How to be a Brit

by George Mikes

  ‘… no concessions must be made.’

  ‘… must be a certain amount of give and take.’

  ‘… look forward to an era of increasing stability.’

  ‘… we are living in a topsy-turvy world.’

  2. Television is also one of the main architects of slumps. A short while ago Panorama made a report on the stock-exchange boom, in the course of which one or two people made some cautious remarks about the boom not lasting forever, and recalled the Wall Street crash when people threw themselves out of the windows of skyscrapers. Next day hordes of people sold their shares, thus causing a fall unknown since the days of the Suez crisis. The bank rate had to be raised three days later and if Dotto and a few other programmes had not rectified the country’s economic balance by giving away even more washing machines, bubble-cars and tea-sets, we would have faced utter and irretrievable ruin.

  3. Television has united the family – by keeping the family at home, gaping at it round the family hearth.

  4. Television causes more friction in family life than any other single factor by offering unique scope for quarrels as to which programme to watch.

  5. Television is of great educational value. It teaches you while still really young how to (a) kill, (b) rob, (c) embezzle, (d) shoot (e) poison, and generally speaking, (f) how to grow up into a Wild West outlaw or gangster by the time you leave school.

  6. Television puts a stop to crime because all the burglars and robbers, instead of going to burgle and rob, sit at home watching The Lone Ranger, Emergency Ward Ten and Dotto.

  7. Television has undeniably raised the general level of culture throughout the country. Some people allege that it has killed the habit of reading and thinking – but there is no truth in this. I have yet to meet a person who gave up his methodical study of, say, early Etruscan civilization in order to be able to watch more of Sunday Night at the London Palladium or who has stopped reading Proust or Plutarch because he could not tear himself away from What’s My Line? or Spot the Tune. I believe that in most cases the devotees are better off watching Army Game than listening to one another’s conversation. And this brings me to my last point – overleaf.

  Weather Report

  On the Art of Conversation

  The main and the most glorious achievement of television is that it is killing the art of conversation. If we think of the type of conversation television is helping to kill, our gratitude must be undying. The trouble is that it has not yet killed enough of it. Some of it is still alive and flourishing in Britain.

  A few days ago I was observing two sisters and their brother at a seaside resort. The sisters – around sixty years of age – lived at Bexhill and their brother, a few years younger, at Folkestone. These three – because of the great distances involved, amounting to something like fifty miles – had not met for over ten years. The reunion was a happy and uproarious occasion. They had so much to tell each other that they often stayed up chatting till after midnight. I could not help overhearing a great deal of their conversation. It went like this:

  BROTHER: It struck me when I was out before supper, that the wind is going round to the south …

  ITS SISTER: Yes … definitely. What do you think, Muriel?

  MURIEL: I couldn’t agree with you more. Yes. Southerly. Definitely. Yes.

  BROTHER: I don’t like south winds. Not in these parts. Do you, Grace?

  GRACE: Oh no … Heaven forbid. No south winds for me. Not in these parts. What do you think, Muriel?

  MURIEL: I couldn’t agree with you more. No south winds. No, thank you. Oh no. No, no, no.

  BROTHER: Get a lot of south winds at Bexhill, Grace?

  GRACE: Not a lot. A fair amount. We get our fair share of south winds. You know how it is. One has to take the rough with the smooth.

  BROTHER: I like west winds, personally. West winds are fun.

  GRACE: Oh yes. I do enjoy a good west wind. We often get west winds at Bexhill, don’t we, Muriel?

  MURIEL: Fair amount. I couldn’t agree with you more. Not too much though. But we mustn’t complain, must we?

  GRACE: No.

  BROTHER: Yes.

  GRACE: Yes.

  MURIEL: Oh yes … definitely. I couldn’t agree with you more.

  GRACE: No.

  BROTHER: Oh no.

  MURIEL: Yes.

  And so on, and so on. I listened for another hour or two, then I jumped up, went to the television set and shouted:

  ‘I am thirsty for the pleasures of the pure intellect! Dotto for me!’

