windsor for 4 years and shuddered when I had to venture near Slough.

Winner.

The tale of Westhoughton - suburb of Bolton - on Wikipedia.

"The people of Westhoughton are known as "Keawyeds" (cow heads) and the town is known as "Keawyed City". There are two local stories how this name came about. In one tells that in 1815 a celebration was held to mark the end of the Napoleonic Wars and that an ox's head was roasted, which was mounted on a pole and was fought over by two opposing factions in the town. The victors were dubbed "Keaw-Yeds". In another story tells that a farmer in Westhoughton found his cow had got its head stuck in a five barred gate (or fence), and rather than cut the gate, the farmer cut the cow's head off, since the cow cost less than the gate."

Re: a few of the earlier comments - it was only a matter of time before the 'Hull bashing' started...

A few details to correct some of the above postings..

1. We are not and never have been the obesity capital of Britian - this is, I belive, Easington in the North-East (note for Southerners - Hull is NOT in the North-East)
2. The M62 stops some 10 miles west of Hull and so cannot be the best thing to come from Hull. It is perhaps the best thing to come out of Gilberdyke. Or Liverpool.
3. Paul Heaton is not from Hull but chooses to live there. As a child of Sheffield it is refreshing to see him support a home-town club.
4. Hull City's adventure in the Premiership will last longer than 6 games as a season lasts for 38 games and our opening day victory suggests that we may last longer than 1 season.
5. Hull is no worse than many other small cities across the country (eg Coventry, Stoke etc etc).
6. Due to local government re-organisation Hull lost its suburbs to the neighbouring council thus losing the usual middle-class education / health etc achievements that would boost its rankings nationally. Consider how bad most other cities would be if you focussed just on their inner city areas..

Thankyou for listening

A Hull resident about to move out of the city (ahem..)