BEIJING has the Bird’s Nest Stadium. London has Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament... even The Gherkin. And Yorkshire? Well, if the broadcasters of our proud nation are to be believed, Yorkshire has the Tinsley Towers.

Or at any rate it did have them until the weekend when we (nearly) blew them up in one go.

Crowds of tear-stained onlookers apparently all gathered there in the early hours of the morning to bid a last farewell to what some of them were describing as ‘The Gateway to Yorkshire’.

Some of them felt so warmly towards these concrete monstrosities that they revealed they’d had actually posed for their wedding pictures using the towers as a backdrop. You can only hope they didn’t have them in mind as a symbol of eternal love, because even though it wasn’t a job Fred Dibnah would have been proud of, the towers are very much history now.

But I digress.

Am I the only person who feels indignant at the idea of these towers somehow having become an emblem of our fine county? I can’t say I have ever even registered the things as landmarks on my occasional forays into the Deep South, or as heralds of my return to civilised parts on the long drive back to Yorkshire.

I have, I confess, noticed Meadowhall each time, and given an involuntary shudder at the thought of being inside its hellish confines; and for some reason I always seem to register the Severn Trent water company’s building each time that I pass by.

When I’m feeling uncharitable, I might say I really know I’m getting near to home when, having driven in brilliant sunshine for several hours, I first see the bank of low cloud looming into view over, say, Doncaster.

But really, for me, it is the first time that I see York, or at any rate Leeds, mentioned on a green road sign that I know it won’t be long now before I can get out of the car, dump my bags in the hall and make myself a nice cup of tea with water that doesn’t taste like a failed chemistry experiment.

It is a different matter to return to Yorkshire from Lancashire on the M62. There, you really do feel you are coming home when you see the farm that forced the road to go around it. That’s the spirit.

And if, for some reason, that sight doesn’t do it for you, there’s surely no denying that Scammonden Dam and its bridge truly deserve the status of a home-coming Yorkshire landmark.

So I refuse to embrace the Tinsley Towers as ‘The Gateway to Yorkshire’. We have struggled for long enough against the smug ‘Grim Oop North’ types who reject the notion of life beyond Potters Bar, without deciding to hitch our wagon to this dubious star. It’s as if we want to be thought of as flat ’at-wearing whippet-fanciers who know all and pay nowt.

We may have had an industrial chapter in our lives, but Yorkshire should not be defined by that relatively short chapter, any more than Britain should be defined by a portrait of Myra Hindley.

By all means, take York Minster, green fields, high moors. Take Swaledale sheep, Wensleydale cheese or Whitby Abbey.

But Tinsley Towers? It has taken their demolition to make them at all remarkable. They say nothing to me about Yorkshire.