#5 Uncool Britannia

I love Britain.

There I said it.



Barely a week goes by without someone - a friend, a colleague, a random passer - muttering the immortal words 'this bloody country!' in my earshot.

Usually I'll give a sympathetic smile and roll my eyes at the rain/late bus/graffiti but other times, when I'm feeling feisty, I'll question why then, if this country is so very, very awful, they don't just...well, pack up their gear and emigrate?

Don't get me wrong, I quite agree that there are a lot of things that are eminently shit about the old green, green grass of home. Our trains are always late, our Prime Minister (at least for the next week) looks like a St Bernard who's just been picked up off the roadside by the RSPCA (and his main competitor like a suspiciously smooth buttock), we consider Bruce Forsyth to be the height of showbiz talent, our estate agents are pushy gits with over large tie-knots.

Ok, it's not a fashionable thing to say but I like Britain - a lot. I'm proud to be British and although I would happily live elsewhere to experience another lifestyle and culture for a bit after a few months I'd probably run screaming back in to Queenie's arms begging for a decent sausage.

Here then are my very bestest British things:

Queues
It's not that I enjoy queuing per se, that would be a stupid statement to make. It's more to do with what the queuing represents. It's the apotheosis of the British obsession with manners. We're a nation of people who say sorry when somebody else bumps in to us.

But the best, the absolute best thing about our obsession with queuing is that not one of us actually wants to do it, we're just being terribly British about the whole thing. I love watching the queues in Sainsburys - the shifty sideways glances, the odd rebel attempting to insert themselves midway along the self checkout line, somebody breathing down your neck as they shuffle as close as humanly possible to ensure that even a Kate Moss sized malcontent can't challenge their position.

Next time you're in a very British queue, pull on a bowler and enjoy.

Eccentrics
A few weeks ago a force was unleashed on the UK, a force which stunned even that paragon of unflustered common sense, Jeremy Paxman. That force was Alex Guttenplan, the team captain of the 2010 University Challenge winning team: Emmanuel College, Cambridge. I was not alone in developing a passion for the 'plan. Why? Because (despite having an American father, himself a renowned Pulitzer nominated journalist) he was the epitome of our very favourite type of Brit - the intelligent eccentric.



From Stephen Fry to Boris Johnson, Isabella Blow to Malcolm McLaren to Janet Street Porter and Quentin Crisp, Britain does a great line in those eccentrics who walk the fine line between madness, stupidity and downright genius. Guttenplan, though probably not set to become a TV icon a la Fry or Dr Brian Cox (he was in D:Ream, now he fiddles about with the Large Hadron Collider and knows everything there is to know about Sat-URn), made me smile with his Paxman-baffling knowledge of just about everything, and I wasn't alone in doing jumpy claps every time he was on screen. He was a wee Monday evening celebration of the Best of British and we couldn't help but love his serious little face for it.

The NHS
This week, due to some kind of idiotic clerical error, I was left without the regular medication which prevents me from losing my mind and rampaging naked up and down the streets of Market Harborough with an axe in one hand and the head of a goat in the other. I went cold turkey for a couple of days. I felt queasy and headachey, my hands and feet tingled and I was really, REALLY grumpy. Like, scratch your eyes out and put them in my blender grumpy.

Why didn't the medication get to me? Because the computer system for the UK's hospitals don't link with the computer systems which our GPs use. So there has to be letters, through the postal service. Or it may be that the specialist carves his recommendations in to a stone using his fingernails and has it paraded to the doc by seventeen naked virgins. One or the other.

Devastatingly flawed it may be but we seem so often to forget how extremely lucky we are to live in a country where we don't have to scrimp and save to afford a life saving operation, where our doctors and nurses and midwives though dangerously overworked have a high level of training and decent equipment to work with.

Our life expectancy is high, infant mortality is low, we have more doctors per 1000 people than the USA and around the same number of nurses. We give birth to our children in relative comfort and choose how and where we do so. If we're injured an equipped ambulance and trained professionals are sent to help us. And we don't have to pay.

It could be better, but it could be a hell of a lot worse.

The Countryside
Travelling by train from Nottingham to Manchester (it was only four minutes late!) I passed through the Peak District.

This was just as the snow was starting to melt.

