Not long now before all those southern softies pack their finery and board the stagecoach for the dusty, three-day ride oop north to Royal Ascot.

If they get through Sherwood Forest without the Hooded Man and his merry men parting them from their possessions, they will book into York's taverns to an "eyup sithee" welcome and be served foaming tankards of ale by buxom Yorkshire serving wenches. Then they will start looking down their snotty noses at us.

It's true.

Everything they say about the north-south divide is alive and well. They really do seem to think that up here it's gas mantles out at 8pm, windows closed to keep out the thick smoke belched out by the satanic factories, ready for an early, gruelling shift down t'pit or at Mr Epplethwaite's woollen mill

All these stories about the down-south dandies staying away from the displaced Ascot meeting because it's rough up north make me spit.

I heard a story last week about the travel editor of a national newspaper invited to come and spend a free (as travel editors duly expect) weekend sampling the York experience.

"Why would I want to come up north and visit York?" he replied. The words 'north' and 'York' were uttered as if they represented something stuck to his shoe.

I went to a party in Southend once while visiting my best pal and got into conversation with a local Royal Mail manager who, bright as a button, noticed my accent and suddenly blurted out: "What do you people DO up north? I mean there's nothing to do, is there?"

I was so gobsmacked I pushed back my flat cap, stamped my clog and tugged on my whippet's lead, issuing the command to kill this stupid oaf.

When I had recovered my cool I calmly explained that some of us in Yorkshire were just having this new-fangled electricity installed and were all waiting for a thing called television.

I also told him straightfaced we played games such as Dodge The Rent Man, where all the family hid behind the settee until he had gone for another week; or Scribble On Dad's Back, where we all drew pictures on dad as he washed off coal dust in a zinc bath in front of the parlour fire.

Mind you, this party buffoon did say he'd been to Sheffield once and found it desolate. He did not pick the easiest place for me to defend as a northerner.

Surely television should have opened their blinkered eyes as to the state of civilisation just 200 miles up the road from our cosmopolitan, broadminded capital.

But then Coronation Street has dedicated decades to perpetuating the northern cloth-caps-and-mufflers myth, just as EastEnders has done nothing to promote the image of the Cockney character. I saw that programme once and I swear I saw someone almost smile - and be almost pleasant to family or friends.

There are two schools of thought in Yorkshire about the southern toffs: Either, stuff 'em, we don't want them up here, they don't know what they are missing; or "Come on up here, geezer, we'll show you what we have to offer and it is better than anything you've got down there."

We have it all up here - the dales, the vales, the moors, the coast, the history, culture and thriving diverse economy. And the people are open-minded enough to explore the rest of the country in uncharted territories such as London and Essex.

Few visitors to York can fail to fall in love with the place and Royal Ascot will beam out to the world - even the south of England - that civilisation has finally spread north of Watford.

Weird, isn't it, that such prejudice and ignorance can exist within one tiny island country in these days of instant communications.

If we are so blinkered about our fellow English, what chance with France, Germany and the rest of the world? Or perhaps that travel editor was broadminded and exotic enough to get off his backside, widen his horizons and accept a freebie in other countries to educate his southern readers.

Updated: 09:02 Tuesday, May 31, 2005