Not everyone from Essex is intellectually challenged....
Menelaus
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If you just watched Celebrity or Reality TV series you would imagine that we were all halfwits in Essex!
Really hoping that one day TV producers might choose a different stereotype for my county.....but I shan't hold my breath. Basically it has been decided that we are all braindead, orange halfwits, fit only to be laughed at, and that's that.
Who would have thought that Maggie Smith, Laura Trott, Ruth Rendell, Rik Mayall and even bloomin' John Constable were born in Essex!
Come to Saffron Walden, Finchingfield, Thaxted, Dedham, Stratford St. Mary or even Colchester to see a different "Essex."
Sure we have a few retards (TOWIE etc) but no more so than many other sub-urban areas of the UK.
Really hoping that one day TV producers might choose a different stereotype for my county.....but I shan't hold my breath. Basically it has been decided that we are all braindead, orange halfwits, fit only to be laughed at, and that's that.
Who would have thought that Maggie Smith, Laura Trott, Ruth Rendell, Rik Mayall and even bloomin' John Constable were born in Essex!
Come to Saffron Walden, Finchingfield, Thaxted, Dedham, Stratford St. Mary or even Colchester to see a different "Essex."
Sure we have a few retards (TOWIE etc) but no more so than many other sub-urban areas of the UK.
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I come from Glasgow where everyone is either drunk, fighting or going around saying 'See you Jimmy'. ;-)
Ditto Newcastle.
Drunk, fighting or going around with no clothes on saying 'why aye man'.
As a born and bred Essex man myself, I agree with your comments 100%.
Some of us actually had a good education and a good upbringing, I hate being tarred with the same brush as Joey Essex, Gemma Collins etc.
May I add to your list Dame Helen Mirren who was a Southend-on-sea girl.
You would have to be pretty stupid yourself to judge an entire county by the actions of a dozen fame hungry fakes on reality tv shows - though it's been done one here
The most exciting thing that happens is the kfc opening
I know. I fled essex twenty years ago. Its actually got worse
Those characters are based on real people
You forgot the head-butting!:D
^ Well quite.
@OP, I think you can sleep easy in the knowledge that most people with a brain(cell) know the difference between RTV and real life.
I hear you DD, I think tourists are quite surprised when they come to Scotland & find the men aren't walking around in kilts playing the bagpipes then off home for a dinner of Haggis, Tatties & Neeps.
You mean tourists go to Scotland?:o:D
Just like to point out that John Constable was born in East Bergholt which is in Suffolk and Stratford St Mary is in Suffolk too.
I have lived on the Suffolk side of the Suffolk / Essex border for most of my life. It has always amazed me that you just have to cross the river Stour into Essex and everyone is suddenly talking very loudly in a Mockney accent!
Just because the postal address for some villages is either Colchester or Manningtree ( Essex ) it doesn't mean that those places are actually in Mockney Land.
They are Suffolk'n'Good!
Only the Educated ones, YL.....The rest go to London;-):D
Its so painful to watch. I'm from the New Forest, but I moved to Essex 11 years ago. I think I've met roughly 4 people with that dreadful accent.
I've found Essex to be an interesting and friendly place, with plenty of history and educational opportunities.
Even Chelmsford where I grew up. Come to that I have several friends in Brentwood and the Brentwood/Ongar villages and used to go out there a lot and they are not all like the TOWIE lot.
Yes there are some like that but an awful lot more aren't.
Douglas Adams went to school at Brentwood Boys for Crying out loud and Chelmsford's Boys Grammar School is one of the top non fee paying schools for exam results in the country!
I would like to think that most people have the sense to realise it is a large county and TOWIE is just a small part of it and basically they have rounded up all those of 'dubious' intelligence to the extent that most Essex villages have lost their idiot!
Gemma is making me cringe constantly though. She's even worse than Joey Essex, Amy child's and Mark Wright.
Very true. It is not as though Essex is the only region to be landed unfairly with a stereotype. Glasgow, Liverpool, Newcastle are all in the same boat as well. I'm sure there are others as well.
Despite not coming from a supposedly posh bit of the county like Buckhurst Hill Dougie is a lot more down to earth and decent than the rich spoilt Towie brats.
As for Helen Mirren. Aged eighteen, she auditioned for the National Youth Theatre (NYT) and was accepted. She never looks back at Southend.
As I said before, the decent ones get out...
I spend a lot of time in Brentwood and the most TOWIE type people are the ones who come in for the weekend thinking the town will be like a theme park. You see them every Saturday tottering down the night street, over dressed, over tanned, over made up whilst the locals struggle to conceal their amusement that people actually think that show is real.
In all the years I've spent time in Brentwood (my 2 best friends live there) I've never met anyone with that ear grating accent like Gemma or Amy Childs.
Calm Down, Calm Down....sorry just justifying my Liverpool stereo type, now off to rob the wheels off a car whilst perming my hair and wearing a shell suit!
Neither have I. Even Basildon locals (which isn't far from where I live now and I worked there for a cpuple of years) don't sound like that.
I think the closest is Romford area but even they are nowhere near as over the top as that. And the girls a few miles across the border in Kent are just as bad. In fact I'd say most of the 'ESSEX Girls' stereotypes I have met in my life have actually lived in Kent.
I honestly don't know where they find these people.
When all these people are not in that programme are they all told to carry on the thick and stupid act wherever they are?
Theres her now. That idiot Essex bloke and that girl with the fake breasts and horrible pouting mouth whose name I've forgotten.
They all seem to do the same "idiot act" and its not at all funny now. They're getting young impressionable kids thinking this is how to behave to get on.
As can be seen by the reaction to this person 'normal' people are slowly starting to see sense and rebel against this being on our tv.
Its the same with that Benefits Street programme that was on a few weeks ago which gave the wrong idea about part of Birmingham.