Line #75 UsefulNotes/TheMidlands


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/midlands_map_6788.jpg]]
2
3	->''"Northampton, Northampton, Northampton, Middle of England!"''
4	-->-- '''Linda Jardim''', "Energy in Northampton"
5
6	The Midlands is between OopNorth and [[BritainIsOnlyLondon London]]. Land of the Free, Home of the Brummies. [[note]] Though of course, as is usual in Britain, Midlanders from outside Birmingham will get very annoyed if called a Brummie.[[/note]]
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8	It broadly corresponds to the old Kingdom of Mercia (the dialect influenced Creator/JRRTolkien) and is split by the UK government into UsefulNotes/TheWestMidlands and East Midlands regions; as of 2023 this split is only used for statistical purposes and for TV news coverage.
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10	The Midlands is usually considered to contain the historic counties of Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Gloucestershire and Huntingdonshire are occasionally considered part of the Midlands but fall outside the regions of the West Midlands or the East Midlands and are more often considered parts of UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry, UsefulNotes/EastAnglia or the UsefulNotes/HomeCounties. Lincolnshire is part of the East Midlands region but its northern part (which was formerly part of Humberside) falls inside the Yorkshire and the Humber region and the county is often excluded from being part of the Midlands because of its large coastline. Opinion is divided as to whether most of Cheshire, (outside its northern industrial belt and the bits in the orbit of Liverpool or Manchester) counts as OopNorth or Midlands. Similarly, the northern part of Derbyshire, the spur pointing up into the Pennines and bordering Lancashire and Yorkshire, is often considered as the southern boundary of OopNorth, and to a lesser extent so are towns like Chesterfield and Worksop (which are firmly in the orbit of Sheffield, an unambiguously northern city).
11
12	The largest cities of the Midlands include Birmingham, Coventry, Stoke-on-Trent, Wolverhampton, Nottingham, Derby and Leicester. Somewhat deprived in places, Birmingham and Nottingham currently have a rather bad reputation for gun crime. Coventry, meanwhile, has been named [[http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-named-most-dangerous-city-12408683 the most dangerous city in the UK]] and the seventh [[http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/coventry-named-seventh-most-dangerous-9568642 most dangerous in Europe]].
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14	The cities of the Midlands are noted for having a larger than usual percentage of ethnic minorities. In the city of Leicester, over 50% of the population come from ethnic minorities, and Leicester also hosts the largest Diwali celebration (the Festival of Light) outside of India. Special mention should go to Belgrave Road in Leicester, commonly known as the Golden Mile for its absurdly high number of gold merchants, jewellery stores, and banks (it's literally door-to-door), with every business run or owned by an ethnic minority. Furthermore, the 2021 Census confirmed that Birmingham is also a White minority city, although since it is a rather bigger city than Leicester, it has a much wider range of ethnic groups compared to the latter, where the majority of people from ethnic minorities are Punjabi and Gujarati Indians.
15
16	Midlanders are often thought of as being stupid, possibly due to most accents being non-rhotic with vowels so sloppy that they can successfully dirty up any nearby consonants too. This results in the Midlands Drawl, which involves either taking as long as you can to say as little as you can, or saying as much as you can as slowly as you can. The Black Country accent makes people assume 'thickie' whereas a Staffordshire accent is more generic. An East Midlands accent actually sounds much like OopNorth to the untrained ear.
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18	By a quirk of geography, the Midlands are actually slanted so the "North West" region is actually further south than the centre of the East Midlands.[[note]]Debate persists as to whether most of Cheshire, outside its northern industrialised belt, properly belongs in the Midlands. Parts of northern Derbyshire, especially Buxton and Glossop, are considered to be just about part of the north. Refer to OopNorth for further details.[[/note]]
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20	----
21	!!Examples:
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23	[[foldercontrol]]
24
25	[[folder:Comic Books]]
26	* Creator/PaulCornell's ''Wisdom'' and ''Comicbook/CaptainBritainAndMI13'' featured a UsefulNotes/WorldWarII-veteran Brummie superhero called [[CaptainGeographic Captain Midlands]].
27	* ''Comicbook/SuburbanGlamour'' takes place in Lanbern, a small suburban town somewhere in Worcestershire.
