Revisiting Nasty and Debunking "Nasty man marries Ugley woman."

Following the post about the wonderfully named village of Nasty in Hertforshire, I read that there is a village down the road from Nasty called Ugley.

Here's a recent letter to the Independent:

Now here's an interesting thing; if you search on Google, you get hundreds of references to this headline.

Sometimes it's Ugley woman marries Nasty man," and sometimes "Nasty man marries Ugley woman," but the story is always "it is rumoured that..." or "many years ago..." which is normally a sign that there's no truth in it. Not one of the references leads back to an original story and nobody ever mentions the name of the actual newspaper involved, so it looks like yet another example of a story which has taken on a life of its own through constant retelling.

Big prizes - the usual - for anyone who can dig out any more on this.

Comments

[ian sheen]

I was a member of a cycling club that back in the 90's had the local press cutting on the club notice board, as th eclub was based nearby. It certainly seemed genuine enough!