English

by Ben Fogle

  These mob games were codified during the nineteenth century at English public schools such as Eton, Winchester, Rugby, Harrow, Charterhouse, Westminster, Marlborough and Cheltenham, so that the schools could compete against each other. Eventually a division between the pure ‘kicking’ and the ‘running’ or ‘carrying’ games became evident. The huge reach of the British Empire allowed these rules of football to spread far and wide – to regions way beyond the borders of the Empire.

  By the end of the nineteenth century, distinct regional codes had developed: Gaelic football, for example, deliberately incorporated the rules of local traditional football games to maintain their heritage. In 1859, the Melbourne Football Club codified the first laws of Australian football to develop a game more suited to adults and to Australian conditions. It is as a result the oldest of the world’s major football codes. Association football rules were officially drawn up in 1863, and while William Webb Ellis famously (and probably apocryphally) picked up the football and started running with it in 1823, the rules of rugby union weren’t codified until 1871; rugby league followed in 1895.

  In 1895 the Northern Rugby Football Union was founded. (In 1922 its name changed to the Northern Rugby Football League, while in the 1980s, the ‘Northern’ was dropped from its name.)

  Village sporting rivalries in medieval England have evolved into the world’s most popular sports. Who could have predicted that?

  My mother is the oracle of all things sporting; she is a true sports fanatic. She would happily spend the rest of her life following sport, a passion she inherited from my late grandmother. As a child, I was pretty hopeless when it came to sport, but my mother, in a vain attempt to get me into cricket, enrolled me at the home of English cricket, Lord’s cricket ground. Once a week I would put on my starched whites and make my way to the Mecca of cricket.

  Cricket has always struck me as a very formal sport that plays on the English love of queuing: both batsman and bowlers wait patiently for their turn with the ball. It is very orderly and, to be honest, very slow. As the son of a Canadian, I found myself playing baseball in the garden with my dad at weekends in a nod towards my father’s baseball heritage. The contrast didn’t serve cricket very well and I never really ‘got’ it. It seemed so strange that we would be forced to wear all white while leaping about on muddy, grassy fields. Why not wear green? I used to wonder. And a cricket box to protect my willy from a heavy leather ball? Any sport that jeopardized the family jewels was never going to take off in my mind.

  It is the subject of much mirth to nations where cricket isn’t played that we would develop a game that moves at a sloth’s pace and can go on for days. There’s a wonderful summary of cricket which you can get, printed on tea towels and mugs. It goes like this.

  ‘The Rules of Cricket’

  You have two sides, one out in the field and one in.

  Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out.

  When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out.

  Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

  When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in.

  There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.

  When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!

  I spent many years playing the game and to be honest I still don’t entirely understand it.

  Cricket perhaps reflects the optimistic portion of the English mind that hopes for a long string of fine summer days uninterrupted by rain; but it’s not difficult to find a sport that provides fun and games in inclement weather.

  Bandy, for example, is a team game played on ice with sticks and a single round ball. First seen in London at the Crystal Palace in 1875, it is arguing hard at the moment to be included in the Winter Olympics, claiming that it is the world’s second-most popular winter sport. Who knew?! The first recorded games took place in the Fens during the Great Frost of 1813–14. The game’s history glories in wonderfully atmospheric names. Bury Fen Bandy Club from Bluntisham-cum-Earith, near St Ives in Cambridgeshire, rejoices in a reputation as the most successful team ever, with a remarkable unbeaten run until the winter of 1890–1. Charles Tebbutt, a member of the club, oversaw the publication of the rules of bandy in 1882. He was also instrumental in taking the game to the Netherlands and Sweden, as well as to other villages in England where it became popular with cricket, rowing and hockey clubs. It is possible to make a pilgrimage to the Norris Museum in St Ives, where Tebbutt’s home-made bandy stick is proudly on display.

  The English are always resourceful when it comes to inventing sports – using quite literally anything that comes to hand. Perhaps one of our strangest sports is ferret-legging, an endurance test in which ferrets are trapped in the trousers worn by a participant. Contestants put live ferrets inside their trousers; the winner is the one who is the last to release the animals. The world record is five hours and thirty minutes. The origin of ferret-legging is disputed. The sport seems to have become popular among coal miners in Yorkshire in the 1970s, though some Scots claim it first gained popularity in Scotland. Marlene Blackburn of the Richmond Ferret Rescue League claims that ferret-legging originated in public houses ‘where patrons would bet on who could keep a ferret in his pants the longest’. The sport may alternatively have originated during the time when only the relatively wealthy in England were entitled to keep ferrets (which were used for hunting), forcing the animal poachers to hide their illicit ferrets in their trousers to avoid detection by gamekeepers.

  Having worked with several ferrets over the years, I still bear the scars of their sharp teeth on my hands and arm and I can tell you I would never place one near my nether regions.

