On the way to a show in Skipton, in North Yorkshire, I noticed a road sign to a town called Keighley. So later, during the show, I mentioned this, asking the audience, 'Is that your rival town?' And the room went chillingly quiet, until one woman called out with understated menace, 'Keighley is a sink of evil.'

Based on his award-winning BBC Radio 4 series, Mark Steel's In Town, is a celebration of the quirks of small-town life in a country of increasingly homogenised high streets. Steel's bespoke observations on the small, sometimes forgotten, towns of Britain go right to the heart of British culture today, championing the very people who shape the places we live in now.

"As everywhere hurtles along a route towards being identical to everywhere else, it seems any expression of local interest or eccentricity is becoming a yell of defiance. Scrape away the veneer of Wetherspoons and Pizza Hut-inspired uniformity, and the march of Tesco's towards being reclassified as a continent, and Britain is as magnificently diverse as ever, and ready to celebrate each distinct community. The elements of a town that make it unique are what make it worth visiting; they change a journey from being functional to being an experience. For example, one drizzly dark February afternoon as I came out of the station at Scunthorpe, I got in a minicab, and the driver didn't even look at me, but kept staring straight ahead as he said, 'I don't know what you've come here for, it's a fucking shit-hole.''

Unearthing some of Britain's most unusual tourist attractions, and noting local quirks and habits, Steel's journey takes him through the backwaters of England, up to Scotland and across to Ireland, where he encounters a country united by a peculiarly ingrained sense of pride, no matter which village, town or city, to give a refreshing take on Britain, its people and its places.

About the Author

Mark Steel is a writer, presenter, comedian and champion of the left. His TV and radio series include The Mark Steel Solution, The Mark Steel Revolution and The Mark Steel Lectures. He has written for the Guardian and the Independent and is a regular on Radio 4's Loose Ends and appears frequently on the television programme Mock the Week. His latest series of In Town was broadcast in April 2010, and is recommissioned for winter 2011.

Reviews

Reviews of Mark Steel's In Town:

'This programme is stand-up comedy at its very best...stand-up on radio is immensely challenging - and often unsuccessful but this programme is intelligent and rich in content, well paced and, moreover, funny...although it is clear that a lot of preparation went into making this programme, the result is fluent, natural and exciting...it was also generous to its audience and to its location - and very much in tune with the sound and appeal of the network.' The Sony Radio Academy Awards

'A tough gig...more like shooting fish in a barrel, to judge from the reception he received from the honest burghers of Skipton, North Yorkshire...from the moment he remarked on the fact that the hall in which he was performing was used as a cattle market during the day and was hosed out before the show - and got a roar of approving laughter - Steel must have known that he could do no wrong.' Times (review of Skipton show)

'Going to a place and insulting it takes guts and careful strategies...Steel made use of the fact that he is from nearby Swanley both to signal that he knows the area but also that - whatever he was about to say about Dartford - it was better than his hometown.'Guardian

'A simple idea, kindly and wittily executed by another unfashionably humane Englishman...thank Gaia they still exist.' Observer

Book Information
ISBN 9780007412426
Author Mark Steel
Format Paperback
Page Count 300
Imprint Fourth Estate Ltd
Publisher HarperCollins Publishers
Weight(grams) 310g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 135mm * 20mm