Sacha Baron Cohen is immensely multitalented but since 2016 his popularity in one of England’s landmark coastal outposts has plummeted. Seven years ago Grimsby, a spy-comedy-thriller co-written and co-produced by the actor, hit UK cinemas with the north-east Lincolnshire town depicted as a violent, rubbish-strewn, addict-inhabited ghetto.
No matter that filming largely took place in Tilbury, Essex, it was most definitely not the sort of Hollywood treatment most Grimbarians desired. Baron Cohen played Nobby, a jobless, feckless, Grimsby-bred, football hooligan and father of 11 children, who joins forces with his MI6 hotshot spy brother Sebastian (Mark Strong) in some hair-raising James Bond-esque international escapades.
