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The best (and most eccentric) towns across the UK, according to Mark Steel

Since 2009, comedian Mark Steel has travelled across the UK and beyond, exploring weird and wonderful towns, writing a stand-up show about each one (57 so far…and counting), and performing it for the locals and us in Mark Steel’s In Town. As more of us choose to spend our holidays closer to home, we asked Mark to pick his favourite towns from across the UK.

Listen to Mark Steel's in Town

Sometimes I’m asked which of the 57 towns from Mark Steel’s in Town is my favourite, but I can’t answer that. That would be like choosing my favourite child (if I had 57 children). There are two or three that definitely AREN’T my favourite, but I can’t say which one is the absolute best. Here are some of the finest.

Alderney

This is the most remote Channel Island, seven miles from France, and not easy to reach. I went by a 12-seat plane from Guernsey, that seemed like an old flying Ford Anglia.

There are three planes that do this trip, and Alderney people delighted in telling me one has a hole in the roof that the rain comes through.

As there are only 1,200 people on the island, lots of people have two jobs. For example, Trish the pig farmer is also the radiographer. If someone needs an X-ray she has to wash mud off her hands and pop to the room with the machine.

They love the fact that the man who takes your ticket at the airport is also the undertaker.

Hull

Hull was City of Culture in 2017, as it deserved to be.

One way this was celebrated was a machine was installed by the docks, that picked up everything said as anyone walked past it. Those words were then immediately shone in light on a tower a little way down the road.

So of course, thousands of people took turns at swearing into it, joyfully queuing up to go **** **** **** **** **** and giggling as those words were beamed from the tower.

This was dealt with by changing the software, so it didn’t recognise sweary language, and I asked the audience what was the rudest swear word that it would still light up. Without a pause one man shouted “Leeds.”

© Tom Stanier

Barnard Castle

The opening line of this show, recorded in 2015, was “The marvellous thing about Barnard Castle is no one knows you’re here.”

Mark enjoys a stroll at Barnard Castle

At the time this was true. It’s a delightful tiny place in Durham that was proud of nothing happening, except a giant museum that takes up almost the whole town.

There was a protest there, because BT installed a green metal box on the pavement, causing uproar. One woman was quoted in the newspaper, saying “It’s disgusting, you could bump into it if you’re not looking where you’re going.”

So they planned direct action, threatening to “knit a large tea cosy and put it over the top.” But it was announced the following week that “The protest has been called off, as organisers say it could appear too confrontational.”

And then – suddenly it became the hottest news area of 2020, the town famous for being the destination of Dominic Cummings, saying he drove there to test his eyesight..

This time the town responded by replacing some of the local ‘Barnard Castle’ signs, with notices that spelt the town’s name like an eye chart. They seem to be becoming more militant.

CSI Barnard Castle

Is Barnard Castle a hotbed of crime? Not really.

Portland

This is a beautifully dramatic island off the coast of Dorset, with a wonderful island mentality.

Mark samples the famous Melton Mowbray pork pie

It’s strictly forbidden to say the word ‘rabbit’ as it’s considered an awful swear word. I didn’t realise how seriously they took this, so I had a jokey end to the show, in which I’d pretend I was about to get the audience to join in a singalong of ‘Rabbit’, the Chas ‘n’ Dave song. Some of the older people went berserk as if I’d committed an appalling blasphemy. But afterwards one local man of about eighty yelled ‘it’s all nonsense’, went to the piano and played ‘Run Rabbit Run’ while his wife yelled at him ‘stop it, you’ll get us killed’.

Maybe one day they will get a machine that listens to passer-by, and that man will whisper ‘rabbit’ into it, to see his word get beamed from the lighthouse.

The Best of the Rest

Everywhere has something that people identify with. Hundreds of businesses in Hastings are named after the Battle of Hastings, so there’s a 1066 vets, a 1066 judo club and a building firm called William the Concreter.

For a while everyone in Northampton knew the sign outside the hospital that said “Family planning advice – use rear entrance.”

Melton Mowbray is obsessed with pork pies, and one café sells a ‘Melton special breakfast’, which is a pork pie on a piece of wood.

How can anyone pick a favourite?

Take a journey across the UK with Mark Steel’s in Town, with all episodes now available as a podcast. Listen and subscribe now on ±«Óãtv Sounds.

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