Comedians like Sheffield

And they’re not being funny, either.

Who could forget Alexander Armstrong’s kind words about my hometown last year? And those were followed up by Michael Legge last month, which were emailed to me by regular reader, Darthfarter. I would probably have got to this sooner, but I only found it by chance in my deleted spam folder last night while I was desperately trying to find an ancient email to prove my wife wrong on some inconsequential matter or other.
(Needless to say, I lost.)

But Legge’s blog made for good reading.

I’ve never been to Sheffield before until this weekend. I’m not sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t this. I’m not saying that I was just assuming that Sheffield was one big coalmine. No. It’s just I didn’t think it would be… well… beautiful. But it is. I genuinely can’t think of a nicer city I’ve visited in Britain.

I arrived on Thursday and spent the night in two bars in what looked like a pretty boho area of town. This must be the nice part of Sheffield. I’m sure the centre of town is constantly on fire with rapists, murderers and Hitler drinking, puking and shouting outside every branch of Greggs. Also, I thought, every shop in Sheffield will be a branch of Greggs. It was good to spend the night in these two cool and relaxing bars because surely seeing the centre of Sheffield tomorrow will be a nightmare of biblical proportions, if The Bible was written and directed by Wes Craven.

But of course, it wasn’t. And it’s not just the vibe, the atmosphere and the architecture of Sheffield that Legge enjoys. Even the people are great (as those of you who have met me will happily testify) (or else):

Here’s the most important bit: I have yet to see a Sheffield dickhead. Every single person has been friendly. Properly friendly. Like you know when you go somewhere and you say “Oh, I like it there. People are very friendly there” but you realise you only met about 3 people so you have no authority at all to claim people are friendly there? Well, I must have met 50 people since arriving in Sheffield and they’ve ALL been lovely. And how many people are there in Sheffield? 70? 80? Something like that, so I’m definitely right to say they are friendly in Sheffield because I’ve met nearly all of them.

It’s another feather in the cap for Sheffield, further evidence that the dark days of the 1980’s (which I still actually quite enjoyed) are passed and another reason for people to put away their misconceptions and take a visit to the Steel City.

I do realise that it’s a bit out of the way for South Africans.