Radio One listeners have voted Braintree the dullest place in the country in a new poll.

Listeners were asked by Scott Mills, who is standing in for Zoe Ball on the Breakfast Show, to vote for the most tedious place in Britain.

And Braintree won hands down. One caller told listeners how he had driven through Braintree and hated it so much he was thinking of killing himself

The poll was prompted by a new book due out at Christmas which describes Braintree townsfolk as the "ugliest collection of people in the UK outside Wales".

Author Bill Murphy also labels many women as "sea monsters" and says the only good thing about Braintree was the M11 heading south.

Braintree residents reacted furiously to the book, saying the author had overlooked many of the market town's attractive qualities.

The controversy was further fuelled yesterday by a report in the Guardian newspaper which said a survey showed Braintree men were "bad in bed".

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.