How to be a Brit

by George Mikes

  Forget these misleading examples because it is obvious that Shakespeare could not possibly have had any film technique, and recent research has proved that he did not even have an eight-seater saloon car with his own uniformed chauffeur.

  You must not touch any typically American subject. For instance: a young man of Carthage (Kentucky) who can whistle beautifully goes to town, and after many disappointments forms his own swing-band and becomes the leading conductor of New York’s night life – which, if you can take the implication of Hollywood films seriously, is one of the highest honours which can be conferred on anyone in that country. At the same time he falls in love with the cloakroom attendant of a drug-store* round the corner, a platinum-blonde, ravishingly beautiful, who sings a little better than Galli Curci and Deanna Durbin rolled into one and, in secret, has the greatest histrionic talent of the century. After a last-minute scandal with the world-famous prima donna she saves the first night of her lover’s show in the presence of an audience of six million people by singing Gounod’s slightly adapted song. (‘If you would be my tootsie-bootsie, I would be your tootsie-bootsie.’) The young and mighty successful band-leader marries the girl and employs Toscanini to clean his mouth-organ.

  Or – to mention just one more example of the serious and ‘deep’ type of American films – there is a gay, buoyant, happy and miserably poor young man in New Golders Green (Alabama), who becomes tremendously rich just by selling thousands of tractors and jet-propelled aeroplanes to other poor fellows. The richer he becomes, the unhappier he is – which is a subtle point to prove that money does not mean happiness, consequently one had better be content to remain a poor labourer, possibly unemployed. He buys seven huge motor cars and three private planes and is bitter and pained; he builds a magnificent and ostentatious palace and gets gloomier and gloomier; and when the woman he has loved without hope for fifteen years at last falls in love with him, he breaks down completely and groans and moans desperately for three days. To increase the ‘deep’ meaning of the film they photograph the heroes from the most surprising angles: the cameraman crawls under people’s feet, swings on the chandelier, and hides himself in a bowl of soup. Everybody is delighted with the new technique and admires the director’s richness of thought.

  English film directors follow a different and quite original line. They have discovered somehow that the majority of the public does not consist, after all, of idiots, and that an intelligent film is not necessarily foredoomed to failure. It was a tremendous risk to make experiments based on this assumption, but it has proved worth while.

  ‘I understand they then knocked them in the Old Kent Road’

  There are certain rules you must bear in mind if you want to make a really and truly British film.

  1. The ‘cockney heart’ has definitely been discovered, i.e. the fact that even people who drop their aitches have a heart. The discovery was originally made by Mr Noël Coward, who is reported to have met a man who knew someone who had actually seen a cockney from quite near. Ever since it has been essential that a cockney should figure in every British film and display his heart throughout the performance.

  2. It has also been discovered that ordinary men occasionally use unparliamentary expressions in the course of their every-day conversation. It has been decided that the more often the adjective referring to the sanguinary character of certain things or persons is used and the exclamation ‘Damn!’ is uttered, the more realistic and more convincing the film becomes, as able seamen and flight-sergeants sometimes go so far as to say ‘Damn!’ when they are carried away by passion. All bodies and associations formed to preserve the purity of the English soul should note that I do not agree with this habit – I simply record it. But as it is a habit, the author readily agrees to supply by correspondence a further list of the most expressive military terms which would make any new film surprisingly realistic.

  3. Nothing should be good enough for a British film producer. I have heard of a gentleman (I don’t know whether the story is true, or only characteristic) who made a film about Egypt and had a sphinx built in the studio. When he and his company sailed to Egypt to make some exterior shots, he took his own sphinx with him to the desert. He was quite right, because first of all the original sphinx is very old and film people should not use second-hand stuff; secondly, the old sphinx might have been good enough for Egyptians (who are all foreigners, after all) but not for a British film company.

  4. As I have seen political events successfully filmed as detective-stories, and historical personages appear as ‘great lovers’ (and nothing else), I have come to the conclusion that this slight change in the character of a person is highly recommendable, and I advise the filming of Peter Pan as a thriller, and the Concise Oxford Dictionary as a comic opera.

  Driving Cars

  It is about the same to drive a car in England as anywhere else. To change a punctured tyre in the wind and rain gives about the same pleasure outside London as outside Rio de Janeiro; it is not more fun to try to start up a cold motor with the handle in Moscow than in Manchester; the roughly 50–50 proportion between driving an average car and pushing it is the same in Sydney and Edinburgh.

  There are, however, a few characteristics which distinguish the English motorist from the continental, and some points which the English motorist has to remember.

  1. In English towns there is a thirty miles an hour speed-limit and the police keep a watchful eye on law-breakers. The fight against reckless driving is directed extremely skilfully and carefully according to the very best English detective-traditions. It is practically impossible to find out whether you are being followed by a police car or not. There are, however, a few indications which may help people of extraordinary intelligence and with very keen powers of observation:

  (a) The police always use a 13 h.p., blue Wolseley car;

  (b) three uniformed policemen sit in it; and

  (c) on these cars you can read the word POLICE written in large letters in front and rear, all in capitals – lit up during the hours of darkness.

