We're British, Innit

by Iain Aitch

  POOR SERVICE

  Despite glaring economic evidence to the contrary, we still see ourselves as a nation of industry and manufacturing, which means that we largely regard jobs in the service industry as being below us and not of any intrinsic value. This means that we are generally rude and discourteous to those who wait on our tables, serve us drinks or greet us as we enter buildings, with the result being that we then get poor service. But we generally see this as a good thing, even rushing to go on nights out to restaurants that have legendarily bad service. Some restaurants in London’s Chinatown are renowned for their disdain for customers, with many people travelling to them just be bossed around, insulted and served substandard meals. If you are going to irritate kitchen or waiting staff in Britain then you should always do this after you have eaten your meal, as you will end up eating at least 40% less faecal matter when dining out. Good service should be tipped, though bad service should be tipped more, for we are British and we don’t like to be seen to make a fuss.

  PORK SCRATCHINGS

  These deep-fried pig carcass salted snacks are popular in pubs, where the greasy, hairy morsels can be washed down with beer in an attempt to stop them simply coming straight back up again. Known as the mildly more appetising ‘pork rinds’ in the US, the British name for the snack is thought to derive from the fact that they look a little like infected sores that a pig may have scratched off by rubbing itself against a wall. Health consciousness has made the fatty snacks less popular over the years, but they have outlived other similar products, such as Chicken Psoriasis, Lamb Lesions and Rabbit Herpes.

  POT NOODLE

  Invented for those who found Vesta meals too much like real food, the Pot Noodle requires only some boiling water and a few minutes’ wait in terms of preparation. Beloved of students and single men, the snacks come in a variety of flavours, all of which leave the consumer with a slight feeling of guilt and grubbiness. The branding gurus behind Pot Noodle took this feeling and ran with it, producing advertising campaigns that compared their food to a visit to a sex shop or a session with a kinky prostitute, only with more soya protein and monosodium glutamate. Pot Noodle, which was introduced to the UK in 1979, is now a staple of every corner shop (see corner shop), with some having special Pot Noodle filling stations for those who can’t wait to get their dehydrated food home or those whose wives will not allow the plastic pots of noodley goodness in the house.

  PRINCESS DIANA

  The famously see-through skirted Queen of Hearts was a more regal, more legged version of Heather Mills-McCartney, who won over even the most ardent of republicans by being killed in a Parisian tunnel by hired assassins/our alien overlords/ accident (delete as appropriate) in 1997 at the age of 36. There was a huge public outpouring of grief over the Princess of Wales’s death, with the event fundamentally changing the way that we mourn in Britain. Her untimely demise ushered in a more Catholic wailing and gnashing of teeth approach, where previously we had made do with a strong cup of tea and a short sit down. Many of us now remember her through the Sir Elton John song Candle in the Wind, which was a re-hash of his song about Marilyn Monroe. The flamboyant singer got together with regular writing partner Bernie Taupin to bash out a quick adaptation, in much the same way that a lazy schoolboy may re-hash an old essay on the bus to school. The single stayed at number one in the UK for five weeks.

  PROMS

  This festival of classical music takes place for eight weeks each summer in London, building up to the Last Night of the Proms at the Albert Hall, which is the patriotic climax of the season. The Proms appeal to a wide variety of music lovers, though the Last Night audience is seemingly made up of braying inbreds who play out a bizarre series of rituals while dressed head-to-toe in items made from the Union Flag. The Last Night begins with Land of Hope and Glory and finishes with Jerusalem, which gives the evening the air of a Thatcher-era Conservative Party conference, only with less chance of it all ending with some harsh new laws on trade union activity or everyone laughing and pointing at Neil Kinnock.

  PUB CRAWLS

  So called because crawling is all you should be able to do by the end of the night, this fine tradition has long been a Friday night pursuit that is followed by manual labourers, students and hen parties alike. All you need is a few pubs within staggering distance of each other and you have your crawl. It is exercise and drinking combined. Imagine that. Crawls can be arranged around themes, with A-Z and Monopoly board pub crawls (ie visiting a pub in each of the streets listed on the board) being popular in London, where the underground system can be used to hop around the city and to store excess vomit.

  PUBLIC SCHOOL

  Before public schools were legally recognised by the Public School Act of 1868, the children of the rich had to learn about sado-masochism, tuck and ruling the country on an ad hoc basis, picking up such knowledge where they could in the state-school system. This meant that they missed out on the chance to warm the toilet seat for older boys or for their buttocks to serve as an impromptu toast rack of a morning. Public schools are famous for their elitism, small class sizes and their ability to guide even the most dim- witted of aristocrats through A-levels and on to their rightful place at an Oxbridge college (see oxbridge). The existence of public schools is always a political hot potato; their abolition would have a damaging effect on the economy, with demand for trauma counselling and Soho dungeons all slated to drop by up to 75 per cent over a decade should this happen.

