Mark Steel's In Town

Mark performs at the Town Hall in Walsall, the West Midlands, celebrating the accent, the concrete hippo, the anarchists who were framed by the police and how the town has absolutely nothing to do with Birmingham.

This week, Mark performs the local Town Hall in Walsall, West Midlands: a town which has nothing to do with Birmingham.

Mark talks about one of their local attractions; a statue of a concrete hippo, which is not as big as he thought. Also, people keep moving it. Elsewhere in the funny statue department is the one of Princess Diana that turned black.

Mark then talks about its leather trade and the local leather museum (fetishists will be disappointed). He then talks about a story in the local paper that he found, about a Walsall man who shot himself with his own taser.

Looking into the history, Mark talks about the mining and his own visit to a very hot iron foundry. There was also the creation of St. Monday, in which people tried to get the Monday off from work. Then there is Sister Dora, a woman described as the "Civilian Florence Nightingale" and who helped to improve health care for the poor. Her statue was the first of a non-female royal.

He then goes onto talk about the Walsall Anarchists, probably the most famous anarchists in British history, who were framed by the police. Can you imagine the West Midlands Police framing people for bombing in modern times? Mark also talks about Walsall Football Club, who in the 1930s performed the biggest upset in football history by defeating the seemingly unstoppable Arsenal 2-0.