The former Housemartin once took a group of German tourists to Hull – and ended up staying there for 20 years. He praises a city full of artists, dry humour and beautiful light ... and wonders if he’ll ever get his name on a bus

I never planned to live in Hull. A mate and I were showing some German people around the north, I stopped off, bought a copy of the Hull Daily Mail, had a look for property and just set up house with my mates. I ended up staying for 20 years. A lot of people do that. Philip Larkin – from Coventry – liked the fact that Hull was out of the way, right out on the coast, with that huge, overbearing bridge. When you arrive, there’s nothing after it, which gives it an outsiderliness. The people are the same. There’s none of that, “Oh, everyone talks to you at the bus stop,” you get elsewhere in Yorkshire. People mind their own business in Hull and are suspicious of anyone who is over-friendly. They’ll get to know you when they get to know you, which is very different.

For the first couple of years, I felt like an outsider, too, but once you’re there you can’t be bothered going anywhere else, and you sort of become a bit “Hull” yourself. We called the Housemartins’ first album London 0 Hull 4 because we were sick of people asking where we were from and going [adopts posh voice]: “Where? Oh! We’ve got friends in Manchester, you know. It’s very happening.” So what? We wanted to put the city on the map, and people were very proud of us when we had success. But Hull doesn’t make a song and dance about it. In Brighton, Norman [Cook, ex-Housemartins bassist, AKA Fatboy Slim] and Chris Eubank have got their names on buses, but they don’t do things like that in Hull unless you’re dead.

The city has so many qualities. It’s got one of the driest humours I’ve heard of any city, and it’s very self-deprecating, which Larkin loved too. When we toured elsewhere, we used to say: “Isn’t everybody loud? Why is everybody shouting?” I found Hull incredibly peaceful. One of the first things I noticed was how much sun there is because it’s right next to the sea with no hills, so the quality of the light is incredible. It bounces off the buildings. Now that the town centre is pedestrianised, you can walk for 20 or 30 minutes across it and appreciate the architecture without being run over.

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I formed the Housemartins and the Beautiful South in Hull. It’s a place that really facilitates art and craft – people are very good with their hands – and music, whether it’s country singers from the Hessle Road pub scene or the recent grime stuff. It’s not people desperate to be famous – just ordinary people who just enjoy playing or going out to hear live music. Nearly every plumber or gasman who came round would say: “Oh, I’m in a bit of a band myself. We don’t do CDs, we just play in the pub on Friday,” which I thought was great.

I have written loads of songs about Hull and its people. A lot of people live in their own little world and are quite happy to get on with it, and they are really interesting, I find. When I took my first Hull girlfriend to London, she was stalling at the top of the escalators because she’d never been down one before. This was 1986, but Hull has such a strong social scene I can see why people have never been outside the place. Although it doesn’t smell of fish any more, the legacy of the industry is the way people drink. Fishermen would come off the boats with a lot of money in their hands and go down Anlaby Road and be kings for Friday and Saturday. The money would be gone by Sunday. I know loads of people who live like that.

Many people found the City of Culture thing jarring, but that’s very Hull. The common expression for anyone who does anything out of the ordinary is “daft cunt”, but, overall, it’s been good for the city. It has introduced working class people to things they wouldn’t have otherwise seen, like giant puppets. When Jacqui Abbot and I did our City of Culture gig in the poorer east of the city, it was great to see people coming out of their houses to watch it.

Hull has become more multicultural – everything I wanted has happened since I left. The council sold its stake in the telephone exchange and built sports stadiums, the Deep aquarium and smartened the place up. I still get back a lot, but the most frustrating thing about Hull is that no one from there has been to see me in Manchester. Not because they don’t like me any more, but because it feels like the other end of the planet. I’m two hours away by train, but it’s as if I’ve moved to Australia.

Handmade in Hull, a tribute to Hull’s craft traditions, is on BBC Four on Thursday 16 November at 11pm. Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott’s Crooked Calypso tour starts at Sunderland Empire theatre on 23 November