TRASHFUTURE - *UNLOCKED* Britainology 25: The North feat. Rob Smith and Kaye Wiggins

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

(The free one will be out later today! In the meantime, please enjoy this unlocked episode of Britainology) This week, Nate and Milo discuss the North-South divide of England with help from two friends of the show--and FT reporters--Rob Smith (@bondhack) and Kaye Wiggins (@kayewiggins). Rob is from Derby (technically not in the North, but presumed to be) and Kaye is from Southport (definitely in the North). We discuss their experiences in the South, the fact that Liverpool and Essex have so much in common, and a guide for international students in the UK that offers a doctrinal definition of Northern Monkeys vs Southern Fairies. Hope you enjoy! Rob and Kaye worked on a piece about financial misadventures in the North that you should check out: https://t.co/YaFREWTHbg?amp=1  

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Britonology, the podcast about Britain and what the fuck is up with it. I'm joined as ever by my co-host, Nate Bazae. Not in room today, because like everyone else in Britain, I have suffered the dreaded cold, but also some other stuff. And so, over abundance of caution, decided to stay home, because I have a fake fake job but our guests have real jobs and I wouldn't get a live with myself if I passed on something that made your lives harder. So I am instead recording from South London, but excited it's still being Britain regardless. Yeah, I also forgot to say my own name, which is my other one, but you probably know that. The reason for this is that I think to describe what I have today as a hangover would be not strictly accurate because

My girlfriend had an art gallery dinner thing last night ended up getting her at four o'clock in the morning And I was wired so I thought I'd had a brainwave which was what if I take some night nurse to knock myself out Unfortunately, I slept really well, but I over corrected and woke up at 2.30 p.m And like I'm still like I feel like I've had a general anaesthetic like my brain is about like four steps behind reality So yeah, it's a great day on which to go Yeah, a highly cerebral episode about regional divides in England. Yeah So we we've brought on our special guests today. If you could introduce yourselves, please.

Hi, I'm Robert Smith, and I've right for the financial times, and I did the green cell episode of Trash Feature over this year, which was really fun. Yes, and I was alerted to the possibility that you might be a good guest for a topic about North South divides when Milo made a smug joke about Darby, and were like, I'm from Darby and you cut yourself off right before you say you can't. And I was like, perfect flawless. Gotta get him back on. And America thinks Darby's in the North, exactly. And yeah, I mean, the Midlands is a whole law unto itself. Exactly. But I've brought along an actual North and a...

Oh yeah. Yeah. Just here for the purposes of being an ordinate. And I think that's all. Anyway, hi, I'm Kay. Wiggins, I also work at the FT with Rob. And Rob told me he was doing a podcast about the North Self-Divide and didn't have any actual North and Earth on the podcast.

So here I am. Yeah, it's a thing that would get us canceled the mill. We could do any other controversial topic as you'd be aware of where it is. It's done. But we get, you know, it's fun. But we get this one wrong and that's it. We're done. To be honest, love robbers I do when Nate said that he'd put this episode and he'd booked

Rob. I was kind of like, I hope he hasn't just booked Rob because I feel like this is going to get us in trouble. Like, no face, face, like face. Like this black guy comes right out. I wanted to bring this up because for most, I think there's two points of entry here. The first is that many Americans

because of the, call it perhaps a femoral popularity of Guy Ritchie films in America in the early 2000s have probably seen, or least a certain subset of Americans have probably seen lock, stock, and two smoking barrels in which stereotypes of the North versus the South are quite pronounced. But that's almost inscrutable to Americans. And then also, I am kind of responsible for this, and if you've ever seen this and rolled your eyes at it, because I used to work in the United States, I worked in media in the

U.S. for a bit, have a bit of my mutuals on Twitter, mostly American. And I shared that show.com video of the guy getting the Wig and Cabab and everyone just would like, well, I don't understand what they're saying even with the subtitles. And us, people started, exactly. And so that happened. That's basically my fault. But I have a slight entry to this from the American side too,

because my dad's whole family is from, not just the South, but from Mississippi. And I had a coworker when I used to work in New York, who was from Louisiana, and she basically had to go to great pains to extorpate her Southern accent because it was sort of like a professional hindrance. And I realized there was kind of an analog to this in the United Kingdom, but perhaps more so

because accent stuff is so, and many other things are so more precisely dialed in here. And so I wanted to sort of bring that in with just talk about if you wanted to sort of introduce this. Like, what is that conception of sort of having to, people who move south for a work of other reasons? Like, does it feel like you're moving to a different country or is it more or less just like, you know,

not as big of a deal as I'm making it out to be? I mean, I'd say, so, Dobby for people who are not aware if we have any American list, there's, is in a place called the East Midlands. It's in like the dead middle of the country. But when I went to Cambridge University, which is an institution you went to as well, by the way. Allegedly.

Allegedly. I suddenly discovered I was from the North. I thought this was ridiculous at first. But then increasingly, it was like, wait a minute. When I realized words like, Cobb, which is a derby term for like a bread roll. Like everywhere in the North has a different, you know, like a smack bomb.

Like a bomb. Like a bomb. Like a bomb or a bomb cake. Yeah. And all of this shit, I'd book bread rolls that like sort of fine wines in the North. That's all about like, the 10-1.

Yeah. But I remember saying like,, I have like a ham cob, and like someone looking at me like I pissed myself or something, like just like what the fuck eat. And then, yeah, it kind of slurred me dawned on me. But the thing I really remember was in the first week of Cambridge, we're doing like, all those awful kind of team building type shit

like pastoral get to know each other things. And there was a session where like they were doing, you know, what was the first album you bought, say something interesting about yourself or that horrible cringe stuff that when you're in fresh as we, you're totally, everyone's wearing capes and masks. Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, so exactly. Eyes wide shut part of it. Yeah. But yeah, they literally said like, right, now we're gonna separate everyone into those from north of Cambridge and those from south or like level with Cambridge. And they should get from B to bring

all of them from the north. Exactly right, I'm sorry if you're from Ely. They did this and it was like 30 people in the room. And I realized at this point, I was like one of four with I'm gonna try and get of four. I think it was someone from Grimsby, someone from Preston, and someone from Ukraine. I was like, she was straight around. She was like, I think it's like North of here, right? And yeah, this was kind of my moment of like, I'm not, I've never considered myself in the North,

but fuck, I am actually from the North in this context of having come to the South. So I had the kind of opposite thing when I went to uni. So I'm from a place called Southport, which is sort of North of Liverpool. And I went to, He's bringing not a port of South. Confusing not South and also not a port.

