My Kinda town

Where I live is a strange kinda town full of wannabes, has-beens and real success.  Not bad if you look at England as a pig: Wales the head, the West Country as the leg , the Weald as the arse and well, my manor would be clearly labeled as  the A-hole of Great Britain- warm, wet and smelly. But things grow with fertilizer! So out of this little shabby-chic  town comes the good, the bad and the ugly. Here, Helen Mirren first tread the boards of the stage; Phil Jupitus still sulks around the main drag; Lee Evans was born and bred; Doctor FeelGood felt his way down yonder in the local bars.;  Busted burst onto the scene; Trevor Bailey hit a six and Mark Foster learnt to swim but clearly not to dance!  And so on.
There are too many to feature and here, in this thread-worn town, we have become blaise to celebrity. When you bump into a member of the The Damned in the local or when your brother is best mates with the guitarist from Faithless or when you fight in the local supermarket queue with a member of The Rolling Stones, celebrity seems just ordinary.  But it isn't. In my little town, to become a true celebrity has taken hard work, Essex tenacity and talent.  Sarah Hardcastle swam hard in this town (hopefully not in the Estuary as it would  have been more dodge the "turd" than beat the clock!) to achieve her fame. Yet, the famous and infamous have reached heights of acclaim in this enclave- The Essex Boys are still alive and kicking- God Love 'Em and their crew! Alan Sugar believed in this place enough to launch his empire here and I am proud to say I was probably one of the first to be told: "You're fired!" Clearly, placing a squelch of glue on a TV/combi video set was beyond me as student aged twenty-one or maybe he didn't appreciate me questioning whether he was running a sweat shop. So it is with a little rise of bile to the throat that I have to listen to my boys rave about TOWIE.
I applaud the fact that anyone wants to better themselves but why better yourself in the name of STOOOPID?  Seriously, do we want to give a standing ovation to creatures that buy into KEN and BARBIE as a living? I once had a doll that could write and tumble and now I'm watching its offspring on TV.  I've spent a week experimenting with a match and not one of my town have ignited near a living flame. So how have these strange Midwich Cuckoos descended on my manor and claimed the name of ESSEX? Answers on a postcard if you are not a living, talking, walking doll or otherwise ping!