Is there a doctor in the house? Because we're about to open some old wounds...

Everyone knows Bill Bryson's opinion of Bradford. The American author's tirade against the city in his book Notes From A Small Island has been well publicised since it first caused uproar seven years ago.

"Bradford's role in life is to make every place else in the world look better by comparison," he said.

In fact, during the tour he made to research his book, Bryson was so convinced that Bradford was the most desolate blackspot he'd seen that he was driven to write: "Nowhere on this trip would I see a city more palpably forlorn. The shop windows are covered with tattered posters for pop concerts in other more vibrant communities like Huddersfield or Pudsey."

And there's more... "Bradford seems steeped in a perilous and irreversible decline. Nearly everything in the city suffers from well-intentioned but misguided meddling by planners. You would never guess that Bradford had ever known greatness."

The city seemed to swallow its last breath as he hammered the final nail into its coffin: "Nobody wants to live in Bradford, and who can blame them?"

Many people might have agreed with the writer, indeed, his comments might have been secretly repeated, but the effrontery of having an American spell it out to us was intolerable.

Now prepare for the Bryson backlash, because Notes From A Small Island - the stage show, is coming to Yorkshire.

The author will be nowhere to be seen (he long since quit for America) but playing the roving writer and 67 other characters from the book will be comedian Steve Steen, a veteran of Spitting Image and Who's Line Is It Anyway?

And the comedian promises he won't be pulling any punches. He'll be giving Bradford the full Bryson treatment.

He said: "We'll be doing everything that's in the book. He did have a bit of a go at Bradford and it's in there. It's quite difficult adapting a book for the stage because if you put everything in there it would be a seven-hour show."

But Bradfordians shouldn't take Bryson's comments to heart, says Steen. There are places he hates more than Bradford.

Steen said: "I know for a fact that there is only one place that Bill really doesn't like and it isn't Bradford. It's Blackpool. It's the one place he can't stand."

Steen also points out that Bryson's comments about Milton Keynes and Weston-Super-Mare were worse than Bradford's.

He said: "I actually quite like Bradford, I couldn't actually understand what he was talking about because having been around the country I know there are places far worse than Bradford. There are plenty of places ticked off on my 'never again' list.

"I once played the Alhambra with Rory Bremner and it's probably the best theatre in Britain. When I walked out on to stage I spent two minutes just gazing up at the fantastic ceiling. It's a great place."

Perhaps fittingly, the comedian isn't coming to Bradford with the show, opting rather to skirt around the suburbs to play Leeds and Wakefield instead.

Does that mean he's just a little bit scared of the reaction he'd get? In fact, he wishes he could bring the tour to the city.

"No, I'm not scared at all, it just turns out that Bradford wasn't on the list of places for this tour. I would love to bring Notes From A Small Island to Bradford. I'm prepared to go into the lion's den! You shouldn't do the material if you're not prepared to go about and do it I front of the people."

Steen doesn't think that the author should have recanted on some of his more acidic comments about Bradford when he appeared on the South Bank Show two years ago.

For the show the American was brought back to the city, apparently bewildered by the amount of controversy his comments had caused, to see if it was still the cesspit he remembered. Looking embarrassed, Bryson shuffled his feet and said that Bradford was actually a rather splendid place after all.

I wonder if Bryson would still have thought the city was on the up if he had arrived during the infamous riots seven months later.

l Notes From A Small Island will be at the Leeds Grand Theatre on Sunday, March 3, and Wakefield Theatre Royal on Saturday, March 23.