FOR the first time in my life I've been struck down by bronchitis in summer - if you can call the drizzling, windy misery we are presently enduring "summer".

It's meant that I've had to stay in and sit down a bit. Still, all is not as bad as it might be: there have been some marvellous one day cricket matches on television. As the teams go from ground to ground, the TV viewer gets a sort of proxy tour of England. It's amazing how different the characters of all these places are.

Londoners, as I have come to know them, really are the cheeky chappies we Northerners used to scoff at on the old black and white films. At least they are in Smithfield market. The last time I went in I had my dog collar on and one of the butchers said: "Did you hear about the randy budgie? In order to identify it, the owner tied a piece of white cotton round its neck. Oh sorry, Rector, have they caught you at it as well!"

The day the cricket went to that lovely ground at Chester-le-Street, I thought of all my old friends in the North-East. Years ago, I used to go regularly to Newcastle to do the epilogue for Tyne Tees TV and I was always struck by the tremendous friendliness and cheerfulness of the Geordies. Newcastle has seen difficult times over the last century, but the people show no sign at all of being ground down. Liverpool is another place that has seen hard times. I was at university there in the 1960s when they were closing down the docks. But, like the Geordies, the Scousers were kindly and irrepressible.

When you think of it, England is a pretty cheerful place. I have only found one exception and I suppose I'm allowed to talk about it, since it was the place where I was brought up: Leeds. They are miserable there. All over the city, the maudlin, whining Leeds accent. Generations of people having been told not to expect too much. Butter once a week and spread thin. Now they have butter every day and still they talk in that self-pitying whine. What's the matter with Leeds? Why is it so defensive and un-proud?

Leeds has, on the whole, been prosperous with its clothing and engineering industries. And now it is thriving as a new financial centre. Still, they won't cheer up. If you were to take a Leeds lad out for a slap-up meal with a couple of bottles of the best fizz, then take him to a lovely leg show in the Empire or the Varieties, and ring him up the next morning and ask him if he'd enjoyed it, you know the answer you'd get? "It weren't bad. It were all right." That's what passes for unrestrained joy in Leeds.

And, of course, when the cricket roadshow turned up there, hardly anybody else did. Never mind that here were the Indian cricketers, some of the most exciting batsmen in the world. The Leeds crowds stayed away because the weather threatened to be a bit damp and because they all shared a corporate grudge against Darren Gough for going to live "down south". Come on, my fellow citizens, crack your jaw. Just for once - smile!

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.