  One sport in which I have had slightly more success was shin-kicking, also known as hacking or purring. The aim of the game is simple: the two competitors attempt to kick each other on the shin until one is forced to the ground. It originated in England in the early seventeenth century, and was one of the most popular events at the Cotswold Olimpick Games. It also became a popular pastime among Cornish miners. In the nineteenth century the sport was practised by British immigrants to the United States. It was included in the 1951 revival of the Cotswold Olimpick Games, and remains one of its most popular events, run as the World Shin-kicking Championships. The event now draws crowds of thousands of spectators.

  In the Cotswold Olimpicks the combatants wear white coats, representing shepherds’ smocks. Each contestant holds the other’s collar while trying to kick their opponent’s shin with both the inside of the foot and the toes. You need to be agile, light on your feet and have an English stoicism which prevents you from giving in to the excruciating pain. When the pain does become too much, you shout (or cry) out ‘Sufficient!’ Matches are the best of three ‘legs’. The referee is called a stickler, which seems appropriate.

  The history of the game includes competitors who wore steel-toed boots, which would be one way of winning quickly – though hardly very English, I’d say. Apparently some shin-kickers would try to build up their tolerance to pain by hitting their shins with hammers, a much more English approach. These days it’s all a lot safer: competitors wear soft shoes and stuff straw down their trousers for protection. Even so, ambulance crews are in attendance in case some unEnglish cheat wearing boots with steel toecaps turns up.

  But my personal favourite English sport is one that was only invented twenty years ago: extreme ironing.

  ‘EI’, as it is known, is very simple: people take an ironing board to an extreme or unusual location and … iron an item of clothing. It is quintessentially English in its simple eccentricity. A ma
n called Phil Shaw is largely credited with its invention. The story goes that he got back to his Leicester home after work one day in 1997 to be faced by a mountain of ironing. He decided that it was too dull to iron indoors, so he took it out to the garden. When his housemate came home, he asked Phil what he was doing and he replied, ‘Extreme ironing.’ The idea stuck.

  A chance meeting with a German man, Kai, took the sport on to the international stage. Kai adopted the name Hot Crease and formed a German branch of the Extreme Ironing Bureau. In 2002, the first Extreme Ironing World Championships were held. Eighty teams from ten countries had to navigate an obstacle course arranged in the shape of an iron, pressing boxer shorts and blouses while scaling a climbing wall, hanging from a moss-covered tree branch and squeezing under the bonnet of a car.

  The quality of pressing does actually count. ‘Ironists,’ Phil wrote in his book, ‘are sometimes so absorbed in getting themselves into some sort of awkward or dangerous situation with their ironing board that they forget the main reason they are there in the first place: to rid their clothing of creases and wrinkles.’ When it comes to judging, the ironing accounts for 60 of the available 120 points, style for 40 points and speed 20. Of course, the English competitors didn’t win any individual medals, but they did win the team event.

  There are about 1,500 extreme ironists practising worldwide and some teams have received corporate backing. Calls are now being made for the sport’s inclusion in the Olympics. ‘If you can have synchronized swimming and curling, I think extreme ironing has as much to offer,’ Phil has said.

  If included, it would be the first Olympic sport in which the athletes did not use their real names. Apparently, ironists fear ridicule from the outside world, so they adopt pseudonyms. Mr Shaw is Steam; his housemate Paul is Spray. Other competitors are listed as Cool Silk, Iron Mike, Fe (the chemical symbol for iron), Jeremy Irons and Iron Lung. The winner of the gold medal at the 2002 Championships was Hot Pants.

  So why should extreme ironing be considered the pinnacle of English sport? The answer is very simple. While it may not be as physically challenging as some sports, the difficulty lies ‘in the extreme embarrassment of ironing on a street in front of large crowds’, according to Phil. If you combine making a show of yourself in public and a sporting endeavour, that is an extreme challenge for any English person.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  OO-ER, MISSUS, IT’S LORD BUCKETHEAD

  ‘Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more …’

  Monty Python’s Flying Circus

  English humour is very odd. Our most successful series – Monty Python, Blackadder, Benny Hill, the Carry On films, Mr Bean, The Office, Fawlty Towers, The Two Ronnies – are irreverent, smutty and surreal; they celebrate the underdog, the bizarre, failure. Just like us, they don’t take themselves too seriously.

  Our humour touches every aspect of Englishness: our eccentricity, our landscape, our food, our culture. Cheese rolling and Pooh sticks, bubble and squeak, toad in the hole, Marmite, pomp and ceremony, hedgehog-flavoured crisps … It is all tinged with the ridiculous.

  It is often assumed, celebrated even, that we have the best humour in the world. That it is unique in its highly developed, sophisticated subtlety. It is littered with sarcasm, teasing, mockery and self-deprecation. We love to laugh at ourselves. It is full of what we would call banter, often indecipherable to foreign visitors. Even for a battle-hardened Englishman it can be difficult to know when humour stops and starts. ‘Are they being funny or rude?’

