A MILLIONAIRE bus boss was today slammed by East Lancashire MPs after describing his Northern passengers as "beer-drinking, chip-eating masses."

Brian Souter, whose Stagecoach Holdings company operates services in Burnley, Pendle and Hyndburn, made the comments in a lecture to London Transport.

He spoke of an imaginary line dividing the country, and said: "Above that line we have the beer-drinking, chip-eating, council-house-dwelling old Labour-voting masses, probably with lower car ownership."

He described people South of the line as "wine-drinking, courgette and mangetout-eating, semi-detached-dwelling New Labour voting."

East Lancashire MPs today united to describe his comments as surprising and insulting.

Rossendale and Darwen MP Janet Anderson said it was a "disgraceful slur on our Northern culture". She added: "It is deeply insulting. I suggest he finds a little more time North of Watford so that he can see what his Northern customers are really like. I know where I would rather spend my time." Burnley MP Peter Pike said the description was surprising given Mr Souter's own background.

Scottish Mr Souter, 42, worked his way through university working as a bus driver and is the son of a conductor.

He set up Stagecoach with his redundancy money.

Mr Pike added: "It is not at all helpful for him to have used that type of language. He would be better off ensuring that he runs an efficient and reliable service."

Mr Souter, who earns £3.7million a year from the highly profitable company, said he greatly appreciated Northerners as "wonderful bus customers".

But his firm has recently come in for criticism from passengers and councillors over the standard of school bus services in Burnley, Pendle and Hyndburn.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.