Cold Steel stabs Boston in the back

So did you tune into Radio Four for "comedian" Mark Steel's programme from Blackfriars last night?
Billed as "Mark records a show in Boston, Lincolnshire, celebrating sprouts, chavs, Puritans and the Boston Stump."
Just the usual tired nonsense, we're afraid.
We're in the Fens "which as places go is too flat. "
"Do you all go up to Swineshead on a Sunday to look at the slight slope?"
Local driving instructors say there's only one place in the whole town where you can practice a hill start.
Then from flatness to ... yes, you've guessed ... fatness.
A broken promise to mention this only once begins with the reminder that Boston was once listed as most obese town in Britain.... "obviously you need a few hills to do a work out."
Then we move on to xenophobia ... with Steel telling us that he thinks its fair to say that among some members of the population there is a distrust of outsiders.
Other items of interest....
Boston seems to be known throughout Lincolnshire as a "chavtown," and a website says "If you have ever been to Boston in Lincolnshire then undoubtedly you will have had the utmost pleasure of seeing many a pregnant 14 year old with the obligatory poverty pack of ten Richmond fags."
Boston doesn't do itself any favours in respect to chavs, Steel goes on. In the middle of the main street is a shop called It Must Be Stolen.
In 1911 the then vicar talked about low standard of sexual morality.
Mr Steel had gone out the previous day to meet the men who maintain the area's drainage systems ... "they were so enthusiastic about drains."
They warned that eventually Boston could be lost to the sea, and he visualised archaeologist divers in a thousand years saying "we've found it ... hundreds of really fat skeletons with all these bracelets round them."
Back to the flatness.
The second tallest building in Boston after the Stump is probably a postbox. From the top of stump you can see for miles and miles .... but you can also probably see Spalding if you sit on the back of a donkey.
He asked the audience if they had climbed the Stump more than once .... and suggested doing it again - yes ... to help them get their fat down.
We go on to tackle brussels sprouts, Puritanism, the Civil War and immigration.
Although the town has been at centre of history for centuries, its political life revolves around building a bypass. Do they have any other policies than to build a bypass, he asks.
And let's not forget Boston United and its financial disasters down the years.
One day, he concludes, Boston might rise again and become bigger than its sister in Massachusetts, and visualises a TV show from a bar also called "Cheers" where the barman only dates 14 year old girls from Eclipse, a psychologist says the last erection he saw was the Stump, and a fat man says "this beer's perfect for Boston, it comes from the drains and it's flat."
A bit like Mark Steel's humour really.
This felt like a cold, rushed performance, and in fact it wasn't very funny - even the audience didn't respond as we would have expected.
If you missed it and must hear it, the BBC website will play it back to you.
Frankly, we wouldn't bother ... it's just the usual stuff that puts Boston in the wrong light.

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