  Generally, the more serious the delivery, the more likely it is that it is a joke. ‘Lovely weather,’ delivered in the midst of a biblical storm, is the benchmark of English sarcasm. We love to say the opposite of what is happening to make a point. In an effort to distinguish ourselves from our North American neighbours, Oscar Wilde once said, ‘It is clear that humour is far superior to humor.’

  Our humour is often lost in translation, taken literally. A recent example was when the model-turned-actress Cara Delevingne was asked in an interview on US television if she had read John Green’s book, Paper Towns, before starring in the film. ‘No, I never read the book or the script, I just winged it,’ she answered deadpan. The US media took her comments literally, while the English had a wry smile on their faces.

  We also love understatement. A little like our tendency to apologize, we love to downgrade the situation. ‘I’m in a spot of bother’ actually means we are drawing our last breath. Famously, Spike Milligan’s epitaph reads, ‘I told you I was ill’.

  The early adverts for Hamlet cigars, in which the hapless protagonist would light up a cigar after finding himself in a life-threatening, embarrassing or awkward situation, was a manifestation of such understatement. One I loved was the cowboy arriving at the Pearly Gates with an arrow sticking right through him; St Peter looks him up and down disapprovingly, checks his list and shakes his head. The Gates close. The cowboy lights up.

  Monty Python also played up to this English stereotype. Who can forget the Black Knight proclaiming ‘’tis but a scratch’ after having his arm cut off in Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

  And it doesn’t just happen in films or on television. During the Kuala Lumpur to Perth leg of a British Airways flight in 1982, the plane hit a volcanic ash cloud that caused all four engines to stall. Famously, Captain Eric Moody still managed to make an announcement to the passengers: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.’ Arguably one of the finest examples of understated humour was when journalist Henry Morton Stanley finally found Dr Livingstone on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, having searched through 700 miles of impenetrable forest. ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’

  One of my favourite aspects of Englishness is comedy politicians. I don’t just mean the comedy of politicians, or even of comedians becoming (or trying to become – yes I’m looking at you, Al Murray) politicians, but the art of the comedic political aspirant. And Lord Buckethead may well be the best practitioner of all.

  ‘Mr Fogle, sir, it is indeed an honour,’ announced Lord Buckethead as I emerged onto the roof terrace. Of all the weird and wonderful situations I have found myself in, this must surely have been one of the strangest and most surreal. I was with a man dressed as a cross between Darth Vader and Batman, about to play an urban game of miniature golf on a rooftop in East London. His vast helmet towered above my head as we walked towards the kiosk.

  I felt a little giddy and even a little starstruck. I was with the Lord Buckethead, the man who had campaigned in general elections against Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Theresa May. In fact, my favourite photograph from the 2017 election is that of May on stage in her Maidenhead constituency, the leader of our country (just, at time of writing) standing alongside her political rivals, Lord Buckethead and someone dressed as Elmo. Lord Buckethead won 249 votes in the Berkshire constituency. Nevertheless he celebrated the result as ‘A new Buckethead record!’

  Before the election Lord Buckethead proudly informed his 100,000 Twitter followers that he is an ‘intergalactic space lord, running to be an independent member of parliament for Maidenhead’. His manifesto promised ‘a strong, not entirely stable, leadership’. On a recent visit to another English institution, Glastonbury, he said, ‘I just hope the rain stays away for your sake and mine, because on my planet space lords have no need to combat rain. If the storms come I am in big trouble.’ And he described Boris Johnson as ‘a posh, overblown, full of himself imbecile, who thinks just because he knows a bit of classics he has some superiority over the rest of the species … I say flocci non facio Boris Johnson.’ (Apparently, it means ‘I don’t give a hoot …’)

  I liked him for that and wanted to meet him. On my request for a meeting over a cup of tea, he tweeted, ‘Move over G20, this is the top table.’

  His real identity remains a mystery as he hides behind his
iconic black mask. He is ridiculous and marvellous at the same time.

  I had managed to track him down on social media and he had suggested we meet for a game of miniature golf to discuss politics and Englishness. His real identity remained a mystery as he hid behind his iconic black mask. He was ridiculous and marvellous at the same time. ‘My vision is a little inhibited,’ he said, sweeping back his black cloak to reveal black trousers, cricket pads, a thick black leather jacket and black boots, ‘you might have to keep the scores.’

  We made our way over to the golf course, designed in swirly, slightly trippy black and white. ‘Better take the black ball,’ announced Lord Buckethead, before handing me the white one. A young girl handed us our golf clubs without so much as a question or a hint of surprise at the 6ft 5in man beside me, dressed in a black cape and mask.

  I looked around me and not a single person was staring. This was incredible and marvellous at the same time. Only in England can someone walk around looking like an extra from Star Wars without eliciting so much as a stare or a glance. Another couple on the golf course weren’t even distracted from their game as the cloaked politician and I began ours.

  ‘You must be very good at golf,’ stated Lord Buckethead, ‘it’s written in your name. Fogle, golf, it’s an anagram.’

  I suggested perhaps we might try a game that contained an anagram of Lord Buckethead’s name, ‘We could eat a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken,’ he replied.