| "You probably don't know the history of the expression," says John Roles, and proceeds to give it. "This was first heard in the year Bea Mahaffey came over here (1953). The scene was the White Horse in London on the Thursday night before the Coroncon. We folk from outside London had seen little of Bea and heard her not at all. By chance a moment came this Thursday when the screen of Londoners round here must have thinned, and she strayed to a group of Northerners (mostly of Liverpool and Manchester) and had begun to strike up a conversation. when one of the Liverpudlians overheard Bert Campbell say, '...get her away from the Bloody Provincials'. The news of this spread like a prairie fire, and did little to cement an already apprehensive relationship between the London Circle and the rest of English fandom."
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