Brett Ellis on a report of the UK's worst places to live

Designed as little more than to trump up website traffic, as a curio for columnists to write about, or for incumbents of those places to become incandescent with rage over, there were some surprises.

At number 10 on the list is Sheerness, with Slough at nine. Having never really enjoyed the pleasure of either town, they must be pretty dreadful as Luton is at number seven.

I have frequented Luton on a number of occasions and it is little more than a sore on the landscape: Moody, dirty and with few saving graces I can see. It is useful for the airport however, which is the only reason anyone who doesn’t live there, would actively visit.

Hull has improved (or have the others got worse?) to make it to number five on the list. I don’t understand it: I once worked for a weekend in Hull, helping to refit the reject shop, prior to getting the sack on the Monday (don’t ask), and found it fun and vibrant although possibly a little too hedonistic for a lad whose priority should have been work, not play.

Peterborough bizarrely nicknamed the one thing it is not, ‘Posh’ is in four, whilst Pompey, or Portsmouth is in three.

I have been a few times and its best viewed through a locked car window. At speed.

Brett Ellis says Portsmouth is best views through a locked car window(Image: )

It has potential to be a nice town, but it’s let down by aggressive locals who view anyone outside of their immediate family as fight fodder. And that’s just the women.

Clacton-on-Sea takes the mantle, although how much the local MP, Nigel Farage has to do with that decision, is debatable.

The writer of the ilivehere piece is, I think it’s safe to say, not a fan, classing the locals as insular, insolent and gullible ‘morons’.

The visit Essex tourist board disagree, as they would, classing Clacton as a ‘bustling, but affordable’ resort. In English this means its crowded, but still cheap.

Its main draws are a ‘pleasure’ pier and ‘pleasure’ flight, which set alarm bells ringing as to their overuse of the pleasure descriptor.

I’m sure we all have towns we could add to the list: Grimsby for one, which is a festering cesspit of nothingness somewhere up north, or Stoke, which looks as if it’s been carpet bombed.

 Either way, the foreign vision of English as being quaint and quirky is as far away from the mark as humanely possible, although pockets still exist in, say, York, Cambridge, Rye or the West country.

Still, congratulations to Clacton and Jaywick which is arguably the only prize they will ever win as we dream back to when we could have nice things, before our technological progression and fleecing of the car driver drove towns into the mire by a death of a thousand cuts.