  2. I think England is the only country in the world where you have to leave your lights on even if you park in a brilliantly lit-up street. The advantage being that your battery gets exhausted, you cannot start up again and consequently the number of road accidents are greatly reduced. Safety first!

  ‘Say not the struggle naught availeth’ – A. H. Clough

  3. Only motorists can answer this puzzling question: What are taxis for? A simple pedestrian knows that they are certainly not there to carry passengers.

  Taxis, in fact, are a Christian institution. They are here to teach drivers modesty and humility. They teach us never to be over-confident; they remind us that we never can tell what the next moment will bring for us, whether we shall be able to drive on or a taxi will bump into us from the back or the side. ‘… and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life’ (Deut., chapter 28, verse 66).

  4. There is a huge ideological warfare going on behind the scenes of the motorist world.

  Whenever you stop your car in the City, the West End or many other places, two or three policemen rush at you and tell you that you must not park there. Where may you park? They shrug their shoulders. There are a couple of spots on the South Coast and in a village called Minchinhampton. Three cars may park there for half an hour every other Sunday morning between 7 and 8 a.m.

  The police are perfectly right. After all, cars have been built to run, and run fast, so they should not stop.

  This healthy philosophy of the police has been seriously challenged by a certain group of motorists who maintain that cars have been built to park and not to move. These people drive out to Hampstead Heath or Richmond on beautiful, sunny days, pull up all their windows and go to sleep. They do not get a spot of air; they are miserably uncomfortable; they have nightmares, and the whole procedure is called ‘spending a lovely afternoon in the open’.

  Three Games for Bus Drivers


  If you become a bus driver there are three lovely and very popular games you must learn to play.

  1. Blind man’s buff. When you turn right just signal by showing two millimetres of your finger-tips. It is great fun when motorists do not notice your signal and run into your huge bus with their tiny cars.

  2. Hide and seek. Whenever you approach a request-stop hide behind a large lorry or another bus and when you have almost reached the stop shoot off at a terrific speed. It is very amusing to see people shake their fists at you. It is ten to one they miss some important business appointment.

  3. Hospital game. If you have to stop for one reason or another, never wait until the conductor rings the bell. If you start moving quickly and unexpectedly, and if you are lucky – and in slippery weather you have a very good chance – people will fall on top of one another. This looks extremely funny from the driver’s seat. (Sometimes the people themselves, who fall into a muddy pool and break their legs, make a fuss, but, alas! every society has its bores who have no sense of humour and cannot enjoy a joke at their own expense.)

  You can’t catch me!

  How to Plan a Town

  Britain, far from being a ‘decadent democracy’, is a Spartan country. This is mainly due to the British way of building towns, which dispenses with the reasonable comfort enjoyed by all the other weak and effeminate peoples of the world.

  Medieval warriors wore steel breast-plates and leggings not only for defence but also to keep up their fighting spirit; priests of the Middle Ages tortured their bodies with hair-shirts; Indian yogis take their daily nap lying on a carpet of nails to remain fit. The English plan their towns in such a way that these replace the discomfort of steel breast-plates, hair-shirts and nail-carpets.

  On the Continent doctors, lawyers, booksellers – just to mention a few examples – are sprinkled all over the city, so you can call on a good or at least expensive doctor in any district. In England the idea is that it is the address that makes the man. Doctors in London are crowded in Harley Street, solicitors in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, second-hand bookshops in Charing Cross Road, newspaper offices in Fleet Street, tailors in Savile Row, car-merchants in Great Portland Street, theatres around Piccadilly Circus, cinemas in Leicester Square, etc. If you have a chance of replanning London you can greatly improve on this idea. All greengrocers should be placed in Hornsey Lane (N6), all butchers in Mile End (E1), and all gentlemen’s conveniences in Bloomsbury (WC).

  Now I should like to give you a little practical advice on how to build an English town.

  You must understand that an English town is a vast conspiracy to mislead foreigners. You have to use century-old little practices and tricks.

  Mortification of the flesh

  1. First of all, never build a street straight. The English love privacy and do not want to see one end of the street from the other end. Make sudden curves in the streets and build them S-shaped too; the letters L, T, V, Y, W and O are also becoming increasingly popular. It would be a fine tribute to the Greeks to build a few and -shaped streets; it would be an ingenious compliment to the Russians to favour the shape , and I am sure the Chinese would be more than flattered to see some -shaped thoroughfares.

  2. Never build the houses of the same street in a straight line. The British have always been a freedom-loving race and the ‘freedom to build a muddle’ is one of their most ancient civic rights.

  3. Now there are further camouflage possibilities in the numbering of houses. Primitive continental races put even numbers on one side, odd numbers on the other, and you always know that small numbers start from the north or west. In England you have this system, too; but you may start numbering your houses at one end, go up to a certain number on the same side, then continue on the other side, going back in the opposite direction.