28	* ''Skizz'', a ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'' comic strip by Creator/AlanMoore, essentially asks "What if Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial landed in Birmingham?"
29	[[/folder]]
30
31	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
32	* ''Film/DeadMansShoes'' is filmed and set in Matlock in Derbyshire. All of Shane Meadows' films are filmed and set in the East Midlands, typically Nottinghamshire. Including, unsurprisingly, ''Once upon a Time in the Midlands''.
33	* A film version of ''Stig of the Dump'' was filmed in and around the Derby area, which is in the Midlands.
34	[[/folder]]
35
36	[[folder:Literature]]
37	* Nottingham of course gives us one of fiction's most famous bad guys, the Sheriff of Nottingham. The title wasn't created until 1449, long after the start of the Myth/RobinHood story but it still exists and was recently held by a woman, Jeannie Packer (who referenced Robin Hood on her biography page). Her successor doesn't, but the page describing the office of the Sheriff of Nottingham does briefly mention its role in the legend of Robin Hood.
38	* In ''Literature/TheThirdWorldWar'', Birmingham gets nuked.
39	* Creator/EllisPeters' Literature/BrotherCadfael mystery series is based in Shropshire (with occasional forays into Wales).
40	** Peters' other series detective, [[Literature/FelseInvestigates George Felse]], also hails from the Midlands (specifically a FictionalCounty called Midshire).
41	* One or two vermin in the ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'' series have a noticeable Brummie FunetikAksent, as opposed to the usual generic low-class thug or TalkLikeAPirate vermin dialects.
42	* Literature/AdrianMole is from Leicester, and the books largely take place in various towns in the Midlands.
43	* Creator/JRRTolkien stated that in Literature/TheLordOfTheRings, he based the Shire (and the Hobbit society there) on his childhood home in Birmingham.
44	** An amusing side result of this arises from "Gamgee" actually being a colloquial term in Birmingham for "cotton wool" (the white fluffy stuff), because a local cotton company was run by a family named "Gamgee". Tolkien wasn't aware of the reason, he just remembered it as a term from his childhood and then assigned as the character Sam's surname, sort of like "Sam Cottonwool" (he's this good natured guy who helps out people who are in trouble, sort of like medical dressings do). This even extends to the point that Sam's wife Rosie's surname is "Cotton". Much to Tolkien's surprise, a few years after ''The Lord of the Rings'' was published, he received a letter from a real-life man whose ''actual name'' was "Sam Gamgee". Tolkien wrote him back explaining he never realized "Gamgee" was a real-life surname, he thought it was just a local word from his childhood in the Midlands, though Sam was quite a heroic character so he didn't think it would be too embarrassing. For a while afterwards, Tolkien had the slight fear that one day he'd get a letter from some poor fellow actually named "S. Gollum" as "that would have been more difficult to deal with."
45	** Of course, what the film version controversially omitted for time was one of Tolkien's major points in the book: when the Hobbits return to the Shire after the war, they find that the Industrial Revolution has swept through it, factories have sprouted up everywhere, and all the forests have been cut down. The Shire was taken over by Frodo's evil cousin Lotho using hired mercenaries, and they quickly set about trying to industrialize everything for profit...or to make it a world power...or something. Tolkien usually strongly argued against any allegorical readings of his work (even really strong reflections about the Great War which are kind of obvious), but on this one point, he openly admitted that "the Scouring of the Shire" was his commentary on what happened to the Midlands in the 20th century. Tolkien grew up in the Midlands around the turn of the century, which it was this bucolic Shire-like lush green fairy-tale-perfect place, then he left to fight in the horror of World War I, all but one of his close personal friends were killed in action, and when he returned home to Birmingham, the whole place had industrialized, factories were everywhere and choking it with pollution, and the Midlands he grew up in were utterly swept aside. (Of course, Tolkien was well aware that parts of the Midlands had been industrialized longer than anywhere else--after all, that's why it was called the "Black Country," and the ''original steam engine company'', Boulton & Watt, was based in Birmingham--but the Great War had led the factories to cover even more of the land.) "Mordor" for Tolkien (or more probably "Isengard") was, in many ways, urban sprawl.
