Cream teas and dastardly deeds; Broadcaster Stuart Maconie went in search of the character of Middle England and discovered some curious contrasts.

Byline: Peter Elson reports

WHATEVER his previous culturally crucial credentials, Stuart Maconie is forced to admit an all too glaring fact.

While perhaps he was once a working class media hero from Wigan, now he is part of Middle England.

"Well, I'm a Radio 2 presenter.

How Middle England is that?" he chuckles.

After his success with Pies and Prejudice, his "love letter to the North", he has written a companion volume called Adventures on the High Teas.

This is his personal search for Middle England and what this much-used description means.

He now lives with his wife, Eleanor, a special needs head teacher, and two step-children in a pretty middle-English place, south of Birmingham, in Worcestershire However, he seems to spend as much time, if not more, in Manchester, recording his Radio 2 show with co-host Mark Radcliffe. Or at his Ullswater home.

"I'm an exiled Northerner, or perhaps, more accurately, just a gipsy," he concedes.

"Once I'd done a book about the North, logic would dictate a book about the South next," says Stuart, 47.

"But there isn't the kind of conception about the South that there is about the North.

"But I wanted to do another travel book, as I'd so enjoyed researching and writing Pies."

The idea of Middle England appealed both as a geographical entity and a state of mind, plus its contradictions.

"To some trendy TV commissioning editor, it can mean stifling conservatism and right-wing views, bringing back the birch, hanging and flogging them.

"Or, if it's said in a country pub over a pint of warm flat beer, it means something entirely different: tradition and decency, the long march of history, British fair play and courage.

"People might think that, as I'm from the urban North, became an NME rock music writer and now a DJ, that I would not like anything that Middle England means.

"Nothing could be further from the truth. I love Vaughan Williams, Elgar and warm, flat beer."

One discovery for our man born in Whiston Hospital was that modern Middle England is nothing like that of myth.

He began by visiting definitively Middle England places, the Cotswolds and the spa towns of Tunbridge Wells, Cheltenham, Bath, Buxton and Harrogate.

"They were absolutely delightful and their image is one of faded gentility for the comfortably off. Yet, in Georgian times, under the likes of Beau Nash and Beau Brummell, they provided raucous fun for the landed gentry and the Damien Hirsts and Kate Mosses of the day.

"They were hot-beds of vice, full of gambling and drinking, under the guise of taking health cures, sort of up-market holiday camps. I like that then and now contradiction."

Tunbridge Wells is a by-word for propriety and conservatism, as in the soubriquet "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells".

"Many of the streets have Biblical names to makeover its scandalous past," says Stuart.

The Cotswold villages are like the children's animation show Camberwick Green come to life, he believes.

"You emerge zombified from them by the fact that their sheer loveliness is too nice to be true.

"Then I looked for places that I felt personified the Middle English attitude to things like humour, crime, or booze.

"Although Middle England prides itself on being very proper, we are one of the few countries in which our comfort viewing on a cosy Sunday evening is to watch a programme with a really gruesome series of murders in a market town.

"Christmas is meant to be an uplifting Christian festival, yet deeply Christian Middle England loves nothing more than an MR James story in which innocent people are terrorised by a ghost.

"It's a real contradiction.

Orwell wrote a great essay called The Decline of The English Murder, complaining the subject was getting jaded with the sheer number of more jilted spinsters, con-men and poisoners. This indicates there is always a dark side to human nature, whatever its locale.

"There is no doubt that Middle England is a place of hidden depths. Superficially, the veneer is properly polished, but as writers from Agatha Christie to Joanna Trollope have described, it's seething with repressed sex and violence beneath."

This is nowhere better illustrated than by the dilemma of Celia Johnson character in the classic British film, Brief Encounter.

"Here again is the pulling in both directions. This time between doing the right thing and following your heart.

"Quiet suppression is a very Middle England trait, which runs through literature, music and film."

Brief Encounter also embodies the cowardice of Middle England, he argues, as, within its social framework, it is easier to do the decent thing than rebel.

"I think Celia Johnson's performance in that film is extraordinary," he says.

"You see the anguish of dilemma in her eyes. It's anything but the cosy comfort trash that it is sometimes dismissed as.

"It's the best thing that Noel Coward wrote, as if he was born to record the definitive story of the woman who didn't follow her dreams."

There is also the Middle English attitude to war: "It's as if we won't start a punch-up, but if someone begins shoving a little guy, like Poland, then, as we had this innate idea of fair-play, we'd take up cudgels on their behalf.

"This is incredibly admirable.

In our post-1960s ironic way, it's very easy in our post-modern, irony-protected way to sneer at this stuff.

"The Second World War was the defining time in the last century.

"In Europe's darkest hour, we stood up for what was right and that gave us a renewed confidence that carried us into the swinging 60s."

The death of Princess Diana, although diametrically opposite, was another watershed in British public behaviour, which was probably slightly for the worst, he thinks.

"The subsequent national madness in the way people reacted had never been seen before.

"I saw a tough-looking 19-year-old lad in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, crying over Diana's death.

"Victoria Wood famously said that there wouldn't be a revolution in England unless they banned car-boot sales.

"I think she's right. People will endure terrible recession, fat-cat bankers mocking them and numerous indignities.

"But there is the final straw, which in this case was the Queen's response to Diana's death.

"The crowds in the Mall effectively said 'Come out onto the balcony, Your Majesty, and grieve'.

"The implication was that the Royal Family would lose their place in people's hearts forever if the Queen didn't show this emotion. And that's exactly what happened.

"Our relationship to the Royal Family has irrevocably changed.

"All that obeisance and 'aren't they wonderful?' has gone now, even for their greatest Middle England supporters.

"I try and view these matters sociologically, not judgmentally.

"Beyond the tragedy of this young mother's terrible death, we saw the rise of greater sentimentality."

This is manifested culturally in the acceptance that everyone's opinion is equal (when it's not), or that it's good to emote all the time.

An example is the X-Factor TV talent contest.

"It's very un-English watching multi-millionaires sneer at people's dreams," he rages.

"All that letting it all hang out and psycho-babble speech, being there for you, in denial or on a journey.

"How has this once practical, no-nonsense nation ended up talking in this bizarre fashion?"

This culture of sentimentality means that you indulge in feelings that you don't actually have.

"I'm also interested in the infantilisation of our society, which I discuss in my next book.

"Children have gone from being seen and not heard a century ago to now ruling society.

"I think there's much more to life than worrying about kids being fat and seeing Jamie Oliver cry about it. We've lost our collective marbles.

"I think we're lucky that by and large we don't have much to worry about, say, compared to the population of Burma.

"There seems, also, a fear in Britain of not being different.

Whereas, throughout our history, from Morrissey to Noel Coward, from Jarvis Cocker to Alan Bennett, we were famous for it."

Interestingly, Middle England does not extend everywhere.

Two places seemingly immune are Cornwall, which is a strange, other kind of world and - guess where? - Liverpool.

What about the Lake District?

"I'll add my half-inch spine to the groaning shelves of Lakes literature just before I retire,"

Stuart promises.

"I should emphasise that one of the important elements in my book is wandering about going to cake shops and making loads of jokes."

ADVENTURES on the High Teas, by Stuart Maconie, Ebury Press, pounds 11.99.

STUART MACONIE will give readings and take questions from the public at Waterstone's, Liverpool One, at 6pm, tonight.

Comfort viewing is gruesome murders in a market town

They were hot-beds of vice, full of gambling and drinking

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CAPTION(S):

Stuart Maconie with quintessential icons of middle England, the tea-room, above, and repressed passion and a sense of right, as seen in Brief Encounter, right