It feels like the town is the punchline of a relentless national joke.
Plenty of towns across England have suffered from the decline of industry rising poverty (the town's East Marsh ward is one of the poorest in the country and was the subject of Channel 4's Skint) lack of investment and the resulting drug, alcohol, and crime problems-but few others seem to attract the same kind of derision as Grimsby. As kids, we were taught that the town was named after 'Grim,' the Viking fisherman who founded it, but it may as well have been named after what immediately comes to mind: the synonym for 'bleak.'ĭescribed by its former MP as 'a tough, taciturn, and unemotional town, inured to suffering because of the death of fishing and the inadequate level of support and spending it gets from government,' Grimsby is the sort of place where you'll leave the train station and be instantly confronted by a flock of pigeons pecking away at dog shit. Grimsby, as much as I love it, has the dubious honor of being the most appropriately named place in the world.