Watching the snow tipped peaks, the clusters of daffodils, the streams cutting through valleys, the abandoned mines (Ok, ignore those) passing by me in a blur. I teared up a bit.



In fairness I was hungover and somebody had just inserted a large Pizza Hut Meatfest in to the luggage rack above me but still, the British countryside...it's beautiful and varied and ever so slightly tear jerking when you've had one too many very delicious British ales.

Diversity
Since when was immigration a bad thing?

Without immigration our music would be interminably dull - no grime, no garage, no Specials. We'd have to rely on Simply Red for 'soul'. Brrr. Our fashion world would be an unexciting landscape of Pringle knits and Burberry coats with no Chalayans or Ozbeks or Gallianos. Art would be free of Emin and Ofili and Chapmans Jake and Dinos, Gilbert would have to do his thing free of George.

Most importantly, if there was no immigration, the Daily Mail would be have to become a weekly and my amazing cleaner would have to go home (selfish, moi?).

I like the fact of being a mongrel - a little bit Irish, a little bit Welsh with a lapsed Catholic father and a not-at-all-Jewish Jew mother, educated at CofE schools despite being an atheist. I like that I look different to my friends and that they speak different languages and have different life experiences I can learn from and be entertained by.

The diversity of Britain makes it an exciting place to live, always on the cutting edge of fashion, science and education. Our food has been turned from dull grey slop to vibrant, delicious variety, we embrace religions of all sorts and nobody, in theory at least, is penalised or judged for their belief or their race or their class.

Screw you guys, Britannia rules.

#4 The Daily Fail

So there I am, sat at my in laws' kitchen table, idly flicking through their copy of The Daily Mail. I should know better. I should expect the stomach churning anger and the teeth gritting frustration that comes with this very same activity, that has come with it many, many times before. But I continue on, flicking from the sports pages backwards past the adverts for slankets and plates emblazoned with wrinkled royal faces, through a middle page spread featuring a former weather girl's/daytime TV presenter's/little known author's heartache and pain on finding that they were adopted/they had a long lost brother/their husband was a cross dresser. And there it was. The big story of the day, right there on page three.

"She fancied a fried egg sandwich. But Ann Hordon didn't get any further than breaking the egg into the pan.

For there, sizzling away, were four golden yellow yolks. All from a single shell."

I can imagine the excitement in the Mail offices when the photo of Mrs Hordon and her incredible egg hit the shiny mahogany desk of the lucky hack she had contacted. He no doubt threw open his door screaming 'STOP THE PRESSES! Bump the Haiti quake! Forget those thousands of dodgy Toyotas! Who even CARES about bombings in Pakistan...hell, today we're not even going to talk about immigration and those poor soldiers in Afghanistan because we've got the biggest story of the week, the month, probably the year!' That's when he slapped the picture of Hordon, ready in her big clip on earrings and golden bangles, a freshly ironed cardi pulled around her ample bosom smilingly showing off her ready cracked eggs.

I'm not even going to mention the fact that next week I'm going to send a picture of a fluffy yellow chick in my frying pan to the Mail. How could they question it? There it is a chick, in the pan. How could they consider the possibility that I simply put a chick...well, in a pan, and snapped a picture of it? I can prove it! Look HERE'S THE SHELL.

No, the fact that The Daily Mail have given space to a story which couldn't even possibly be verified, a story which really isn't even a story, is not my point. My point it this: The Daily Mail is not a newspaper.

Or rather, its a newspaper in the way that The News of the World or The National Enquirer is a newspaper. But the difference is that the Screws knows what it is, the journalists who work on the Screws knows what it is and so do the people who buy it and read it - it's a cheap thrill which might be honest or might not. The reason the Mail is so dangerous (and it is dangerous)is that it considers itself an equal to The Times or The Guardian and so do those who read it.

There are those of us who sneer at The Mail and all it stands for, who laugh in the face of another story about how buying a house can give you cancer or how immigrants can...er, give you cancer. But there are even more who buy it religiously, that suck up its drivel like its the Holy Scriptures. And then these people spout the same 'good sense' nonsense to their friends and family. There's no such thing as global warming, 99.9% of crime is committed by non-whites, all children are essentially 54% more evil than they were forty years ago. As far as the Mail's readers are concerned if it proves the prejudices which make them feel slightly uncomfortable now that they're in their middle age and their children can give them the 'I'm not sure that's appropriate Dad' look, it's something to be quoted.