Yeah. Confusion of the enemy and so is all about. I went to uni, I went to Oxford and I got there and sort of kind of carried this kind of northern thing with me for quite a long time, it's like a feeling out of place in this weird city and like it being something to kind of cling onto and like look for people that you would have something in common with on the basis of, which I realize is like stupid because there's not really very much basis for you know thinking you'd have more income, but it's like a familiarity thing right right? And the college that I chose to go to when I was doing like open days in Oxford, there was like a student doing these sort

of open days and a particular college that I went to Hartford and she told me that it was the college with the highest proportion of students from the north of England in all of Oxford. And I was like, right, well, I mean, look no further. Was it true? Well, I mean, look no further. It's true. Well, I mean, that's a very low bar, right? It's like an extremely low bar. Yeah, we've got three. Exactly.

Because I'm a new creamer. Yeah. We've got an outreach program in Galicia. Teened up with the, the As of Battalion to offer a special masters, you know, the European brain band. Did you befriend any of this? Well, I did, but like, I mean, obviously, that's like not a very good proxy for like, will I be compatible with this person? So like most of the people, I'm like still friends with now that I was at uni with, are probably not from the north, but one of my best mates, from uni is from Yorkshire. And probably the whole

Northern thing actually was like a bit of a thing that sort of helps us, I don't know, pros together. It's interesting, isn't it? Because I feel like there is this very pronounced like kind of thing about like the North and the South, but it's not, it's quite like illusory. Like Britain is so class-ridden, and I think a lot of people have this concept that like people from the North are like working class or whatever, which doesn't bear any relation to reality. Yeah, it's a terrible possibility.

I remember it's a like another thing on like, there'll be kind of being pretty northern, despite not being northern, is like, I have the short A as Cader, so I say glass instead of glass right yeah and I remember growing up I thought everyone who said glass was posh even if they were like the guy Richie Cockney criminal they would sound posh to me because they're less in glass I didn't actually have a conception I just thought that's

what posh people said. Yeah I think that's pretty common in the North. You hear the arthas, arthas, arthas. People go, oh, God. Yeah, exactly. He's a spirit as posh without any, yeah. Yeah. We've got to find out who's a fucking grass. Yeah.

Oh, right. Oh, right. Yeah. Mr. Fancy. Basically, yeah, I'd probably watch Lockstock when I was like a teenager, it was very confused by all these very posh gangsters. Yeah, I thought Stavron must have eaten or something.

Listen, if I don't make it to DIVs in the next 15 minutes, the Latin masters can have my ass. Basically. Yeah, I was, I guess for me, so my mom's from England, that's how I was able to get her passport and move here to work. But my mom moved to America. Her dad was an American airman who was stationed here. So she moved to America when she was a little kid.

So I grew up with some kind of cultural things about it, but not a ton. I mean, I watched some things that she was into that were like British television, but not a ton. And so when I was young, I couldn't really, or even as an probably a young adult, couldn't really tell the difference between regional accents. Now living here, I'm better at it. I can definitely tell when someone's

from greater mercy, so I will call it that. I'm gonna be some extent. Where's the finding in this? Oh, that's just a bit of a stress. Now you get a quiz me on English geography. I know that one time. I need back in it. There was a very, I made the mistake of talking about,

so I don't know if you're familiar with this, but the American rapper Busta Rhymes, his parents are Jamaican, and he's got relatives here, and he's got relatives in America, obviously. And he got in trouble when he was a teenager, like screwing around in school. And I think he went up getting expelled.

So his family's punishment for him was to send him to Morkham to live with his relatives for a couple of years and then he moved back to America. And I made, I guess, out of sort of shorthand, described as like, yeah, I didn't realize Busta Rhymes had this mercy side connection. And everyone's like, that is not fucking mercy side. And like, I got like 15 angry replies

correcting me on the geography. So I'm very wary of. We're more coming. Yeah, more coming. I'm saying it wrong by that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Once again, once again,

foiled by a name pronunciation, this gets me a lot. But yeah, he, I can tell those kinds of accents to some extent now, but beforehand, and I think for a lot of Americans, they can't at all. Like, it's just, okay, people would just build up, you know, kind of blindly refer to them as British accents, and it's like, all right, okay, if it's an English accent, right, you can, you know, discriminate there, but like, it's just more that we can't really hear the difference,

because it, and also most of what we hear on television in movies, et cetera, is gonna be received pronunciation or some kind of really done up sort of, you know, for like a, um, merchandise, every film about like the early 20th century or something like Peaky Blinders, where it's just sort of like, okay, I'm along for the ride, these people talk funny, I'm putting the subtitles on. When I watched Train Spotting for the first time, I had to watch with subtitles, and I realized that's Scottish, but same sort of effect. I don't think Americans are really familiar with how particular it can get,

and that there are these stereotypes attached to it. And also, I think another thing too that really doesn't come across is how London-centric the UK is with regard to professional things. And so that was kind of what I wanted to talk to. Touch on was that, I imagined that for you both, that you went to university in the South,

but then obviously now you're working in London. So there is this sort of, well, I don't know if uprootedness would be the right term, but I'm interested in your experience as sort of like what that's been like because I've known a number of Americans who are from the South who have then gone on to work in the North. And some people hate it and eventually move back, you know, like people who work in finance jobs in New York and then they're like, fuck it, I'm moving to Charlotte because I can't stand this place. But some people wind up just sort of adopting it

and they lose their accents over time. But it seems like that's a way more pronounced thing here to me at least. I was just gonna proper that I used to take a go who was from San Francisco and her mum's friends used to watch a lot of British TV, Peaky Blinders and Down to Naby. They watched Down to Naby with the subtitles on. Absolutely incredible.

Those cut glass pronunciation you can imagine. They're like, what are they saying? Yeah. It can genuinely be a challenge. I've never encountered people who have the reverse problem, like most people it seems that can absolutely understand me when I speak. Some people are more and thralled by it than others,

but I definitely feel like that's up to that thing with Americans is they don't realize, we don't realize how much variety there is, and then how much of a sort of like call it normalizing in a bad way kind of effect. The city, the country being so London centric is in the sense that there is, for my perception at least kind of like a pressure to sort of southerise yourself and I'm interested in your experiences or any kind of reflect on what you have. I think most like normal countries split up all the like powerful things. So you have

politics in one bit, you have finance in another bit, you have the media in another bit. So in like America, you have politics in Washington. You know, you have the movie industry in LA, you have other bits in the media in New York, you have all these different bits. But even in like Europe, obviously in like Germany, you have politics in Berlin and finance in Frankfurt. In the UK, it's all in Berlin.

Yeah, you have the piss, yeah, you in Berlin. You have the piss. Yeah, you in Berlin recently. What? Did you piss me? Sidebar. You haven't been if you didn't get pissed. But yeah, I mean, but like the UK is just fucked in terms of, you know, the politics is in London, the media is in London, like everything is in BBC's in Sulphur.

