"this story about Hull was released in several national newspapers, it was not made up by the guest".

So it was made up by someone else to fill an empty place in a throwaway rag, and passed on by a nameless and faceless one.

Chesterton once wrote something relevant to this business of not liking the place you live in. Pimlico in this case, but it might as well have been Hull or Halifax or wherever:

It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason ...If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence."