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Music

Oi Taylor Swift, Let Me Take You Out For The Night Of Your Life In Norwich

Taylor Swift is playing the Radio One's Big Weekend festival so we got our resident Norfolk expert Josh Baines to plan us the date of the century.

Norwich is an unfairly maligned city. Its national reputation as an inbred populated hovel sustained only by mustard and Delia Smith is a genuinely unreasonable account of a place that’s stuffed with galleries, record shops, venues, independent retailers, and spots of natural beauty. It’s the perfect small city: where else can you sup a cheap pint at a Wetherspoons that overlooks a MASSIVE CASTLE PLONKED DIRECTLY IN THE CITY CENTRE? Where else can you, according to local legend at least, visit a different pub every night and a different church every Sunday? We call it a fine city and we mean it.

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So, when it was announced this morning that Taylor Swift is set to pay us little old bumpkins a visit this summer as headliner of this year’s Radio 1 Big Weekend, our six fingered hands went into overdrive. As worldly a woman as she might be, it’s unlikely that she’s au fait with the splendour of the city and its surrounding connurbations. She doesn’t know the joys of Heartsease, Stalham, Potter Heigham, Poringland, Larkhenham or Happisburgh. She’s never strolled down St Giles’ on a winter’s morning or wandered aimlessly around Chapelfield pausing to pop a curious head into the dark depths of Abercrombie and Fitch. So we thought we’d plot a little day out for her. Taylor, enjoy the place as much as we do. Even if you struggle to understand our accents.

Have a wander down Magdalen Street

Visiting a new city for the first time is always a buzz - the new sights, the strange sounds, the unfamiliar smells. It’s intoxicating and invigorating. The tourist tendency is to rush to the big attractions - the Castle Museum gift shop, perhaps, or the fountain by La Senza in the Castle Mall, or the award winning toilets in that pub at the bottom of Grapes Hill - but it pays off to try and live like a local. There is nowhere more local in Norwich than Magdalen Street. Anyone wanting to sample life as we live it, and I hope beyond hope that Swifty wants to, needs to take a wander through what we think of as our version of Detroit’s battered neighbourhoods. It consists of a market held under an underpass that specializes in three day old clementines and split laundry bags, a few pubs that look like they’re yet to hear of the smoking ban, a shop that sells fake fossils and an Oxfam - perfect if she fancies a grapefruit, the jaw of a velociraptor, a G&T and a James Last record.

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Dine at Zaks

We’ve got McDonalds, sure, five of them in fact, including the rarely visited but always clean Tuckswood branch. There’s a Burger King in the old mall too. But for that real authentic flame-grilled taste served in an authentic American environment there’s only one spot worth visiting: Zaks. Zaks is a Norwich institution, a burger joint that serves up perfectly average fare to pretty much everyone in the county with any reason to celebrate. I’ve been there for birthdays, post-court adoption ceremony celebrations, and result day blowouts. I’ve seen wedding parties cram themselves into a tatty booth that overlooks the local prison, eager to clasp a signature Western Burger while the same six Motown songs play infernally in the background and bored waitresses repeatedly ask “how yer watt at done? Raaare or medyum?” Our version of the American dream is found within these four walls. Suck it down with one of their famous thickshakes, Taylor.

Plan a Little Pub Crawl

After demolishing a bowl of Prison Chilli, Taylor and the gang will be in a slight stupor so why not roll into the city centre and make the most of the endless brilliant bars and pubs that line each and every street. I’m happy to guide her round a few of my favorite haunts. We’d start at The Glasshouse, which is one of those glorious Wetherspoons’ that don’t feel like a Wetherspoons despite being incredibly Wetherspoonsy. After a few pints of Ruddles we’d amble up to The Mischief for a £2.50 treble and mixer, trying not to puke up into the Wensum. Getting into the beating bohemian heart of Norwich we’d sample a few local delicacies at The Plough on St Benedict’s Street, officially the artiest place around, given that it’s got an Art’s Centre, an art shop and is very close to the art school.

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Watch Romance Blossom Down by the Forum

You’re having such a fun day that you forget that Taylor isn’t just a really sound girl you’ve bumped into and had some Before Sunrise bonding session with. She’s a popstar who writes about love, its trials and tribulations, its ups and downs. You try and think of somewhere she can go to have a moment of reflection, a space that might end up in a song someday. You take her through the famously multi-coloured market, up past the Hitler-admired city hall, past the singing Puppet Man outside Primark and end up at the local library, The Forum. Despite containing an extensive collection of actual books inside, the Forum is mainly used by lunching mothers getting little Jacob to enjoy his diavola at the Pizza Express, and teenagers who look like MySpace profile pictures from 2006 and hand out free hugs. These eternal emos sit on the steps day after day, hugging, scowling, whispering. Twinkles zip from eye to eye. Hands furtively reach towards holding. Something’s happening. Then someone gets called Russell Brand for wearing black jeans and it vanishes.

Have a Big One Down Riverside

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Ah, Riverside. The kind of faceless adult entertainment complex that every bustling city needs. Sometimes life can be overwhelming, stressful, anxiety inducing. You know you want to go out. You know you’ve got new shoes to wear, new aftershave to splash on. You’ve watched Take Me Out: The Gossip twice already, but you don’t have the energy or willpower to plan anything. It’s all so difficult. Demanding. Hey, buddy, I bet even Taylor Swift feels like that sometimes. Where do you and Taylor Swift go on a night like this? Riverside!

You can eat at Pizza Hut or Chiciquots or Bella Pasta or Frankie and Benny’s or gorge yourself to the point of puking at Riverbank’s all you can eat Chinese buffet: plate after plate of lemon chicken, curry triangles, chips. You can wash it down at Lloyd’s No. 1 round the corner. You can go to the cinema. You can go bowling. You can dance to Chris Brown at Norwegian Blue, clutching WKD, smiling the night away. You can live like kings and queens and not walk more than 30 seconds to keep the feeling going. Mercy’s one way down the street, Carrow Road the other. She loves it. You love it. This is Norwich. Our Norwich.

You can find Josh Baines on Twitter