I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

> There’s a website (I won’t link to it) that has kept on running a survey of the worst places in the UK for years and years

I will, it's ChavTowns.

https://web.archive.org/web/20061013053524/http://www.chavto...

Still running as https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/

Also the owner is giving up on it as of the start of this year -- mainly because nobody visits the site; churnalists just freeboot it and they rank higher on google. https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/top-10-worst-places-to-live-in-e...

That author on Slough,

> Ricky Gervais encapsulated its brutalist new town grim with ‘The Office’ before giving up and writing lame punching-down anti-woke “gags” for the educationally subnormal

That's a very strange reading on Gervais' post-The Office career. After The Office he did things like Extras, a sitcom about extras on TV and film sets, Derek, an emotional series about a well-meaning care worker who thinks it's more important to be kind than popular, and After Life, a series about a man who loses his wife young and how he deals with grief.