What on earth is a ‘professional Northerner’?

Hear the one about the ‘professional Southerner’? Of course not, says Michael Henderson, so why does the media keep trotting out this tired old cliché about Northerners?

John Prescott is at it again. Embold-ened by his first assault on television, an ‘examination’ of social class that was unaccountably aired by the BBC last year, the man we must refer to as the former deputy prime minister has been invited back, this time (yawn) to help viewers understand the differences between North and South.

Having seen a bit of the first programme, which revealed rather more about Prescott’s notorious chippiness than the defects of his putative targets, I trust readers will not mark me down for missing the follow-up. Life is short. Yet, even if one were granted all eternity to reflect on the follies of mankind, half an hour of Prescott would remain 30 minutes one could never retrieve.