When someone moans about how your home town we take it personally.

It is okay coming from someone who walks the streets or has some connection to it. But then we have these countless lists produced by folk who have never visited the place or came on a fleeting visit.

The most recent one sees Darwen and Accrington included on a list of the most depressing places to live.

Even I will say Darwen is better than Blackburn and I have lived in the area for most of my life.

The problem is many of these lists are put together for the sake of garnering a reaction from the locals or give an opportunity for the posh folk to scoff at our misfortune.

A lot of it has got to do with working class areas up against the more ‘affluent’ villages. You know where people live in thatched roof cottages and drive around in Range Rovers to buy some bread.

You never see ‘upmarket’ areas of the country housing well-to-do folk on the list. Despite the fact, I would say having visited these areas many a time, they are rubbish and have no character. I must say I have to go to London every so every often and never been met but nothing but disdain from the locals.

I mean, it has nothing to do with how I look but as soon as I open my mouth I am labelled a ‘thicko’. 

We normally have rundown estates and towns making some random list so the rest of the country living in their Martini drinking, £10 espresso, Daily Telegraph readers can mock us. The poor, the downtrodden, the destitute and increasingly ‘depressed’ with a shorter and shorter life span.

Even worse than these lists are those countless ‘academic studies’ which tell us that towns are segregated and communities are living ‘parallel lives’. 

Soon enough we have every sub urban do-gooder is trying to flag down a woman with a niqab or some bloke having a quiet pint in a beer garden for a 'quick comment'.

Look, if you can’t make an effort to come into one area or another than that really is your problem and you shouldn’t really moan about it. In the end some people can't be bothered and are happy enough but it doesn’t mean the town is rubbish.

Yes, I know alleyways can be a little intimidating, we do have problems with fly-tippers, there are far too many takeaways and in the winter the cold can seep right into your very soul but its home. And that is all that counts.