I mean, you know, the BBC has a token outpost in Sulphur. I think we're becoming too Sulphur-centric in this country. Yeah, I think, in terms of if I did a normal job, I'd probably, I wouldn't want to live in Derby, and I really liked Derby, and it's fun. I'd like growing up there. But I could see myself living in Manchester, or wherever, it's a proper city.

There's a fun thing to do there. But like, if you write for, if you write for, if you're a financial journalist, there's K and I are, there's not really anywhere over the London, you can do that. Like arguably, there should be a lot more financial journalists in the North, even how like all of the most, well, lots of the most interesting stories we've written.

I was writing about an Northern company today. It's the North England, like Hutt Group, EG Group, all these. We still had a big office in Washington, right? Yeah, in Washington. Like, so maybe we should decamp and separate. Oh, you're right. We, that should, that should be more FT jealous in, in the North. But like, there's not because of the London, you know, it's time for the FT

Birkenh head office. Oh, yes. And so I think. Yeah, it's interesting for me because I'm from Indianapolis, but there's just no way I would want to move back for a variety of reasons for what I'm doing. And also just because it's in Indianapolis, it's the most boring city on the planet. But Chicago was about as far from Indianapolis, I believe, as Liverpool is from London, maybe a little further.

And so Chicago is sort of like the regional center that hovers up people who want to have those kinds of professional jobs in not, I mean, and I'm not trying to be pretentious about So Chicago is sort of like the regional center that hovers up people who want to have those kinds of professional jobs and not, I mean, and I'm not trying to be pretentious about kind of more perocule cities. So Chicago is kind of like you've got world, like other world class cities stuff going on there, like people get sent there internationally, that kind of thing. Whereas Indianapolis, unless you work for some kind of car racing thing or you really, really just want to live in a city with a perfect grid, you're not going to like move to America to move to India now.

I take that back, if you work for pharmaceutical companies maybe. But it's interesting to me though, because yeah, like you just said, Britain has this kind of unipolar nature. The US is huge and you've got these like regional centers and sort of regional elites within them. And so, you know, people who are in the West Coast tend to migrate towards the Bay Area, or to Los Angeles, or to Seattle these days.

Like you said, in the North, you've got, in the Northeast, you've migrate towards the Bay Area or to Los Angeles or to Seattle these days. Like you said, in the North, you've got, in the Northeast, you've got New York, you've got Boston, you've got DC for various things. I guess for me, being from the Midwest, I never had anybody. There's never any weirdness, like even working in New York in a place where, for example, you may have encountered this East Coast people have a different accent than the Midwest or an English accent. I might sound like CNN broadcasters speak, but people in New York, they do talk in a suddenly

different way, but there's no pressure to change your accent really. However, if you're from the South, people assume you're an idiot if you don't change your accent. I was wondering, is that the same kind of thing here? Do you feel as though there's, and not to ham up any kind of notion of that, I was wondering, is that the same kind of thing here? Do you feel as though there's, and not to like, like, ham up any kind of notion of that? It's just, I'm wondering from your own experience, like, have you felt as though that is a thing where,

like, there's this pressure to sound Southern, to act Southern, that kind of a thing? Well, I was chatting to an American friend of us about accents and sort of what they make of the North South of life. It's probably worth at this point reading out what they said which was... Case made notes and like, come to a pair. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where the audience have phenomenal. Well, I'm really sure to do this, which was, I was asking what they think of the North

South of life, the response was, I have no concept of it. The Northern's are meant to be nicer. That's all I think I know. but they sound funny and therefore the job prospects are limited, question mark! It's Britain everyone's job prospects are limited. So it's a wonderful like Victorian anthropologist feel guide. Wearing gas and helmet. Yeah, this is like a bridge, yeah, explorer on the the soil and islands in the 1850s or something like that. It's nothing to do with like trying to wash away my accent, but I'm notorious for like

just kind of being very malleable with my accent. So like my partner's Canadian and I remember when we first started going out, I like kind of picked up a Canadian accent. But like, I remember like at Cambridge, like by the time I finished there, I'd go home and like all my friends in Derby would like take the piss out of me. As they said, like, oh, you know, you really posh now or the usual shit. But then one of my mates there, he was like, this person was not like posh, he was just like a normal person from the South to be clear.

He started like doing an impression of me and it was literally like a Monty Python style for Yorkshiremen like, oh yeah, madame, all this. And I was like, oh, sorry, who are you doing an impression of? And he was like, you, that's how you talk. And I was like, is this just incredibly bizarre out of body experience? I was like, do I talk? Yeah, I was going to say, because I don't. Until I found out that you from Derby, I wouldn't have picked you out as not being Southern at all. I mean, I used to talk a little bit more like this when I was growing up. And if I was in a pub in Derby around those, particularly if I was in a smoking area in Derby,

like this is the big North South difference, I think, eventually is like, if you're in a club in the North, like everyone fucking talks in the smoking area, like a lot horrifying. To the extent like I basically became a cigarette addict because of this, because it was just like really fun, socializing in that.

But like if I was there, I'd naturally just become more- An orthosponsored by Philip Morris. Exactly. I don't know if you felt like when you go back home, you'd be there. Definitely that malleable thing, like completely like when I bring my dad now I still have all

my mom like I still have a very different accent than I would have on like phone call for work typically I get a good year right much more like yeah I get a good year right you know like it's just a very I would never bring a work contact I would say you have that I grew up in Essex and you would not guess, I don't think, but I mean, like my, I mean, one of my siblings was in the States, so she sounds kind of mid-Atlantic in a weird way, but like my other siblings are like very sort of that kind of northeast London Essexy sounding accent. My brother sounds like a guy Richie Carrick. We had, we had my brother on for an episode.

He's on the city, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And one of our patrons was like, I didn't realize that accent was real. I thought they made it up for movies. Yeah. And it's like, no, no, no, that's how we talk. Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, my name is 4 foot 7 and just like on Ironically says, I'm like, no, you're having a bath and yeah.