  PUBS

  The British pub should be a place of refuge from all the other worries of the world around you, be they those at home, at work or on a global scale. The beer should be good, the service friendly and the crisps available in a variety of flavours. George Orwell (see orwell, george) probably came closest to the ideal of a British pub in his 1946 essay The Moon Under Water, which spoke of solid lunches and welcoming barmaids. Or was it the other way around? Whichever it was, this idea was taken and run with by the JD Wetherspoon chain who sell cut-price beer and who turned the idea into a kind of dystopian equivalent, where one-legged alcoholics squander their benefits cheques and are served by aspirant bar managers who are also on hand to dish out a bewildering variety of pre-prepared meals. The jam roly-poly of Orwell’s dreams is nowhere to be seen. Still, there are some pubs that remain true to many of the 1984 writer’s ideals. Mostly down backstreets and unsullied by the word ‘gastro’ as a prefix, these pubs serve up passable pies and a decent selection of beers, all accompanied by that wonderful traditional British pub sound: the absence of children.

  PUB TRIPLES

  Enter an establishment advertising cheap triple shots of generically named spirits and you know you are, almost literally, drinking in the last chance saloon. Gin, vodka and something that is certainly the same colour as whisky are all offered in huge measures for about the cost of a single slug of their household name equivalents, meaning that landlords can compete with supermarket prices and patrons can get hammered in a social setting. Spotting a sign offering such deals on the exterior of a pub is also a good signifier that you may be able to find a friendly local drug dealer inside or even be able to buy back the contents of your garden shed if you speak to the right person.

  PUDDINGS

  The more refined may call the sweet course ‘dessert’, the less refined may call it ‘afters’, but either way, it is pudding that the true Brit should be after when the orders are taken. This catch-all term describes anything that could conceivably have been served after a school dinner and, mostly, anything that can be immeasurably improved by the addition of custard (see custard). So treacle sponges, jam roly-poly and chocolate sponge (with chocolate custard) are in, and gateaux, sorbets and cheesecake are out. Bread and butter pudding is the exception that proves the custard rule, while summer pudding proves that pudding need not be hot to bring pride to British hearts and stomachs. Friends who serve cheese and biscuits after a meal should be snubbed, or reported to the authorities. There is a direct correlation between tim
e spent at public school and the desire for pudding, an equation that also works when measuring a fondness for spanking. Being spanked while eating a pudding is the ultimate fantasy for 62 per cent of Members of Parliament.

  PUNCH AND JUDY

  This puppet play celebrates the consumption of sausages, assault on police, wife battering and child cruelty and has subsequently been thrilling children nationwide since the sixteenth century. The simple tale of a big-nosed, hunchbacked sociopath, Punch and Judy follows Mr Punch as he throws his baby from the window, sends his wife out after her and then batters anyone who gets in his way. This cast of victims includes a crocodile who steals his sausages, a policeman who comes to arrest him and the devil, who comes to take him to hell presumably to run some kind of training course in wrongdoing. The moral of the story seems to be that fecklessness and violence win the day, which has led some local councils to ban the shows from their beaches and parks. But in reality it is simply a grotesque cartoon-like slapstick, and children are unlikely to grow into crocodile-worrying murderers should they witness it.

  PUNK

  That the Union Flag and an image of the Queen were at the forefront of the music and fashion revolution that was punk shows you just how British it was, with bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash still being cited as musical influences to this day. Retro rockers and Japanese fashion students don images of our flag and our monarch to summon up a punk look, with this image still doing so much for British tourism and business that the Department of Trade and Industry should probably add a safety pin to its logo. The music may have originated in the USA, but it was the marketing and design genius of Malcom McLaren and Vivienne Westwood that made it such a global influence, creating a year zero where rock dinosaurs and ageing Teddy boys became seen as figures of ridicule and remnants of a distant past. With 50-year-old punks still donning the bondage trousers and with endless triple-album punk reissues, live albums and best-of collections you could argue that nothing substantial has changed over the last thirty years and that punk has become assimilated by the status quo, though perhaps we shouldn’t quite pronounce its spirit dead until we see Prince Harry sporting a pink mohawk and a Damned T-shirt.

  Q

  QUEEN ELIZABETH I

  Being the daughter of Henry VIII and Ann Boleyn, Elizabeth I was never going to be the poster child for well adjusted behaviour, though she did become known for her restraint in foreign affairs, adopting the motto ‘I see but say nothing’, which is similar to Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger’s motto: ‘I say that I see nothing’. Redheaded Elizabeth I could be fiery when provoked, though, and she is remembered most for being the monarch who oversaw the defeat of the Spanish Armada. She is also well regarded for allowing drama and literature to grow in Britain. Her fostering of the likes of Shakespeare and the dramatic fashions of her reign mean that her memory has been romanticised over the years and her period on the throne in the sixteenth century has been the subject of several films and costume dramas. Elizabeth I was sometimes known as the Virgin Queen due to her close friendship with Sir Richard Branson, the famed poet and explorer who introduced potatoes, tobacco and leaning trains to Britain.

