Nether Edge: Comedian lovingly sends up Sheffield's 'best place to live' on new BBC show

Nether Edge featured in the Sunday Times’ list of the best places to live in the UK, published earlier this year, in which it was described as a ‘happy community with cosy coffee shops where the barista knows your name without having to ask’.

Mark Steel visited to get to know the area and meet its residents before recording a stand-up routine, inspired by what he had learned about the neighbourhood, for his popular In Town series on BBC Radio 4.

The half-hour show aired for the first time on Monday, July 22, and Mark wasted no time in poking fun at the suburb’s middle class mannerisms, while also finding humour in the campaign for village status and residents’ valiant stand against the council’s controversial tree chopping scheme.

The mockery was delivered with a gentle touch, and it was clear he had developed a genuine affection and respect for the community and its characters during his short time there.

Mark joked that there were two parts to Nether Edge, ‘a hummous belt and a lentil belt’, and said many citizens felt the leafy suburb, known for its independent shops and bohemian cafes, was not ‘real Sheffield’.

“You hear people in other parts of Sheffield go ‘Nether Edge isn’t real Sheffield, real Sheffield is farting outside the Penny Black at 1am in the morning’,” he continued.

In between the jokes, Mark praised Cafe#9, on Nether Edge Road, which he described as a ‘wonderful little hub of the community’.

He also gave shout-outs to Cole’s Corner cafe, bar and deli, on Abbeydale Road; Rumkeg876, a small bar bringing a slice of the Caribbean to England’s fifth biggest city; and Zeds wholefood grocer, on Nether Edge Road.

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Mark recounted some of the favourite, possibly apocryphal stories, he had heard about life in Nether Edge.

They included how one resident became so fed up of people sitting on their wall during the popular farmers’ market that they covered it in honey.

He also told how the snooker star Jimmy White had once taken Ronnie Wood to Nether Edge Bowling Club, only for the Rolling Stones guitarist to be banned for ‘inappropriate behaviour’.

Reading from the book Nether Edge People and Places, he described how the steward ‘didn’t know who he (Ronnie Wood) was but was proud when he found out that he’d thrown out a member of the Rolling stones’.

As well as Nether Edge, the 13th series of Mark Steel’s In Town features the comic’s take on Margate, Malvern, East Grinstead, Stoke-on-Trent, and Coleraine in Northern Ireland.

You can listen to Mark Steel’s In Town on BBC sounds.