Caitlin Moran is dangling a black bra from her arm with glee as she points out of the window at a Casino, “That’s where I gobbed off fat Tommy,” she says into a microphone.  “I learnt a lesson that day. You can’t get the love of your life by gobbing off his best friend.” I’m on a coach tour of Wolverhampton with star columnist and author Caitlin as the guide, and she’s just announced that her sister Caroline (Caz) has taken off her bra “because it’s more comfy”. Just in case we don’t believe her, she’s displayed said underwear to the entire coach-full of actors, crew and journalists. This is the press launch for Caitlin and Caz’s new Midlands-set sitcom, Raised by Wolves, a show based on the duo’s own warm and chaotic childhood in a Wolverhampton council house with their six siblings. “We’re not Northern twats, we’re not Southern twats, we’re Midlands twats” says mum Della in the first episode of the Channel 4 show. And that’s very much the spirit of today’s rather surreal trip down writer Caitlin’s funny, filthy memory lane.

As we sit on the coach eating packets of Channel 4-provided Walkers crisps like schoolchildren on a very unusual field trip, Caitlin— who now lives in North London’s middle class Crouch End— stands at the front with a microphone reeling off personal tales of the city in which she grew up. For example, that red-brick Rubicon Casino where Fat Tommy had his fun, used to be the Dorchester nightclub and features in the final episode of the sitcom. According to Caitlin, it’s “the finest nightclub in all of the Midlands” and it’s there that the show’s precocious, boy-obsessed Germaine, based on Caitlin’s teenage self, discovers that kissing boys is actually pretty easy. We’re barely into the centre of Wolvo (that’s what proper Midlands people call it, we're told) before Caitlin, still in her furry leopard print coat, informs us that we’re approaching the place she started her first period; “It happened as I was walking around with my dad, and I had to hide behind a rotating rack of of Ruth Rendell paperbacks."

Not many people would stand in front of twenty plus strangers- men, women and even a small child- and casually talk about their first experience of menstruation.  kylee lime green curtainsWhen asked about very un-British desire to talk about embarrassing things, Caitlin says, “ I’ve never seen a taboo that I didn’t want drag in the light.” circo pirate shower curtainAnd that attitude clearly inspires some of the best moments in Raised by Wolves, like when mum Della tells her daughter, “Nobody wants to be a woman, but men are too chicken shit to deal with it.”rosemont red lined curtains And Caitlin’s love of taboo-breaking, along with hard graft and writing talent, is why at only 39 years old, she has two columns in The Times, three bestselling books, a comedy tour, two screenplays-in-progress and now a sitcom under her belt.curtains mytholmroyd

When I interviewed her a year ago, Caitlin said: “My friend, Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies, gave me a brilliant bit of advice— when you get hot, there’s a year where you can get anything off the ground, and even though it will kill you, just sign those contracts because in two years time you might not be as hot and it’ll be 10 times harder”. mostyns curtains voucher codeAnd it’s clear that Raised by Wolves, a six-part show for Channel 4, has been born of this full-throttle approach.hookless shower curtain burgundy But today, Caitlin’s main aim is to show us that Wolvo is not worthy of all the mocking it gets. hookless shower curtain burgundyShe says that its bad press is down to the fact that it was the first place Queen Victoria visited after she’d been in mourning for Prince Albert.

When she took train from London and got into the city, she asked her people to draw the curtains because it was too depressing. Whether it was grief or Wolverhampton that did it, the reputation has stuck. Now well and truly in the Wolvo city centre, we pass Blunts shoes, Pets and Patios and JC’s hair (or Jesus Christ’s hair, as our tour guide calls it), all of which spark off-the-cuff memories for Caitlin about puberty, drinking and boys. Of all the Black Country I’ve seen so far, which is admittedly very little, I feel most drawn to the Hells Angels headquarters where there’s a huge 'welcome' sign and a basketball net.  “I like the idea of Hells Angels playing ball while smoking their crack,” says Caitlin to her giggling audience.CHRISTMAS MARKET SHOPPING IN TAMWORTH 2016 LSD Promotions working in Partnership with Tamworth Borough Council.  Open every Tuesday Friday and Saturday.  *Please see poster above for extra shopping days for Christmas. *TAMWORTH STREET MARKET IS OPEN 3 days a week! 

