Barmy Britain
Page 3
The Times
Two policewomen sped to arrest an attacker in pedal-powered rickshaws. They flagged down two pedicab riders after learning that fellow officers needed help. The pedicab drivers told how they rode them through Hereford rounding corners ‘with a motorbike sidecar lean.’
Daily Mirror
The Times’ version of the rickshaw raid said that the WPCs ‘sat in the back urging their drivers to go faster and encouraged pedestrians and other vehicles to move out of their way by yelling “Nee-naw, nee-naw, nee-naw” at the top of their voices. The rickshaw men said: “We like to think of ourselves as cowboys riding down the bad guys.”’
The Times
Martin Hallam, of Oxford, writes about the 1960s when he was a policeman in Winchester. TV personality Hughie Green, of Opportunity Knocks, reported his car had broken down and asked the police to arrange a lift for him to London. A gnarled old policeman advised: ‘Go to the bypass, stick up your thumb, and see if opportunity knocks.’
Daily Telegraph
John Chatfield, of Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, saw a report about fake £20 notes being in circulation, along with a quote from a police sergeant: ‘About three weeks ago we saw a rise in fake £30 notes, and that is something that is more serious.’
Daily Mail
The Financial Times ran a series questioning the behaviour of lawyers:
Why did the lawyer cross the road? To distribute his calling card to the victims of a five-car pile-up on the other side.
What do you call 500 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A good start.
How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb? How many can you afford?
What is the difference between a lawyer and a rat both lying dead on the road? There are skid marks in front of the rat.
Financial Times
In Stroud, Gloucestershire, a man was given an Asbo banning him from yelling abusive and racist comments at his TV.
Sun
A woman who was tied to a refrigerator door at gunpoint by two raiders has been praised for her coolness by Tonbridge police.
Kent and Sussex Courier
David Wills, of Southampton, wrote about solicitors’ charges and revealed the following extract from a Bill of Costs raised by his firm in 1907:
To attending you when asked if we had your mother’s will.
We replied that we would search. 6s 8d
We searched but did not find it. 6s 8d
Suggested you should see if the bank had it. 6s 8d
Letter to the bank asking if it was there. 3s 6d
Ultimately finding the will in our safe and attending the reading of it. 13s 4d.
Mr Wills ends his letter with: ‘We are happy to say that our procedures are considerably more efficient nowadays’.
Daily Telegraph
David Spark, of Great Ayton, Yorkshire, recalls an (apocryphal) solictor’s bill:
To crossing the street to say good morning to you. 6s 8d
To crossing back on finding it was not you. 6s 8d
Daily Telegraph
The Rev. W. N. C. Girard, of Balsham, Cambridgeshire wrote to the Daily Telegraph about a lawyer’s bill sent to the estate of a man whose will he had drawn up. It included the item: ‘To attending on you for your signature, but you were dead.’
Daily Telegraph
Police appealed for witnesses after a woman put her toddler into a pushchair on display in a Plymouth store – and walked out with it.
Western Morning News
Clive Anderson, former practising barrister turned successful comedy writer and TV and radio presenter, was rueful about his day job: ‘It’s just 99% of lawyers who give the rest a bad name.’
Guardian
Retired vicar’s wife Ann Laycock, of Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, who was shot at by youths in her local park, was advised by police to walk her dog somewhere else in future.
Daily Mail
A gunman attempting to hold up a Tesco petrol station in Cheltenham did not allow for the formidable 51-year-old Linda Faulkner behind the counter. Instead of surrendering the cash from her till she told the raider that she was too busy to deal with him. ‘I just got on with it,’ she said later. ‘British people don’t stop work just because someone is trying to bully us with guns.’
Daily Mail
A thief who tried to hand herself in at her local police station in Kent for stealing £3,000 was instructed to go to a police station nine miles away in Canterbury. She was told ‘We can’t do it today – it’s a Bank Holiday. Come back later.’
Sun
In the relentless war on villains, the Serious Organised Crime Agency set up a confidentiality hotline for the public in October 2006. In November 2007 The Times reported ‘it is manned five days a week and, thus far, has taken 16 calls. One reported the theft of a bicycle. Another complaint was that someone was smoking in a bank.’
The Times
A woman from Aberavon, South Wales, falsely claimed that she was living apart from her husband and fiddled benefits totalling £8,832. She was ordered to pay it back at £10 a month and she will be 109 if she ever gets to make the final payment.
Sun
(This recalls the story of the man in a similar predicament who protested that he was already over 80. ‘Just do the best you can’, advised the kindly magistrate.)
UKTV Gold invited viewers to nominate the most ridiculous law on English statute books. Strong contenders included:
Oliver Cromwell’s attempt to combat gluttony by banning the eating of mince pies on Christmas Day.
A 19th century London by-law which allowed pregnant women to relieve themselves in a policeman’s helmet.
The law that will find you guilty of treason if you stick a postage stamp on an envelope with the monarch’s head upside-down.
