Where people live influences their body odour - and by hum, it's grim up north, it was claimed yesterday.

Northern sweat smells of rotten eggs and cabbage, according to nutritionist and food writer Kevin Gould.

And the Scottish have a smell described with brutal frankness by Mr Gould as "goat-like".

But before southerners get too sniffy about their northern neighbours they should remember that some of them are not so sweet.

People living on the Essex coast, for instance, are likely to have a fishy whiff.

The reason for different regional smells is that people around Britain have different diets.

Northerners consume 14 per cent more dairy products than the national average, points out Mr Gould.

"This is going to give them a sulphurous smell, a little like rotten eggs or cabbage," he said. "Matters are not helped by the fact that people in the North eat more curry than they do in the South."

The Welsh also ate a lot of dairy products, said Mr Gould, who has written an article on food and body odour for the lifestyle magazine Bare.

People in Essex, on the other hand - especially those living in the coastal towns - ate four times more fish and seafood than anyone else in the UK, giving them a certain "tang".

As for the Scots, they ate very little fresh fruit and vegetables and a great deal of meat and carbohydrate, washed down with copious amounts of alcohol.

The result was a "strong, savoury smell," said Mr Gould. Asked if this was unpleasant, he replied: "Have you ever smelled a goat?"

Londoners were difficult to pin down, since they consumed many different kinds of foods.

Mr Gould believes that it should be possible to guess which part of the country people are from by their smell. "It depends how close you are willing to get to strangers," he added.