Essex Man and Essex Girl jokes became a national craze in the late 1980s. Essex Man's missus was an Essex Girl, blonde, wearing white stilettos, and the subject of jokes such as: How does an Essex Girl turn off the light after sex? She kicks shut the car door. Twenty-odd years on something strange has happened, Essex is still the most iconic county in the UK and the essence of Essex is everywhere. A casual glance at Saturday night TV or into the boardrooms of City companies describes a cultural phenomenon. From Mark Wright to Russell Brand and Amy Childs, via Gavin and Stacey, Jamie Oliver, Phill Jupitus, Alan Davies, Ray Winstone and films such as Made in Dagenham, Sex and Drugs and Rock'n'Roll and Oil City Confidential, Essex is in danger of becoming cultured. In The Joy of Essex, Dagenham-reared Pete May takes an uproarious journey through the Essex tundra, from Romford to Chigwell to Southend-on-Sea, chronicling the history, the present and the legend of Essex.