How much money, including visitor income, did John Betjeman cost Slough when his poetry when his poetry called for ‘friendly bombs’ to fall on the town? It’s impossible to know, although the local authority and others who promote Slough have been known to express some exasperation about the effect on the town’s reputation.
No poet has been quite so cruel to High Wycombe, but it has a long, unwanted track record of cultural references which make it out to be dull, dreary or even just a bit of a joke. For example…
“This is about as much fun as a wet weekend in High Wycombe…”
(Yootha Joyce in George and Mildred, the film of the ITV sitcom, 1980)
“I’m living in High Wycombe with a madwoman!”
(Tim Brooke-Taylor in You Must Be the Husband, BBC sitcom, 1990s)
“High Wycombe is the last place on Earth, or should I say in the universe, where anything unusual is ever going to happen.”
(The Doctor in short story ‘Return of the Spiders’ from Doctor Who: More Short Trips, 1999 – the story featured giant man-eating spiders)
JOHN: “Do you go for a discreet Harvester sometimes [with Irene Adler]? Is there a night of passion in High Wycombe… Just text her back… Because High Wycombe is better than you are currently equipped to understand.”
SHERLOCK: “I caught a triple poisoner in High Wycombe.”
(‘The Lying Detective’, Sherlock, 2016)
Steve Coogan’s tragi-comic creation Alan Partridge referred to a night of passion in the town’s (fictional) Queen’s Moat Hotel while, in his comic novel In Your Dreams, Tom Holt made High Wycombe an unlikely portal to the land of the Fey. Even The Archers has made not particularly flattering reference to the town not so long ago.
As it happens, some encouraging developments have been afoot in Wycombe in recent years; a new shopping centre, a new bus station, university status for the local college and an excellent theatre, the Wycombe Swan. And – if you’re ready to look for it – there is much of interest to find, for example at the Wycombe Museum (pictured above).
There isn’t a Harvester in the town, though there is one just outside, at Handy Cross. Maybe all those deerstalker-wearing fans of Benedict Cumberbatch will be paying it a visit soon, hoping for a glimpse of the Great Detective.
