Grimsby

[FatLazyContractor]

Watched the movie last night.

Elephant scene =

[NibblyPig]

Having spent the first 18 years of my life in Grimsby I doubt there is anything in that film that could shock me

[DodgyAgent]

Tell us, Sacha. Is it cos Grimsby ain’t London? | The Sunday Times

Rod Liddle's take

IT’S a long, long way to Grimsby, if you start your journey in London. It’s bad enough that you have to go through Doncaster, which is itself a long distance to the north and slightly horrifying. But then you have to execute this sharp right turn and travel, for more than an hour, past antiquated and emphysemic steelworks, languorous wind farms, flooded sluices and rank, frowsy canals, vacated collieries and huge patches of that awful giant emptiness of the north, all rigid with the cold, and many terrible miles from the nearest Waitrose.

So who can blame Sacha Baron Cohen for not actually filming there, then? All too far, all too grim.

One assumes that he was attracted by the name, as an immediate signifier of the north of England (even if it isn’t quite in the north of England). Its poverty, its ubiquitous welfare lepers and feckless halfwits, with their tracksuits and their drink and their drugs and their hordes of ghastly ill-begotten hyperactive kiddies. And having seen the name — Sacha knew that was enough.

So Sacha Baron Cohen called the film Grimsby — but filmed it all in Tilbury, Essex. The whole lot. Also an awful place, naturellement, but rather handily within an hour’s drive of Islington, north London.

They mocked up a few shopfronts down in Tilbury to resemble some the film scouts had seen in the real Grimsby. And Sacha mocked up his accent so that his principal character — a cheerful cretin called Nobby — sounded, for a bit, sort of northern, in a Dick Van Dyke kinda way. He forgot the accent towards the end of every sentence he spoke.

The good people of Tilbury are not happy, incidentally. When I was up in Grimsby last week, Radio Essex was on the case, importuning the leader of North East Lincolnshire council, Ray Oxby (Lab), to feel their pain.

This bloody man came and shot footage of our poorest houses and suggested they were full of deadbeats — and then called it Grimsby! But it wasn’t Grimsby, it was just us in Essex. Surely you share our annoyance, Ray?

Nah, said Ray, and just laughed. Lighten up. Welcome to our lives. Grimsby is used to it, to the slings and arrows aimed squarely from the south.

A decade or so back there was a book out called Up North: Travels Beyond the Watford Gap, a posh southerner’s bone-headed let’s-take-the-piss guide to everywhere north of the Trent. How the author laughed at Grimsby. It smells of fish!

Well, what the hell did you expect it to smell of, a previous mayor of the town retorted, and added: “He should have stayed down south, under his duvet” — and saw his quote printed on the front cover of the book.

Northerners — they’re hilarious, no? They may not mean to be, but they are.

The locals are pretty sanguine about the film. They say, yep, we have a bunch of chavs around here, living on the council estates to the west of the town, the usual druggies and alkies, but no more of them than most towns.

The council has wisely resolved not to be too defensive, not to act with the same splenetic outrage as did the Kazakh authorities when Sacha Baron Cohen’s film Borat depicted their citizens as corrupt, violent, Jew-hating, misogynists.

Ray Oxby has played a canny game of treating the whole thing very lightly while simultaneously trying to wring from it any beneficial publicity that might improve Grimsby’s economic position and status.

For the town is not doing too badly, in truth. The new growth industry is renewable energy — at least 2,000 jobs promised as a consequence of the offshore wind-turbine development at Hornsea, and the port at Immingham is thriving.

The high street has its share of pound shops and pawnshops, but there are also decent restaurants and what I suppose we could call boutiques.

Grimsby’s problems are similar to those that afflict much of that insignificant part of the UK, not-London. Wages are low and it is difficult to retain the most educated sectors of the labour market.

There are one or two Grimsby-specific issues, not least its location — out on a limb, about as far to the east as you can go in the UK, marooned between Hull and high water.

He has form, does Sacha Baron Cohen. You might describe it as taking the piss out of the powerless, if you were being very self-righteous. And the reviews of his latest movie have been split on political lines. The left doesn’t like it, doesn’t find it very funny — both the New Statesman and The Guardian absolutely hated it. Whereas the right thinks it’s all a bit of a hoot.

Baron Cohen aroused a few misgivings with his first, brilliant comic creation — the wide-boy from the Staines Massiv, Ali G, with his catchphrase “Is it cos I is black?” There was an uneasiness, in some quarters, at that sort of cultural appropriation and mockery, and the word “racist” was uttered here and there. So, too, to a slightly lesser degree with the wildly funny Borat, which reduced an entire country to the status of a laughing stock.

I don’t see why the powerless should escape ridicule and Baron Cohen is a very skilled comedian — even if he is more Carry On than Chris Morris. But I do object to the specious and self-serving argument, advanced by the film maker, that we are not laughing at the powerless, we are laughing at ourselves.

