Janet Street-Porter has labelled Wales "grey", the language "incomprehensible", the people "gloomy", and the food terrible in a lengthy rant in her weekly column. Writing in the Daily Mail about plans to rebrand Wales so as to appeal to more tourists the outspoken TV personality said: "At the risk of sounding racist (I am half-Welsh), re-branding the place as a jolly land welcoming visitors with open arms is a nigh-impossible task that piles of cash won't change."
Janet, who co-presents ITV's Loose Women, lays out her qualifications for being able to offer up such dismissive views of Wales by explaining her mother was born in north Wales. She added: "Every school holiday until the age of 16 was spent staying with my granny in a small village in north Wales.."
She even took part in a TV reality show where she was "locked up in a derelict Welsh village" for a week and "force-fed language lessons from dawn to dusk", she says. For all her trips to Wales, however, her overriding impression is one of greyness: "Grey skies. Grey granite chapels. Grey sea," she asserts. Wales has an image problem, she adds, echoing comments made by the director of Zip World who said Wales needs to “weaponise” the Welsh language as an “advantage” because the tourists “love it”.