Like that is, you know, and somehow this is produced me, but I think, yeah, when I'm around them, I probably talk differently. Yeah, your brother was like a wonderful time caption of the old city when people, like those Essex market, they would have been market traders but they happened to get a job broken 4x or whatever. Like it was very, yeah, captured that vibe. I mean, I noticed at home as well,

my, my, because my, when my grandfather was still alive, when my dad was around him, his Mississippi accent would come my, because my, when my grandfather was still alive, when my dad was around him, his Mississippi accent would come out way more strongly, because my grandfather was born in the Mississippi Delta in like 1929, and he, he told a lot of the guy from the South, and when he was talking, Mike Tell's story is about going down swimming pool,

like that, it's very, very much like, oh brother, where are the 100%? That's what he sounded like. And that, that's not even really like people who are from there now. It's not quite as pronounced anymore. It's just stuff's gotten flattened over time. But I noticed that too that I was always, you know, as a kid, you're always kind of like observing the way your parents act around

their parents or around other adults. And I noticed my dad's other accent would come out more. And I've even noticed it when I first came here and visit here for work, I would pick up on not not the accent. So much as like the intonation. The way you would ask questions, for example, like, oh, are you gonna go home after work then? That kind of thing, kind of raising your voice at the end of the question that's not really the way Americans talk. And, but the longer I've lived here,

the less I do that now for some reason. I use more Britishisms, but there's also sort of like weird, defiant Americanness, I guess, where I'm like, no, I'm gonna talk like a guy from Indiana forever. And I, but at the same time though, I think I'm kind of, and I think a Canadian's too, like North Americans in general,

we're kind of granted that latitude in a way because our accent is just sort of like, oh, it's just this thing that it's inscrutable perhaps or it just, it doesn't mark any one thing or another unless you talk like Brooklyn Guido guy, which my old landlord who I'm friends with was here for business recently. And I was talking to my wife after he and I went out

and got dinner and she was just like, you're talking like a Brooklyn guy, what's going on? And it's like, yeah, just being around him, I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm gonna get some coffee, that kind of a thing. Like, it does happen. But for us at least for, you know,

ex-pat Anglophone people, I guess. There's not really a pressure to, like, for go that. If anything, people are just sort of, I mean, my impression is, you're kind of like tickled by it. Like, oh, you say funny American things. Like, aha, isn't that funny? I think this is supposed to be a good time to mention the time that Nate and I went to

Liverpool to do a video job. Oh, God. You mentioned this on one of your other podcasts, right? Did they were really awful? They were like, yeah, Oh, you mentioned this on one of your other podcasts, right? Did they were really awful? They were like, yeah, they hate you basically. Which is an ever-nate. I haven't heard this.

Whatever, Nate would. We'd get in a cab or whatever. And if Nate did the talking, everyone would be perfectly polite. And as soon as I started talking, I feel like fucking shoddened, const. Like, straight 100%. Well, I could ask the exact same question. Like, oh, you're American.

That kind of a thing. And then they'd say, This guy from the highland, the only thing I remember that I could ask the exact same question, like, oh, yeah, I'm American. That kind of a thing. And then they say, oh, it's the guy from the highland. Seriously, look, man. I think the only thing I remember that I could even pronounce correctly in a Liverpool accent was I remember asking the guy, and he's like, oh, yeah, there's a car park in the back. And I was just like, do you speak English? Well, weird.

What do you say that you speak English? So one of my good friends from uni is from Essex. Oh, you like? Or she's from like Woodford. So one of my good friends from uni is from Essex. She's from like Woodford. So that's new me. Yeah, anyway, yeah, kind of is. Yeah, anyway, I took her out clubbing in Liverpool once a long time ago and some Scouse bloke was trying to chire up

in this club and she wasn't particularly interested, let's say, anyway, she'd literally turned around to him and said, excuse me, are you speaking English to me? He walked away pretty quickly. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I mostly understood what people were saying, but for example, when the cabbie who was smoking in the cab was not particularly interested in taking us as a fair unless we paid cash, he was definitely like, how do you describe this?

More amenable to compromise with me versus when Miles started talking to him. He was just like, a f**k off. And it's just, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, He's next to the nearest magnetic point the naked TV accent which happens to be Glasgow. Yeah, well that's the thing too, there are those finer points of accents

that the only time I can ever imitate something correctly is if I've heard someone say it who has that accent and it's made such an impression on me and I guess with Northern ones it's just much harder. But yeah, I did feel like Milo, you were kind of less welcome there than I was. But at the same time, you were right. People, I do think that the broader stereotype was pretty true.

People were really friendly. They were perhaps chatier. It didn't seem as, well, obviously, one is a huge city. It's just like America, people, if you come and you visit the United States, and be like, God, Americans are so unfriendly, I only visited Midtown then had. It's like, yes, you might get that impression. But I did find that, yeah, it did seem like it was things were friendly. And people that I know who are from America, for example, who have lived here, lived in the North have said the same thing that that it's that that culturally there are some big differences. And so I was sort of wondering.

Yeah, I like definitely had to get warned when I moved to London, like not to start conversations on public transport with people. Like that's not okay. That is so true. I remember like back in Derby, like public track, well the big difference public transport is it's really fucking expensive anywhere out of the London.

Yeah, that's what's wine. Yeah, like you get a bus in London for 150, but as soon as you're outside London, it's like two quids, three quids. Well, this is the thing, so like our bus into town, as we call it, like get a bus in London for 150, but as soon as you're outside London, it's like two quids, three quids. Well, this is the thing. So like, I'll bus into town, as we call it. Like, so I lived in the suburbs, you didn't say like, oh, BCC, he said to you, just said, oh, going to town. But like, there was a different rate for every, like, bit right, and it was like three pound 50 to drive like 20 minutes down the road,

right? You had this conversation with the bus driver, like, oh, I'm going to town, please, oh, yeah, 350. And when you got off the bus, you always said, like, oh, thanks mate, cheers mate. I remember the first time I'm getting a bus in London, and I didn't realize it was a flat rate, like, you just tapped your oyster right. So, like, I don't have a conversation, like, oh, yeah, I'm just going to like, Kings Cross, and like, this guy's like, look at me, like, why the fuck are you talking about? And then, like, I tried to say say like, oh, and this is before the Boris buses with the bits you could, I tried to go out the front seller, oh, but he's like, no, not that door, like,

I'm like, okay, so you don't talk to the driver, you don't exit by the driver and say, yeah, so it's like, deprogramming myself from lightness on public transport. We've been ready for COVID for a long time, and it's our spiritual saving being. It's kind of the same thing in New York that, I mean, I lived in New York for four years, and it's basically, yeah, you don't really

start conversations, but if there's, call it this, if there's a good reason to people do, and it's not really considered weird, it's just like, there's the sort of, hey, how are you doing kind of making conversation? People don't do that, but like, if something happens, people will talk to each other or like, there's a call it a slight like jokingness about it. And here it does seem like it's far more rigidly enforced that you just don't. And so I wonder

sometimes if a lot of American stereotypes of call it England in, you know, at large are just based on their experiences in dealing with Londoners and they just presume that everywhere in this country is like that. And that it's actually like even people who are from England are taken aback by it being call it more hostile or just more closed off. Because that's definitely, I don't know, that's definitely a stereotype that Americans have of England in general that people are introverted, that they're very not forthcoming, that people are reserved.

