Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells

The phrase Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells is a generic name used in the United Kingdom for a person, usually with strongly conservative political views, who writes letters to newspapers in a tone of moral outrage. The term may have originated either with the 1944 BBC radio show Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh, or with an editor of the letters page of the Tunbridge Wells Advertiser.

Origins

A "stuffy, reactionary image" was associated with Tunbridge Wells by the novelist E. M. Forster in his 1908 A Room with a View, where he makes the character Lucy Bartlett say "I am used to Tunbridge Wells, where we are all hopelessly behind the times".

The BBC radio show Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh, first broadcast in 1944, is sometimes said to have popularised the term "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" for correspondence to newspapers.

According to local historian and former newspaper editor Frank Chapman, the phrase has a different origin, starting in the 1950s with the staff of the former Tunbridge Wells Advertiser. The paper's editor, alarmed at a lack of letters from readers, insisted his staff pen a few to fill space. One signed his simply "Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells".

Later use

In 1978, Radio 4 called its new listener feedback programme, Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells, though it has since been renamed Feedback.

In 2009, some residents of Tunbridge Wells called the tag "inappropriate" and "stereotypical", and asked the town to drop association with it in favour of "Delighted of Tunbridge Wells".

See also

• Edith Clampton, a pseudonymous comedic letter-writer to the Bangkok Post
• Will it play in Peoria?
• Sir Bufton-Tufton, a recurring character in the UK satirical magazine Private Eye

External links

• Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells (local website)