Can’t quite remember where I spotted this one, but I’ve discovered that TV’s James May and Oz Clarke are distinctly unpopular in the brewing town of Burton-Upon-Trent following the screening of their recent Oz and James Drink to Britain TV series.

I watched the whole series myself and generally enjoyed it – it’s being repeated on BBC1 in the small hours at the moment (episode 2 goes out tomorrow at 01.20 a.m.) so you should be able to catch it on iPlayer. On this, their third busman’s holiday adventure (after two series of Wine adventures), Oz and James had their ‘curmudgeonly old married couple’ routine down pat and watching them stumble, bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived, round some of the alcoholic highlights of our fair nation was quite entertaining for the most part. I even learned a thing or three about brewing beer, and the names of a couple of interesting new breweries to check out, in the process.

But it seems the good people of Burton are distinctly unimpressed with the “dismissive … callous, demeaning and offensive” segment on Burton in the show and frankly, I can’t say I blame them. The duo’s visit to the town (in episode 5) really did strike a definite bum-note. For whatever reason (I suspect something hangover-related, although that’s still no excuse), curmudgeonly grumpiness spilled over into outright cynical snarkiness, and culprit May was unnecessarily unpleasant to Worthington White Shield head brewer Steve Wellington. No, scratch that, he wasn’t snarky and unpleasant so much as downright effing rude.

The incident in question occurred when Mr Wellington invited the pair to sample the one of the oldest and rarest beers in Britain – a 139 year old bottle of technically drinkable Ratcliffe Ale – in the Bass / Coors Royal Ale Store. Whereas elsewhere in the series May was able to summon up enough enthusiasm to at least make polite noises about everything from scrumpy perry to English sparkling wine to vintage single malt, here he did little but take the piss. He was completely out of order in his reaction to an extremely generous gesture on the part of White Shield in letting the two of them sample an extremely rare and costly archive item. Even if it did taste like shit, there are ways of conveying the fact he didn’t like the stuff without making it sound like he’d been force-fed it at gun-point in the first place. Shame on You, Mr May. You let yourself down very badly, there. Very badly indeed. I’m not the only one who thinks so, either: top beer blogger Pete Brown said as much at the time the first show went out as well.

But it’s the fact that the two intrepid adventurers only spent a 15 minute or so segment on Burton, despite apparently spending five days in the town, that’s upset local MP Ruth Smeeth to the point of putting together a protest website – www.bestofburton.co.uk – and a petition to the BBC demand formal reparation in the form of a documentary about the town and its heritage.

The BBC apparently remains unrepentant. As, to the best of my knowledge, does Mr May.