This doesn't look good for Corby

[king_tubby]

It has the Parish, for one thing.

Yeah, they get a lot decent acts. Not made it over for any, but then I have the Brudenell on my doorstep. There's also the Contemporary Music Festival which I did make it over for a lot pre-child and Covid.

Also the Magic Rock Brewery and The Grove.

[The Culture Bunker]

Main thing I know about Corby is that the title track from Big Country's excellent second album 'Steeltown' is about the place, and the migration of Scots there.

It might well be a bit of a dump, but coming from a post-industrial hellhole myself (that I will happily take the piss out of, but get defensive about to those from down South who make any digs), I'm not one to talk.

[PlanktonSideburns]

This one, yeah?

Chuckling at the name

PIZZA ON DEMAND

like you have to really want it to get a pizza

[shoulders]

Yeah, they get a lot decent acts. Not made it over for any, but then I have the Brudenell on my doorstep. There's also the Contemporary Music Festival which I did make it over for a lot pre-child and Covid.

Also the Magic Rock Brewery and The Grove.

The Sportsman gets most love from me these days since The Grove's recent makeover slightly sucked the life out of the place (still great beer though). If you can get in either of the snugs as the afternoon turns into evening it is very pleasant indeed.

[aunt mildred]

Been Corby a few times for the BTCC, it is a shithole but no worse than many midlands towns. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the 'spoons there famous for being the only one in England that sells Tennants on draught?

[Bently Sheds]

I was born and grew up in Peterborough, but have lived in several other places, so I'm quite aware of its limitations as a city. It's not as historic or vibrant as Cambridge, not as lively as Leicester (even though the walk from Leicester train station into the city centre is Desolation City). It gives Lincoln a good run for its money in the "dull city with a cool Cathedral" stakes, but shades it by dint of having a better football team.

When I lived there the inhabitants weren't interested in live music, theatre or stand-up: getting pissed up in pubs and nightclubs & having a fight (or wazzing about the Parkways in a lowered, souped up Vauxhall) was your typical Peterborian's weekend. Big acts mostly avoided it in favour of the more cosmopolitan Cambridge & Leicester & their respective captive student population.

Historically there's been a large pre-war Italian and Polish presence. Post-war immigration came from the West Indies, India/Pakistan/Bangladesh and Vietnam; more recently Middle Eastern, Portuguese and Eastern European folk have swelled the numbers (not so many now, post-Brexit), but still the city doesn't feel like a vibrant melting pot of all these cultural influences.

The posh bits are relatively posh, the rum bits are relatively rum, no better or worse than any comparable town. There's been an explosion in housing development - most perplexing are the new estates built on the old London Brick brick pits that, in the 1970s, were always full of water.

Ultimately it's a big-ish city with a small town mentality. Still the bronze age island squatting by the marshy edge of the desolate fens, isolated and inward looking. It just got lucky when the railways were steered there instead of Stamford.