We’re not crap! That’s the cry of one of Medway’s loudest defenders after the Towns featured in a new book.

Crap Towns Returns, due out 10 years after the original Crap Towns, gives Medway pride of place - apparently by popular demand.

It is one of only two Kent places to feature in the long-list of 100, alongside Sheerness.

At night, the book’s website claims, Medway “shrugs off this genteel middle-England mask and reveals a lethal truth.”

It adds: “You’d be surprised what one can conceal in a knock off Louis Vuitton clutch bag and don’t even think about the menfolk.

“Frankly if you are stupid or tasteless enough to go to any one of the grotty pubs, foul restaurants or filthy, sticky nightclubs you will get your head kicked in or contract a social disease or both.”

But town crier of nine years Robin Burfoot - who regularly yells the Towns’ praises in public - has promised to defend Medway to the hilt.

The 77-year-old, of Leeward Road, Rochester, said: “To just pick on the nightlife is totally unfair. I know for a fact that Rochester High Street does have problems at night but the point about the Medway Towns is you have to take them as a whole.

"You’d be surprised what one can conceal in a knock-off Louis Vuitton clutch bag"

“This place has some of the finest views, albeit some industrial ones, that you’ll find in any urban conurbation.

“Rochester’s wonderful. Chatham could do with a heart bypass, I will say that, but I don’t think it’s crap.

“I think the Towns are under-rated rather than crap as the gentleman suggests. But I do understand he’s writing with his tongue in his cheek and if he can make a few quid out of it, so be it.”

Sheerness also gets a ranking, but there is no explanation as to why it's been given the dubious honour.