WHERE is Worcester? For such a seemingly straightforward question, those three words have been causing much debate in the Worcester News office over the past couple of weeks.

It all started when our political reporter Tom Edwards piped up to state that the West Midlands was a county in its own right, as defined by the Local Government Act 1972.

What with Worcestershire also being a county, it cannot sit within another, or so he claimed.

By the letter of the law, the metropolitan county of the West Midlands is made up of Birmingham, Wolverhampton, West Bromwich (Sandwell), Dudley, Solihull, Coventry and Walsall, with a total population in excess of 2.7 million.

It would seem the place we call home sits in a seemingly undefined area that is south of the West Midlands but not in the South West either.

So, with us seemingly floating in some sort of nameless hinterland, it begs the question – what is Worcester’s identity?

Sitting as we do, somewhere in the middle of the country, we seem to have fallen foul of the same identity-less crisis as much of the Midlands.

Unlike the north and the south, there isn’t an obvious mast for the city to pin its colours to.

It may be known as the Faithful City for its Royalist stance in the English Civil War but, apart from the enthusiastic flag-waving of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, I doubt the city sells itself purely as a haven for card carrying monarchists.

Then there’s the love it or hate it appeal of Worcestershire Sauce, which, although a great asset, looms over the place like a parallel universe version of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

For some areas of the country you can conjure images, no matter how idealistic or outdated – be it cobbled streets, flat caps and whippets to the north or streets paved with gold and be-suited businessmen to the south. But that can’t really be said of Worcester, which is a shame as it could be seized upon as our calling card.

It is probably about time that those in the know got their heads together and cultivated an image to put an end to this nameless and faceless problem that leaves us as a slightly lost province of the largely uninspiring Midlands sprawl.