Is this, Walsall's Premier Internet Location, the world's ugliest webpage or what? I'm sure you can show me worse - not pictures of deliberate ugliness, human grotesques or gross fetishes but downright butt-ugly design.

-- Nicholas E. Grinder (eda@impolex.demon.co.uk), June 18, 2000

Answers

Oh god! I bridled with righteous indignation at your scurrilous remarks about Walsall, and hot-linked over to see for myself, all ready to leap to the defense of... well, yes, a heap of crap, to be honest. An awful, awful screenful of ugliness and hideously clashing colours obviously designed by an equal-rights colourblind schoolchild on Work Experience. Vile, and quite rightly condemned by you. Oh, the shame...

-- Paul Vincent (paul.vincent@uce.ac.uk), June 19, 2000.

AIE! AIE!

MY EYES! MAMA! I HAVE LOOKED INTO THE FACE OF SATAN HIMSELF!

Yeah, gotta admit -- that is one suck-ass page. I now have a throbbing headache just above my right eye from that hideous, hideous background. I don't have the faintest idea where Walsall is, but maybe they could pony up for your services, Mine Host. MMF

-- Melanie Miller Fletcher (xanadu1@ibm.net), June 19, 2000.

Dang! I thought I would be able to beat you because I have seen my share of ugly webpages but then I looked at it and I knew I was beat. Ugh. Gross.

-- Amy (AMY4LOGS@AOL.COM), June 19, 2000.

"The horror, the horror." :)

-- David Frazer (David.Frazer@dial.pipex.com), June 20, 2000.

And what's with the Tyrell Corporation building? Is it to suggest that Walsall is a nightmarish metropolis equal to Los Angeles in Blade Runner?

I think we should be told.

-- David Frazer (David.Frazer@dial.pipex.com), June 20, 2000.

It's pretty vile, isn't it? It's been getting its backgrounds from freebackgroundsthatsuck.com, I think. Ooh, love those misproportioned animated .gifs, though.

But I still don't think it beats www.artomatic.co.uk. Which isn't all that bad unless you want to know what it sells or how to buy things from it. Not that e-commerce is about selling things, perish the thought.

I did like the fetish doll (also tipped by ntk), but I'm not sure why they couldn't give us a boy as well. Or a hermaphrodite. And a piercings menu, while they're at it.

-- Alison Scott (alison@kittywompus.com), June 21, 2000.

Oh, I don't know, it has a certain naive charm that speaks of a genuine attempt to produce a web page. Another fetchingly honest example is http://vzone.virgin.net/ian.ridgeway/narch.htm. This site actually hurts. www.webpagesthatsuck.com has more on a daily basis.

-- Pete Crump (pete@oakhouse.demon.co.uk), June 22, 2000.

Just to say that the man who 'writes' the 'ents page on that site is or was also a removal man, helping his dad, but while they were moving my piano they had such a flaming row he stormed off. Perhaps never to remove again.

-- chris (chris @clatimer.freeserve.co.uk), July 03, 2000.

Did you know that Walsall has also attracted the title of The Ugliest Town in the World? Some details at url= http://www.travaille.freeserve.co.uk/news/news.htm

-- Bill Hilltop (brains@travaille.freeserve.co.uk), February 22, 2001.