Radcliffe And Maconie

[clarion]

It's good to get a diversity of accents on there, breaking the sterility of Home Counties/'Urban' BBC.  Radcliffe's Bury, Maconie's Warrington, Lord Noddlington of Holder's Yamyam, Miranda Sawyer's Castrian, Sarah Outen's um, er, Midlandsofsomesort, and the voices of interviewees and callers from around the country makes it a lively listen.

[border-rider]

Maconie's Warrington,

Are you sure ?

[citoyen]

Maconie's Warrington,

Are you sure ?

Warrington/Wigan/Widnes... they're all grim northern towns with not much to distinguish them. 

Maconie's actually from Whiston, which isn't that far from Warrington, I suppose.

d.

[border-rider]

Warrington/Wigan/Widnes... they're all grim northern towns with not much to distinguish them. 

Some outlying parts of greater Warrington are rather nice

[clarion]

Maconie's Warrington,

Are you sure ?

Not sure at all - it all kinda falls into the sea west of Saddleworth  

EDIT: On closer inspection, it turns out that Whiston, where Mr Maconie first entered the world is in this order of proximity to the other Ws:

Widnes
Warrington
Wigan.

So, if I cared one jot about the geography of Merseyside (it has none, and is just a marsh at the extent of Strathclyde, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle attests), I might claim to have been right.

As it is, I suspect that, wherever he was born, he did, in fact, grow up in Pie-land.  So I'm wrong.

[Mr Larrington]

Maconie claims to be from Wigan in both Pies & Prejudice and Cider With Roadies, but since the former contains a Several of factual blunders, it might be foolish to assume anything about the veracity of his claim.

[Zoidburg]

I bet he comes from a posh bit of Cheshire and tries to pass himself as something else.

Knutsford, maybe Alderly Edge, footballers wives land.

[border-rider]

His accent is def.  Wigan*.  I'm listening at the moment.

*not that that means much of course

[Really Ancien]

Wigan is actually a very nice place. 30 years ago it suffered from appalling post industrial dereliction, this has largely been sorted and there are now extensive woodlands on many of the old colliery sites. It is fair to say that the area offers few opportunities, other than the nuclear industry in Warrington, for highly educated people, and there are no Universities, the result is migration of the clever and a reputation for a certain lack of sparkle in comparison with the surrounding cities of Manchester, Liverpool and Preston. Radcliffe and Maconie are indeed very posh by local standards. Mark jokes about his posing as a punk while being a middle class pupil of Bolton Grammar, a school of impeccable academic credentials. They both have smoothed out accents, the only problem is that in company with others, such as Miranda Sawyer, they start to speed up and you have to be attuned to the cadences of fast Northern speech to keep up.

Damon.

[border-rider]

I listen most evenings to the chain

Now I used to really enjoy this but Mark Radcliffe seems to have buggered off for some reason that I havent quite bothered to persue until now. Maconie is now running the show on his own and it is dire, unfunny, dry and also now lacking a decent playlist as Stuart Maconie actualy seems to think that people want to listen to every new single from the latest Lightning Seeds album.

What went wrong? did Radcliffe get fed up with the smug git and leave him to it?

The show is going to die on it's arse and this would be shame as it was once well worth a listen.

I listened to tuesday's and wednesday's from last week today (Maconie on his own again). Dear God.  What a dire collection of prog, whimsy and 3rd rate psychodelia.  If I wanted that I'd listen to his tediously self-indulgent Freak Zone.  

[Andrew Br]

Miranda Sawyer is from Wilmslow, which means that her accent is pretty-much the same as that of my early girlfriends...

I've heard that Wilmslow girls like a bit of rough 

[LEE]

Wigan is actually a very nice place.

No. 

You need to leave yourself somewhere to go and "Very Nice" sets the bar too high when you consider other places.

Desenzano, on Lake Garda, is a very nice place.

St Emillion, in the Dordogne, is a very nice place.

Rome is a stunning place.

Hungerford is a nice place.

