Last night on BBC World Service some British bloke was bloviating about Yorkshire being the 'Cradle of Civilization'! I didn't hear much of the following substantiation but isn't this pure drivel?

Obviously! Everyone knows that that title rightly belongs to Lancashire ;-)

Flanner, where are you when we need you?

What can I possibly say that Xenos hasn't already?

Except that there's a serious case to be made for why the modern world was invented in Lancashire, on the basis of intellectual advances made in Scotland, which were possible because Ireland and Northumbria had protected Western civilisation a thousand years earlier.

Yorkshire's major contribution to any of that was Harry Ramsden's chip shop.

Yorkshire the cradle of civilisation? Is that why they're always banging their rattles on the table?

Well the Beep guy gave some convincing arguments to this but can't remember them after the Trader Joe's Beaujolas Nouveau...something to do with the Viking invasion..Jorvik Centre...

There are arguments that York remained Christian after the Romans ran away, conserving aspects of classical civilisation.

Unlike the Northumbrian monks who were getting raped & pillaged whilst Yorkshire folk sucked up to the Viking hordes

As opposed to the Irish monks who were the only literate folks left after the hordes of barbarians fell Rome?

It's grim up north.

Well if Lancastshire were the Cradle of Civilization then it would cast great redoubt about the meaning of the word 'civilization,' casting it from something generally positive, i.e. a civilized society is generally a positive thing to have, to something not to emulate or have desired in your community.

I've seen Yorkshire on the telly. It's either old blokes falling off their bicycles and waving their legs in the air, Geoff Boycott attacking grass with car keys or someone strangling kestrels.

It is, indeed, grim up north.

It's not the old blokes falling off bikes. It's the Nora Battys. Not to mention Marina....

Was Bennie Hill from Yorkshire??

Benny Hill was a Hampshire boy, Southampton born and bred.

I once saved his live:

He stepped in front of my car and I hit the brakes.....

Pity you stopped in time. Bouncing off the bonnet of a car would have been about the only funny thing he ever did.

I regularly walk through Southampton cemetery , and think maybe there should be more lines o scantily clad young women chasing and slapping small bald Scotsmen. It's what he would have wanted.

Was York area considered civilized before or after the Vikings came to try to beat some sense into the inhabitants? More seriously, will York serve well as my first long distance daytrip out of London?

I went to Hull once, is that in Yorkshire?
There is nothing civilised about Hull I can tell you !!

Muck

Yikes. Don't judge Yorkshire by Hull.

As an American, I visited some good friends once who live in Leeds; their kids spoke with such a 'brogue', I could hardly understand them. When I said "Timmy, I can't understand you," the kid switched to perfect English!! I was told that it was a 'fad' to speak in the 'old' dialect. Remember in My Fair Lady "Hear a Yorkshire man converse....I'd rather hear a choir singing flat!" Do they still talk like that?