Newquay is a stag and hen do sort of place. And if you’re not on a stag or hen do, you’re either celebrating the end of your GCSEs or A Levels or a local who’s fed up with the town’s status as a place people go at the end of exams to wear T-shirts with nicknames like ‘KNOBFACE’ and ‘TITS DEBBIE’ printed on the back, before downing litres of booze and fingering/getting fingered by strangers on sticky carpeted dancefloors.
But, apparently, the town is getting a better reputation as its antisocial behaviour levels have halved since 2009 and overall crime has dropped by 10%. Why’s that?
It’s not down to the fact that people are opting for cheap holidays to Prague, Malia, Magaluf and the like instead, say the powers that be. They think it’s because the town banned silly outfits, eg mankinis.
‘I remember back in the 2000s, you couldn’t walk the streets on a Saturday without seeing someone wearing a mankini or what have you,’ said the town’s mayor, Dave Sleeman.
‘But now they’re not allowed in Newquay. The police will tell them to go home and get changed if they see them wearing one, and the guest houses and camp sites are pretty good at warning their guests about what’s acceptable.’
Inspector Dave Meredith, of Devon and Cornwall Police agrees, telling The Sun: ‘Five or six years ago and more, Newquay was a little bit of a Wild West town. It had a bad reputation nationally.
‘People expected to come to Newquay to drink a lot, behave irresponsibly. Certainly we have clamped down on that and the image of Newquay now has certainly curtailed some of that.’
Shame, then, that Bobby Norris will never be able to take his literal ball sack (the Schlong Thong) to the Cornish shores…
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.