And if that didn’t work then you can endure the long, inevitable, awkward silences by reading these utterly uninteresting facts about Bristol.

According to the National Audit Office, Bristol is the least anti-social place in England. Boy, that really is uninteresting!

The world’s first test-tube baby was Bristolian. Cheers drive!

Not sure how official this is but I’m sure I read somewhere that there is more greenery per person in Bristol than any other city in the UK.

Local folk-lore has it that writer Daniel Defoe met and grilled castaway Alexander Selkirk in The Llandoger Trow, a pub on King Street, and later published the novel Robinson Crusoe based on his story. It is also said that Robert Louis Stevenson boozed there and based the Admiral Benbow Ale House in his book, Treasure Island, on the pub. And if that wasn’t enough, Edward Teach of Redcliffe, better known as Blackbeard the Pirate, had a tab there which he would pay in exotic treasure! Gaahhhrr!

Carrying on the literary theme, Harry Potter was based on a boy that J K Rowling met in Bristol as a child.

The Theatre Royal Bristol (now the Bristol Old Vic) is the oldest continuously working theatre anywhere in Britain, staging productions since 1766. Well…ahem…until it shut down last year.

A Reader’s Digest Survey in 2007 voted Bristol as Britain’s Funniest City!!! Whatever that means.

Laughing gas was discovered in Hotwells, Bristol. Read into this correlation what you will.

Another survey in 2007 voted Bristol as Britain’s Most Honest City as well as the city with the largest number of layabouts with nothing better to do that fill out meaningless online surveys.

Why would you want to live anywhere else?

Matthew Whittle www.matthewwhittleblog.blogspot.com