They've clearly never taken the tube at exactly 11.01 p.m. on a Friday night when it's like it stops being quiet business and starts being sweet Caroline and just bottles being swirled everywhere. Slightly different than New York, but it's that way. But yeah, I do wonder sometimes if like that conception, like American stereotypes have written are basically based on their grandparents or grandfathers who were stationed

here after the war and like people's tourist experiences in just London. When I was a student, I used to quite often get the last central line home to Essex and the shit you would see was in code. There was a lot of, you know, yeah, sweet Caroline, very drunk, people, whatever, but I remember just think the one night being on the last tube and everyone, like everyone on this tube is absolutely hammered, but there's one guy who is so drunk that every time the train stops, he falls over. And another guy, every seat is taken, and another guy who is so drunk that he can't really talk gets up and is like, man, you should sit down. And then if so, he's like, white knuckling the bowl.

That's amazing. Like the higher up you're drunk in this. Did you ever see that video that was like the sadder everyone shared it with that guy? Pist that was mine offering everyone else Coke. I'm the sh**. No. Alright, it was amazing. He was clearly like some worked in finance,

but like kind of back office finance. So back office means you do like the more administrative stuff in the bank, so you make like a great salary by normal person standards. Yeah, yeah. But you know, a bit like your brother would have been like all those years ago. But yeah, he was like pissed out with my done the tube

and he like pulls out a wrap of cake. And he starts like offering it to like everyone. And he says something amazing, like, if you're not here to fuck around, like, you don't have to do it. But he's been like polite and aggressive at the same time. He's polite to offer first, isn't it? Before you eat that.

Exactly. I presume that doesn't take place in, in Derby, you know, it's awkward. That's, I mean, that's another thing, like the Coke is a very London thing and like, so I mean, not saying as an F.D. employee, not saying whether I've ever partaken in illegal drugs. Your capacity is in my company. Is it?

Is it? I remember. So when I was going up, I used to go out in Sheffield along, which isn't an off because it was like the nearest big club city. It was like 40 minutes on the trade. And like everyone did pills, like everyone did XC. And it was like really high quality. It was like, you know, one pound a pill or something like that. But like no one did fucking cocaine because it's like, it's northern prices, isn't it? No, but then, the last thing like cocaine's like really

expensive and the effects last half an hour. So like the value conscious northern customer. It's an interesting business. Is it start lost forever? Yeah. Yeah. This is similar experience as a Midwesterner. I didn't I never saw it until I mean until I was not prepared for how ubiquitous it is in the United Kingdom.

But until I moved to New York, like I didn't know people who use drugs like that, socially or casually even, because it was just so uncommon. Whereas everyone in the Midwest knew someone who had the crawl space in their attic had a huge bag of weed in it or something like that. The drinking problem that Midwesterners have is comparable to the English relationship with alcohol, even if all of America is not. But yeah, I did kind of wonder about that kind of a thing to like, are there culture shock things going out socially or at work where you're just sort of like,

you were confused by a thing that didn't seem to confuse anybody else? As an actual norvener, okay, I feel like you should say something because I've been taking it all. So the thing is, it's been so long that I've lived in the South that I'm like one of these. You've assimilated. You've assimilated, yes, and I...

There's definitely like terms of phrase, and I'm definitely like words that I've used to describe such people, and they just look to me like, sorry, you're suggesting, what is this? Like, I'm trying to think if there's any... I think the thing I have done is started conversations on public transport, and people have been like, no, no, no, no, do not do that. Ever, like, is this... Or do you bring that thing where we were talking about in the office, that cultural... Oh, I so, in my, in my...

It's good to... It's good to... ...to do research. So, I found on the internet a publication that is, I think, designed for like international students in the UK. And it explains to them the differences between the north and the south. Oh, it's amazing. It says, there is no denying that people who live in the north of the UK have very different characteristics from those living in the south. It's the pit cell maker. are very different characteristics from those living in the South. It's the pit-fell making.

It speaks better than any. Which leads to intense rivalry between the two. It tends rivalry. Northerners accuse Southerners, especially Londoners, of being Southern Ferrys. LAUGHTER This is the Garth Ritchie, mate. It's means they think that people from the South don't know what honest days work me and spend too much time in wine bars.

Yeah, I would think it's really a southerners on the other hand, prefer to people from the North as inverted commas, northern monkeys, which means they think northerners are uncultured. It doesn't include Ukrainians, that's the real... That's the real question. Where is that on the axis? Yeah, they then also on this website says you may also want to read at the bottom. We do bettube. Number one, the lowdown on Brits and their teeth.

What? Oh wow. We do bettory. Number one, the lowdown on Brits, I'm their teeth. What? Oh wow. That's a bettory. Why do Brits call strangers love deer or duck? Which is genuine. Yeah, we used to say duck. Duck and duck, I used to say a million things.

I say A up, that means hello. Yeah, duck. So I say A up, midduck. I didn't realise A up and midduck came that far south. Yeah, I mean, because it's a Yorkshire thing basically. Cause I say duck more with the North West, like Lancashire and A up more with Yorkshire, but maybe that's. But there's a lot of cross-sabesied like,

particularly Yorkshire and Darbyshire, cause they do border-ish have a lot of crossover. Do you remember that? It became really popular because it was an on-tip monkey song called Mardi Bum. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Mardi is a word I use to an on-tip monkey song called Mardi Bum. Oh yeah yeah yeah. Mardi is a word I used to sing along to the acit monkey without doing the voice can you? But this is the thing so Mardi kind of means moody but it means like more aggressively like

someone who's like, we say that in the south as well. Yeah, but I remember like no one really knew about it in the south until the Octo Monkey song. Like, yeah. So this is something actually that I thought was quite interesting when Nate was asking you and Kate about that kind of like culture differences or like phrases and things like that, is I think that that kind of particular London and sort of Essexie type speech is also very different from other kinds of speech and sometimes has more overlap

with the North or like more just like weird stuff that other people in the South also wouldn't know. Like I often come out with like Cockney phrases that people like. Well, people like posh people just stamedfully call it estuary English, don't they? Yeah, yeah. Like they look down upon it as well. Yeah, and so things like Mardi, I can remember people saying like yeah in the Essex when we were like young teenagers, like, yeah, like pre-Arctic monkeys, but I think that's more likely to be like an Essex thing

than it is like a, I think they would say in Oxfordshire. I would spend on a stagdew with like 15 people for Essex. Oh my God. I'm sitting in your life. No, but this thing is actually like the most fun I've ever had in my life. It was brilliant, but yeah, there were like two non-SX people there of which I was one. And yeah, it was great.

