DON’T talk to me about hung parliaments.

The last time there was a hung parliament was in 1974 when Leeds United won the then Football League championship.

Thirty-six years later, they have executed a minor copy of that feat by gaining promotion to the Championship.

I am one of that most unfortunate breed who come from Leeds. In mitigation, I would add that I was not actually born there: that event was in 1942 when pregnant mothers were evacuated to a maternity hospital in a minor stately home in the nearby country for fear of Hitler’s bombs. So you might say that I was born in splendour and it’s all been downhill since then.

I lived the first 20 years of my life in Leeds, in Armley under the shadow of the jail, by the gas works and Greenwoods and Batley engineering factory. So I think I have the right to say what I think about my home town and its denizens. Leeds folk are miserable buggers.

If you take a Leeds lad out for a slap-up meal and a leg show, ply him with drink and general happiness, then ring in the morning to ask if he had enjoyed himself, the best he will say is: “It weren’t bad.” Alan Bennett’s intonation personifies the character of the place: “I never bothered, really.”

I can remember conversations between my mum and dad and aunts and uncles: “What are you doing for Christmas, Jim?” Answer: “Nowt much. We don’t bother, do we Elsie?

We don’t make a fuss of New Year either.”

It’s that bored monotone that goes with the mucky waters of the Leeds-Liverpool canal and talking about lengths of trouser suiting to be made up by one of the hundreds of traditional Leeds tailors.

Leeds United were the same. In those socalled glory years – 1969-74 – Don Revie had gathered around him a most spectacular galaxy of footballing talent: Bremner, Giles, Madeley, Gray, Lorimer, Clarke, Cooper and Jones – to name only a few. But he wouldn’t let them off the leash, wouldn’t let them play the dazzling football of which they were capable.

Play cagey was his rule. So at the height of their triumph they were never really loved and gained the reputation as a team of grafters and spoilers.

The only other time Leeds won the league was in 1969 and I was at Liverpool University.

I was on the Kop for the last match of the season: Leeds against Liverpool. Whoever won would clinch the league title. Leeds edged it. The players ran off the field at the end and there was a moment of disappointment among the Scousers.

Suddenly, they started to clap and shout for Leeds to come out and do a lap of honour.

“Bloody hell,” I said to the Scouser next to me, “they wouldn’t get a lap of honour back at Elland Road.”

Well, I’ve had a good beef about my home town, but the truth is I love the place. Twenty years ago I even wrote a novel about Leeds which was published by a company owned by another Leeds lad, Keith Waterhouse.

I loved the market and Macfisheries, the splendid Victorian arcades and City Square with the bare-breasted statues of the nymphs which made folks giggle or turn their heads in disapproval in those more sheltered times.

As lads, we loved to fish in the canal and chase girls at the Majestic ballroom or in the Lyric, the Palace or any of the other cinemas known as bug-hutches.

Now, they tell me, it’s all Harvey Nicks and trendy young accountants. At least they’ve got promotion to the Championship – miserable buggers.