Dundee has come under the spotlight as part of a series of television features on the competing UK City of Culture 2017 entrants.
BBC Look North, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire which covers rival city Hull spent two days on a “cultural trail” in Dundee, including visits to DCA and jewellery designer Kate Pickering from Vanilla Ink at her studio in Wasps.
Caroline Bilton from BBC Look North, who will visit Swansea Bay and Leicester over the next two weeks, said her trip to Dundee had “tried to do the city justice”.
She added: “We are in the final strait now and the idea is to give our viewers an opportunity to see what Hull is competing against.
“We have been taken aback by the similarities Dundee has with Hull in terms of its waterfront cut off from the city centre by the main road. Hull has exactly the same problem.
“There is the deprivation element here that Hull has, but also the feeling of regeneration that we are seeing in Hull as well.”
Caroline said that Dundee seemed more muted in its reaction to the competition, compared to her hometown.
She said: “People are buzzing in Hull. When the bid was entered on September 30, 12,000 people took part in a Twitter campaign. That shows you the strength of feeling on that one day.
“Everywhere you go, everyone is talking about it that’s no exaggeration. I’ll be honest, my experience here in Dundee has been subdued in comparison to the atmosphere we are having in Hull.
“I have come up against a few cynical views the last two days here.
“Saying that, we have had emails to our programme from people saying, ‘Why are we trying to become a city of culture when the council can’t even empty the dustbins and clean the streets?’.
“But you’re always going to get that.”
Caroline later tweetedthat “the gloves are off” after Stewart Murdoch, who heads Dundee’s bid team, told her that Dundee would win the title and Hull was around five years behind the city in comparitive terms of regeneration.
She said: “There is a real feeling that this is Hull’s time.
“It depends what the judges are looking for. Do they want to give it to a city that will develop or to a city that has already developed? Hull is like Dundee, in that you don’t come here unless you have reason to.
“It’s been in the bad cities around the country year on year, but things are changing now for the better.”
Mr Murdoch said: “That’s certainly the first time that BBC from any other region of the UK have been filming in Dundee regarding the competition.
“It’s nice that a visitor to the city has had a good experience. Their feedback was very complimentary.”
He said that he was “not concerned” about a more low-key public presence for the competition in Dundee, compared with Hull, which has posters and banners around its city centre.
“I think that if you stop people in the street, you are going to get mixed reactions on anything like this,” Mr Murdoch added.
“What they have done, and we decided not to, is spend lots of money on public advertising and banners.
“That money would have had to come away from other things, so I would rather Dundee put money into cultural programmes that people attended than banners that flutter in the wind.”