Call Dave Perry to book a stall/pitch. It’s the same price rent on and we will provide you with trader friendly stalls, lovely canopies, and lights.   For further details go to the link below (above the map) this info includes prices of stalls.   You may also like to visit http://www.tamworth.gov.uk/shopping Tamworth Street market is held in Market Street, George Street, St Editha’s Square and Colehill every Tuesday Friday and Saturday. There are 100+ stalls selling a wide range of products. General trading hours of the market are 8:30am to 4:30pm. Tamworth market information 2016  – Download market info International Delivery Find out moreCharles Simon, actor and playwright: born Tettenhall Wood, Staffordshire 4 February 1909; married 1940 Nancy McDermid (died 1958; two daughters), 1965 Sheila Eves (died 1998; one son); died Harrow, Middlesex 16 May 2002. Charles Simon's extraordinary career as a professional actor – extending over virtually 80 years – was arguably the longest in British stage history.

However, the role for which he will ever be remembered was on radio, as Dr Jim Dale in The Dales (the erstwhile Mrs Dale's Diary), the long-running BBC soap.His career began in 1923 when, at the age of 14, he was paid £1 a week to recite "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" ("Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew / And watching his luck was his light o' love, the lady that's known as Lou") in front of a screen showing the silent film based on Robert W. Service's epic ode. And it ended less than a month ago, after he had completed a film with Peter O'Toole, with the eerily apposite title The Final Curtain.Although he was rarely out of work, the final two decades of his life were astonishingly busy, public (and thus directorial) recognition perhaps at last sparked off by his notable performance as the grotesque George Adams in Dennis Potter's celebrated television serial The Singing Detective in 1986. He was then in his late seventies.At the age of 60, he made his début at the National Theatre in Jim Cartwright's touching drama about old age, Bed, and then stayed with the company, taking over the part of the Colonel in Trevor Griffiths's Piano (the character has a flatulence problem: Simon later modestly admitted that not all the eructatory explosions came from him – "I had a special fart-machine under the chair for when I couldn't quite manage it myself").

He also played in Peer Gynt, Brecht's The Good Person of Sichuan, Alan Bennett's popular revise of The Wind in the Willows (as the tetchy magistrate in the trial scene), and Arthur Miller's The Crucible. This might have seemed pretty good for a man in his eighties, but Simon was only, as it were, gearing up for a startling, and extended, burst of creative energy.During the 1990s he was seen in important character roles on both the large and small screens: in Shadowlands (1993) with Anthony Hopkins; American Friends (1991) with Michael Palin; and, on television, Kingsley Amis's Stanley and the Women with John Thaw. At the age of 95, he embarked upon a gruelling world tour of Measure for Measure, and topped off his global peregrinations with a visit to Hollywood to film a commercial for Microsoft.In 2000 he gleefully played Lord Carnivore to Glenn Close's Cruella De Vil in 102 Dalmatians, as well as a memorably venomous old man in "Beyond the Grave" (a play in Caroline Graham's Midsomer Murders series) which involved thwacking all and sundry with his walking stick and toppling

into an open grave.Born a Black Countryman (at Tettenhall Wood, near Wolverhampton, in 1909) and Gloucestershire-bred, Charles Simon left school at 14 to enrol at the Irving Academy of Dramatic Art in Cheltenham. With a similar shocking precocity he wrote, at 17, an early radio play for BBC's Midlands Region, The Tutor of Ratshorne, in which he played all the parts himself. In 1927, he made his acting stage début touring with Sir Seymour Hicks and, in 1928 – not yet 20 – his Stratford début with Sir Frank Benson's company.In 1936, having worked with Hicks and Benson, two of the 20th century's greatest actor-managers, Simon decided to have a crack himself, founding the Darlington Repertory Theatre, which lasted for 15 years. During the Second World War, he served in the RAF.In the 1950s, Simon joined BBC Radio's celebrated Drama Repertory Company, playing high-profile Third Programme roles, as well as butlers, villains, m'learned friends and Cockney gas-fitters in rather lighter dramas on the old Home Service and Light Programme.In 1963 he was chosen as the "new" Dr Jim Dale (Douglas Burbidge and James Dale having preceded him), about whom his fussy wife was eternally