What he had to say about a visit to Sunderland:

"Since before Ford, Sunderland was a by-word for Lowryesque urban misery, generations of underclass with a wariness bordering on violent hostility towards starngers and a masive inferiority complex about Newcastle, possible stemming from the Wearmouth Bridge - a toy Tyne Bridge. It's the one route from the city (as declared in 1992 but this is a town at heart) centre to the Stadium of Light ale.... The women wear short skirts and have fake tans - Sunderland is Britain's fake tan capital.... Sunderland has always suffered, hard times have never been far away. Britain's first cholera epidemic began here in 1531 and thirty yaers later, commentatirs were noting "the great decay of buildings and inhabitants... now competing humiliation, it's a company town, effectively owned by Nissan - the Japanese giving back what they took away two generations ago but keeping the profits... people cannot associate Sunderland with pleasure". It has to be said, however, he thinks they are better footie fand than us in the ground. However, they weren't at that time having to adapt to TSM.

-- Anonymous, April 27, 2000

Answers

"people cannot associate Sunderland with pleasure."
Effin brill. Best thing I've read in ages.

I'm so happy, I'm so happy, so happy and . . . .

-- Anonymous, April 28, 2000

I work with a girl who was brought up for the second half of her childhood in a wee village in South Yorkshire. It was a small school with some very quirky ideas. I read this out to her and she came back with a story her geography told them.

God invcented the world, made all the towns and cities, but the last place he made was Sunderland and after the mistakes he made there he just couldn't bring himself to make anywhere else.

Another, more worrying one was that God made all the people of the earth and the white people were the hardest working, cleanest, the Indian/Paki people were lazier and didn't wash as much, hence their darker skin. The laziest, dirtiest types were the negroes.

Amazingly this girl is fairly (fairly fairly) normal.

-- Anonymous, April 28, 2000