Proof of how the Mail is, at best out of touch, at worse malicious came late last year in the form of that Jan Moir opinion piece. While Moir got the brunt of the anger over her spiteful claims that Stephen Gateley's death was caused by (to paraphrase) being gay, it appeared to be overlooked that Moir's editors allowed the story to be published. At the very least three editors would have signed off on the story (in print and online including at least one sub) before it was read by the outraged public.

Interesting that it was The Daily Mail who began the witch hunt against Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand for an ill advised and stupid prank call on Brand's Radio 2 show. This over reaction (only a handful of people complained before The Daily Mail splashed what was very much a non news story all over its pages in an attempt to prove that Ross and Brand were bullies of the very worst kind, picking on a poor defenseless old man) resulted in the sacking of the DJ's producer and suspension for both Ross and Brand who have both since quit the BBC. Even more interesting that Jan Moir - who made disgusting, homophobic comments about a man barely cold after his death (her speculation that it was not possible for Gateley to have died of natural causes were quickly proved wrong) - has kept her job along with those who published her piece.



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#3 Footballer In Cheating On Wife Shocker

This John Terry thing. Did it really come as a shock to you? Really? No but, really?

Let's break it down point by point:

1. he is a MAN, a man who, one can safely now assume, has a penis

2. he is wildly overpaid, vastly overexposed and hero worshipped for being able to run in a straight line

3. women (not all I hasten to add) love footballers, even ugly ones with mean foreheads

4. footballers, as a general rule, are not the sharpest of tools

5. footballers, and sportsmen in general, are often away from home staying in hotels, drinking with other overpaid men and being salivated over by girls in teensy dresses



The shock and disappointment with which Terry's infidelity has been greeted is, all this considered, slightly idiotic. As far as I can tell the England captain, unlike many of his teammates, is fairly private. That is to say he doesn't advertise Japanese hair loss supplements or invite the press over to take a photie every time he manages to take a pee without getting his shoes wet. With this in mind we can't claim to know him, know what kind of person he is or to understand the reasons behind this misdemeanor. One can simply assume that the temptation placed in front of dear John Terry outweigh both his self control and his brain cells.

Just a few weeks ago Golfing God Tiger Woods found himself publicly lynched by a bewildered, disillusioned public. A few years ago a world mourned on discovering that David Beckham (good looking, not especially bright, loaded, talented, worshipped) had cheated on Victoria (sullen, lacking in talent, extremely unsexy)with Rebecca Loos (savvy, available, oversexed).

The fact of it is that these men are cheating is the least shocking of it all. The public reaction, the call for the heads of those in the wrong, the scrabbling for every gory detail, the sainting of the cuckqueans, is more surprising. In this case England Manager, Fabio Capello (come ON, an Italian who played in the 70s), has been forced in to considering John Terry's future as captain of the national team. If shagging around seriously affected footballing performance George Best wouldn't have an airport named after him today. Meanwhile the news is filled with Max Clifford's glorious mug as he comforts poor Vanessa Perroncel, the object of Terry's wandering trouser snake and tales of the Chelsea striker being granted 'compassionate leave' to spend time with his distraught wife. Because for some unfathomable reason - perhaps we just like to see the mighty fall - we care, we want to hear the latest on this unsavoury rendezvous, to know whether he went with Vanessa to the abortion clinic, whether his wife is going to stand by him, if Perroncel's ex and Terry's teammate Wayne Bridge has yet to land one on him.

With mere months until the England squad fly to South Africa for the World Cup the public and press are causing feathers to fly when they could simply have been ruffled behind closed doors. And those feathers will undoubtedly disrupt the team's ability to play well, certainly a change in captaincy will put England on the back foot so late in the day. And those who have been baying for John Terry's blood this week will be bemoaning his demotion when England find themselves unceremoniously dumped on their arses in the early stages of the tournament.

#2: So Much For Global Warming LOL!!!11

If I see one more Facebook status or Tweet saying 'So much for global warming!' (especially if followed by an LOL or Haha) I will head out to the pond, fold myself in to it and wait to be trapped under the ice where I will be unable to hear any more discussion of inclement weather.

