Accrington

Known to most people only because of a football team and an old milk advert featuring a couple of Scouse kids, the once thriving Lancashire mill town of Accrington is now, quite frankly, a ****-ridden wasteland. For a town of just over 30,000 people, it has a disproportionate number of dodgy areas: Lower Antley, Fern Gore, Rothwell Ave, Meadoway and Spring Hill (to name but a few) are dotted all around the town, meaning that nowhere in Accy can you live a safe distance from thieving, dole-scrounging wasters. Oh, and not forgetting the Huncoat estate, which is so grim that when a load of ****** arrived there a few years ago, even they couldn’t find anything worth nicking.

The town centre, despite the council’s best efforts to spruce it up, just illustrates the **** population’s descent into total lack of sophistication and taste. Until a decade or so ago, it had an interesting array of mainly independent local shops, but one by one, these have almost all closed down and been replaced by the likes of Poundstretcher, Matalan, TK Maxx, Argos and Wilko’s. Particularly popular are the ‘everything for 99p’ type shops. Despite frequenting these emporiums of utter tat on a daily basis, the locals still haven’t grasped the simple concept of them – they can often be heard asking the assistants “‘Ey up, ‘ow much is this then?”

As far as food goes, all of the ****’s favourite eateries and supermarkets are of course present: McDonalds, KFC, Lidl, Netto, Aldi and Iceland are all doing a roaring trade. Woe betide anyone who opens an Italian or Indian restaurant in Accy – they soon find to their cost that the locals don’t want any of that “foreign muck”.

How grim is your Postcode?

The same is true when it comes to drinking: the interesting old boozers have practically all disappeared, and in their place are theme bars serving watered-down lager to Burberry-clad youths, who are frantically trying to down enough of it to build up their Dutch courage for the inevitable fight at Lar-de-Dars nightclub (“Lardys”) later in the evening.

In fact, there’s so much booze-related violence in Accy that it was the first town in the country where drinking alcohol in the street was outlawed. The town centre boasts special signs with a picture of a pint glass inside a red triangle. Not that anyone takes any notice of them, as the blood and vomit to be found in the streets most mornings will testify.

Accy is also notable for the sheer stupidity of its **** criminals. The same names appear time and time again in the crime columns of the local rag, caught and convicted over and over again for the same type of offences. In one recent case, a local Einstein was caught stealing an old biddy’s handbag just TWENTY MINUTES after being released from prison, having served a sentence for theft. Back he went for another few months…

On the plus side, Accrington must be one of the last places in the UK where you can still buy a house for under £20,000. Buy one as an investment, insure it to the hilt, let it out to DSS tenants, they’ll eventually do a runner, the local ***** will torch it, and you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. Just don’t EVER consider living there.