Never mind that at the end of the film the chavs save the day: for the previous 80 minutes we have been laughing without remorse at the portrayal of a nest of imbecilic lumpenprole living in a northern slum, the characters and milieu drawn straight from the pages of the Daily Mail.

It will not do to pass this off as satire. It is not satire. It is exaggerated depiction.

And beyond that, it is possible to have misgivings even while enjoying the film. It has become acceptable and even fashionable to sneer at not-London, and especially at the north. We are two countries and one looks down its nose at the other.

There is a good film to be made about this amenable port: How Henry Kissinger Killed Grimsby. Back in the mid-1970s, at the time of the cod war with Iceland, Kissinger visited the town with the local MP and UK foreign secretary, Tony Crosland. Kissinger wanted Iceland onside as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and a base for submarine-detecting sonar installations. So he was inclined to let the tiny country have its hilarious 200-mile fishing limit and urged this policy upon Crosland, who was of course torn. But not torn for very long, if we’re honest. And that was the beginning of the end for Grimsby’s fishing fleet.

I’d watch that, even if it had fewer laughs than Grimsby the film, and less chance to use an elephant’s vagina as a humorous prop.

[clearedforlanding]

Having spent the first 18 years of my life in Grimsby I doubt there is anything in that film that could shock me

Having spent a couple of years at St. James Choir School, I agree. There is a lot worse. Walking into the town centre in school uniform and being greeted by mobs in Pringle shirts comes to mind.

[FatLazyContractor]

TL;DR Brainfart.

WTF are you on about?

The bald baddie in the movie reminded me of you

[LondonManc]

Tell us, Sacha. Is it cos Grimsby ain’t London? | The Sunday Times

Rod Liddle's take

IT’S a long, long way to Grimsby, if you start your journey in London. It’s bad enough that you have to go through Doncaster, which is itself a long distance to the north and slightly horrifying. But then you have to execute this sharp right turn and travel, for more than an hour, past antiquated and emphysemic steelworks, languorous wind farms, flooded sluices and rank, frowsy canals, vacated collieries and huge patches of that awful giant emptiness of the north, all rigid with the cold, and many terrible miles from the nearest Waitrose.

What a twunt. He's gone miles out of his way if he's gone to Doncaster then turned right rather than cutting up the A46. Kin disgraceful.

[darmstadt]

Its Grimsby Up North....

Residents of the English town of Grimsby have been outraged that their home has been portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen as a rubbish-strewn, violent ghetto in which drunks urinate from windows and mothers hand children cans of beer in the street.
...
The Grimsby Telegraph has followed the story keenly and many readers have taken the opportunity to vent their outrage.
“The problem I have with this man, is that he was welcomed into this town and treated kind and well, he then goes away and then tulips on the town,” said one reader.
“Those who thought this would be good publicity for the area are so wrong,” wrote another. “He is taking the piss out of you. All he wanted was the Grim part of Grimsby and anything that looked Grim ... that's how he works. You've been had.”
However, others chimed in to say that the fictional Grimsby was on the whole an accurate portrayal of the depressed Lincolnshire town.

[Troll]

Having spent the first 18 years of my life in Grimsby

<scratches chinny> HH&H ?

[DaveB]

Or as one of the Meme's doing the rounds on Facebook puts it:

Privately schooled, Oxford educated multi-millionaire invites us to laugh at his latest creation. A man wth no job and 11 kids.

For those following the direction is the article, make sure you don't have to make a pit stop in Doncaster. Even the Army won't go near it. I don't blame them, I live within 20 miles and try to avoid ever going any closer.

A place full of in-bred, piggy-eyed, adidas-wearing, chavish oiks and their orange-faced breeding partners, who all live on a diet of Iceland budget sausages and Sunny D, with their feral offspring running around making the place look like something that would scare the shyte out of Tolkien and Charles Dickens.

Although not a garrison town in the mould of Aldershot, Osnabruck or Chatham, its female denizens have a reputation to rival their garrison counterparts. The town has the unique distinction of having the highest AIDS/HIV and teenage pregnancy rates in the country. This is a remarkable achievement in light of the fact that many of the local 'talent' have the same characteristics, physique and vocabulary of Vicky Pollard.

There are several prison establishments in the area, one of which is responsible for training prison staff in riot control techniques. At the end of these courses it is tradition for course members, (many of whom are ex-forces or ex-miners and not easily fazed or scared), to complete their training by visiting many of the hostelries of Doncaster on their last evening.

Veterans of this hardening process have distinguishing characteristics such as the thousand yard stare and other symptoms similar to PTSD. Those displaying the severest symptoms appear to be those who were naive enough to remain sober during the ordeal.

Let's face it, if you built a wall round the pit villages of South Yorkshire and gassed the inhabitants like badgers then the gene pool would improve and the crime rate would drop to near zero. Doncaster? You have been warned!

[Dallas]

Born in Burnley, schooled in Blackburn and uni'd in Dundee