  On Advertisements

  All advertisements – particularly television advertisements – are utterly and hopelessly un-English. They are too outspoken, too definite, too boastful. Why not evolve a national British style in television advertising instead of slavishly imitating the American style of breathless superlatives, with all their silly implications (buy our shampoo and you’ll get a husband; buy our perfume and you are sure to be attacked by hungry males in Bond Street; smoke our pipe-tobacco and you will become a sun-tanned Adonis)? I feel sure that the effect of these advertisements could be vastly improved if they were made more English. Some ads, for example, could be given an undertone of gambling:

  GRAPIREX: It may relieve your headache. Or, of course, it may not. Who can tell? Try it. You may be lucky. The odds against you are only 3 to 1.

  Or:

  Try your luck on BUMPEX Fruit Juice. Most people detest it. You may be an exception.

  Or appeal to the Englishman’s sense of fairness. A beautiful, half-nude girl (you cannot do without them in any advertisement, British, American or anything else) might call to the public:

  S.O.S. We are doing badly. Business is rotten. Buy Edgeless Razor Blades and give us a sporting chance. Honestly, they’re not much worse than other makes.

  Or appeal to the Englishman’s inborn honesty:

  Use BUBU Washing Powder. By the way, have you ever tried the whiteness test? Here is Mrs Spooner from Framlingham. Now, Mrs Spooner, which would you say is the whiter of these two pairs of knickers?

  MRS SPOONER: This one.

  ANNOUNCER: You are perfectly right, Mrs Spooner. That is the one washed in PRIDE. So you don’t get your five pounds, Mrs Spooner – no fear. Nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, just go on using BUBU. Who likes that blinding, ugly, vulgar whiteness, in any case? After all, people don’t see your knickers. At least they shouldn’t. BUBU WASHES GREYEST.

  Or, just moderate your language. Make no extravagant claims; be vague and incoherent; in other words, natural.

  CRANFIELD chocolate is rather nourishing. Never mind the taste.

  Or:

  Drink DANFORD’S beer. It’s dirt cheap and you CAN get used to it.

  Or else:

  Can you tell the difference between our margarine and our hair tonic? WE can’t.

  On Politics

  The fundamental concept of British political life is the two-party system. The essence of the two-party system is that there are either 358 parties or one; but never, in any circumstances, are there two. To explain: both parties reflect such a vast spectrum of opinion from left to right that the left wings of both parties are poles apart from their right wings and in no other country would politicians ideologically so remote from each other even dream of belonging to the same political organizations. In the two main parties – with the Liberals thrown in for good measure – there is enough raw material – I have just checked it again – for 358½ parties. (The half being a minor group which advocates the nationalization of the button-manufacturing industry in so far as it consists of firms employing more than 33.7 workers. The .7 of a worker is, of course, on part-time.)

  Or else, as I have mentioned, you may say that while the Labour Party has a few real leftists and the Tories a few real rightists (and vice versa), the rest of the two parties simply overlap and one single party would do quite adequately instead of two. In many cases it is really just a toss-up whether Mr X or Mr Y joins this party or that. To c
ross and recross the floor of the House is not unheard-of; it does not necessarily ruin your chances within your own party. Sir Winston Churchill, for example, managed reasonably well in the Conservative Party after his temporary absence in the ranks of their rivals. (There is nothing illogical in this. My whole point is: in most cases it does not really matter which party you belong to.)

  The period after 1945 was exceptional. Then the Labour Party really had a programme (I personally believe an admirable one) and carried it out. The trouble was that they did not have enough programme and used up the little they had too quickly. Then they started scratching their heads in embarrassment: what to do next? While scratching, they fell from power and then a 1066-ish period started for them. I do not refer to the actual period of the Norman conquest; I refer to the book 1066 and All That. A violent dispute ensued (on various levels of intelligence and literacy) on whether nationalization was a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. Whether it was better to be Leftist than to be in Power? Whether a change to a Tory programme would ensure, at last, a Labour victory?

