Kernow Place Like Home

CORNWALL is second only to Yorkshire when it comes to its inhabitants banging on about where they are from. Whilst a Yorkshireman will typically tell you within 5 seconds of meeting them that they are from God’s Own County, a Cornishman will keep their place of birth

a secret for a further three seconds before revealing they are Cornish.

We called some famous Cornwallians and asked them what Britain’s only county without a football team in the top five flights means to them and why they love it so much.

Ed Sheeran, singer Ben Dover, grumble thespian James Martin, TV chef

Born: Perranporth

I absolutely love my native county, and I like to come back here from all the other places that

I live as often as I can. Cornwall has always been a great source of inspiration for my songs. I remember getting the idea for my hit single Castle on the Hill after seeing Launceston Castle whilst driving down the A30. And the inspiration for my 2015 ballad Photograph came after spotting a man taking a picture of his wife on the rollercoaster at Dobwalls Adventure Park near Liskeard.

Born: Falmouth

I’m proud to be from Cornwall, the most beautiful county in the country, and I have many happy memories of playing in and around the magnificent Pendennis Castle on the headland when I was a boy. In fact, when I became a scud actor later in life, I considered using ‘Dennis Penis’, a play on Pendennis, as my stage name, but I thought it was a bit ridiculous and went for ‘Ben Dover’ instead. I live all over the world now, but I like to come back home to Cornwall to make the occasional film. My 1997 film British Anal Invasion was filmed in a Travelodge near Bodmin, and Council Estate Sluts was filmed on location in a house in St Austell. In one scene, where I’m doing one of the milfs reverse cowgirl, you even get a glimpse of the beautiful Trenance Valley out of the bedroom window!

Born: Trerice

I am so proud to be from Cornwall, and I believe it’s my duty as a Cornishman to tell everyone I meet where I am from, whether they ask me or not. The temperate climate here means that lots of different fruit

and vegetables can be grown throughout the year, which, as a chef, is music to my ears. But more than the food, the thing I love most about Cornwall is the maze of leafy lanes which traverse the countryside, edged as they are with lush green vegetation, perfect for running cyclists off the road into.

Kylie Minogue, Aussie songstress

Born: Newlyn

As everyone knows, I come from a family of tin miners in the east of the county. For generations, the Minogues of Newlyn hacked this metal ore from the ground, but as the demand for tin decreased, the mines all shut. My father used his redundancy money to open a teashop – Minogue’s Cornish Teas – on the seafront in Newquay, and it is there that I grew up. I would split my time between waitressing in the cafe and surfing in the Atlantic rollers on Fistral beach – ‘serving and surfing’, if you will! We emigrated to Australia when I was 7, and I lost my Cornish accent, replacing it with my now familiar Aussie twang where every sentence goes up at the end like it’s a question.

Saddam Hussein, dictator

Born: Wadebridge

When I was alive, I was proud to be a Cornishman. But I had always wanted to be a feared, despotic dictator and, growing up in the leafy, well-heeled Camel Valley on Cornwall’s

Atlantic coast, I knew there would be little opportunity for me to achieve my autocratic ambitions. So, as soon as I was 18, I left Cornwall and moved to Iraq and joined the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, where, using tactics of extreme brutality and terror, I was eventually able to realise my dream. But I always had a soft spot for my native Cornwall, and had I not been found guilty of crimes against humanity in 2006 and hanged at the Camp Justice army base, I would have like to have retired to a cottage in my native Wadebridge after I had done despotting.