Don't get me wrong, I love a bit of extreme sky excitement as much as the next person, you'll often find me kneeling awkwardly on a windowsill poking my head out of the window at the first rumble of thunder, but isn't all this snow-fever getting just a teensy bit out of hand? While I have no doubt that in the worst hit areas people are being severely inconvenienced by the white stuff but so far I've seen little evidence of much aside from good old fashioned Britishness (ie: going on) about the whole thing, for example the following struck me during a recent BBC news report:

1. A lot of people are being interviewed were in pubs. They can't get to work but they can get to the pub. This strikes me as the ideal situation for 99.9% of our population and somewhat ironic at the same time.

2. There is much concern about the elderly. Yet nobody needs to leave the house less than a pensioner. Provided they have a toasty central heating system, a well stocked fridge and an emergency three bar what's the beef? Oh, of course! You can't get down to the newsagents at 6am for your copy of The Sun and a packet of Golden Virginia.

3. Those complaining that their journeys are essential are fibbing. During one interview in a badly snowed in area of Scotland a couple announced that it was 'absolutely vital' that they were on the treacherous roads in their Cavalier (ok, it probably wasn't a Cavalier but it was definitely not a snowmobile). Why? Well they traveled from Hong Kong for a business meeting and now had to get back. Idiots. Number one: did your business meeting relate to, I don't know, MAINTAINING GRAVITY ON EARTH? Number two: your flight has probably been cancelled. If it hasn't been cancelled there will be another one - if you fly in from Hong Kong (snorty snort snort) for business meetings you can probably take the financial hit. Right kids? Number three: I can't even think of a number three which doesn't relate to the bizarre snow/sun glasses the woman in the not-Cavalier was wearing.

A Polish friend of mine pointed out that 'at home', where temperatures between January and March annually drop to a minimum of -20oC and where snow cover lasts for anywhere between 40 and 120 days a year, 'we just change tyres in winter and change them back after the snow finishes'. I have also overheard a German proclaim that in Germany at the first sign of snow residents begin clearing the paths outside their home and that most Canadians own a snowblower. Imagine that? Just getting on with it! Isn't that what we're supposed to be good at Brits?

While I quite accept that we're not used to snow and thus we don't keep special equipment in reserve I refuse to join in with the ridiculous Blitz Spirit which half of the population are displaying, as if each snowflake is falling from the sky wearing its own individual toothbrush moustache. Nor do I wish to join the throngs who are so terribly important that a bit of inclement weather has caused the downfall of modern civilisation because 'I can't get to my yoga class/conference/nan's house'.

Most of all though, MOST OF ALL, I am not going to click my teeth as I pull on my woolly hat and dryly comment to the nearest person 'so much for global warming eh? EH? *nudge*' Because, hang on just a moment, weren't we all quite au fait with the term 'Climate Change' until Christmas? Yes, Climate Change which suggests that the temperature may go down as well as up. I would venture so far as to say that this here cold, wet, white substance in my yard is fairly supportive of that very term, whether (and I'm not a climate change or weather expert, simply an irritating pedant with access to a PC) it was caused by a terrifying apocalyptic change in our atmosphere or whether its just a nice bit of snow which is JUST WHAT SOMETIMES HAPPENS.

Tell you what, So Much For Global Warming-ites, when we get that first toasty day in April, come round to mine in your shorts and flip flops and announce 'I don't know why people complain about global warming *stretch* *squint into the sun* *fart*' and we'll have another chat about it.

#1: Top Gear Tops TV Poll

It's the end of a decade. Which means even more Best Of countdowns for your money. No surprise that Beyonce's Crazy In Love has been widely touted as the song of the last ten years or that the Bourne franchise, Mulholland Drive and There Will Be Blood have topped best film countdowns.

But this week Channel 4 released the results of a public poll of the decade's defining television shows. Conducted with the help of Yougov, Channel 4's poll revealed the favourite TV of the decade. And what was the result?

Top Gear.

A series as old as Elvis's grave, Star Wars and Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols.

So, in a decade which saw the world of TV turned on its head by Big Brother, in which talent shows became our favourite Saturday night entertainment, in the ten years which gave us The Office, Shameless, Mad Men, House, Lost and Curb Your Enthusiasm... In the decade of The Wire, The West Wing, The Sopranos and The Thick Of It and (love them or hate them) Sex and The City, Little Britain and Location, Location, Location, we 'the Great British Public' have chosen a 33 year old series which appears to be weekly coverage of old blokes going REALLY FAST in cars. No, I mean REALLY fast in, like, cars.

