Why Hull is the opposite of Hell - despite Emily Maitlis’ Newsnight slip-up: Anthony Clavane

In years to come, this is what the BBC presenter will be remembered for.

“Former Health Secretary Alan Johnson joins us down the line from hell,” she blurted on Newsnight. She meant to say Hull. Maitlis later apologised on Twitter. “For clarity,” she explained, “I do know Hull is not hell.”

Oh Emily, how could you? This was, surely, more than a mere gaffe. It was a Freudian slip. The BBC has once again exposed just how southern-centric it is.

I am being a bit tongue-in-cheek here. Still, Maitlis, who was brought up in Sheffield, should have known better. Her slip of the tongue feeds into a north-south narrative that just won’t go away. It reveals a prejudice that dates back to the line from the 17th century John Taylor poem: “From Hell, Hull and Halifax, good Lord deliver us all”.

As Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said a few years ago, about the Remain campaign’s failure to resonate in the north: “Too much Hampstead, not enough Hull.”

To reconnect with her Northern roots, Maitlis should be sent on a train journey to Hull – for those of you reading this in Hampstead it’s at the end of the rail network – where she will immediately encounter in the station a statue of the great poet Phillip Larkin, overcoat flapping open and a hat swinging from his left hand. She will discover that the Great Civil War began in 1642 when its merchants slammed shut the gates in the face of King Charles.

She will learn about the generations of brave Hull trawlermen who battled the freezing winds and roaring seas. And how Westminster stood by during the 1970s’ Cod Wars, allowing swathes of the fishing industry to rot.

She should then be forced to listen to the first Housemartins LP, which is entitled London 0 Hull 4.

After this, she needs to be reminded that the 2017 City of Culture programme staged more than 2,800 activities, installations and exhibitions in Hull in a 365-day programme which attracted £32.8m worth of funding.

And that this year’s digital Freedom Festival, founded and based in the city, was described in the Daily Telegraph, no less, as an “absolute ball”.

Hull no longer tops every nefarious list going: awful towns, teenage pregnancies, obesity, bad schools and low wages.

It is no longer a symbol of a lost world, an emblem of a dying, post-industrial culture.

It has been re-energised by its thriving arts scene.

The festivities of 2017 changed everything, turbo-charging the local economy – before the pandemic delivered another hit.

According to an evaluation by the local university it “challenged the worst images of the city”, reversing its reputation as a “crap town” at the end of the M62.

Listening to an excellent Radio 3 discussion programme on Tuesday, a few hours before Maitlis’s indiscretion, I was surprised to discover that this reputation almost put it on the movie map.

In Free Thinking, the director of one of the greatest British crime films of all time – Get Carter – mentioned that it was nearly filmed in Hull. Mike Hodges told the presenter Matthew Sweet that he had visited the port on a minesweeper during his National Service. It was “Hogarthian…I couldn’t believe what I was seeing”. In the end, he set the gritty Michael Caine thriller in Newcastle and the rest is cinema history.

The movie is based on the Ted Lewis novel Jack’s Return Home.

Lewis grew up in Humberside, went to Hull Art School, sampled the bright lights of London, then moved back to Scunthorpe where he died at the shockingly young age of 42.

My favourite scene in Get Carter is the one where Caine clicks his fingers and orders a beer in a “thin glass”.

One of the Radio 3 thinkers claimed this was representative of an arrogant, condescending Londoner’s view of the bleak north.

Jack’s Return Home is a masterpiece. This year, it celebrates its 50th anniversary, an occasion surely worthy of a Newsnight tribute.

Not, of course, to be hosted by Ms Maitlis.

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Thank you

James Mitchinson