NEW!! - Hear what Paul Crooke, star of TV's 'Would Like To Meet' thinks about London and Walsall

Foreign visitors to Walsall who have arrived via London will notice a number of differences between our town and the capital. Some of the most important points to bear in mind are:

1) You may occasionally find people working in the service industries who are English. Do not be surprised if you are not served by Australian bar staff, or if your order at McDonalds is not taken by a Spanish Student. English students in most cases can carry out these jobs almost as well as their foreign counterparts.

2) There is no Starbucks. Yet. The inhabitants of Walsall seem to manage very well despite this.

3) Strangers may sometimes talk to you without this leading to them begging for money or mugging you. This odd custom, known as 'friendliness', still exists in some areas outside the South East of England. Most people will be relatively harmless, and if you engage them in small talk they will eventually leave you alone. Offering money to someone who is being 'friendly' may often cause offence, although the money will often be accepted in any case.

4) 'Politeness' is a phenomenon related to friendliness, and is similarly prevalent outside the capital. You may notice, for instance, that people who bump into you in the street in Walsall may well stop and apologise. You can have a go at this quaint custom yourself - for example, by holding a door open for an old woman or by using the words 'please' and 'thankyou' in a shop.

5) It is not unusual to meet some older Walsall folk who have not yet obtained mobile phones. As in the rest of the country, however ownership amongst teenage schoolchildren is at 100%.

6) When talking to someone from the town, DO NOT on any account respond to a mention of Walsall by saying "What, the capital of Poland?". Recent research showed that every resident of the town has heard this lame joke more than 250 times by the time they are 40 years old. Most of us have also received a postcard from Warsaw at some point with the equally un-hilarious message "Came here, but couldn't find your house", so don't think about doing that either.
As a related point, it is also considered bad form when talking to citizens of the Polish capital, when they say 'Warsaw', to respond with "what, the medium-sized industrial town in the English Black Country?". It's not so much that this is unfunny and annoying, just that they won't have a clue what you're talking about.