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

(samj.substack.com)
395 points url | 3 comments | 26 Apr 25 00:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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amiga386 ◴[26 Apr 25 01:58 UTC] No.43800248[source]▶
> 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...

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mvdtnz ◴[26 Apr 25 03:16 UTC] No.43800617[source]▶
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.

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1. arrowsmith ◴[26 Apr 25 04:30 UTC] No.43800950[source]▶
He also did The Invention of Lying, which, 16 years since I watched it in the cinema, is still the answer I give without hesitation to "what's the worst movie you've ever seen?"
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2. HideousKojima ◴[26 Apr 25 05:24 UTC] No.43801157[source]▶
For me that has to be High Life. Pitched to me as "Robert Pattinson has to to take care of a baby in space", in reality it was basically a side plot to "serial killers and rapists are stuck on a spaceship together" and all that implies.
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3. stavros ◴[26 Apr 25 14:23 UTC] No.43803886[source]▶
Yeah I don't know, you're selling it well. I kind of want to watch that.