How do you define a ‘northerner’?

Obviously, now that every high street in England looks identical, and everyone under 30 uses exactly the same Australian rising inflection in speech, books of this sort are based on a false and wishful premise. But let us enter into Paul Morley’s game and ask the question he has asked again.

What is ‘the north’ — or ‘the North’ — anyway? Obviously, as a geographical entity, we know (roughly) what we are talking about; we can argue about Derbyshire, but between Yorkshire and Scotland no one is going to dispute what the north is.

Culturally, we may think we know what we are talking about, but all attempts to pin this down founder on the rocks of narrowness and outdated stereotype. Lazily, people sometimes refer to ‘the northern accent’, without differentiating between accents from Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford, Newcastle, Carlisle and Sheffield. These are all distinct from one another, and distinct again from rural accents.