Winner of the contest was the law which bans you from dying in the Houses of Parliament. Anyone who manages to break this law is technically entitled to a state funeral.
Independent
A newly recruited policeman of Swanage, Dorset, recalls walking the beat with an experienced colleague when they came across scrumpers clambering over a wall with their pullovers bulging with stolen apples. His mentor ordered the boys to empty their booty on to the grass, gave each miscreant a sharp slap on the hand with a leather strap, and said: ‘Don’t let me catch you again.’ The scrumpers ran off and the old-fashioned bobby said: ‘Stick a few in your pockets – pity we can’t take ‘em all’.
Daily Mail
A Scotsman convicted of beating up his partner turned out to be an anger management counsellor.
Independent on Sunday
A rape trial was halted after defence counsel accused the judge of falling asleep. Next day Geoffrey W. Davey reminded The Times of an incident in Darlington County Court when the judge closed his eyes. From the back of the court came the comment: ‘The old b*****d has gone to sleep’. The judge opened one eye and replied: ‘The old b*****d hasn’t’.
The Times
A judge ordered a man from Ramsgate, Kent, to pay his former wife £1 for the pineapple he damaged when he hit her with it during an argument.
Thanet Times
Judge Jeremy Roberts adjourned a kidnap case at the Old Bailey and went to watch his horse race at Ascot. It came 12th.
Sunday Telegraph
The Police Federation magazine Police tells of thieves who raided a soccer clubhouse in Surrey. They wheeled away their haul of drink on the club’s white-line marking machine – and the police tracked down the villains by following the white line.
Daily Mail
Suspicious staff in a Portsmouth store checked on a man when he went into one of their changing rooms. They found he was wearing a bra and knickers he had stolen for his wife.
Sun / Sunday Telegraph
A thief stole a briefcase from a synagogue in Stamford Hill, North London. All it contained was a set of circumcision tools.
Sun
In Scotland, it is
illegal to be drunk in charge of a cow.
Observer
A Swindon man who dialled 999 when thieves tried to steal his cannabis plants was arrested when police found 46 plants at his home.
Western Daily Press
When Thames river police cautioned a woman yachtsman for speeding they said: ‘Who do you think you are – Tracy Edwards?’ ‘Yes’, replied the lady skippering Maiden II, the proven fastest yacht in the world.
The Times
A thief who has been taking furniture piece by piece from a fast food restaurant in Norwich has been invited by the owner to take a sixth chair to complete a dining set.
Norwich Evening News
A thief snatched a handbag from an 86-year-old woman who was out with her dog at Netley Abbey, Southampton – then found the handbag contained only the contents of a poop-scoop.
Daily Telegraph
A burglar who stole a BMW from outside a house he had broken into in Old Basing, Hampshire, was arrested next morning when police found him asleep inside it.
The Times
A thief hiding in bushes after stealing a battery-operated Buzz Lightyear toy from a Hereford shop was caught when police heard the intergalactic law enforcer shouting: ‘Buzz Lightyear… permission to engage’.
Daily Telegraph
A Mafia hitman charged with two murders told a court: ‘It was not me. That night I was killing someone else.’
Independent
CHAPTER 4
BEST OF BRITISHNESS
When an earthquake damaged homes in Kent, victims went down the pub to watch football…
Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean is a clumsy, gurning, bumbling, birdbrain – and undeniably British…
If you ask a non-Brit to describe Mr Bean, these are the words they deliver back: ‘Hapless, awkward, self-conscious, childlike, disaster prone….and British.’
Guardian
Next day Guardian reader Brian Denoon, of Inverness wrote: ‘Your appreciation of Mr Bean as the epitome of Britishness will boost the desire of Scots to become independent. This cringeworthy creature could not be anything other than English.’
Guardian
There was a very British response when the fourth largest UK earthquake shook Kent in April 2007 – people emerged from their damaged homes and went down the pub to watch football.
Independent on Sunday
British tradesmen drink the equivalent of 1.3 BATHFULS of tea each year.
Direct Line
When packing for their holidays 51% of Britons take baked beans, 46% HP sauce, 23% teabags and 19% loo rolls.
Independent on Sunday
During a 2007 visit to Washington, then Prime Minister Tony Blair demonstrated once again that he is truly a man-of-the-people.
After talking about his plans to promote understanding among people of different faiths and bring peace to the Middle East he went on to tackle a problem which really does concern the British: the difficulty of finding a really good cup of tea. ‘This is serious,’ he said. ‘This is a British tradition that must not be lost. If I were running for office again, I’d make it a major part of any platform.’
Daily Telegraph
Britons have a bewildering lack of knowledge about their country according to a survey commissioned by UKTV History. It revealed:
Four in ten think the bulldog is the animal that symbolises the country. It is, of course, the lion, which is has been part of the Royal Arms since the Plantagenets.
A quarter said the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall are among the Seven Wonders of the World, confusing them with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
One in five think the Pennines are between France and Spain.
Fifteen per cent think Hadrian’s Wall is in China.