46	*** It is soon revealed that Lotho's rise was funded by Saruman, who later arrives and directly takes control, at which point all pretense to "productivity" is abandoned and the mercenaries just start randomly burning forests, polluting rivers for no real purpose, etc. Saruman had no real goal other than ''petty revenge on some country farmers who are three and a half feet tall'' (how the mighty have fallen...) -- so its sort of implied by Tolkien that there could ''be'' no rational reason for what had happened to the Midlands, the actual underlying reason for all of this industrialization was for the ''sole'' purpose of polluting the countryside out of existence out of spite!
47	* ''Literature/TomBrownsSchooldays'' is set in Rugby School (where the sport was also born, at least according to the popular legend), and the quasi-spinoff ''{{Literature/Flashman}}'' stars a character from the book.
48	* ''Literature/PreciousBane'' is set in rural Shropshire.
49	[[/folder]]
50
51	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
52	* Richard Hammond of ''Series/TopGear'', who is constantly cast as a sort of country bumpkin by co-presenter Jeremy Clarkson for that very reason.
53	** Constantly joked about during the tractor challenge, culminating in Hammond attempting to herd sheep [[FunnyBackgroundEvent in the background]] while Clarkson and James May talk.
54	** Jeremy Clarkson's scorn for the culture of this region shows up occasionally, mostly when discussing cars that were great but then "ruined" by being built here. In particular, he bemoans what became of the Range Rover because of this during their Bolivia Special. It's worth noting that Clarkson himself is from OopNorth.
55	* Creator/EricIdle's ''Series/RutlandWeekendTelevision'', the joke being that Rutland, the least-populous of all counties in England, would have its own TV station, and so be extremely low-budget. There is also the "joke-name" aspect; people are often surprised Rutland actually exists and wasn't made up as a Python-ish fake place. [[note]]Rutlandshire is so small it doesn't even appear on the header map at the top of this page; you can find it at the bottom right-hand corner of Leicestershire, bordering onto Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire. For a long time a local government reorganisation dissolved it as an entity and absorbed it into Leicestershire but outcry and campaigning restored it. It's so small, in fact, that the county named after it in ''UsefulNotes/{{Vermont}}'' is larger both in land area ''and'' in population, which is possibly the only time anything in Vermont has been larger than its comparator in anything.[[/note]]
56	* ''{{Series/Peaky Blinders}}'' is set in Birmingham and is based loosely on a real gang from the city.
57	* Timothy Spall is famous for portraying TV West Midlanders, despite not actually being from the Midlands. It started with ''Series/AufWiedersehenPet'' and just sort of snowballed.
58	* ''Crossroads'': three different versions of a SoapOpera set in a Midlands motel/hotel.
59	* Sibling actors Creator/MichaelSocha (Tom in ''Series/{{Being Human\|UK}}'') and Lauren Socha (Kelly in ''Series/{{Misfits}}'') are from Derbyshire. Notably, they use their natural regional accents in the aforementioned roles, providing rare examples of strong East Midlands dialect/accents in television dramas.
60	* 1970's nostalgia-comedy ''Series/TheGrimleys'' is set in Dudley, near Birmingham.
61	* The series ''Series/RaisedByWolves2013'' is set in the West Midlands city of Wolverhampton - hence the title.
62	* Since Stratford-Upon-Avon is in the Midlands, ''Series/UpstartCrow'' gives Creator/WilliamShakespeare's family the accent. But not Will himself, to emphasise that he doesn't fit in.
63	[[/folder]]
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65	[[folder:Radio]]
66	* ''Radio/TheArchers'' is set in a ([[{{Barsetshire}} fictional]]) West Midlands county called Borsetshire, whose inhabitants have Dorset and/or Somerset accents for no adequately explained reason. Presumably someone from the casting department who's never been to either region just went for "generic country bumpkin" and nobody bothered to correct them.
67	** Ambridge is based on Hanbury, a village in Worcestershire. The difference between "generic country bumpkin" and the genuine Worcestershire accent (which is not that common these days) is probably lost on most people.
68	[[/folder]]
69
70	[[folder:Theatre]]
71	* ''Theatre/TheBeauxStratagem'' is an 18th century RestorationComedy set in the Staffordshire town of Lichfield. It centres around two would-be [[ConMan Con Men]] trying to embezzle the town's wealthy and eligible young ladies.
