The joke’s not on Grimsby, says child star, as port braces itself for the Baron Cohen effect

In Grimsby these are the last days of normality, for Hollywood is about to fix the town with its many-headed gaze.

The Lincolnshire port, so often the butt of southern metropolitan mockery, will edge uncertainly along a red carpet knowing not whether notoriety or approval await it. Grimsby, the new vehicle for Sacha Baron Cohen’s subversive and astringent humour, will be unveiled in Leicester Square on Monday, and the town, like any other Hollywood debutant, is wondering how it will be judged.

There is a palpable fear on these streets that Grimsby, which has learned to grow resilient in the face of adversity, is being set up by Baron Cohen for another knock. Without having seen the film, it’s difficult not to laugh merely at its central premise. Two inseparable young orphan brothers are cruelly prised apart by the process of adoption. One becomes a sleek and lethal international assassin, while the other settles down in Grimsby to a life of football hooliganism and joyous fecundity. Even though no one here has seen the film, some sense it will traipse complacently down a well-worn path of making fun out of social deprivation and inequality.

So who better to elicit a verdict from than the only Grimbarian to have been granted a part in the movie? Twelve-year-old Freddie Crowder plays the delinquent son of Baron Cohen’s slacker brother and feels sure there is nothing in it for his fellow citizens to fear. It is simply a comedy, he says, and a very good one. “People will laugh out loud at it,” says Freddie.

“My favourite moment comes near the beginning, when we are in a conversation with Sacha and he just tells us to lose the script and start improvising. None of us could stop laughing; he’s very funny. He does take the mick in the film, but it’s so funny that I don’t think anyone will be offended. During filming he acted like a proper dad to the younger actors and was so easy to talk to between takes. I liked him a lot.”

Since beating around 100 others in auditioning for his role, Freddie has been involved in filming for the last couple of years. His mother, Rachel, was also impressed by the actor. “From the very outset, Freddie and we as a family were looked after brilliantly by Sacha and his wife, who was also around the set a lot.

“They made time for everyone – parents and children alike – and were always available for a chat. He was nothing like the Hollywood big shots you hear about, and he took special care to shield the younger actors from any of the more risque scenes. He made this special for us all.

“Originally, we were under the misconception that the film was all about Grimsby, but it’s not. It’s a comedy that’s simply located in Grimsby about two brothers. I can only go on what I witnessed during some of the filming with Freddie, but I never got the impression it was being negative about Grimsby. I mentioned to Sacha himself that there was already a reaction growing against it, and he was genuinely puzzled and couldn’t understand why this would be.”

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In October 2013 Baron Cohen went incognito to Grimsby to research the setting for the film, which he also wrote and produced. His visit has since passed into folklore and included a trip to Blundell Park, the home of Grimsby Town, for a match he attended with a handheld camera. He was spotted (though not recognised) by the club’s security officer, who ordered him to stop filming immediately, as he hadn’t sought permission. Thereafter, as it became clear that the actor was making a film based on Grimsby, the realisation began to dawn on some individuals that they had been sharing beer and laughter with a Hollywood A-lister.

He is not the first international celebrity to savour the delights of a Grimsby Town home game. In 1976, at the height of the “cod war” standoff, the local MP, Anthony Crosland, who was also foreign secretary in James Callaghan’s administration, took the US secretary of state Henry Kissinger to a game to watch the Mariners play Gillingham.

Baron Cohen’s visit led, in turn, to a wave of euphoria sweeping Grimsby at the prospect of the full cast and crew of a serious Hollywood “happening” rolling up to give the town a little taste of the high life. It didn’t happen, though. The movie might look as if it took place in Grimsby, but all the filming was done in Tilbury, Essex. That was a kick in the teeth, but the town has grown accustomed to them.

In the first half of the 20th century, Grimsby docks were home to the world’s biggest trawling fleet and it became a magnet for Scots and south-coasters alike eager to join the oily Klondike on the Humber estuary. It’s often recalled here that you could walk from one side of the docks to the other across the decks of a thousand jammed-in fishing vessels. Almost overnight, however, they disappeared when the UK government bent to Iceland’s demands to increase its North Sea fishing territories at the expense of those traditionally fished by the trawler communities of Hull and Grimsby. This was Iceland’s price for allowing the US to use its territory to monitor Soviet submarine activity. More than 30 years later, trawlermen who lost their jobs and boats were still waiting for compensation.

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Until recently Grimsby Town FC adopted the chorus of Chumbawamba’s rollicking song Tubthumping as its theme song: “I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never going to keep me down.” It could be a fanfare for the recent experiences of the town itself. Peter Craig, a senior reporter on the Grimsby Telegraph, is helping to organise a local premiere of Grimsby when it opens in Cleethorpes on Wednesday, but he remains unsure how the town will be portrayed. “I’ve heard talk of a boycott over concerns some people have that the film will mock the social problems that towns like Grimsby have faced, but I’m hopeful that, if it’s genuinely a good and funny film, there will be some benefits to Grimsby.

“Grimbarians have this amazing confidence and loyalty to their town born of great resilience forged in difficult times, and perhaps that might come out too.”

In the sunshine last Friday, Grimsby was scrubbing up well for its big-screen debut. The town centre, pedestrianised and resplendent with a new shopping centre, carries an air of optimism, perhaps fuelled by a new jobs boom in renewables and fish processing. There are proper local shops here and few of the empty facades, bargain outlets and fast-food emporiums that have come to characterise similar-sized UK towns that have suffered post-industrial decline.

This week, as the world laughs with Sacha Baron Cohen and beholds an old English town with a cartoon name, Grimsby will probably laugh too, if a little uncertainly, and think it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to it.