Yeah. I sometimes do you think that Essex is sort of like an enclave of the North and the South? I think Essex and Liverpool have got a lot in common. Yeah. As someone who has, well, I've never lived in Liverpool. I live in a city that I would go to the most as a teenager. So Liverpool's like, I don't know, it's pretty close. It's pretty close itself, but probably technically not the near.

I think probably Preston is technically the nearest city, but like, I never went to Preston. If you were up in Southport, you go to Liverpool on your weekends. No one's going to Preston, they're going to be very well, although that's not... Not I think. No. So, I'm pretty pressing.

I wrote the word Preston in a story today. So, it might be in the FD tomorrow, if it doesn't get edited out by the ordinary boys. Anyway, when I would go out in Essex, and when I lived in Essex for a few, I immediately after finished uni, I lived in Woodford. She was doing research for that, South Divide advice column. You failed to mention you wrote that. Yeah, it was there. Anyway, yeah, it was really similar, right? To Liverpool, there's so much you can go to a club in Essex. Everyone looks the same as the people in Liverpool and not a very specific look. And it's like having been

clubbing in Oxford at uni, you basically go clubbing in like jeans and flat shoes, and it's like a very different world. And then you've been sort of gone from Liverpool where it was like you were like a body con dress and a pair of stilettos and some fake tits. I had your hair rollers in all day. Now I actually have done that several times,

you know, all day roller thing. But you're just going to a shop in Liverpool with rolls in your hair, like no, really no one bats. Yeah, that's all they roll the thing. Yeah, we just, you're going to a shop in Liverpool, we're rolling here, like, no, we're really no one bats on eyelids. They'd be more surprised sometimes if you didn't have rolls in your hair. I was the first I went to Liverpool with my cousin did a PhD in Liverpool and we went up to visit him.

And we're just like hanging out there during the day and just how walking around the town centre and there were like almost everyone that you saw was out and it was on Saturday. We've had a role in pajamas. Yeah, they do that. They do, they're here. Yeah.

I thought that was like a joke as well because it was once they had there's this brief Liverpool reality TV thing. A common was called. It was like an early like only way is Essex thing but about it, isn't it? And it's great gimmick was that they all had their role as in. Well, this passed me bad. And I just thought it was invented for the show until... No, no, it's very much a real thing.

I wouldn't have believed that was real. You would say it was real. I would think it was some sort of like Pat Barker's Union Street slash some kind of really grim soap opera. If you want your hair curl to stay in all night and you've got to have them rollers in all day. It's funny that you should mention that

though with the sort of the day rigor outfit that you would wear because when my little and I went up to the reveal for the video shoot we did, we got notified kind of late on, it was on a Saturday night. We thought we needed to meet them on Sunday afternoon and we were going to leave early Sunday morning and then it turned out they wanted to meet us on Sunday morning. So we had to get up there ASAP. And so we left London at like 8.30 or 9.00 pm. We didn't get to our hotel and Liverpool told us about three in the morning.

So three in the morning on a Saturday night, you can imagine our hotel was right near the docks. It was in like some, it looked like a club in the hotel. Like in the hotel. Like in the hotel. And the hotel looked like it was, you know, it would feature in like a photo of the Titanic being Christian or something like that.

And the nightclub, when we went to go get our keys, there were people standing around who were getting ready to leave, there were guys outside, having three A.M. take-aways and stuff like that. And there were women who were, I'm 37, there were women who were probably about my age in what I would describe as leather saran wrap, but as little as possible.

It was November, it was, it was, it was right before, remember, it's Sunday, and they were wearing poppies. And I was just like, I have gone to a different country. The last we forget song is a powerful. And I just remember thinking to myself, like, all right, like there was culture shock when I went to London for the first time, but this is something completely different.

I remember the culture shock of, so I actually think interesting and interesting vein here is that London and not London is probably like the biggest divide. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but I remember when I moved to London and like obviously like all scumbags moved to like East London like a decade ago, like near Dolston. What do you think that's where our office is? Yeah.

But yeah, I remember I was like, why are all the girls wearing like jeans and converse and not like a single shred of fabric? And like, it was like very disconcerting. And then now when I go back to Derby, I feel like a bit disturbed away. I'm like, why all these 18 year olds like falling around in the street, wearing absolutely no clothes?

It's like, I think that's one of the biggest differences in London and anywhere else. No, I completely agree. And that's very, yeah, that is very Essex's as well as you were saying. Yeah, if you go on a night out in like Brentwood or somewhere, like it will just be exactly like, like if you take away the accents, it could be a picture from Newcastle or anywhere in the North. That's what I loved about the only way Essex was the had all, it was the sugar hut, wasn't

it? Yeah, yeah. It was a bit like, you know, like in Scarface, the only Montana is like, yeah, the club, like they had the big wig in the sugar hut, like surrounded by it. And the decor is so, it's like a powerful energy, the decor in those S6 night clubs. Yeah, like a corn, that kind of,

like a conception of what luxury is. So it's defined entirely by a guy called Gavin who has two ice white ranger overs. Yeah. It's like, it's like that thing about how people say Trump is a poor, poor person's idea of what a rich person is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like gold lift.

The gold lift, yeah, it's like that kind of vibe, isn't it? Oh yeah. I remember when I was at school, there was a guy I was at school with, extremely Essex family, and his, his mum's family were actually like proper wrongs. They were like notorious local criminals. And, but his dad's family were like sort of quite wealthy there, this like railway engineering company. But they were like proper rough, nevertheless.

But like kind of, they tried to sort of, his dad always tried to put over this kind of like hard man image, even though he was just a guy who like laid railway track for a living and had like millions of pounds. And I remember like, he always had like, the biggest Mercedes S class you could get with like a TV in every surface. And it was all like very, they had this house, which I think had originally been pebbled ash.

It was like a detached detached but like kind of, because Harlow's a new town, you'd have a lot of houses that were built that weren't council houses, but they were very much built in the same style. It was like a bigger detached house, but it still looked like a council house in that kind of like pebble dash, gray PVC windows. And they'd renovated it and put this like fake Roman colonnade porch on it and an indoor pool. It was massive, but it looked like a Chernobyl council house. I can remember once this kid's birthday party and we're all there having a sleepover and we're going out to pizza hut for dinner. So we all get in the back of his dad's fucking merch or whatever it was. And then while we're sitting in the back of the car waiting for some of the other kids to get in,

his dad turns around and some reason addresses this to me and looks me dead in the eye and goes, do you know I've got the entire collection of Ray Winston films? And I'm just like, right. And then he goes, my personal favorite is scum. Like that, saying. It's just stuck with me all these years.

If Nate hasn't seen scum, it's probably essential. I have not, but I've always owned it. Oh, it's, well, I mean, he's like a teenager in it. I think it's pretty young. It's like one of his early ones. It's set in a Bore Stull, which I don't know if Nate knows what a Bore Stull is like a young offender. Yeah.

