Oh, just do one Morrisons.

This was my initial reaction to the supermarket’s mysteriously offensive recruitment ad for northern actors which specifically ruled out applicants with a Liverpool accent. Being a scouser, I bridled instantly (before quickly having a word with myself to “calm down, calm down”) at the thought of yet another brazen assault on the good people of Liverpool. Being a journalist (who writes headlines for a living), my next thought was: “Fewer reasons to shop at Morrisons”.

It soon became clear, however, that this was not a simple “demonise-all-scousers moment”. It was directed at actors. Actors who can probably pull off quite a few regional northern accents. So why the discrimination?

Posted by “a third party” on Casting Networks International website, it appealed for “proper working-class people” for a Morrisons publicity campaign. “They should all be warm and likeable,” it went on. “But not at all like the characters from Benefits Street. They should not sound or look posh. And nobody from Liverpool, please.”

The deplorable language used to stereotype different types of 'working class' people is pure class-based discrimination

The crass, gratuitous nature of the words jump out. Like being stopped in the street and hit with a tirade of puerile, outdated incoherence. Growing up against a backdrop of the Thatcherite “managed decline” of the city of Liverpool, I have plenty of personal experience of such nonsense. In my quest for a first job as a reporter, I ended up being interviewed for a news agency role. It went OK until the interviewer, as if struck by a paroxysm of offensiveness, blurted out: “Just one final thing … you don’t write the way you speak, do you?”

A new twist on the “what do you call a scouser in a suit?” gag.

Needless to say, it didn’t work out; I took my dubious literacy skills elsewhere and left the interviewer (who, incidentally, could reasonably be described as a “bad wool”) to ponder his ethically questionable approach.

My other brush with a more political anti-scouse buffoonery came in the run-up to the 2005 general election. A few months earlier, Boris Johnson, then Tory MP for Henley and editor of the Spectator, had been forced to apologise for a notorious leader article in the magazine accusing Liverpool people of being “hooked on grief” and rehashing the Sun newspaper lies over Hillsborough for good measure. Johnson was out on the stump in Reading, where I now live, to drum up support for a fellow Tory. As he bumbled into view, pressing the flesh with abandon, he marched towards me and held out his hand. “Sorry. I’m not shaking your hand,” I spat out. “I’m from Liverpool.”

“Oh, right,” he splurted. “Well. Oh, yes I’ve apologised about that ...”

“Still, I’d rather not,” I replied.

After a brief pause, his eyes flickered as he spotted an opportunity to unite around a common enemy. “Of course,” he chirped. “I went to Liverpool. The scousers were brilliant. Wonderful. The ones who were really hideous were the press. Awful people!”

“Oh riiiiight,” I mused. “I’m a journalist. At the Guardian. I used to work for the Liverpool Echo, too … what exactly … Boris? Boris?! Don’t go Boris, come back laa …”

The Morrisons incident combines elements of both these approaches: the dimwit who can’t help himself and the snide bullying type out to gain popularity by exploiting misperceptions, but who simply hides when challenged.

The anti-scouse barb is undeniably crass, but the deplorable language used to stereotype different types of “working class” people is arguably more invidious; it’s straight out of the divide-and-rule school of snide, dishonest class-based discrimination.

It stinks of the sort of warped morality seized upon by George Osborne and other Tory ministers with their common rhetoric of “strivers” and “skivers”, all of which raises the spectre of the Victorian workhouse and the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. And scousers always fall into the latter category.

Of course, it could all have been a joke. Pretty lame, but maybe some witless fool of a casting director’s idea of a jape. For jokes to work, though, I would say they need a a signpost or two and a jolting punchline. A punchline like “fewer reasons to shop at Morrisons” perhaps.

As for the author of the ad? My money’s on it being the work of a bad Tory wool.