  QUEEN ELIZABETH II

  The woman whose head is on our coins and stamps is seen as fairly moderate and tends to keep away from controversy in domestic and foreign affairs, though this is also due to the ever-decreasing role of the monarch in Britain (see monarchy), with it now being a largely ceremonial and tourism-attracting role. Apart from looking quite good on a tea towel, Elizabeth II is the current monarch of sixteen countries in the Commonwealth, top dog in the Church of England and, surprisingly, Duke of Normandy. This historical role now mostly pertains to the Channel Islands, though she is rumoured to sometimes dress as a man and impose new laws on this part of France when she gets bored with Prince Philip and the corgis. Our Queen famously had an annus horribilis in 1992, when most of her offspring were divorcing and separating from their spouses. Her annus was similarly nasty in 1997, when the public turned against her and her family for the lack of their public emotion about the death of Princess Diana. This was resolved when she returned from Balmoral and took a carriage to the local Texaco station to buy some carnations to leave at Kensington Palace.

  QUEEN’S ENGLISH

  Sometimes referred to as Received Pronunciation or even BBC English (see the bbc), the correct enunciation of vowels and the ability to not drop aitches and then stick them on the front of words where they are not needed is seen as vitally important in certain parts of society. In the upper class and parts of the middle class it is simply impossible for one to even consider dating anyone who has a glottal stop or who comes from Newcastle, as the voice is seen as a badge of breeding. The term can also be used with unintentional irony by rude morons who cannot understand what an immigrant or tourist is saying. ‘We only speak der Queen’s English, mate,’ is one particular example you may hear in a bar or restaurant. In a further irony, the Queen herself only speaks German in private, though she is known to have a more than working grasp of Klingon, which she uses to communicate with Prince Charles when she doesn’t want Prince Philip to know what she is saying.

  QUEEN VICTORIA

  The famously stone-faced Queen oversaw Britain’s birth as an industrial nation and is often seen as the most fearsome monarch since the days of Henry VIII. She married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, following in a tradition that has kept European aristocracy in extra toes and webbed feet for the last 400 years. Never accept an invitation to enter a swimming race against the aristocracy, as they always win. Victoria was on the throne with the Empire at its peak and took Britain into the modern age, witnessing the start and growth of the railway and the first instance of the wrong kind of snow affecting the points at Clapham Junction. Her name is still attached to an era of advancement and achievement for Britain and it is for this reason that she is probably the best-known British monarch globally. She is the only monarch to have a London Underground line named after her and she was apocryphally said to have not believed it possible for any woman to be lesbian, which has long been said to be the reason why this was not made illegal in Britain when male homosexuality was (see homosexuality).

  QUEUING

  If a person stands still for more than one minute in the UK then another will be drawn to line up behind them, with others soon joining them to make a queue. Honed by years of wartime rationing, the British queuing gene ensures that we are often at our happiest in a state of united anticipation. Where there are multiple queues we are able to make complex mathematical computations to work out which will move fastest and when a new product becomes available we will happily queue outside a shop for a special midnight opening, even though we could simply buy it in the morning. When faced with multiple options the true Brit should always form one queue for each outlet, so if there are three cash dispensers there should be three queues. The introduction of single queuing systems, such as in post offices and banks, threatens our way of queuing and our very way of life. It really is only a short leap from single queues and their hateful tethered posts to National Socialism.

  R

  RADIO 4

  The word quintessential seems to have been made for BBC Radio 4’s Britishness. It is hard to imagine the Today programme, The Archers or Gardeners’ Question Time existing anywhere but on these shores and nowhere else in the world has a heavier concentration of plays about maidservants in peril. The station has a place for regional dialect, but it also retains a healthy number of presenters who speak only in Received Pronunciation and who still read the news in the traditional manner, from an ermine clad throne at Broadcasting House (see queen’s english). More British than the sound of leather on willow, this great British institution also rewards us with panel shows such as Just a Minute and I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. The latter is best known for the nonsensical game Mornington Crescent, though it is also loved for the laughter of genius comic Barry Cryer, whose guffaws often sound li
ke a man in his death throes. Ironically, the show’s consumer programme Money Box Live makes listeners long to hear their own death throes whereas Quote Unquote is actually blocked from

  broadcast via the internet in Hungary, as it is deemed to be both depressing and disorienting.