Using these as guidelines to position various towns and cities I would have to say that Wigan is a little shit-hole.

Using chips and pies as a guideline however would have Wigan right up there.

So, in summary, we could say that "Wigan does very nice chips and pies" and still leave room to accurately rate Venice, Rome and so on.

[Really Ancien]

This is Wigan Town Centre.


This is Hungerford apparently.


Perhaps it was only a little shit hole when you were there.

Damon.

[border-rider]

Hungerford's a prettyish little market town.  In terms of population it's closer in size and feel to somewhere like Lymm.

A better comparison with Wigan might be the Newbury/Thatcham conurbation, which I don't think I'd suggest overall is very much prettier than Wigan (especially the Thatcham bit - parts of Newbury are nice enough, but mainly because they've sacrificed Thatcham to make it so)

[Really Ancien]

The Manchester/Merseyside conurbation is misunderstood by those who pass through it. The ribbon development they see from the main roads is largely a facade, and a pretty grim one at that. Behind it is a mosaic of Clough woodland and reclaimed industrial land, which has a much greater degree of access than in more rural areas. There are canals and old railways criss-crossing the area and untouched villages on the periphery. Lots of workers in the main cities are attracted by new estates built on the edges of places like Standish, so much so that commuting congestion has turned the M6 form Jct 26 to 21 into one of the busiest in the country.
Maconie is from the West of Wigan, where the Grammar Schools were, both of which are now well regarded Sixth Form colleges. As I say, the main problem for Wigan is that the educated tend to leave, and that the population is skewed towards the remains of mining and heavy industry, so the cultural life revolves around brass bands and sport. There is however extreme sexual equality. It is quite normal for girls to play Rugby League, and robustness in women is seen as normal and desireable, an attitude which stretches back to the 'Pit Brow Lasses'.
Wigan Album,  :: wiganworld
Wigan Warriors - The Official Website

Damon.

[Mr Larrington]

It is quite normal for girls to play Rugby League, and robustness in women is seen as normal and desireable, an attitude which stretches back to the 'Pit Brow Lasses'.

Did anyone else automatically think of The Macc Lads' Sweaty Betty on reading this?

[LEE]

This is Wigan Town Centre.


This is Hungerford apparently.


Perhaps it was only a little shit hole when you were there.

Damon.

That's not fair, you've airbrushed all the chavs and 'bingo-wings' women out of the Wigan photo.

My home town of Stockport would be lovely as well if you detonated a Neutron Bomb overhead a few hours before visiting.

[Andrew Br]

This is Wigan Town Centre.


This is Hungerford apparently.


Perhaps it was only a little shit hole when you were there.

Damon.

That's not fair, you've airbrushed all the chavs and 'bingo-wings' women out of the Wigan photo.

My home town of Stockport would be lovely as well if you detonated a Neutron Bomb overhead a few hours before visiting.

You might want to use two bombs, just to be sure.

[border-rider]

I've heard that Wilmslow girls like a bit of rough 

That's was my thinking, yes

[Andrew Br]

I've heard that Wilmslow girls like a bit of rough 

That's was my thinking, yes

And did they ? 

[LEE]

From the look of the empty streets I'd say that it's either early Sunday morning or there's a sale on at Matalan in Bolton.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

It's quite easy to work out what time the picture was taken.

[Mr Larrington]

It's quite easy to work out what time the picture was taken.

Assuming the clock is actually working, obv.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

It's a northern clock; of course it's working.

[Really Ancien]

My home town of Stockport would be lovely as well if you detonated a Neutron Bomb overhead a few hours before visiting.
[/quote]

Some of my best friends are Wiganers, but it is significant that they now live in Central Lancs, likewise my Scouse and Manc friends. All these places hold 'Here be Dragons' significance for us round here.
Their view of us is that we're distant, mumbling, woolybacks, and that indeed is our culture, with added begrudging. Our local celebrities are Nick Park, John Inman and Phil Cool. Make of that what you will.

Damon.