I think my least favourite place in the north is Liverpool. I know this is going to piss off Scousers, but I just don’t get anything about it. I thought the music was crap – Beatles, Julian Cope, the Las, the Zutons…it’s a long, depressing list.
Everything seems like a bad copy of London. Echo & The Bunnymen = poor man's Psychedelic Furs. Toxteth Riots = poor man's Brixton Riots. Benjamin Zephaniah = poor man's LKJ. Hollyoaks = poor man's Grange Hill.
The city is boring and it’s the only place I’ve been north of Reading where people in pubs did head swivels and gave me dagger glares as soon as they heard my accent (something I was warned about as a naive, unworldly brat when going to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Leeds and Newcastle... but it never happened when I went to those places?). Why is everyone there so pissed off?
That said, it was still miles better than Southampton.