Panic, Paranoia and Peter Levy's Top Lip (3/3) By Joe Hakim

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3).

Men's Fitness is one of those weirdly homo-erotic men's lifestyle mags for straight blokes that you see at the checkout of supermarkets, next to Bella and Heat and other insidious shit too rancid to recall. Y'know the ones - there's always some guy on the front with an impossibly toned stomach, and the cover's always covered in headlines like: 'New abs the old school way', 'Vitamins and you - the truth' and 'Lose that flab before your bird dumps you for someone with a bigger cock', shit like that. It's the first time that I've read anything like this, but within ten minutes I see that its formula is very similar to other men's mags, but with added emphasis on keeping fit and looking good. FHM on steroids if you will.

I find the feature in question. It's a double page spread of a world map, the headline: 'Wish you were here?' And sure enough, along with places like the Philippines and Russia, there's Hull. It's a small block of writing, saying pretty much what the reporter said, but with one thing he missed out: 'Following the influx of ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo, gang-related crime has also soared, with violent crime up a whopping 31 per cent on last year'. Hmmmm. I put the magazine back on the shelf and leave the store, my confusion growing exponentially. Just who is writing this shit?

After a weekend spent hiding from the news, the search for a job, the dire need for money, the five things that I'm working on, the weather and reality, Monday arrives with the élan of a ram raid. I'm looking at an article in the Hull Daily Fail about the report At a turning point? The state of race relations in Kingston Upon Hull by Professor Gary Craig. It paints a grim picture, hinting at an ingrained racism that is regarded as commonplace. The arrival of asylum seekers in Hull, a particularly tender issue considering the huge amount of paranoia and panic heaped upon it in light of current events, is referred to as being the subject of 'disastrous' management.

It's almost like a confirmation of the shit reputation being thrust on Hull by wank like Men's Fitness magazine. It's saying to the rest of the country, "Yep, this really is a city comprised of thugs, morons, gangs and other lowlife". It's fuckin' tough writing about Hull. I've recently begun to think that Hull is the place to be right now, what with all the music and art and writing and film and gods-knows-what-else, but every now and then the shadows move in, and they come to me in threes, and it's almost enough to de-rail me. Those niggling thoughts in the back of my head that say things like, "This town is a shithole, get the fuck out while you still can," creep into my head when I'm laid in bed on a night. But there's something keeping me here, something left to do.

It's a love/hate relationship, Hull and I, and the fact that I'm out of work and living on my wits causes the occasional wobble on the tightrope. Just another part of yer (deep breath) classic Manichean dichotomy, I suppose, so I have to change my mind, my way of looking at things - update and evolve, baby, move forward and don't falter - all the time. I - we, even - have to see shit like this report as just another challenge, another obstacle that is to be climbed.

We have to prove that Hull's more than just a list of problems, a set of statistics that states how shit everything is. We're no more fucked up than any other city in Britain right now. It's just a case of inverting the common view of Hull and helping it to become something more , and I'm not talking about buildings and architecture and the fuckin' Deep... I'm talking about soul. At least it's never dull in Hull...

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