THE REPUTATION of Evesham took a trashing on social media recently when a YouTuber visited Worcestershire and posted a 24-minute video on the county’s ‘six worst’ towns.
It was named the town as only place in the county that gave the content creator, ‘trauma at every corner’ rating it number one, beating Redditch to the top spot and catching the eye of national newspaper, the Express, who ran an online story about it last Sunday.
The YouTube channel which boasts 86,4k subscribers, goes by the name Turdtowns, visits towns and cities across the UK to highlight those that he feels have significant issues.
The commentary questioned why when just five miles from Broadway, why is everything so appalling, citing traffic issues, Port Street and the Rivershire Shopping Centre as the reason.
The creator, who remains anonymous, likens the town to ‘one giant car park’ and said he’d never seen anywhere as bad as this, calling Port Street a ‘ghetto’ in contrast to the town, commenting on ‘unscrupulous characters hanging around’.
The shopping experience ‘was the worst ever’ with the Riverside centre coming in for severe criticism which will come as no surprise to residents.
Town stalwarts have been leaping the town’s defence with the mayor, Councillor John Clatworthy who called it a ‘diatribe’.
“Whoever put that together must be a coward for not identifying themselves – nothing new there – when useless video garbage is being posted. The hint is in the first four letters – turd. Exactly what this is.
“I have had nothing but praise for the activities and events in the town and the enormous credit to the organisers and the footfall it brings. Whoever trusted and supported the installation of this, I wouldn’t trust them to run a bath,” he told the Observer.
Meanwhile, district councillor Craig Reeves, ward representative for Harvington and Norton took a more nuanced stance:
“While the YouTuber Mr TurdTown does highlight some of the challenges our town centre faces, his reliance on sensationalist, emotive, and derogatory language undermines any credibility.
“Referring to elderly residents as ‘old people limping about’, dismissing local authorities as ‘morons’, and suggesting that only those with ‘substandard GCSE results’ live here is rude and discriminatory. It’s simply a provocation for profit.”
So far the video has had more than 108,000 views.
Mick Hurst, director of the Battle of Evesham festival agreed with the sentiment.
“It’s such a shame that the people who get the most attention online are the ones who want to bring Evesham down. Yes, it does have its issues – the traffic jams, the Riverside Shopping Centre blah, blah…
“However, there are a lot of recent blogs on-line about the great things about Evesham, and not just the Battle of Evesham Festival which had thousands of very positive comments.
“Turdtowns goes into a place looking for bad content by kicking places that have problems, they get more viewers and so more sponsors. It’s all about them making money.”
