Last year, reviewing Mark Easton's latest 'Englishness' reports, I wrote:
And, given that four years ago I titled one of my pieces about Mark's last pro-regionalism foray around the counties of England Mark Easton Baht 'at, I found it amusing (alarming?) that tonight's Mark Easton piece from Yorkshire featured a brass band playing On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at.
(Seriously Mark? Why didn't you go the whole hog and cuddle a ferret whilst taking your clothes off and popping on a cloth cap and walking up a steep cobbled hill with a loaf of bread humming the theme from In Loving Memory?)
And then it was onto Somerset.
And if you (meaning me), as a non-metropolitan Northerner, felt offended (almost to the point of calling the ever-eager police) about Mark Easton employing (sackable? racist?) stereotypes by using a brass band playing On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at to represent Yorkshire, then please pray, with all your heart and soul, for our poor south-western friends in Somerset (and Sue beyond in Cornwall),....
....for, yes, I kid you not, Mark Easton of the BBC really did feature morris dancers from there. And talk of dragons and wassail.
(The only thing I think he missed here - and this is truly unforgivable, especially given how hard he'd been trying to go for the tried-and-testedly stereotypical before - was to feature The Wurzels singing I Am A Cider Drinker).
Well, this week's Newswatch featured a disgruntled lady from Mansfield complaining about a BBC News at Ten report from Lucy Manning (concerning Brexit, of course):
Angela Senior, Newswatch viewer: Dear Newswatch. I watched the Ten O'Clock News on Tuesday night with some trepidation, as it was said at the top of the programme there would be a report from Mansfield. As expected, the short report featured an evening silhouette of a disused pithead stock plus an elderly local resident, with a rich local accent to boot, in a Labour club, and - to top it all off - a rendition from a local brass band rehearsal. How much more cliched and stereotypical can the BBC get? This is so totally opposite to the Mansfield area we know. Come on, BBC, it is many years since the coal mines and hosiery mills closed and Mansfield is recovering and regenerating. Please think carefully before you portray this area in such an extreme light.
Still, in fairness to the metropolitan elite types at the BBC, the piece of brass band music being rehearsed there was one of Gustav Holst's Suites for brass band - real favourites of mine. So get your clogs on and off down t pit we go!
Update: Extra images of the colliery from the BBC report....
