{"id":387994,"date":"2026-04-08T11:33:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T11:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/387994\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T11:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T11:33:10","slug":"suddenly-great-yarmouths-obesity-rates-made-sense-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/387994\/","title":{"rendered":"Suddenly, Great Yarmouth\u2019s obesity rates made sense \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hewett family ran the largest commercial fishing fleet in the world off the east coast of England throughout the 19th century. Originally based up the River Thames in Barking, the Short Blue fleet operated high-speed trawlers known as smacks.<\/p>\n

In 1860, the fleet moved northeast from Barking along the coast to the Norfolk port of Great Yarmouth, from where Short Blue vessels prowled the North Sea, plundering fabulous wealth for the Hewetts. It was Yarmouth\u2019s golden era. But that was then.<\/p>\n

This is now. The historic Barking Smack pub on Yarmouth\u2019s Marine Parade, near where the Short Blue vessels used to unload their cargo to Hewett icehouses, was shut last week. Now, the whole centre of this scrappy old town lies scarred by empty outlets.<\/p>\n

A local wit had scaled the front of the building to remove the letters A and K from the first word of the famous old pub\u2019s name. Bring Smack, it says now.<\/p>\n

Yarmouth\u2019s fishing industry is all but dead. The UK government is also ending all drilling in the North Sea, whipping away any slim possibility of a future revival as an industrial port for energy. Cod-and-chips tourism and amusement arcades are about all it has left.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Nigel Farage\u2019s \u2018turquoise wave\u2019 set to crash on Norfolk shoresOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Great Yarmouth\u2019s prospects don\u2019t look too good right now. How this rough old seaside town with its dog-eared, stubborn handsomeness yearns for better days.<\/p>\n

Political people in London say that Clacton, in Essex, is \u201cBrexit<\/a>-on-Sea\u201d, which chimes because Reform UK<\/a> leader Nigel Farage<\/a> is the local MP. It has the right-wing politics, the disenfranchised white working classes and the deprivation to go with it. There is a UK<\/a> media cottage industry in Clacton-after-Brexit articles<\/a> \u2013 I wrote a few myself.<\/p>\n

Well, Clacton has nothing on Great Yarmouth, a town of 100,000 that is so neglected by the Westminster establishment that the political bubble seems to barely even know it exists. Almost 70 per cent of people in Clacton voted for Brexit. In Yarmouth it was almost 72 per cent \u2013 the fifth-highest Leave vote in Britain.<\/p>\n

\"BringBring Smack, you say? The Barking Smack pub in Great Yarmouth. Photograph: Mark Paul <\/p>\n

About 35 per cent of children in Yarmouth live in poverty, versus 22 per cent across England. Life expectancy is lower than average, obesity rates are higher, and there are more people with diabetes and depression than almost anywhere else in England.<\/p>\n

Yet for some reason that I couldn\u2019t fathom, I felt a soft spot for Great Yarmouth as I wandered around last week while in Norfolk, following Farage\u2019s travelling political circus. It might have had something to do with the pound of beef I gobbled.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Is Britain headed for prime minister Nigel Farage?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

I had ambled from the neon-flashing seafront up Regent Street, a badly named avenue of vape shops and discount stores \u2013 and a joke shop with a puking statue.<\/p>\n

There was a hubbub halfway up the street. A crowd of hungry locals had gathered at a fast food stall that opened on to the street. I looked up at the fascia festooned with flags of St George \u2013 Grill and Grind.<\/p>\n

I spied the price list. Then I did that stereotypical little act of disbelief where you rub your eyes with the knuckles of your index fingers, and you look again.<\/p>\n

It was true. Grill and Grind was selling quarter-pounders with fried onions for the ridiculous price of \u00a31 (\u20ac1.15). A half-pounder cost \u00a32.50. Their maths mightn\u2019t have been the best (it would be 20 per cent cheaper to buy two quarter-pounders instead of a half-pounder), but these burgers I had to try.<\/p>\n

I ordered a half-pounder with cheese for the princely sum of \u00a33. The cockney stall owner clocked my accent and we had a little chat, beneath the England football pennants hanging down around my ears.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou won\u2019t get a burger this price anywhere else,\u201d he said. I didn\u2019t doubt him. I was going to ask why they were so cheap, but I wasn\u2019t sure I really wanted to know.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Barking Smack pub in Greater Yarmouth: ‘A local wit had scaled the front of the building to remove the letters A and K from the first word of the famous old pub\u2019s name.’ Photograph: Mark Paul <\/p>\n

Sauces at burger stalls are often laid out on a separate table for customers to squeeze out themselves. Not here. Grill and Grind employs a man whose sole job is to squeeze the sauce on after you pay \u2013 ketchups and mustard are kept out of reach.<\/p>\n

I devoured my half-pounder, egged on by the watching Grill and Grind crew. They practically cheered when I ordered a second one.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a whole pound of meat you\u2019re putting away, mate,\u201d said Sauce Man.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know,\u201d I replied. \u201cIt feels as if I\u2019m cheating on my wife.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suddenly, Great Yarmouth\u2019s ballooning obesity rates made a little more sense.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0A \u2018proper f***ing lunch\u2019 with Nigel Farage: \u2018I mustn\u2019t be sloshed this evening\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Everybody seemed ethnically white on Regent Street, which runs for about a kilometre up to the town centre. A few blocks east, the parallel St Peter\u2019s Road runs for almost the same length. Almost everyone I saw on that route was of different ethnicities \u2013 Kurds and South Asians, mostly. Segregation, side-by-side. <\/p>\n

Farage and Reform are considered too soft for Yarmouth. The local MP, Rupert Lowe, was previously in Reform, but he fell out with the party. He has now set up his own party, Restore Britain, which is running 12 candidates in next month\u2019s local elections under the Great Yarmouth First banner.<\/p>\n

Whatever else changes in Yarmouth, I hope its burgers stay the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hewett family ran the largest commercial fishing fleet in the world off the east coast of England…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[57092,72,61,60,6236,17144,1192,303],"class_list":{"0":"post-387994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-nigel-farage","13":"tag-reform-uk","14":"tag-uk-politics","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}