First he said in a national newspaper column that his home city of Wolverhampton was "the armpit of the Universe."

Now he has written a book in which he brands it the backside of the Black Country - and he wants forgiveness.

Journalist and author Sathnam Sanghera confessed during a return visit from his London home at the weekend: "That was harsh and I am sorry."

The 31-year-old, whose first book "If You Don't Know Me By Now" sub-titled "a memoir of love secrets and lies in Wolverhampton" has just been published, explains: "It is aboutmy family, how I have changed my opinions about them and also how I have changed.  The Wolverhampton thing was meant to be a theme."

"I have spent a large part of my 20s and my career slagging off the place.  That was because I felt so trapped.  It was an easy thing to kick in my adolescence."

"Somebody said that growing up in a small town gives you a purpose in life - to get out.  You are focused on that as a teenager. I just wanted to get out."

"Then you grow up and realise that the place made you and is part of you.  the people of Wolverhampton have this amazing self-deprecating sense of humour.  I missed it in my anger and bitterness about the past."

"The place has changed.  It is much more metropolitan and far more integrated.  It is wrong to say that I have fallen in love with it again because I never loved it in the first place, but I am very fond of it.  I'm toying with the idea of moving back."

Sathnam's parents still live in Blakenhall where they moved with their four children from a terraced house in Prosser Street, Park Village, in which Sathnam first felt the pain of being caught between conflicting cultures.

He was crushed between Asian custom and Western ways.  Now he has written about the struggle to appear faithful to one while embracing the other and the high price paid for that double life.

Sathnam hopes the story helps others to cope with the demands of a multi-cultural Britain where the problems faced by second generation children of immigrants are blamed for everything from home grown terrorism to the demise of the street corner shop.

It tells of his illiterate, mentally ill, father Jagjit; his schizophrenic sister Puli and his dominating mother Surjit who still speaks little English.  The last of these dominates the book.  Sathnam's batle to find a way not to explain his need to abandon much of the Sikh religion that his mother holds dear - and, most importantly, his need to marry a woman of his choice without sacrificing her love - is its main theme.

 He did not speak English until he started at Woden Junior School near his Park Village home but then won an assisted place scholarship to Wolverhampton Grammar School and became head boy.  From there he went to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he achieved a first class degree in English  Literature.  He now writes a weekly column in The Times.

"It has been a surreal journey and it created lots of stress for me," he admitted.  "Loads of second generation Asians have this difficulty between East and West.  I decided to try to write my way out of the problems it caused.  I wanted to put it all down in a letter to my mother but I knew what she would say in the event  of a confrontation - that classic mother's thing of 'If only you knew what I had been through you would not have done this'.  So I needed to know the whole story and the letter turned into a book.  It was just one long therapy session for me."

"I felt a lot of parallels with the difficulties of gay men coming out.  I am a big George Michael fan and when he was recently asked why he had not admitted he was homosexual earlier he had said: 'I was scared of my Dad'.

"The fear of the parents is such a profound thing because you do not want to lose them.  They mean so much to you."

"It was easier for me to be brave in public and confront my mother in print.  I had to send the letter which becomes central to the book to be translated into Punjabi because I speak the language but cannot write it."

"If her reaction to it had been negative then the book would probably never have been published.  I wrote it for my own needs and her response was the key."

"I really hope the book helps others in similar situations to confront and overcome their problems.  People suffer in silence, especially in the Asian community where so many secret relationships cause so much pain.  It is hell and it is futile."

"I always felt so alone going out with a white girlfriend.  Now perhaps others will not have to endure that feeling of isolation.  I still believe in the Sikh religion but I feel that it has been corrupted like all religions."

"The way it is practised is bizarre.  The whole aim was to do away with the caste system and now in Wolverhampton we have one temple for one caste and another temple for another caste opposite each other."

"I have never been in the other one.  Why does nobody say that is bizarre".

"I am  anxious about the response to my book from the Sikh community.  It is not a very reflective culture and I do not want to be the Sikh's Salman Rushdie."

"All I am really saying is that people should be allowed to marry whoever they want but that is still quite radical.  It is an important thing to say and I will say it despite my nervousness about the reaction."

Then he recites the final words in the book as if they were a mantry "Know where you come from but don't let it stop you becoming what you want to be."

"If You Don't Know Me By Now" piblished by Viking, priced £16.99