Things are livening up in Dull and Boring

Readers who have been following the gripping saga of Dull and Boring will be pleased to learn there have been exciting developments in these previously somewhat somnolent communities. To celebrate the official link between Dull, Perthshire, and Boring, Oregon, car giant Jaguar has come out with a two-minute television advertisement featuring both places to launch its sleek new Jaguar F-Type car.

In the ad, which can be seen on YouTube, two residents from Dull and two from Boring are seen whizzing around in the F-Type at their respective communities, much to the envy of their fellow Dull and Boring residents. The ad concludes with the claim that if you drive this car there is “Never a Dull (or Boring) moment”.

One Dull villager was overjoyed when he was given a speaking part in the two-minute ad. “I had to say ‘dull’ over and over again,” he said, proudly noting he remembered his lines without any slip-ups. Alas for the villager, his hopes of stardom were dashed when they cut his part from the final clip.

Seething and Snoring

There is such a wealth of wonderful place-names in Britain that the “Dull and Boring” advertisement could spark a whole new era of ads set in unusual-sounding places.

There is an area in northern Norfolk that would be of particular interest. It features two sleepy villages named Great Snoring and Little Snoring, surely an ideal location for any company selling beds and mattresses. One also wonders whether these places could also be promoted as retirement homes for Thai officials transferred to inactive posts.

It was a very different matter during World War II, however, when RAF Little Snoring (a most unwarlike name) hosted mainly bombers. In its two years of operation from 1943-45, a dozen Lancaster bombers and 43 Mosquitos were lost on missions. The village sign depicts a Mosquito fighter-bomber flying over the airfield.

Not far from the Snorings, there is a village called Seething. Some years ago the local newspaper came up with the cute headline “Little Snoring Man Marries Seething Woman”.

Ham sandwich

There are some village names that exemplify Britishness, such as the delightful Nempnett Thrubwell in Somerset.

Another wonderful name is Bishop’s Itchington in Warwickshire, although it does sound a bit like a skin complaint. Then there’s Oxfordshire’s Kingston Bagpuize, which brings to mind kilted pipe bands. Perhaps less enticing is the Essex village of Ugley, although thousands of tourists line up every year to be photographed next to the sign of the Ugley Women’s Institute.

Another marvellous name is the South Yorkshire settlement of Wigtwizzle, which resembles a character from a Dickens novel. Yorkshire is replete with quaint village names like Crackpot, Blubberhouses and Ugglebarnby.

Just imagine when people ask where you come from and you respond “Crackpot”. It’s either a great conversation opener or the complete opposite.

Sometimes you get a thought-provoking juxtaposition as in the case of the Kent hamlet of Ham, just down the road from Sandwich. Then there is the Devon village of Splatt, not to be confused with the Welsh hamlet of Splott. That would make a perfect name for a firm of solicitors, Splatt and Splott.

Only here for the beer

On holiday in Devon a few years ago, I regrettably did not come across Splatt, but the part of the county I visited was still resplendent with wondrous names like Budleigh Salterton, Ottery St Mary and Newton Poppleford.

Then there was a fishing village called Beer. It will come as no surprise that Beer became a compulsory stop on my itinerary and those pints slid down very nicely. The village is in the middle of what is known as the Jurassic Coast, where dinosaurs used to roam. As a certified fossil, I felt quite at home.

Nobody home

A bit further west, near Exeter, is the delightfully named village of Doddicomsleigh, home of the celebrated Nobody Inn, wherein lies a tale. The inn had another rather bland name until its landlord died in 1952. On the day of the funeral, the undertaker and the pallbearers all got totally plastered on the lethal local cider, but still went ahead with the service, burying the coffin in the Doddicomsleigh churchyard.

It was not until the undertaker got back to his establishment that he realised he still had the landlord’s body. So he called up the wake to inform them there had been no body in the coffin. The drunken mourners duly dug up the coffin and then plonked the body in it.

The new landlord was so amused by the tale that he renamed the pub The Nobody Inn.

Bottoms up

As a schoolkid, I had a newspaper round which took me to a place called Bugs Bottom. It lived up to its name with assorted unidentifiable flying insects and crawling things enjoying their morning exercises.

Of course there are many more exciting Bottoms around, some of which might prompt childish giggles. Probably the most famous is the Kent village of Pratt’s Bottom, but for Bottom aficionados Yorkshire is the place to go with its Slack Bottom, not to be confused with the villages of Slap Bottom and Margaret’s Bottom.

While approaching the realms of bad taste, there’s the oddly named Bachelor’s Bump in East Sussex and the intriguing Great Bulging, near Liittlehampton, no relation to Willey, a hamlet just north of London.