The Times
The 2007 Rough Guide names 25 things to do in Britain before you die. Among them:
See the Belfast murals.
Sup Guinness.
Breathe in the sea air in Tobermory.
Hunt ghosts in York.
Gorge your way through Birmingham’s Balti triangle.
Go clubbing in London.
Visit the best beach in Britain: Holkham, Norfolk. (The Queen’s bathing hut is in the woods just behind the nudist beach.)
Daily Telegraph
Journalist Cole Moreton went in search of polite society after it was reported that schools were to have Civility Classes. When a man dropped his plastic pint beer glass in a pub Moreton said: ‘Excuse me, I think you’ve dropped something.’ The beery bloke lurched forward, chest thrust out and fists clenched, slurring: ‘Wassyer problem?’
Maybe, wrote Moreton, if the man had been to a civility class, he would have said: ‘Yes, I see the error of my ways. I will hasten to a bin. Thank you for helping me to be a better citizen.’ Or maybe not.
Modern Britons are rude and getting ruder.
Independent on Sunday
Bestselling American author Bill Bryson has a deep knowledge and an absolute passion for England’s heritage. So it was no surprise when, in May 2007, he became president of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England. He lived in England for a long time and then went back to the States, intending his return to be permanent. But, he says, he ‘spent the next eight years pining for Radio 4, the English sense of humour – and Branston pickle.’
He once wrote of Blackpool: ‘On Friday and Saturday nights it has more public toilets than anywhere else. Elsewhere they call them doorways.’
And of Liverpool: ‘They were having a festival of litter when I arrived.’
Guardian
In February 2008 a small addition was made to England’s treasury of listed buildings – a rare surviving example of a late 18th century privy, even rarer because it is a three-seater where parents and child ‘could sit down peacefully together and let nature take its course’. It is in the grounds of an old farmhouse in Kent and the proud owner says: ‘It faces towards the evening sun and is the most delightful place to sit with a glass of wine and the door open, and just be peaceful and sit and think’.
Guardian
The report of the three-seat privy reminded David Critchlow, of Poole, Dorset, of the time he stopped at a cottage in Cornwall so that a friend could relieve herself. The elderly woman owner told her where the privy was and said: ‘Do mind out for the chicken’. When the friend opened the door the chicken was nesting on the second hole.
Guardian
Only a third of Britons would mind missing the Queen’s Christmas speech. 62% would not mind if the Trooping of the Colour disappeared.
But fewer than a third would give up Sunday lunch or beer in pints, and 85% would not surrender days out at the seaside.
YouGov survey in the Daily Mail
‘This country is a blessed nation. The British are special, the world knows it. This is the greatest nation on Earth.’ (Tony Blair’s exit speech, 10 May 2007.) Next day the Guardian asked: ‘Are we the greatest?’, and listed some areas where we excel:
38.1% of British 15-year-olds have had sex – the highest figure in the developed world.
British house price inflation is higher than any other developed nation.
Haydn Pitchforth, of Leeds, is world champion bog snorkeller.
Guardian
How could Hitler ever have made the mistake of thinking that he could conquer this blessed nation? On 14 May 1940 the Manchester Guardian (as it then was) reported Churchill’s ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat’ speech.
It also carried an article that dealt with another pressing matter indicating the gravity of the sacrifices facing a nation in peril. People, it said, can affect an economy by doing without a maid – making her services available for more essential work.
Guardian
And Kaiser Wilhelm was surely foolish to ignore this admonition: ‘We give this solemn warning to the Kaiser: The Skibereen Eagle has its eye on you’.
The Skibereen Eagle quoted in The Times
A D
aily Telegraph reader was invited to a wedding in Salzburg which required guests to turn up in national costume. He asked for advice and got this from Richard Woodward of Nottingham:
Develop an enormous beer gut and a bright pink suntan.
Wear a beer stained England football shirt.
Behave boorishly.
Chant futile songs and demand to know where the nearest kebab shop is.
Alan Wright, of Bristol, said that the choice of national costume should comprise knotted handkerchief, white shirt with rolled up sleeves, grey flannels supported by braces, and sandals with socks.
Daily Telegraph
A survey reveals that Britons have collectively wasted £169 billion buying things they never wear or hardly ever use. The average person has squandered £3,685 on pointless purchases. Half admit to having expensive clothing they never wear, 35% have a pair of unworn shoes, and 35% are members of a gym they never attend.
Daily Telegraph
The British take their traditions seriously – and dangerously. The annual cheese rolling tradition takes place on Cooper’s Hill, near Stroud, which has, in places, a one-in-three gradient. Participants hurl themselves after huge, wheel-shaped Double Gloucester Cheeses, and spectators gasp at the speed of the races and the violence of the tumbles. The cheeses sometimes veer into the crowd as they hurtle down the steep hill.
The Times headline on the 2007 event was:
CHEESE ROLLERS GET OFF LIGHTLY. ONLY 20 HURT
The organiser commented: ‘Last year it was almost double that. Some would like to see it stopped, but it’s a British tradition.’