72	[[/folder]]
73
74	[[folder:Video Games]]
75	* ''VideoGame/EverybodysGoneToTheRapture'', sets the end of the world in the quiet village of Yaughton in Shropshire, this is as strange and odd as you might expect.
76	[[/folder]]
77
78	[[folder:Web Comics]]
79	* Russell and Reggie, the protagonists of ''Webcomic/{{Transmission}}'' were born and raised in Stoke-on-Trent.
80	* Zimmy and Gamma of ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt'' both hail from Birmingham; Zimmy's personal BlackBugRoom is a DarkWorld reflection of the city. (The author himself lives in Birmingham; the portrayal in the comic [[TakeThat shows his own feelings]] about the RealLife city.)
81	* Going by a plot-point involving the exact geographic centre of the UK, and one rather specific cultural reference, many of the central cast of ''Webcomic/FreakAngels'' are from Northamptonshire.
82	[[/folder]]
83
84	[[folder:Web Videos]]
85	* ''WebVideo/ACoupleOfCuntsInTheCountryside'' is filmed in the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin countryside]] of Lincolnshire.
86	* ''WebVideo/ThePeriodicTableOfVideos'' is filmed in the School of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham (in... Nottingham).
87	[[/folder]]
88
89	[[folder:Real Life]]
90	* Music/OzzyOsbourne. And the rest of Music/BlackSabbath, from Aston, Birmingham. There's now a "Black Sabbath bridge" over one of Birmingham's canals.
91	* [[Music/{{Motorhead}} Lemmy Kilminster]], from Stoke-on-Trent (the rest of Motörhead are from London). The local council refused planning permission to erect a statue of him, as they felt he was the wrong sort of local hero they should be celebrating.
92	* Music/TheMoodyBlues, from Birmingham. The name derives from the Mitchells And Butlers brewery, who were happy to sponsor several employees who started a pub blues band, on the proviso they had "M & B" in their name.
93	* Music/ElectricLightOrchestra, and its parent band Music/TheMove, and spin-off band Music/RoyWood's Wizzard.
94	* Creator/AlanMoore is a proud native of Northampton and still lives there.
95	* Thom Yorke of Music/{{Radiohead}} is also a native of Northamptonshire. Also Raging Speedhorn, but we try not to talk about that too loudly.
96	* Creator/LennyHenry
97	* Comedian Creator/RikMayall, whilst born in Essex spent a great deal of his upbringing in Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire, which fueled the inspiration for his Kevin Turvey persona.
98	** And [[Series/DoctorWho Eleventh Doctor]] Creator/MattSmith.
99	*** His companion [[Series/DoctorWho Rory Williams]] (Creator/ArthurDarvill) is from Birmingham.
100	* East Midlands Airport has been renamed multiple times because almost no one from outside Britain has heard of the East Midlands. They tried to get it renamed to Nottingham Airport at one point, because more people have heard of this, but as the airport actually isn't in Nottingham at all, or even Nottinghamshire, this raised objections from the other two cities the airport serves, Leicester and Derby.
101	** Also there already is a Nottingham Airport, but it's so small that not even some people in Nottingham know about it.
102	* Comedian Creator/JasperCarrott, noted for his Brummie accent and routines about supporting the mostly hopeless Birmingham City FC. He also had a routine about being the most average man in Britain:
103	--> "Have you ever stopped to think about how ordinary you are? I have. I'm so ordinary...it's ''extraordinary''. I'm middle-aged, middle-class, and I live in The Midlands, in the middle of England. In fact I live bang slap in the middle of The Midlands in the middle of England. I drive on the middle lane of the motorway while listening to some middle-of-the-road music (usually Music/BetteMidler) and when I get to work I feel like I'm stuck in the Middle Ages! I went to the doctor, he said 'you're having a midlife crisis'. I gave him ''the middle finger!''"
104	* All the members of the psychedelic rock band Traffic were from the West Midlands.
