Tasmania is a land of “dregs, bogans and third-generation morons”, according to well-known Australian cultural identity Leo Schofield, who said a decade spent living in the state left him feeling bitter and depressed.

Mr Schofield, a longtime restaurant critic and festival curator, was speaking to ABC News after an article published in Fairfax Media today quoted him as saying his experience in Tasmania “was probably the unhappiest episode of my life”.

“I think I came very close to either a nervous breakdown or suicide. I just started to fall apart,” he told Fairfax.

The 79-year-old, who set up a Baroque festival in Hobart, said Tasmanians had no respect for their heritage buildings or the environment.

He finally decided to return to New South Wales after the Tasmanian Government cut the festival’s funding by 25 per cent, to an offer of $300,000.

He had been looking for a significant increase for the 2014 festival from the $400,000 the Government had previously provided.

The Baroque festival has since moved to Brisbaneafter a group of arts organisations offered additional cash to secure the event for the city.

He said the rejection hit him hard and his daughters convinced him to return to Sydney.

“I was in a bit of a bad way, and she [my eldest daughter] and her two sisters come down and effectively intervened and gave me a ticket and said ‘get back up to Sydney, we don’t want this to keep going’,” he said.

“I was on anti-depressants and drinking rather too much and not in really good shape, I must say.

“It was a terrible blow when we were informed, not even officially or through a direct source, that the Government was going to whack 25 per cent off the grant that we had for the last one.”

Mr Schofield said the whole experience left him feeling bitter and depressed, and he stood by his comments that Tasmanians were bogans who did not like mainlanders.

“Well, it’s not difficult to see,” he said.

“Look at Australia’s Biggest Bogans and see where most of them come from on that television show.

“There’s almost sometimes a celebration of mediocrity evident in some areas, and a feeling we’re absolutely perfect as we are and we don’t want anyone coming here telling us how to do anything.”

Asked if he had any plan to live in Tasmania again, he replied: “No, no, no, no, no, I’m very happy back in the bustling metropolis of Sydney, back in Potts Point where I’ve lived for many years anyway, and where there are many people happy to see me, where elsewhere maybe they’re not.”