Good old salt of the earth lovely rosy cheeked straight up northern lass Nell McAndrew vows she’ll leave London after her flat was burgled yet again on Sunday.

She wants to go home. Back up north where everything’s wonderful and nobody would dare even steal your wallet. Not if it were strapped it to your back with a big ‘Steal Me! Free Money!’ sign and twentys hanging out.

And where is this idyllic setting, deepest inbred Cumbria perhaps? A quaint little village in Lancashire? Quiet shack by the Whitby coast?

No, it’s Leeds.

That’s right, fighting on street corners, ‘I’ll poke your eye out with a stick if you stare at my bird’, car thieving, drug fuelled, mug happy Leeds.

There’s no place like home, we suppose. Wonder if Jesus thought that too?

Sweet Nell McAndrew has undergone something of a career renaissance in recent years. At one point she was doing the softcore thing, all ice cubed nipples and baby oil as a (pre-Rhona Mitra) Lara Croft. Ready for any photoshoot no matter how big the challenge. Sitting up, crouching, frozen action stance, she could do them all.

Though she didn’t have lips like an inflatable dingy so Angelina Jolie got the big movie role, all the international fame and enough ready cash to import babies from the Sudan. Or something like that.

Not to worry. Eating proper dinners kept Nell busy. She became a ‘forces sweetheart’ during the Iraq war (presumably for the allies), done a bit of telly (as a jungle mute mainly) and now seems to have made a career out of being the official face of every single charity shop on the planet.

Have a look for yourself. If you don’t find her face near the till, behind the Kevin Spacey TV movies, or slapped on a fitting room poster with her arm round some hyperventilating elderly gent, we’ll reimburse you five pounds of your own money. And that’s a promise. No it’s not.

If all this career dizziness is getting too much for Nell then it must be the London connection. She lives (for now) in a posh part of Marylebone with her husband Paul Hardcastle (didn’t he do ‘19’?). A bonefide metro chick by all accounts.

“I can no longer live here,” Nell confided to The Sun. “I feel I’ll always have to be looking over my shoulder.”

And things would really be so much better in West Yorkshire? Granted, a suped up Nissan Skyline replaces a Range Rover as the celebrity car of choice, and most streets still have corner shops that aren’t selling bottled oxygen. But is Nell really going to get the reprieve she thinks she will?

The only difference is that when someone breaks into your house up north they won’t steal your laptop because they think it’s an Ikea tea tray.

Still, having your flat burgled for the second time in one year, while doing the London Marathon for charity in an unquestionably quick time (3 hours 11 minutes), would persuade even hecklerspray city magnets to ‘get away’ to the country for a bit. So good luck to Nell we say. And we don’t say that very often.

If we could just persuade Jodie Marsh to do the same those stagnant South East house prices might just get into gear again. Yes, we know she’s from Essex but she can emigrate.

Pontefract is lovely at this time of year. Just ask Nell.

[story by Chris Laverty]