BY Comedian and broadcaster

The woman came down from the table, whipped off his pants, they sang “too-ra-oo-ra-ay”, while no one else took the slightest bit of notice. The producer of the radio show nudged me and said, “And it’s only half past seven.”

Almost every town has a rich tradition of protest. So everyone in Walsall, West Mids, seems to know Sister Dora – the Victorian nurse who transformed hospitals by campaigning for them to be kept clean – who has a statue in the town centre. And all of Hull knows Lily Bilocca, the woman who led the campaign for safety laws on trawlers, whose face is on a vast mural by the docks.

But in the genteel Durham town of Barnard Castle, there was fury because British Telecom installed a small green box on a pavement. One woman said: “I was delivering the church newsletter and wasn’t looking where I was going so I nearly walked into it.”

But they were determined to resist. The local paper reported: “A group of knitters are threatening to produce a tea cosy to cover up the cabinet... However, having considered their tea cosy protest, fear of getting into trouble with the authorities is making them think twice.”

It’s like reading about the struggles of Nelson Mandela.

Over in Carlisle there’s another bone – or rather stone – of contention.

Since a “Cursing Stone” inscribed with a 16th century spell was placed in an underpass, the town has suffered foot and mouth disease, floods, job losses and even a goal drought for the local football team. Still, no locusts yet...

Some of the proudest areas are just outside cities. Don’t suggest to someone from Paisley they’re a part of Glasgow. You’ll face abuse that goes, “We’re nowhere near Glasgow, we’re at least two miles from Glasgow, I don’t even know how I know it’s two miles away as I’ve never heard of Glasgow.”

In a pub in Paisley I was told of the time a dog’s jaws locked around a man’s testicles.

The police were called but action was required urgently, so a passer-by whacked the dog with a baseball bat. Later the police said: “It was lucky this happened in Paisley, as it’s the only place you can guarantee there’ll be a passerby with a baseball bat.”

On the surface, modern Britain looks increasingly uniform and soulless. Every town has its identical pedestrianised precinct, Tesco Expresses, and out-of-town retail parks with Homebase and identical staff and pot-plants.

But in Portishead, the personality they asked to turn on the Christmas lights was Nigel who worked in Homebase, “chosen above TV stars, for his cheerful demeanour and helpful attitude”.

In Alderney, I went on a “wildlife walk” which yielded just one white hedgehog and in Matlock Bath found a “seaside resort” with fish & chips, amusement arcades, illuminations and a theme park called Gulliver’s Kingdom.

But no sea. Because it’s in Derbyshire’s Peak District.

By the end of the series, I’ll have been to 55 towns, and every one has been packed with enthusiastic people who adore their town, because each place is ridiculously gloriously different. Because it’s only in Hastings that businesses can have names such as “1066 waxing for men”, and a builder called “William the Concreter”.

Mark Steel’s In Town, Radio 4, Thursday, 6.30pm. Earlier episodes on BBC Sounds or Radio 4 website.