  While dispute is still raging and while some Socialists are still trying to convince one another that their leader would be more at home in the Tory Party, the Tories are carrying on a normal and by no means extremist Socialist policy. They speak of the blessings of the Welfare State as if they had not opposed it tooth and nail; they assure us in all their manifestos that they are doing more for the poor, the old-age pensioners, the down-trodden, the workers, the underdog and even now and then for the overdogs such as the landlords, than Labour ever did. In other words, they are riding on the crest of world prosperity – and they are pretty good riders.

  And while the Tories are trying to establish a mild, non-Marxist, faintly paternal Socialist regime, the House of Lords is being filled up with Socialist peers. A lord becoming a Socialist would be a normal phenomenon in any country; for a Socialist to become a lord would be nonsense anywhere else. It is absolute nonsense in England, too, but absolute nonsense is the normal run of things here. Indeed, the customary reward for a life spent in determined fight against privilege, seems to be an elevation to the peerage. If you go into the House of Lords and contemplate Lords Attlee, Morrison, Alexander, Silkin, Dalton, Shawcross, Lucan, Burden, Kershaw, Haden-Guest, etc., all in one row, you are at first a little perplexed. Then suddenly you may realize – as I did – the devilish pattern behind it all. The Labour Party, for once, is being really Machiavellian. As they are obviously, or so it seems, unable to take over from the Conservatives through elections, they enforce a Changing of the Guard by more subtle methods: they let the Tories carry out a Socialist policy in the Commons while they gradually and almost unnoticed form the new aristocracy and gain a majority in the House of Lords.

  The Two-Party System

  How to Stop Road Traffic

  The greatest change in my twenty-one years is the way Britain has become motorized. When I first came only a rich person could afford a car; today only a rich person can afford to be without one.

  This motorization has developed into a war between the motorists and the authorities. A feature of other wars is mobilization; the main feature of this one is immobilization.

  The conduct of the war itself clearly reflects British genius at its best. The authorities were quick enough to discover that cars are a menace and a nuisance and should be stopped at all costs. So the police, the Ministry of Transport, local authorities and quite a few other bodies joined forces to form a secret society under the name of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Motor Transport.

  Each constituent body of the R.S.P.M.T. has its own function in the society’s stratagem. The general idea is to make roads and streets impassable and bring traffic to a standstill in the shortest possible time and thus free us from the danger of motor traffic for ever. The Ministry of Transport’s job is to deprive the country not only of motorways – as is generally believed – but of all sorts of roads. This aim is achieved by the devices known as (1) road-building, (2) road repairs and (3) improving the Highway Code which is, in fact, a clever way of spreading confusion.

  1. The Minister of Standstill – as he is commonly referred to in R.S.P.M.T. circles – in spite of occasional flurries of activity and waves of self-advertisement – has various means at his disposal for preventing road-building. The laws of the land are, of course, of the utmost help; also the administrative methods: several hundred local authorities can cause larger and healthier confusion than the Ministry could by its own unaided efforts, efficient though the Ministry is.

  Everyone in England is clamouring for more roads through the other fellow’s land and skirting other people’s towns – your own land and immediate neighbourhood being, of course, sacred and exempt.

  So the first seven years of any road-building programme are taken up with appeals against the plan by those who desperately want more roads. If, in spite of its efforts, the Ministry cannot prevent the sporadic conclusion of a small stretch of motorway here and there, it need not lose heart. To accept defeat would not be the British way. There are two main methods of retaliation:

  (a) If, in spite of every effort, a stretch of motorway is actually opened, it should be closed again as soon after the ceremonial opening as political considerations permit;

  (b) if you cannot prevent traffic on the motorway itself, block it at the entrances and exits.

  2. Road repair is an even more effective way of driving motorists insane. Under the excuse of ‘keeping the road in good repair’, half the roads and streets of England may be constantly blocked, closed, halved, quartered, made one-way, etc. A secret order of the Ministry of Standstill reads:

  Inasmuch as after seven or eight years of strenuous work, minor road-repairs must unfortunately be terminated, the cooperation of the local authorities is now sought. As soon as the road is covered by the new asphalt, but before it dries it is to be torn up again by the gas authorities; the same procedure is to be repeated by the Water Board authorities; by telephone linesmen; by the Sanitary authorities; by the Inland Revenue; by the local education authorities; by the Chelsea Pensioners. As soon as the last-named body has completed operations, ordinary road-repairs may safely recommence.

