Is there anything more lovely in England than kicking through the autumn leaves of Tudor Grange Park, safe in the knowledge that in five minutes you'll be having a hot chocolate and high-end cakes in one of the country's leading branches of John Lewis followed by – who knows? – a satisfying rummage through Amtico samples in the flooring department? Of course there isn't. That's why Solihull has been declared the best place to live in the UK. Reports that certain towns are the best to live in in the UK rear their heads every now and then (a fortnight ago it was Bristol – pah), but this time researchers have got it right.

Solihull's motto is "urbs in rure" (town in the country). It thus marries verdancy and shopping, which is just what we all – in our secret if unimaginative hearts – want. Don't we? Stop shaking your head. Plus it has miles of boulevards of Tudorbethan real estate, a sixth-form college where I spent two happy years, and the Land Rover plant on Lode Lane. It has everything, particularly if you're a Brummie.

Plus if you want to get out fast (and you won't!), the M42 is your man. Just don't take the 37 bus to Birmingham – they made that a single-decker service because it all got a little too tasty upstairs on the double-deckers, if you catch my drift. Get the train to Snow Hill instead – they're building an even bigger John Lewis near the Bullring in Birmingham, you know. In fact, that development alone may soon make Birmingham even happier than Solihull. I know what you're thinking: Let's not go nuts.

In English class at Solihull's Alderbrook School in the late 1970s, we studied David Turner's 1962 play Semi-Detached about fictional Brummies aspiring to live in a thinly fictionalised commuter town called Dowlihull. "Semi-detached!" one Brummie would coo (our teacher Mrs Anderson had an LP recording of the play). "Semi-detached!" their spouse would counter-coo. Brummies, you see, lived in dark satanic terraces/cowsheds/under Gas Street Basin canal bridges (it's never been half as glamorous really as it looks in Peaky Blinders) and dreamed of the green and pleasant that Solihull represented. We all looked smug in class, no doubt, because we had arrived, or rather our parents had: mine had come from the furnaces and factories of the Black Country into something like a Blakean Jerusalem. I once interviewed a man for Radio 4, who was poised to spend a family evening in his heated swimming pool in the garden overlooking Solihull's elegant Brueton Park. "I've made it," he told me. "What's really cool," he added, " is that I can walk to John Lewis." Even though I despised him and everything he stood for, a little part of me envied his lifestyle.

The Daily Mail affects to rain on this Silihillian parade today with its frankly snooty headline "The best place to live in the UK. Er, Solihull". Thanks for that "er", you monsters! How extraordinary, the story continued, that Solihull toppled Elmbridge, Surrey, which has long been considered the Beverly Hills of Britain.

Solihull's Touchwood shopping centre. Photograph: Archimage/Alamy

Hold on. Does Elmbridge have a John Lewis? Thought not. Is the new RSC Theatre in Stratford 20 minutes down the A34? Thought not. Does Black Sabbath axeman Tony Iommi live nearby? Thought not. Is the intermediate Monday yoga class in the Library Theatre reasonably priced? It is in Solihull. Did Felicity Kendal, Nigel Kennedy, Richard Hammond, Epic Soundtracks from Swell Maps and Spizz Energi come from Elmbridge? Thought not. Did Dave "Superyob" Hill from Slade get lots of oestrogen-charged propositions over the garden fence when he moved next to a girls' chool in Elmbridge? No, that happened in Solihull. Is the butler in the Ottoline books called Elmbridge? No, he's called Solihull.

Moreover Solihull isn't Britain's answer to Beverly Hills or anywhere else. It is itself and proud of it. So cram it, you anti-Midlands, southern-centric whiners at the Mail (no offence).

Pronunciation note: there was once a vox pop on Midlands Today that asked the key socio-political question: how should once pronounce the town's name? It was like the pronunciation of scone debate, only more vexed. The consensus was that those who said Solihull with a short "so" as in sorry were proper poshos (think Jack Whitehall meets Adrian Chiles), while those who said it with a long "so" as in "So long, suckers" were infra dig aspirants and/or arrivistes from Lower Gornal trying unsuccessfully to fit it. And those who said it like "sow" were people from outside the area who based their West Midlands accents on Harry Enfield's "Oi am considerably richer than yow". If anyone needed their faces filling in, it was that last group.

But there's another reason that Solihull is now the best place to live. It's because I don't live there any more. Instead, I've moved to the fifth most unhappy place in the UK, Islington. Cause and effect: when I leave town, everything upgrades – the looming new Asda on Haslucks Green Road, the drive-thru Burger King, Touchwood shopping centre, whatever it is they're doing to the old CEGB HQ on the Stratford Road and the new swimming pool (oh Splashlands! How I miss your trio of flumes!).

Meanwhile, in Islington now, a glance out of my back window will give me a vista of social division, vast disparities of wealth and opportunity, a drug bust in the park, and a dog poo problem that's gone beyond a joke. In so far as this is my fault, Islington, let me apologise. It was probably just as lovely as Solihull before I arrived.