Slough, the Berkshire town immortalised by Ricky Gervais in The Office, is marking the sitcom's 25th anniversary by trying to write a new script for itself. At the end of the Elizabeth Line, a co-working hub called Future Works has replaced the paper-merchant drudgery of Wernham Hogg with fintech founders and hot-desks, and the town is rallying behind a bid to become UK Town of Culture 2028, hoping to edge out Guildford.
A different kind of office life
Vineet Vijh, the entrepreneur behind Future Works, gives tours with a missionary zeal. "If you put Varun in front of people, he'll just talk about startup fundraising for two hours. I highly doubt David Brent could do that," he says, introducing a 31-year-old founder who runs a fintech venture from a room of multiple screens. Varun admits the loneliness of the role.
Being a founder can be lonely. I've already found myself crying in the toilets due to the stress of running a startup.His favourite film is The Pursuit of Happyness, a Brentian touch, but the resemblance ends there. He is a boss first, with no desire to be an entertainer.
Data centres and deprivation
The contrast is stark. Slough hosts Europe's largest collection of data centres, hulking megastructures that process most of England's internet traffic. At the same time, the borough tops the country's league tables for income deprivation and is the most ethnically diverse local authority outside London. Nilesh, a financial consultant, argues the old comedy would not survive today.
I don't think Brent would survive here now to be honest. We've had to make a few tough decisions around firing people because of AI. And I don't think he'd manage that because ultimately he's a wimp.He also notes the diversity that would make Brent's casual racism far more visible.
From New Labour dreams to AI reality
The Office rose during the New Labour years, when Tony Blair promised a "thousand days to prepare for a thousand years" and an "information superhighway" that for many meant a call centre in a town like Slough. Blair even visited Slough police station after the second series, mimicking a drug test with Brentian panache. The show became a pathology for a nation run by politicians who fancied themselves as rockstars and best friends.
Now a version of that future has arrived, but with less comic potential. John Betjeman's wish for "friendly bombs" on Slough has been partly granted by developers Berkeley Homes and SEGRO, who have replaced brutalist shopping centres with self-contained residential complexes that from a distance resemble the data centres themselves. Vijh has co-written an updated Office script set in Future Works to support the culture bid. The new humour derives not from people being trapped, but from what happens "when everyone is free". Chris Finch becomes a LinkedIn influencer; David Brent is absent entirely.
Schrödinger's Slough
Rob Deeks, a social worker and town champion, describes a duality.
There is something I like to call Schrödinger's Slough. To outsiders it is simultaneously a drab, grey and dreary place, but then also a vibrant, growing and sometimes dangerous place that no one apparently wants to live in.He drives past Eton's playing fields, a mosque serving an estate built for bombed-out Londoners, and a data centre venting the smell of cremated plastic into back gardens. Residents, he says, have little idea what happens inside the server farms.
Slough is full of people who have just moved here or are just trying to get by. I think this stuff gets put here because you know they're not going to make a fuss.
High street realities
NHS nurses say nightlife has vanished.
No one goes out anymore in Slough. The people who work just seem to live in their own world, and then there are now lots of people here from places where drinking is not a big part of their culture.The high street shows the friction. A boarded-up shop bears a facade reading "Slough Celebrates Neurodiversity", graffitied with arguments about immigration. Berkeley Homes plans a residential-leisure complex by 2039, promising penthouse views toward Heathrow.
Outside the derelict centre, a man who looks like Chris Finch screams at a woman in a hijab before marching off. "Don't worry about him," she says. "He's just having one of his moments." They walk up the high street together, an odd couple embodying a town that defies the sitcom scripts written for it.