Like kind of, it's like something between a prison and a high security boarding school. Yeah. It was like, I don't know, maybe they're introduced by Thacher or probably early in actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, it was like a Venn diagram

of school in prison and something in the middle of that. So it bore us to like B-O-R-S-T-A-L. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like I've seen that word before and I've just glossed over it and not realized what it actually meant.

This has happened to me before Milo was talking or somebody was talking about hearing something over the Tanoi and I was like, what? Is that how it was? Did it hurt? No, it's not. We say sciatanoi.

Well, that's your main public address system. Tanoi is a broad name. Okay. Yeah. That's Kistaro, Adam Parchu. That is Adam Parchu. Okay, Kistaro, but would welcome the Tanor, right? I would encourage them to go further by using the correct generic term to make it more understandable

to a wider pool of photos. That is an interesting dynamic though that you've set forth here that like perhaps one of the bigger divides is London versus not London and London as opposed to North versus South. And I realized now, I haven't really spent that much time outside of London in the South. I mean, I went during the general election between 19. I went, I went canvassing in Peterborough and in Crawley. And then my wife and I went to Bath

like a couple of weeks ago. And I've been to Bristol obviously for Trashutra shows, but Bristol seems like Bath like a couple of weeks ago. And I've been to Bristol obviously for Trashy to show. But Bristol seems like it's own sort of weird universe. Other than Milo has taken, when we did Vox Pop videos for this Russian comedy show, we went to Woking and Tundbridge Wells. And there's nothing worse than towns in the home counties.

There was nothing more believed. They just felt like slower, slightly grim or London. They didn't feel like massively culturally different. But then you guys describing stuff in Oxford and Cambridge, and I could imagine, I don't know, like parts of Essex perhaps, yeah, I can imagine, yeah, like it genuinely might feel different. I feel like they're divided,

like there's definitely like a, it's not just London versus everywhere else, right? It's like London and quite a big chunk of the selfie for the big ones. Not necessarily in calculus, maybe. that's like a big theory, but where the North South divide actually is, and whether you should understand it by just drawing a horizontal line across a map

across the middle of the country. We go through Cromford, which is a dumber show. We go through it. Oh, whether it runs from the seven to the humbous, so like, that kind of cool thing. Yeah, because Wolverhampton's not very far north, but it feels kind of more and more and more than it does something.

Loads of like East Anglia is actually or like North. Yeah, like North. It's like North. It's like North. It's actually really far north. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, cause it's just near. You're actually, but North.

But then you've got somewhere like Pee-Sabre, which is like not in the South, not in the North, not in the Midlands, but it's just, it's just near you. But North, you've got somewhere like peace, which is like not in the South, not in the North, not in the Midlands, but it's just, it's just fucking Mordor. Well, that's the only way. There's a reason to go there. Having gone there, I'm normally one of these people who would be like, oh, Milo's being too harsh, but no, I agree. Well, I think this is taking it a bit too potentially far, perhaps, but this is a belief of mine.

Yeah. I believe the, like, the the London not London thing explains Brexit because London was super in favor of like staying in the EU and all these people from London were saying, it's gonna be terrible if we leave the EU. And everyone not in London was like, well, if these fucking London cunts are saying it's gonna be damaging to them,

we might as well go with it, because wildlife's not great. I remember my dad ringing me like the week before the Brexit referendum and being like, everyone I know is voting leaf. Yeah. And I was like, well, that's it then, right? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, when he knows a lot of people, he's one of those guys who knows everyone in the town that he lives in.

They call him Ipsosmori. I honestly, I mean, I know it's been such a belabored comparison, but I feel like there's a similar vibe with people voting Trump in America in 2016 in a sense that there was this notion of like, because the people that, I mean, I'm from a, I'm from a red state. I'm from a state so red that aside from a

weird and I honestly think you could say spillover reflect from Chicago. Indiana voted for Obama and it was the first time in 2008. It was the first time that Indiana had a voted for a democratic presidential candidate since the Civil Rights Act and that is not a coincidence. And they only voted for Obama by like a margin of like a five figure margin, like a low five figure one. Um, and obviously in, uh, 2004 that went super hard for bush in 2012 that went hard for Romney and, and, and super hard for Trump, like extremely hard for Trump, you know, you had a, a state where the unemployment rate was so low in 2016 that they were, uh, contacting homeless shelters and nearby states to try to get people to towns like Terahot to work in like, you know, what you call caravan factories,

like making recreational vehicles because there was no, like they couldn't find workers, but people still, you know, very aggressively voted for Trump. And there was a part of me that was sort of like, is it because so many people who these people hate are on TV being like, this would be the worst thing that ever happened to me. And it's exactly like this.

It was like, yeah. Yeah, and then their response is like, well, I'd love to make that person unhappy and owning the lips. But this is the thing as well. It's like, even remember like we all knew Brexit was gonna happen because Sunderland voted Brexit, even though they had a Nissan factory,

there was a similar thing in Derby. We have a toy, we actually have like, manufacturing in Derby. So there's a Toyota factory, a Bombardier factory, and a Rolls-Royce factory, but it's in the jet engines, not it's in the cars. And like, Derby narrowly voted in favor of Brexit. It was like 51 or something like that.

Even though like Toyota is the biggest employer and Toyota had said something which they, it was a bit of a threat, like I don't think they've followed through with it, but they said like we would leave Derby potentially if it voted if we voted leave. Yeah. To own the Londoners like the harby still voted Brexit. Yeah, I don't think people really, what I've had to come to terms

with in the last 10 years is that people don't vote with any concept of their own self interest in mind. No, really based on superficial aesthetic choices. I think, I'm sorry, I think the really important thing about the Brexit vote in the North, especially, is that like, okay, so there's lots of people in the North of England who would have this very instinctive kind of like tribal thing about like not voting for the Tories. Yeah. Right. And like lots of those people voted Brexit. Yeah. And then like, what has changed since then is that when then the Conservatives then ran in 2019 on get Brexit done, it, like, what has changed since then is that when the Conservatives then ran in 2019 on Get Brexit done, it was like, well, hang on, we've invested in this project. We've voted Brexit.

And so now we're going to vote for the party that says Get Brexit done, in a way that like, you know, they're sort of already so bought into that project now that for the first time in like, the history of their families, they would actually vote for the tourists because they've already taken a sort of half step towards doing so by voting Brexit. Yeah. I think that's so interesting. So it was like a gateway drug. Exactly.

Exactly. Well, I think that's interesting because I think it's kind of again, it takes us back to Essex because I think it's like the Essexification of the North where what happened to Essex 20 years ago sort of happening to the North now? Because like there were so many, like I mean, like Harlow, like where I grew up, it's the town almost entirely of little geasers descended from East End Cockneys, right?

