Cornwall blasts Dawn French sitcom

The BBC's new sitcom Wild West has infuriated residents of Cornwall, who are angry that it portrays them as idiotic in-breds.

Star Dawn French said she would be "horrified" to think the show, written by Men Behaving Badly creator Simon Nye, caused offence.

But Cornish residents have been bombarding radio phone-ins and local newspapers with complaints that the prime-time comedy was insulting.

Publicity for the show would have given them some indication of what to expect, with the BBC describing its setting as 'a community where witchcraft and wife-swapping are more of a way of life than cream teas and Cornish pasties'.

Viewers from the Duchy complained that the show was a poor advert for the region, that it used accents from Somerset and Bristol rather than authentic Cornish voices, and that it simply wasn't funny.

Comments left on the BBC Cornwall website include: "I felt ashamed that the BBC could blantantly depict the Cornish as inbred fools, thieves with limited exposure and brain power," and: " The Cornish people face this type of verbal attack dressed up as humour in their everyday life. It is about time the issue was openly discussed to combat the insidious nature of such discrimination."

Regional weatherman Craig Rich is among the outraged - perhaps not surprisingly considering one scene included pub locals ridiculing him while he appeared on TV.

In his column in the Western Morning News, he wrote: "The fact that the programme-makers didn't know what effect it would have shows their cavalier attitude towards Cornwall."

Nye admitted he knew little of the Duchy, saying: "I didn't do research, although I did read the odd book. I was fairly neutral about Cornwall but I never thought of setting it anywhere else. I needed a small community where they asphyxiated each other."

But a BBC spokeswoman said there had been no intention to offend.

She said: "Dawn is from Devon and she would never have wanted to do this show if she thought for one moment that she was really upsetting people from the West Country. She would be horrified. "

Published: 26 Oct 2002