Prejudice is 'alive and well in our villages'

Far from offering a rural idyll, a study into life in an English village found that gay men were abused and socially spurned, while single women were regarded as husband-stealers.

Professor Ann Jacoby of Liverpool University, who carried out the research, said villages were highly intolerant places.

It might be an opinion shared by Little Britain character Daffyd, played by Matt Lucas in the BBC sketch show - "the only gay in the village".

Professor Jacoby, a social scientist, said: "The rural idyll is very nice so long as you fit into certain categories, but problematic if you don't.

"You should be married, have children, and live in this conservative family unit."

But her research angered countryside campaigners, who said country dwellers had many positive qualities.

For the study, the professor's colleague, Francine Watkins, spent some time living in Stonycroft, a village with a population of 450, somewhere between London and Birmingham.

The village's name has been changed to protect the identities of those interviewed.

Life in the 16th-century village revolves round the thatched inn, church and village hall. Most of the residents are white. Three-quarters are married or co-habiting.

As part of her research, Miss Watkins interviewed the manager of the pub, who is gay.

He is in his twenties, and has lived in the village since he was 11.

But when Mark revealed he was gay, he found that his life-long friends shunned him.

He said: "In a village you feel like a freak. You don't come across gay people, and you never come across people talking about it.

"I was in a very bad way, really depressed, not outwardly but inwardly."

The research also found that women could suffer from back-biting gossip and innuendo.

Kay and Debbie, both single women, revealed the prejudice they had experienced.

Debbie said: "They think Kay is a threat. There are places she has stopped going because she has seen women who have grabbed their husbands' arms when she walked into a pub."

However, Nicholas Schoon, a spokesman for the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: "It seems a bit absurd to draw conclusions about the whole of rural life from a study of a single village. You are going to find unfortunate prejudices and human nastiness and unkindness in suburbia and inner cities as well.

"There is good and bad everywhere and a great deal of good in the countryside, which has a lot of nice, decent, considerate and caring people."

In recent years there has been an exodus from towns and cities to the country.

About 100,000 of us move out of urban areas every year - often pricingout young villagers from the areas in which they grew up.

One in five of those in rural areas live below the poverty line, while racist incidents are growing fastest in areas where the fewest ethnic minority people live.

North Wales has seen a 400 per cent jump in racially-motivated crimes in six years.

Rural parts also have poorer access to health services, banks and schools. The Shetlands, one of the most remote parts of the country, has the highest male suicide rate - double the national average.