1970: England's NORTH-SOUTH divide | Man Alive | Voice of the People | BBC Archive

fish and chips a meal in a minute and the staple diet of the northerner or so the southerner likes to believe but do they agree in berry lancashire is it right the people in bury talking with fish chips absolute rubbish what have you eaten and this is because of course we're busy we're up early in the morning every morning seven days a week doing what we're doing newspapers when news agents have been for 25 years but a lot of people in the south of england have the idea that folks in the north do exist on fish and tubes a lot of people in the north also don't like the ideas of people in the south they're snobs etc and of course we haven't i haven't been down south but um from what other customers have told me uh they wouldn't like to live downstairs they've been they wouldn't like to live there things are more expensive and it's these type of people who are going out for meals that won't coot themselves would you leave the north for this hour never no what do you feel about south country people about snobbish yes that's enough chips the land of coronation street is it any different from the television version the south has learned to accept as the real thing is the home of ina sharples the true north is she the reason why southerners say north of watford and you're in cannibal country certainly it's club land if you think there's no fun like there used to be try a night out in a north country workmen's club the old music hall term the stand-up comic still packs them in and why not here they'll tell you can music is one thing the flesh and blood entertainer something else especially when he's one of your own it might be the thing to do in pinner or queue but those who want to have it prim and proper behind their lace curtains and privet hedges that's their choice here they'll tell you that if you knew what was good for you you'd be in there letting yourself go it's rough it'll probably smell of beer but it's warm and that's what the naught's about seven seventeen it used to be the atmosphere tom harris knew well but when he married a southern girl and took her back to it that's when the trouble began now they live back in the south playing cribbage in the evenings on their own in their own suburban sitting room remembering the days when he took his southern bride to the warm and friendly north he came from but viewed through her eyes she was no lancashire less the berry he talked about was something else again well up north people used to think i was a bit mad because i did so much cooking they could send the children to the fish and chip shop and get pie chips and pizza a couple of barb and i was there dinner the main diet but do you mean that the mothers didn't do cooking no no they never bothered to do much cooking until if it was it was something that could all go in a pan together the potatoes and mates the carrots the onions all in one pan they never did any um well it's because tom's a chef i don't know but then again i've been bought up this way of having plenty of vegetables on a plate plenty of meats and having a proper meal which is all cooked in a separate pan and put on your plate properly love this just put all in one pan together and there are one family that i know and they actually eat off a saucepan lids because i've done my children then they've been given the same thing on a saucepan lid and my children just don't know i don't like that mummy doesn't look nice and they wouldn't eat her but would you say that was typical of the area that you lived in in bury the biggest majority of it yes eating from the saucepan lids well what were the uh what were the women doing with their time in your eyes if they weren't preparing the sort of mix in one another's houses drinking coffee as soon as the children went because i started when i first went there i didn't but after a while i began to notice that i was coming down in my standards i was beginning to get scruffy i wasn't bothering with my hair and my clothes as soon as my children went off to school right next door a cup of coffee we'd all sit there drinking coffee for about an hour go over the road to somebody else's house drinking coffee and i ended up just before i moved here i was getting as bad as them in fact i think i did get as bad as them but what did you talk about during these coffee sessions one afternoon local gossip obeyed somebody that wasn't there i think you know there is never any um main interest in life they didn't seem to have didn't seem to have any hobbies except finger when they're talking about who was a bingo last night how much they won how much they lost because if the women went to work uh a lot of them would perhaps be working in the factories in the cotton cotton mills in the cotton mill it worked pretty hard there wouldn't they work very hard well i had one experience i decided to get a job in a cotton mill got a half or seven and eight o'clock i passed out passed out with a heat i've never known a place so hard and talk about work i've never worked like it in my life by five o'clock i'd had enough and i couldn't go back that every penny the woman earned she definitely earned in the cotton now well what was that work like can you describe it oh where i was it was a great big long machine or as long as this room and had all these bobbins on these pieces of cotton coming down and if your cotton snapped there was a spindle going really fast had to grab hold of it stop it and piece your cotton up again well i did it once instead of holding it tight had i had all of it and then print all the inside of my hand and the mill girls in berry what do they think about all that she really sandy cat doesn't she i the women who weren't working did nothing but gossip all day long well i can't gut it because i don't like gossiping i'll have a word when they're friends they don't go into anybody's house everybody does that yeah i mean if she can come here and show us whether he took parliament she's welcome we'd like to say we've not seen it how would he eat anyway can you imagine it you don't need to take the bottle off [Music] are you getting rattled by what she said i am very happy very annoyed is it the truth it hurts but you see there's a lot of people take coronation street very very seriously they've never been up here they've never seen how we live or uh what we do or anything she told it yes i know but these are the people that she's telling and they're all obviously get a bad wrong impression of us don't they so they don't want to come up here [Music] tell them what is the right picture if you don't eat off pan lids wait it's the same [Music] we sleep in beds you know we're quite normal to come to [Laughter] [Laughter] one of the things that she was shocked by was the amount of beer drinking that went on in belly every day of the week not just the weekend she must have done a lot of problems getting more money you know they were getting more money during the whole year i'll pay you he's not 30 pounds a week we're because he you know no we don't working out how many years how many do you know and half of that how many yeah but her point was that there was a lot of beer drinking going on a lot of going to bingo five people who were on the dough on the dough on the door oh well that's the other one that's only a few wins oh yeah you've got them all alike what about living down there i live in i won't live down there for 30 quid a week why not because i couldn't stand them what could you not stand about them put you more too much edge about them all together come on peter all as well come look around there they'll not see you saying road no no no no no no they're all one click or one click you

Channel: BBC Archive

Views: 910,913

Keywords: bbc, archive bbc, classic tv, british tv nostalgia, bbc archive, archive, the bbc archive, nostalgia, legendary television, retro tv, vintage, social attitude in England, vox pops, north-south divide uk, north versus south uk, what southerners think of northerners uk, bury lancashire, north of england vox pops, Man Alive documentary, english cultural differences, north/south divide england, north south divide england, english cultural identity, 1970s england, north vs south

Id: Hjdhhc27_r0

Length: 9min 13sec (553 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 27 2022