Leeds named UK's new '˜capital of clumsiness'

Being accident-prone owes just as much to where you live as poor co-ordination or simply having “butter fingers”.

The biggest ever study of mobile phone breakages across the UK highlights massive regional and city-by-city variation in the numbers of shattered screens, scuffed handsets and mangled charging ports.

Data collated from 160,000 online searches by mobile phone repair specialist iSmash has revealed the extent to which clumsiness and geography are intertwined.

The North is officially the most dangerous region to own a phone, with the city of Leeds identified as Britain’s undisputed number-one Clumsytown (is there something in the Yorkshire puddings?). Newcastle, Manchester and Liverpool are all ranked within top 10, while Nottingham and Bristol were second and third overall – accounting for a disproportionate share of the £3.1bn spent on gadget repairs in the UK since 2012.

The study has brought together Wakefield and Swansea as homes for careful phone owners. And perhaps surprisingly, given the fast and frenetic pace of life in the capital, London also finds itself low on the list, ranking 23rd out of 25.

Julian Shovlin, founder of iSmash says; “Breaking a phone is not just frustrating and inconvenient but can also prove very costly. I’d like to humbly suggest that those in our top clumsy cities invest in a good phone case!”