105	* Music/DuranDuran originated in Birmingham with the 1978 founding of the band (with childhood friends and Birmingham natives Nick Rhodes and John Taylor at the core of this band). They were the house band for the Rum Runner, a club set up to be Birmingham's answer to Studio 54, and every band member who joined up until Andy Taylor entered the picture were from Birmingham. (Taylor was from "{{Oop North}}", specifically Newcastle.) Simon Le Bon came from London but was studying drama at the University of Birmingham when he joined the band, and the band were managed by Rum Runner owners (and fellow Brummies) Paul and Michael Barrow.
106	** And speaking of the Rum Runner -- two other bands from Birmingham, Music/DexysMidnightRunners ("Come on Eileen") and Music/{{UB40}} ("Red Red Wine") used the practice space above the club to rehearse.
107	* UsefulNotes/FormulaOne champion Nigel Mansell sounds unmistakably like a midlander. As noted on the trope page fellow brummie Jasper Carrott made fun of his lack of personality: "Potentially, he is the most exciting man on the Earth..." (beat) "... until he speaks".
108	* Creator/RichardArmitage was born and raised in Leicester.
109	* The Stamper Brothers, who founded a company called Ashby Computers and Graphics (literally in the middle of the country - Ashby is about a mile off being the most central point in the UK) which after a period as Ultimate Play the Game, changed its name to Creator/{{Rare}}, creators of ''VideoGame/BanjoKazooie'' and ''VideoGame/PerfectDark''. They're still in the Midlands, but now based in Twycross.
110	** It's been referenced a couple of times in their games: In ''VideoGame/BanjoKazooie'', the haunted church in [[BigBoosHaunt Mad Monster Mansion]] is modeled after the Saint James Parish Church located in the village, and "Twycross, England" can be read beneath the stern of the eponymous cargo steamboat in [[NotSoSafeHarbor Rusty Bucket Bay]].
111	* John Deacon of Music/{{Queen}} was also born and raised in Leicester.
112	* The city of Coventry historically has been the "Motor City" of Britain, headquarters to many automobile companies, most notably Jaguar.
113	* Sir Frank Whittle, inventor of the jet engine, was born in Coventry. There's a statue of him under the double "Whittle arch" in the city centre.
114	* Robert Plant and John Bonham, singer and drummer respectively, of Music/LedZeppelin. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, meanwhile, are from the UsefulNotes/HomeCounties.
115	* Pro wrestler "Gentleman" Wrestling/ChrisAdams was born in Rugby, Warwickshire and usually billed from Stratford-Upon-Avon, also in Warwickshire.
116	* In its heyday, the Airfix plastic model company marketed a series of typically British buildings as kits the modeller could assemble and paint as accessories to a model railway layout. These included a church, a pub, a windmill, a railway station, and other buildings thought to be quintessentially English such as a thatched cottage and a detached dwelling house. After long research to find the most English place possible, so as to create models of its iconic buildings, they settled on Oakham, Rutlandshire. Some of Oakham's buildings are still available to this day as model kits; the town officially became, for Airfix, The Most English Place in England.
117	* Comedian Creator/RobertWebb (of the comedy duo Mitchell and Webb, e.g. Series/PeepShow) was born and raised in Lincolnshire, more specifically the town of Woodhall Spa. He worked hard to drop his East Midlands accent years before getting into Cambridge, however.
118	* Another comedian from the Midlands is Creator/GregDavies, who was brought up in Shropshire (though his Welsh dad insisted he be born in Wales).
119	* Music/EllieGoulding was born and raised in Hereford, but now lives in UsefulNotes/{{London}}.
120	* Music/PitchShifter are from Nottingham.
121	* The {{New Wave\| Music}} band B-Movie, from Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.
122	* Music/ThePretenders, from Hereford (except for American expat frontwoman Chrissie Hynde).
123	* R&B singer-songwriter Charlotte Kelly, AKA Charlotte of "Skin" fame, from Coventry.
124	* Galactically successful international skating treasures Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, superstar perfect-score-earning, Olympic-champion ice dancers of Sarajevo 1984's "Bolero" fame, were born and raised in Nottingham and met on the ice of the city's skating club as teenagers; "Torvill and Dean" still consider it home and are beloved by generations of its residents, with streets and even a tram named after them.
125	[[/folder]]

Context UsefulNotes / TheMidlands