THE idea that Lancashire people, or Northerners generally (excluding some dour Yorkshiremen), are friendly and chatty is a well-worn cliche.

But there is often a factual basis for these stereotypes.

And when it comes to North-South differences not much has changed over the forty years since I left home in south London to jump over the Midlands and settle down North of a line that runs westward across the country from Cleethorpes.

If he ever existed at all the caricature of the cheerful Cockney who joked his or her way through a life of poverty and adversity has now certainly disappeared.

Pearly kings and queens are pretty thin on the ground these days and if you try to engage people in conversation in shops or at bus stops in south London you will be viewed warily.

That’s perhaps not surprising considering the incidence of violent crime and this summer’s looting for which some young people from surprisingly wealthy backgrounds are still going through the courts.

But the overall majority everywhere is basically law-abiding so why do we have the ‘silence of the tubes’ on London Underground as if every fellow passenger had the potential to turn into Hannibal Lecter if verbal contact is made?

In East Lancashire things are so much more relaxed.

People do start chatting in shops without any thought that it might be part of a softening-up process before a mugging.

Drivers in Blackburn and Burnley do give way to each other and will wait while fellow motorists attempt to reverse into parking bays without getting irritable or making obscene gestures.

And foreign visitors as well as Londoners on holiday ‘up north’ continually remark on how we all say good morning/afternoon, or at the very least exchange nods and smiles, when we pass strangers on paths in woods, on moorland or even at the local park.

Such behaviour would be generally viewed with suspicion in Battersea or on Clapham Common.

You only have to read this newspaper regularly to realise that there’s no shortage of crime in East Lancashire – it’s just that a friendly face comes first rather than suspicion and a scowl.

We may not have the climate - but thank goodness we do have the camaraderie.”