  You may leave out some numbers if you are superstitious; and you may continue the numbering in a side street; you may also give the same number to two or three houses.

  But this is far from the end. Many people refuse to have numbers altogether, and they choose names. It is very pleasant, for instance, to find a street with 350 totally similar bungalows and look for ‘The Bungalow’. Or to arrive in a street where all the houses have a charming view of a hill and try to find ‘Hill View’. Or search for ‘Seven Oaks’ and find a house with three apple-trees.

  4. Give a different name to the street whenever it bends; but if the curve is so sharp that it really makes two different streets, you may keep the same name. On the other hand, if, owing to neglect, a street has been built in a straight line it must be called by many different names (High Holborn, New Oxford Street, Oxford Street, Bayswater Road, Notting Hill Gate, Holland Park and so on).

  5. As some cute foreigners would be able to learn their way about even under such circumstances, some further precautions are necessary. Call streets by various names: street, road, place, mews, crescent, avenue, rise, lane, way, grove, park, gardens, alley, arch, path, walk, broadway, promenade, gate, terrace, vale, view, hill, etc.*

  Now two further possibilities arise:

  (a) Gather all sorts of streets and squares of the same name in one neighbourhood: Belsize Park, Belsize Street, Belsize Road, Belsize Gardens, Belsize Green, Belsize Circus, Belsize Yard, Belsize Viaduct, Belsize Arcade, Belsize Heath, etc.

  (b) Place a number of streets of exactly the same name in different districts. If you have about twenty Princes Squares and Warwick Avenues in the town, the muddle – you may claim without immodesty – will be complete.

  6. Street names should be painted clearly and distinctly on large boards. Then hide these boards carefully. Place them too high or too low, in shadow and darkness, upside down and inside out, or, even better, lock them up in a safe in your bank, otherwise they may give people some indication about the names of the streets.

  7. In order to break down the foreigner’s last vestige of resistance and shatter his morale, one further trick is advisable: Introduce the system of squares – real squares, I mean – which run into four streets like this:

  With this simple device it is possible to build a street of which the two sides have different names.

  P.S. – I have been told that my above-described theory is all wrong and is only due to my Central European conceit, because the English do not care for the opinion of foreigners. In every other country, it has been explained, people just build streets and towns following their own common sense. England is the only country of the world where there is a Ministry of Town and Country Planning. That is the real reason for the muddle.

  Civil Servant

  There is a world of difference between the English Civil Servant and the continental.

  On the Continent (not speaking now of the Scandinavian countries), Civil Servants assume a certain military air. They consider themselves little generals; they use delaying tactics; they cannot withdraw armies, so they withdraw permissions; they thunder like cannons and their speech is like machine-gun fire; they cannot lose battles, they lose documents instead. They consider that the sole aim of human society is to give jobs to Civil Servants. A few wicked individuals, however (contemptible little groups of people who are not Civil Servants), conspire against them, come to them with various requests, complaints, problems, etc., with the sole purpose of making a nuisance of themselves. These people get the reception they deserve. They are kept waiting in cold and dirty ante-chambers (some of them clean these rooms occasionally, but they are hired commissionaires whose duty it is to re-dirty these rooms every morning); they have to stand, often at attention, whilst they are spoken to; they are always shouted at in a rude manner and their requests are turned down with malicious pleasure. Sometimes – this is a popular cat and mouse game – they are sent to another office on the fifth floor, from there they are directed to a third office in the basement, where they are told that they should not have come there at all and sent back to the original office. In that office they are thoroughly told off in acrimonious language and dispatched to the fi
fth floor once again, from there to the basement and the procedure goes on endlessly until the poor fellows either get tired of the whole business and give up in despair or become raving lunatics and go to an asylum asking for admittance. If the latter case occurs they are told in the reception office that they have come to the wrong place, they should go to another office on the fifth floor, from which they are sent down to the basement, etc., etc., until they give up being lunatics.

  ‘Alors, ECOUTEZ madame –’

  (If you want to catch me out and ask me who are then the people who fill the continental lunatic asylums, I can give you the explanation: they are all Civil Servants who know the ways and means of dealing with officials and succeed in getting in somehow.)

  If a former continental Civil Servant thought that this martial behaviour would be accepted by the British public he would be badly mistaken. The English Civil Servant considers himself no soldier but a glorified businessman. He is smooth and courteous; he smiles in a superior way; he is agreeable and obliging.

  If so – you may ask – how can he achieve the supreme object of his vast and noble organization, namely, not to transact any business and be left in peace to read a good murder story undisturbed?

  There are various, centuries-old, true British traditions to secure this aim.

  1. All orders and directives to the public are worded in such a way that they should have no meaning whatever.

  2. All official letters are written in such a language that the oracles of Delphi sound as examples of clear, outspoken, straightforward statements compared with them.