On slow news days, our local newspaper fills its pages with articles such as "Thirty expressions that show you are from Grimsby". While some of them are truly local, such as 'Meggie' for someone born in Cleethorpes, many of them are common across the north of England and are far from unique to Grimsby. Some words and phrases are used within families and a family across the street may use a different set of slang terms to cover the same things.

Films and television have introduced so many different accents and dialects into our living rooms, both from home and abroad, that very few slang terms can be claimed to be truly regional.

DC