What does our love of Top Gear say about us? Perhaps that we're not as modern and liberal as we like to think we are? After all the BBC is still making - and we are still tuning in to watch - what is essentially Jeremy Clarkson's souped up soap box. Clarkson is nearing 50, pro-fox hunting, anti-smoking ban, he disregards climate change, insults the Scottish, the Welsh, Malaysians, Chinese, the blind, Germans, women, homosexuals, activists. Clarkson is the figurehead for a nation of Daily Mail readers, people who know little but spout a lot.

Earlier this year Jonathan Calder compared the Top Gear holy trinity of Clarkson, May and Hammond to Last of the Summer Wine characters. But to me Clarkson and co are overgrown schoolboys given a large chunk of our TV license money to grunt around a race track growling about horse power. We all went to school with a Clarkson. The boy who was loud-mouthed, arrogant, who thought he was tougher, cleverer, better looking than everyone else. Who everyone disliked but nobody stood up to - purely because he was bigger - who pretended genius level intelligence by arguing with teachers, who never noticed the rolled eyes and sneers or, if he did, didn't care. (Hammond meanwhile is the boy who dresses in his dad's leather jacket and still wears his hair in a rat tail, spritzs on too much Lynx and smokes roll ups. May, with his careless appearance appears the most intelligent of the threesome, at school he would have sported a non-school-issue blazer in slightly the wrong colour, snail trails on his cuff and pens and protractors in his inside pocket, he would have smelled of hamster and had an acned face only a mother could love. An unlikely collection of misfits - individually annoying, together detestable.)

Why the arrogant, smug Hammond has become a sex symbol is even more unfathomable than Clarkson becoming the mouthpiece of a generation (a generation of disgruntled granddads who still feel uncomfortable in the presence of 'blacks' and complain about the Polish 'coming over here, taking our jobs'). But there's no accounting for taste so all I'll say is this: if he wasn't on tele would you ladies get your knickers in a twist when he scuttled past you, all limp hair and cowboy boots, filling his trolley with Grolsch in Morrisons?



Our decision to vote for Top Gear as the favourite television show of the decade perhaps suggests that the production team who spent five years of their life creating the cutting edge David Attenborough documentary Planet Earth needn't have bothered, that Mitchell and Webb's Peep Show talents were wasted and that Dr Von Hagen could have just opened the bonnet of a Maserati Granturismo, dribbled in to it a bit and rubbed his thighs, Vic Reeves style, rather than attempting to 'educate, inform and entertain' (that's the Beeb's mission statement, believe it or not) rather than wasting a perfectly good dead body on us. Apparently we'd have been as happy watching a Ford Escort Mk 2 set on fire with a flamethrower followed by that episode of Only Fools and Horses where Del Boy leaned on the bar but the barman had opened the door bit so Del-Boy fell over because there was nothing to lean on and we all laughed loads. Welcome to the 21st century.

my one-oh-one

Here are three things I like doing:

shouting at the television

saying 'YOU'RE WELCOME' loudly to people who don't say thank you when I hold the door

driving really s-l-ooooo-oooo-w-l-y in front of tailgaters

For several years I have been compiling a mental list of the things I would request permission to drop in to Room 101 should I become the kind of celebrity who might be asked to appear on semi-comedic BBC entertainment shows. I'm not even sure it runs anymore. Does it?

Anyway. There are a lot of things which rile me. I come from a long line of disgruntled types. By which I don't mean the sort of people who write letters to Points of View signed 'Disappointed of Darlington' but the sort of people who declare Paris to be 'a bit of a dump' or who can have an entire week spoiled by a late to arrive package or who find birthdays to be a bit of an inconvenience. A whole family of Walter Matthaus and Jack Lemmons, people who shrug and go 'it was alright I suppose, apart from...'

This is my own personal Room 101, a depository for my own personal grievances, a pigeonhole of perplexities, a ventricle for venting, a spitoon for bile, a decanter for my discontent. Etc, etc, etc, on and on and on.

I also love to hear other people's spleen venting so please do comment, message or just shout at the screen loudly and angrily whilst beating your chest in the manner of an irate Silverback who has just discovered an Attenborough cameraman in his neck of the jungle.