Poor old Stratford-upon-Avon has taken a bit of a bashing recently from Germaine Greer and few others who should know better, which is a pity because the town doesn’t really deserve such criticism. And although a good many of those who live here drive me to distraction, I love (even with all its faults) this daft, lovely, enduring old town.

I even enjoy the 3.8 million visitors the town attracts every year, most of whom march backwards and forwards far below the high mullioned windows of Humdrumming Mansions like the clichéd river of humanity they are.

And 3.8 million visitors works out at, er…. well, it’s a lot of people marching backwards and forwards everyday on the increasingly uneven streets and pavements of Stratford, which makes them even more uneven of course - and I spotted the now very matronly Germaine Greer doing just that a few weeks ago, so she didn’t help matters did she. And as this chattering, laughing, arguing, sometimes singing, sometimes drunk (especially in the early hours of a Saturday morning) army, which is bigger than the army of the USSR when there was a USSR, march up and down they drop an estimated ten tons of litter a day, most of which seems to end up against the heavily fortified doors of said Mansions, which is okay because one can often find a nourishing half eaten MacDonalds amidst the discarded cans (some half full), bottles, coins, and discarded tenners, that helps keep this writer and publisher upright and robust.

So, who are these people who complain? Well, they seem to be those, like Greer, who seldom drag themselves away from London, and only then if there’s a free press ticket going at the RST, but who still, in their heart of hearts, consider Stratford to be a theatrical and cultural upstart, and pretty unimportant when compared to the capital. Remember that dreadfully hollow beating of breasts when Adrian Nobel closed the RSC venue in the Barbican? That same snobbish element was there in 1879 when the first Memorial Theatre was built; nothing has changed. But most of those who complain locally are invariably residents who have recently moved into one of the 1,000 plus new houses built in Stratford in the last two years (plus hundreds who left a long time ago for Torquay or Malaga) who want the false idyll of a Warwickshire market town (all very Midsommer Murders), the kudos of the RSC and Shakespeare, but not the dropped litter of 3.8 million visitors. They are also the ones who complain most bitterly about the increases in the council tax to clean up all that tonnage of dropped litter. What they never do is give thanks for being in a position to go and see Dame Judi Dench, or Sir Ian McKellen, at the RST, followed by a meal at one of a pretty good selection of restaurants. In fact, most of them will prefer to stay at home and complain about the poor TV reception.

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