I am modifying a view, and I want to use server side code in one of
the columns (to look up a database value).

It looks as though you can do this, as

<%=System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture.LCID%>

works; however it seems as though SP is looking for exactly this
string, as no other server-side code will work, not even adding
whitespace into the same line.

I have also tried writing out a user control, this also fails to run
(is rendered straight to the client).

Is there any other way of doing this?