Sacha Baron Cohen new Grimsby look

I've always thought that, from a marketing point of view the town should have used the name Great Grimsby a lot more. I do think the film will show us in a negative light, but this is also an opportunity to have our say about the positives of the area and maybe reinvent ourselves.

Quoted from Ships Cat

I've always thought that, from a marketing point of view the town should have used the name Great Grimsby a lot more. I do think the film will show us in a negative light, but this is also an opportunity to have our say about the positives of the area and maybe reinvent ourselves.

As the old saying goes u can't polish a turd! Some people taking this all to serious.

You may wish to consider Grimsby a Turd but i and many thousands of others d'ont!
It is not a question of taking this too seriously, there is nothing wrong with defending
the name of your  own Town and i for one will continue to do so - do you think for one
second that this Town will come out from this with one iota of respect? Not a chance,
all it will do is perpetuate the undeserved opinion of most of this country about Grimsby
and while i  accept there is plenty of room for improvement and like anywhere there is a percentage of wasters in it , we are no worse than dozens of Towns.
The fact of the matter is that this film is called Grimsby and it  will not be any reason
to celebrate.

When I first saw Sacha Baron Cohen in a Town shirt i thought it was very cool, about 30 seconds later I realised this might not end too well.  Not actually being from Grimsby I feel kind of odd saying what I think others should do which is why I have not really commented on this yet.  However I think the best attitude to adopt is one of lighthearted humour.  At the end of the day moaning will not really help.  

This film will come out, the media will do some stories with people from Grimsby saying it is not really bad and is actually in many ways a very nice place.  That much is inevitable and the only question really is how to manage it.  If people from Grimsby get angry and moody it will just help affirm peoples negative perceptions and add to it as people who cannot take a joke.  I think it needs to be joked about as a kind of, we are inviting SBC to a proper tour of Grimsby etc.  That way perhaps the damage to the Towns reputation can be limited.  

Other than that perhaps we can hope Jeff Stelling can go on a Middlesborough style rant on Soccer Saturday?

Quoted from petethemariner

You may wish to consider Grimsby a Turd but i and many thousands of others d'ont!
It is not a question of taking this too seriously, there is nothing wrong with defending
the name of your  own Town and i for one will continue to do so - do you think for one
second that this Town will come out from this with one iota of respect? Not a chance,
all it will do is perpetuate the undeserved opinion of most of this country about Grimsby
and while i  accept there is plenty of room for improvement and like anywhere there is a percentage of wasters in it , we are no worse than dozens of Towns.
The fact of the matter is that this film is called Grimsby and it  will not be any reason
to celebrate.

You and I know there are far worse towns around the country (even in the Land of Milk and Honey that is the South-East. I was in Gillingham last Saturday-terrible place.) The appearance of a comedy film taking the mickey will not alter my view one iota. Nor should it. It is admirable that you want to defend the name of Grimsby but let's face it the town has been the butt of comedians jokes for years. The appearance of this film will not make that any better or worse.

Agree with Barralad, pretty much - except I didn't think Gillingham was that bad (I always thought it was like a southern version of Grimsby).

There's no point in whinging bout the film if it goes ahead. Have a laugh*, move on and hope that "the authorities" can maximise the opportunity of increased media attention to put out a positive picture of the town.

* always remember that "Sing when we're fishing" was originally a taunt by Everton fans in 1979.

Quoted from petethemariner

You may wish to consider Grimsby a Turd but i and many thousands of others d'ont!
It is not a question of taking this too seriously, there is nothing wrong with defending
the name of your  own Town and i for one will continue to do so - do you think for one
second that this Town will come out from this with one iota of respect? Not a chance,
all it will do is perpetuate the undeserved opinion of most of this country about Grimsby
and while i  accept there is plenty of room for improvement and like anywhere there is a percentage of wasters in it , we are no worse than dozens of Towns.
The fact of the matter is that this film is called Grimsby and it  will not be any reason
to celebrate.

Far from it... polishing a turd was just my analogy, again someone being to serious,
And when it comes to defending the name of my town then I'm the Bobby Moore of town name defending.
Only last week I launched the Guy Martin biography out the door after reading page 1 when the cheeky scruffy village girl private called our town a excrement hole, a town that has provided well for him and his family I'd like to remind him.

As I've previously said in my line of work Ive come across people over the country that have called Grimsby a shithole, what I didn't say is that they end up with at least a barrage of abuse concerning the town they come from, and I've even come to blows with a bloke from Blackburn who slagged our town off - yes flipping Blackburn! il say no more don't want banning

It's the exiles like chaos and that mammary living in Boston that really urine me off, they move away to pastures new And then come on here making out its flipping  paradise, and as soon as anything negative crops up about the town in the news they are on here in a flash sticking the boot in.

So you can see I'm passionate about my place of birth, but amongst fellow Grimbarians I think I can say to some on here stop making the town out to be something it's not, let's be real the place is what it is a rough in parts typical northern working class town, just like many others over the country no worse but usually a lot better than some of the cesspits that I've visited.

When I'm bigging the town up to people from away I don't mention the urine heads & smackheads because every town has them, I tend to mention our living area what with the parks, Cleethorpes, nightlife, shopping centre, the wolds, and no multiculturalism  

Most people know Baron's work is an over exaggerated urine take, and the film called Grimsby will be no different, it could be any northern town but what has swung it for Baron is probably the name, so we should just accept it for what it is a comedy movie, let's embrace it after all it's putting us on the map more than gtfc have done in the last 10 years now there's an embarrassment.

Quoted from KingstonMariner

Agree with Barralad, pretty much - except I didn't think Gillingham was that bad (I always thought it was like a southern version of Grimsby).

* always remember that "Sing when we're fishing" was originally a taunt by Everton fans in 1979.

There's the problem. Virtually everywhere has poor areas. Grimsby's is pretty much on show to all travelling fans. We went to a Birminghan away game in the 80's, parked the car in what looked like a warzone. A street that had been knocked down, with, oddly, just the pub left standing. Very, very rough with allsorts of undesirables in and out of the pub, with rubble everywhere. After the game, after some stealthy movements back to the car we got in and were off like a bat out of hell. Strangely, just 3 or 4 minutes later we were passing through a lovely leafy avenue with large and very expensive houses.

I don't think that's right.

Grim74 - pleased to hear you are passionate about defending Grimsby, i realise the
phrase 'c'ant polish a turd' isn't meant to be taken literally! Its just that it
was a strange analogy to use about your Town!
I think you are probably right about the name making us the victims instead of Scunthorpe,
Mansfield or the like, its just going to be hard accepting being called a sh1thole by
residents of other, probably worse 'sh!tholes, of which there are many, as RoboCod rightly
says.
Anyway, as i have already admitted, i am sensitive about my home town being ridiculed
and suppose i always will be - rightly or wrongly.

Quoted from barralad

I'm just surprised that people think this film will do anything to Grimsby's reputation other than confirm the views that people who already slag it off have. It's not as though this is a town that generates favourable opinion anyway and Cohen is somehow trying to change peoples views. Christ on a bike the name itself has been a source of amusement to some for years. I and I suspect thousands of others will not have our opinions of the town swayed by it and will see it for what it is the selection of an easy target to make a film maker some money to pay his bills...

Probably true,  but, at the risk of sounding incredibly over-serious about a daft film, the more important issue is to do with the potentially adverse economic impact of this kind of mass exposure (assuming the film is produced, distributed and enjoys moderate success), rather than simply being the butt of predictable jokes.

Is it cos we is black&white?