**** OFF, YOU ****!

"**** off Gordon ****ing Ramsey and **** yourself, you ****ing jumped-up ****ing ****er. Oh, so you think the ****ing food in ****ing Skegness is ****ing atrocious do you? Well let me tell you, Mr. ****ing so-called Michelin One Star (One B*****k more like) Ramsey. You’re ****ed because nobody comes here to eat your poncey ****ing rocket salad on a bed of sun-dried ****ing organic bananas ***p anyway. So do us a ****ing favour and **** off to ****ing Bognor ****ing Regis instead where they don’t know one ****ing end of a ****ing King Prawn ****ing Biryani from the other." Mabel Thorpe (Mrs.) (69).

Yes, Skegness is in the news again. Twice in fact. But more of that, as they say, later. Last time a famous cook tried to change eating habits, it was Jamie Oliver’s doomed effort to wean the nation’s schoolchildren off Turkey Twizzlers (cost £486m, results - falling school-dinner sales and fatter kids). Now TV’s celeb chef Ramsey wants to start a crusade to change the menus at Britain’s seaside resorts – this in the country that has introduced the All Day Breakfast to the Costa Blanca and whose national dish is Chicken Tikka Masala.

I can’t see it myself. Blaming the restaurants for poor food is like blaming the BBC for Strictly Ballroom – if there wasn’t an appetite for this kind of ready-chewed pap, they wouldn’t offer it. We have to face facts... Britain is dumb and tasteless. Sad but as true as any generalisation ever can be. Newspapers realise this, so do record companies, fashion designers, retailers and advertisers. So does the Government, for that matter. In the end, the consumer always gets his way. If enough people want rubbish, that’s what they’ll get. And we do. That’s why the biggest selling tabloids appeal to the worst instincts of the barely literate, music has been the same old tosh for years, tat clothes are sold on the basis of having the ‘right’ labels, shops cash in on the shopping-as-a-hobby OCD and goods are sold on image rather than features.

But forget the food, ignore the weather... Skegness has triumphed in the British Toilet Association’s prestigious Best Loo Award of 2007 (sponsored by Dyson Airblade), winning the coveted Four Star Commendation for several of its conveniences. So there you are, Ramsey. Shove that up your ****ing **** and smoke it. We’ve got our priorities straight without you. Our best selling plat du jour might only be chips with cheese, but when we go, we go in style.