More than a quarter of Merthyr Tydfil’s residents claim incapacity benefits. A third of its children leave school with no qualifications. A tenth of its patients are prescribed antidepressants. Nearly three-fifths of its population are overweight or obese.
This may not sound like ideal material from which to fashion an amusing book, but somehow Tim Moore manages it. Moore has made a career out of writing quirky travelogues: in Do Not Pass Go, for example, he visited all the streets mentioned on the original Monopoly board, and in Spanish Steps he trekked across Spain with a donkey.
Now, in You Are Awful (But I Like You), he tours what he calls “unloved Britain”, stopping off at our most miserable towns, gasping at our most hideous architecture, shivering in our worst-reviewed hotels and forcing down our most disgusting delicacies.