And they're like families that were, yeah, they were East End Cockneys. They were like tri-bully labor, like they would never vote anything other than labor, but like by like the mid 90s, they were almost all voting Tory. It was right to buy, wasn't it? Have you ever bought that?

Council houses. They're voting Tory, but they're still like, yeah, it's still working class. Like, yeah, it's working class landlords. Is that that thing? That's a familiar refrain on trash shooters. I was talking about the Metropolitan Elite barista versus the working class by the let landlord.

Yeah, oh man. And that's that, I definitely think there are parallels there. And it's weird because when I think about that phenomenon, I do think that I remember us in 2019 having people on who made the prediction that, you know, people in the North would vote labor regardless. And they, they basically the argument being put forth kind of sounded to me like, well,

voters in the South are more fickle and Brexit's more important to them. They'll absolutely not vote labor if labor doesn't support a second referendum, but the North, they're gonna vote labor regardless because they just couldn't ever count and it's voting for the Tories. And it's like from what I could tell,

it seemed like a lot that those people did exist. They just didn't vote at all. And if they didn't vote at Tories, they just didn't vote at all. And you look at some of these places like, my mind is drawing blank for Dennis Skinner's constituents. Also, if you looked at the vote counts from 2019 versus 2017, it was a significant decrease, like double digit percentage decrease, so people just didn't vote. And I remember thinking, I was like,

ah, well, they definitely put forth that theory and it definitely seems like it was wrong. And now we live in complete hell. What do you mean now? Well, perhaps more so than before. But it's like, how have they break in that link forever now as well? I wonder. I have seen polling recently that seemed to indicate that the Tories were actually doing

quite poorly in what they called red wall seats. And there was in terms of current intentions. I love Kastana. They saw it. And they saw it revising that shock. And they were like, is it alright? But there is a part of me that wonders, are there there been, you know, are there people who are like, well, Brexit has in fact happened,

and so now we don't have to vote Tori anymore. But I'm wondering, I guess the last question I had for you was one of the phenomena that we've talked about a bit and we've tried to explore on the show has been this conception that I think you were touching on this previously, that the North is uniformly working class, uniformly guys with Whip It's in Flatcaps, is full of gravy for some reason.

And the black caps are full of gravy. The black caps are full of gravy. The black caps are carrying the black caps. And he's also carrying a wizard with a smacks of bomb. And there's also the point, the two points that people have, who are from the North that have been on the show, and people that we talk to have tried to make is number one that there are, in fact, wealthy, Tory constituencies in the North, that's point number one and point number two is that a lot of these places, their voting patterns,

don't just reflect some sort of, like, curmudgeonly attitude towards hating, hating multiculturalism, but rather that, like, young people have left to go to cities for jobs. And you know, that's why, and you can see it, where I live, I live in Peckham, and in our constituency, you know, even in 2019, you had, you know, five's why, and you can see it, where I live, I live in Peckham, and in our constituency, you know, even in 2019, you had, you know, five figure majorities for labor.

And it's like, what you think about if you have a system in which, you know, those what's effectively don't count past the majority, then it doesn't surprise me that if, you know, a lot, there's an exodus of young people leaving for London, but also leaving for Manchester, or leaving for, I believe there is kind of a draw, like a pull effect in bigger cities

too, places like Sheffield and Liverpool and I don't want to sound like a, for 10-time an expert when I'm not. I'm wondering, what is your take on that, on that sort of like, the perception of the North as this place where everyone is that, you know, maybe take out the gravy, but flat-capping and with at least in the caricature. The gravy is real. You have chips and gravy on the other hand. There is gravy. We have to make sure you understand that. Yeah, never night. You have chips, cheese and gravy. It's the cheese. I think the front-southerners there and the gravy.

It's not the... Combination of gravy for cheese. It's both fine. It's dobby. You often have chips, cheese and gravy. What, curry sauce? Curry sauce, I wouldn't combine. I really know That's gonna piss off the Indians just really

Anyway, I was gonna say oh yeah, what do you make of this thing about everyone? Everybody's asking us something sensible The North is your chip order. Let's go Yeah, we can just send into creepy just say we can talk about the map. We're really like wrap up actually, but we should do we should do like just final thoughts really. I think that's you don't get. So you did this episode on like posh posh it was basically right. Yeah. And like you don't really that are like wealthy places in the north of England. There are like Toreca situances and you don't get that like absolute posh-o thing that you did, that you had the whole, that you could spend hours talking about.

Like those people, they just not really a thing, the North, right? So it's like, so. So it's a paradise is what you're saying. No, no, no, I mean, yeah, I guess final thought on that. Like, yeah, that was the thing that when I went to university at a very privileged university in Cambridge having like,

K, come from a state comprehensive school. I just thought all private school people were like this amorphous thing. And then I just discovered there were infinite gradations, like a managerie of posh people. And you're right, this does not exist, rich people existed in the North, but much like your mate whose dad was made money in the railways whatever, like they're, people who've made good generally, not an inherited load of land and like yeah. So Scotland's a different question. Oh yeah. I have met Northern Poshers, but they're always from very rural areas and they always sound like they're from the South. But you would never remotely pick them out as well. I mean there is like, I guess like Manchester Grammar School

right, it's like one of the biggest. And yes, yeah. But schools in the country. Fuck, I have a story. I'll get a finalist. Finalist story. So like, there was a incredibly posh person across my hall at Cambridge.

And like, I don't know, not fresh as we, maybe a few weeks in. He's literally taught us how to write this and all that. And he starts referring to MGS, which K's laughing. There's no explanation. I know, I know I did the time. What this was, and the gay sound. It was Manchester Grammar School, which confusingly is not a grammar school.

It's a very light. But he can't refer to it. And I was like, I was like, sorry, what are you talking about? And he was like, well, Rob, you went to MGS. I was like, no, I did it. And he literally said, but everyone in the North went to MGS. And this is not him trying to be funny. This is like an actual non-marketing slogan of the skill.

Yeah. So yeah, that's my final thought. I'd not be in front of the North, not being from the north. Well, Robin K Thank you so much for making time tonight to come and do this. We really enjoyed this and we will hopefully not get massacred for our inability to cover the north Respect, but we really appreciate it Northern is there anything you'd like to plug to our loyal hogs read the FT Yeah, I got nothing else. There's a story about the North and the FT tomorrow

that I wrote, so I think. This should come out soon over the weekend, so I will plug, I will pull the link from that plug that's story in the show notes as well. Fantastic. All right, well, we will see you next time. Thank you very much for being subscribers and for checking out Brinology as being usual.

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