Joe Lycett is on a mission to visit every one of the 17 Birminghams in the US and the one in Canada too. Why? Because he is a native of the UK’s own Birmingham, and he wants to see if there is any shared identifiable vibe and to foster a sense of togetherness among the scattered Brummies. Also, as he says, he has a pressing need to make a travelogue for Sky “and if anyone can do it, it’s Frank Sk– … it’s me”. There is also a Birmingham on the moon (a remnant of an impact crater – save your jokes, please, that’s Joe’s department) and one in Belgium. But “we don’t have a lunar budget and I’mnotgoing to Belgium,” says Lycett, so off he sets round the US in a tour bus suitably decked out in Cat Deeley and Alison Hammond scatter cushions. They both hail from Birmingham in the UK. This is not difficult, people. Do try to keep up.
Joe has a sheaf of “friendship agreements” for the Birmingham mayors to sign – including a promise to stand together in Nato’s stead should it fall – a pen once used by the Queen Mother with which to do so, a collection of commemorative plaques and some Birmingham-centred presents to give to the people he meets along the way. There is Cadbury’s chocolate, of course, originally manufactured by one of the Quaker families whose histories are centred round the city; Bird’s custard (“sugar and asbestos”) invented by Brummie chemist Alfred Bird in 1837; HP Sauce (born of Nottingham but made famous under the aegis of the Midland Vinegar Company); and some of the 723 novels by “the David Walliams of her day”, Dame Barbara Cartland, originally of Edgbaston. Not all of these facts are in the programme, by the way. Joe’s enthusiastic spirit and evident love for his home town inspired me to go digging. He has that effect on you. And indeed on his driver, the North Carolinian Randy who, once he has figured out what little there is to figure out – and, indeed, that there is that little to figure out – relaxes and gets into the swing of things and functions as the perfect foil for his passenger.
The first Birmingham they reach is in Pemberton, New Jersey, with a population of 32 “Pinies” as those who live so close to the Pine Barrens are known. “Wow!” says Joe, looking round in wonder. “There really is fuck all here, isn’t there!” But this is America, so there is still a diner and a gun shop. Joe duly does the rounds, enjoying a Jersey Devil burger among the friendly people at the former and himself at the latter when it turns out that he is a surprisingly good shot. “I’m a natural!” he exults as his first bullets land firmly within the target zone of a human-shaped silhouette. “I’m a cold-blooded killer!” He is honest about the experience. “It worries me how much I get it. I loved it … I have to remind myself that people shouldn’t have these.”
From there, he takes in the rest of the Birminghams on the east coast (one seems to be literally a set of bushes by a roadside, and from another he is firmly rebuffed by officialdom – or at least by emails from “Susan” and “Linda”, who have lost their county the chance to be a tiny part of “at least a difficult quiz question of the future”), heads on through the midwest and ends up in the deep south, where the most famous American Birmingham can be found – the centre of the civil rights movement in Alabama.
He meets civil war re-enactors, cavern owners and mayors aplenty, drinks a bloody mary with a sausage in it and attends a Beer and Bacon festival (the last two among the Hungarian population in Birmingham, Toledo, one of the three Birminghams in Ohio alone), and discovers that the inhabitants of the one in Detroit, Michigan call themselves “Birminghamsters”. “Like the little critters?” says Randy. Yes, and I would very much like this to catch on over here. The Detroit suburb is an impressively polished one. “It’s as smart as Solihull thinks it is,” says Joe admiringly.
It is the daftest of conceits held together by Lycett’s charm and wit. He cuts his cuttingness with warmth and modulates neatly in accordance with his interviewees’ needs without becoming boring or patronising. His other programmes have had worthier goals as part of his work as a comedian-activist, helping to draw attention to such matters as the sewage crisis, greenwashing by big companies and various consumer rights issues, but the man has earned the right to a little jolly across America in the pursuit of lighter entertainment. No Brummies were harmed in the making of this programme and some may even have enjoyed themselves. Can’t say fairer than that, bab.
Joe Lycett’s United States of Birmingham aired on Sky Max and is on Now.