  3. Another trick of the Minister of Standstill is to spread confusion, alarm and despondency among the ranks of motorists. Not long ago, for example, the Minister decided to clarify the rules of priority on the roundabouts.

  He decreed: there are no rules of priority on the roundabouts. It is as simple as that. It is a strict rule that there is no rule. Having made this clear to everyone once and for all, he abolished the ‘overtake me’ signal, adding in a statement that he hoped motorists would go on using it.

  4. The police are responsible for inventing that sublime doctrine: cars should move but never stop. The police are perfectly right, of course. You do not need an expensive motor vehicle down in the street if you are up in an office. In fact, if you want to stay somewhere, you do not need a car at all. The most heinous offence known to the police is officially called ‘obstructing the Queen’s Highway’. The Queen is brought into it to underline the close connection between a parking offence and high treason.

  The police insist – as full members of the R.S.P.M.T. should – that taxis should always pick up and put down passengers in the middle of the streets and stop there without signals. And they dote on their main henchmen, the refuse-lorries, and work out complicated patterns for them to ensure that these Refuse Collecting Vehicles (as they are fondly called) and their happy crews should block the largest number of streets for the longest possible time. They encourage double parking, dangerous parking, careless parking everywhere but they may tow away your car from a peaceful suburban street just to show that they have the Public Good at heart.

  5. Parking rules – whether in the temporary Pink Zone or outside – is one of those mysterious English ways a foreigner will never understand.

  (a) There are streets (in Soho, for example) where parking is absolutely and
totally prohibited during the daytime. These streets are chock-full of cars all down one side. If the other side fills up too, that is all right. The ‘total prohibition’ was only a joke.

  (b) Most High Streets all over the country are filled with the cars of the shopkeepers and their assistants from 9 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. If delivery vans or customers want to park, they must – and indeed do – double park. The streets become first dangerous, then impassable. The police wink a benevolent eye at this. After all, it is only fair that the British shopkeeper should try to keep customers away from his shop by barricading his entrance with his own car; and it is equally fair that the customer should not take such an attitude lying down.

  (c) Secrets, generally speaking, are not very well kept nowadays. With reporters and television cameras all round us, the secrets of conference chambers, however well guarded, become public knowledge in no time. There can be no doubt that the best kept secret in England is: where one can park a car and where not. Not even the Lord Chief Justice of England can be sure about that. The law is this: parking is allowed, really, everywhere; ‘causing obstruction’ is strictly prohibited everywhere. But parking is defined as causing obstruction; consequently it is allowed and prohibited at the same time, everywhere. Just another triumph of that clear English way of thinking which – I believe – they are fond of calling empirical.

  An executive officer of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Motor Transport must be ready for action at any time …

  Many people believe that the motorization of the land has greatly changed the British character. A member of the Government has recently declared that as soon as an ordinary Briton touches the steering wheel he reverts to a savage cave-man. This, I feel, is an empty boast on the Minister’s part. I have driven cars in New York, Paris, Rome and Tokyo as well as in London and I am certain that while the British, no doubt, have their fair share of road-hogs, neurotics and incompetent asses among their drivers, on the whole they are the most courteous and civilized of all motoring nations. Personally, I am used to French driving and like it; but most Britons regard an English Bank Holiday jam as a sheer joy-ride compared with a normal, week-day drive round the Arc de Triomphe. But the French, in turn, are still the incarnation of tact, old-world chivalry and timidity compared with the Japanese. Why then do ministers boast of our rudeness on the roads? Why do drivers regard their fellow-drivers (commonly referred to as ‘the other idiot’) as cave-men and barbarians? Simply because, deep in the English soul, there is a deep-seated desire and a passionate longing to be rude. Rudeness is one of the admired and coveted vices of virility. I know that whenever I call an Englishman rude he takes it as a compliment; by now I have learnt to call people rude only when I want to flatter them. Yet the English are fighting a losing battle. With an effort they may manage to be silly, lazy, indolent, selfish, and obstinate; now and then they may even manage to be cruel. But rude? Never.