Redhill, Surrey
A truly awful place, and one that has possibly been designed as social experiment. You see, despite it's utter awfulness, a lot of large financial organisations have seen fit to set up offices there, which means a daily culture clash between people wearing suits and with jobs who have to commute there, and people who choose to live there.

I can't write anything better than this gentleman did:

www.chavtowns.co.uk/2004/08/redhill/

Although a couple of stories do spring to mind.

Firstly there was the occasion when most of the staff of a subsidiary of a large, Dutch bank found the spectacle of two people having carnal relations at the back of a bus more diverting than their daily, more worthy tasks. People do this sort of thing at the backs of buses all the time, surely, on a Friday night on the way back from the pub. Why, yes. But this was 11am on a weekday, and the bus was parked in a bus stop lay-by in the MIDDLE OF TOWN. And it was the bus driver who was partaking of said carnal delights, in front of 300 people in a tall, glass-sided office block. Apparently it was quite a show.

Or the time when, walking back from a couple of lunchtime refreshing beverages in the town's only decent pub (names withheld to protect the innocent), a man was observed curling a sizeable log out into the gutter. In the middle of town again, did i mention that? At lunchtime.

Other than that we used to regularly go for post-work drinks in a pub called the Stabbot.*

*may not be its real name
(rockdoctor, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 13:31, 4 replies)

Oh yes.
I have to go here for meetings once a month or so.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 14:02, closed)

I sympathise
I've worked down there for about 3 years on and off over the years. I've managed to escape the place since 2006, but I know one day they will send me back...
(rockdoctor, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 14:06, closed)

Grew up there
Went to school there, worked at McDonalds there, socialised in the bars and lovely nightclub when I was too young to know better.

Now spend very little time in the UK, but when English people over here ask me where I am from, I say Reigate. It's posher, and technically I lived there for a few years so it qualifies right?
(Jboy, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 23:54, closed)

The (St)Abbot
isn't all that bad now, particularly at lunchtimes.

Speaking as a born and bred Redhillbilly ((c) someone I know at work) it's not all that bad - like a lot of towns orbiting a larger city, it has a lot of the soul sucked out of it, cos the perception is there's something bigger and better nearby. I'll agree there are some rum inhabitants (adding to the local colour, I guess) and it's a bit lacking in pizazz, but it's home for me, and even if I feel like slagging it off sometimes, I can't really bring myself to do it.
( milkybarnick is calming down Boris on, Sun 1 Nov 2009, 23:26, closed)