Interesting one, Martin. Beowolf? Beowulf? I got the impression that fish and Hull had largely parted company and came across a local's post complaining that outsiders thought the town still stank of it. Hence the penultmate line in the following. Did PL ever directly quote himself? Probably not . . oh well.

City of Culture? Can some pompous pricks
Have chosen here for 2017
Although the river Humber’s like the Styx
But both banks melancholic misty-mean?

This place in eastern flatness is a bore
That squeezes out quotidian despair,
However true, as back in ‘54,
Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.

Since it no longer reeks of stinking fish,
So little left now, even for a gull,
And surely answers no-one’s prayer or wish,
Best not disturb the bloodiness of Hull.

Jerome,One of my earliest traceable ancestors was a Lord(?) Mayor of Hull in the late 18th or early 19th century and was buried in its aptly named Scullcoats Graveyard. Perhaps I should claim that some sort of droit de seigneur entitles me to do a series of readings there during their year of culture. But maybe I shan't bother.

I always thought that Tesco would be a good substitute for Grendel in any modern dress version of Beowolf. But perhaps for Hull a more suitable villain would be a composite of Edward Heath and Geoffrey Rippon who "negotiated" away our fishing industry. If satire is alive in Hull ..... who knows what amateur attempts at theatre may try to pass themselves off as culture?

So Hull's been named the capital of culture?
Now hordes of gawking tourists will descend.
The council must be pissing in their knickers
At the thought of all the money that they'll spend.

There'll be no decent jazz, just mindless pop songs
With thuggish, thumping basslines (what a bore!)
And "artists" building childish installations,
As no-one's ever taught them how to draw.

I have no Truck with gurning, shrieking luvvies
Who gobble public funding for "the arts"
And populate their gaudy, blaring freakshows
With a cast of brute Neanderthals and tarts.

In fact, I loathe this "culture city" business -
A vulgar stunt to lure the bored and thick...
But, if they must perpetuate the circus,
There's places worse than Hull that they could pick.