Watching the English

by Kate Fox

  Britain and America are the only countries in which none of the Big Brother housemates has been seen having sex (I think the reasons are slightly different: we are inhibited, while the Americans are prudish). In Holland, they apparently had to be told to stop having sex all the time, as viewers were starting to find the non-stop humping rather tedious. In Britain, the newspapers went into paroxysms of excitement if two housemates so much as kissed. When, in the third series, a pair of housemates finally took things a little bit further, they made sure that they were carefully concealed under a duvet (another pair later used a bubbling Jacuzzi) and it was impossible to tell what was going on. Even when our Big Brother producers, in a desperate attempt to spice up the show a bit, provided a special little lovers’ den, allowing couples to cavort away from the prying eyes of their fellow housemates (although still filmed by the hidden cameras), none of the inhibited housemates could be tempted. They used the den for ‘private’ gossip sessions instead. In 2003, a tabloid newspaper offered a reward of £50,000 (almost as much as the prize-money for winning Big Brother) to tempt the housemates to have sex, but still nothing happened.

  In other countries, Big Brother housemates regularly have screaming rows, and even stand-up fights and brawls, with broken chairs and flying crockery. For some years on the British Big Brother even a raised voice or a mildly sarcastic comment was a major incident, discussed and speculated over for days, both within the house and among the show’s many fans. Our housemates’ language is often foul, but this reflects their limited vocabulary, rather than powerful emotions. For the first few series, their behaviour was quite remarkably restrained, and even polite. They rarely expressed anger at a fellow housemate directly, but rather, in true English fashion, bitched and complained constantly about the person behind their back.

  Although the show is a competition, any sign of actual competitiveness was severely frowned upon by our Big Brother contestants. ‘Cheating’ was the worst sin – a violation of the all-important fair-play ethos – but even admitting to having a game-plan, ‘playing to win’, was taboo, as one competitor discovered to his cost, when his boastful remarks about his clever strategy resulted in him being ostracised by the rest of the group and swiftly evicted. Had he kept quiet about his motives, pretended to be ‘in it for fun’ like all the others, he would have had as good a chance as any. Hypocrisy rules.

  Inhibition, embarrassment, indirectness, hypocrisy, gritted-teeth politeness – all very English, and, you might say, not particularly surprising. But think for a minute about who these Big Brother participants were. The people who applied and auditioned to take part in this programme actively wanted to be exposed to the public gaze, twenty-four hours a day, for nine weeks, with absolutely no privacy, not even on the loo or in the shower – not to mention being obliged to perform idiotic and embarrassing tasks. These were not normal, ordinary people: these were the most shameless, most brazen, most attention-seeking, least inhibited people you could hope to encounter, anywhere in England. And yet their behaviour in the Big Brother house was largely characterised by typically English inhibition, squeamishness and awkwardness. They only broke the rules when they were very drunk – or, rather, they got drunk to legitimise their deviance from the rules92 – and even then there were boundaries that were never crossed.

  For the first few series, I saw Big Brother as an interesting experiment, testing the strength of the ‘rules of Englishness’: if even the shameless attention-seekers on Big Brother conform to these rules, they must be very deeply ingrained in the English psyche.

  But then the producers became desperate to find some way of livening up the show – of manufacturing some drama and conflict and shedding of English inhibitions. They resorted to more and more extreme tactics, both in the increasingly degrading ‘tasks’ and gimmicks they inflicted upon the unfortunate housemates, and in the selection of these housemates. They began choosing people who were not merely loud, lewd and obnoxious, but clearly suffering from mental health problems – and even neuropsychiatric disorders such as Tourette’s (well, that’s one way to guarantee a lot of swearing, I suppose).

  The criminologist Professor David Wilson resigned as an adviser to the show, in disgust, after less than a week. He said that the producers filled the house with ‘bullies, egomaniacs, predators and exhibitionists . . . A personality disorder became the prime qualification for entry into the house.’ Having selected mentally unstable people, they then got them drunk as often as possible, engineered situations guaranteed to cause conflict and aggression – in some cases actually instructing housemates to insult and provoke each other – and encouraged lewd behaviour, accusing housemates of being ‘boring’ when they failed to indulge in enough mayhem and debauchery.93

  All of these increasingly desperate tactics eventually resulted in one actual physical fight (still mainly just shouting and swearing, but with some pushing and shoving, and a few bits of food and crockery were thrown). No one was even slightly injured, but security personnel were sent in to break up what has ‘gone down in history’ as ‘Fight Night’. Another shouting-and-swearing incident, in which the only physical violence consisted of one housemate spitting at another, was promptly labelled ‘Fight Night Two’ by the media. There were also a few incidents of sexual exhibitionism (falling short of any actual visible intercourse). By international Big Brother standards this was all pretty tame, but many English viewers rightly felt that the programme had become little more than an embarrassing freak-show: viewing figures duly declined and Channel 4 eventually decided that enough was enough and cancelled it. The show has now migrated to the less discerning Channel 5, where the freakery continues and audience numbers decline even further.

  So, although the typical English inhibition exhibited in the early seasons was not maintained, I stand by my conclusions. The fact that disinhibition could only be achieved by selecting emotionally unstable contestants, and even then required deliberate and constant extreme provocation from the producers, shows that this ‘reality’ programme was clearly no longer in any way representative of ‘real’ English behaviour.

  Reading Rules

  The English love of words features, in some form, on a large proportion of the lists of our ‘national characteristics’ that I came across during the research for this book. And the fact that there are so many such lists only reinforces the point: our response to insecurities about our national identity is to make lists about it – to throw words at the problem. Orwell may have started the list-making trend, but now everyone seems to be at it.

  Jeremy Paxman, whose own Orwellian list of quintessential Englishnesses includes ‘quizzes and crosswords’, calls the English ‘a people obsessed by words’, and cites the phenomenal output of our publishing industry (150,000 new books a year, more per head than any other country), more newspapers per head than almost any other country, our ‘unstoppable flow of Letters to the Editor’, our ‘insatiable appetite’ for all forms of verbal games and puzzles, our thriving theatres and bookshops.

  I would add that reading is consistently a top-ranked pastime in national surveys of leisure activity, even more popular than gardening and DIY. About 80 per cent of us read newspapers (either in print or online), and we spend considerably more time reading our newspapers than any other European nation. Our passion for word games and verbal puzzles is well known, but it is also worth noting that every one of the non-verbal hobbies and pastimes that occupy our leisure time – such as fishing, DIY, gardening, collecting, bird-watching, walking, sports, pets and knitting – has many specialist magazines devoted to it. The more popular hobbies each have at least half a dozen dedicated weekly or monthly publications, as well as hundreds of internet sites, and we often spend much more time reading about our favourite pastime than we do practising it.

  The Rules of Bogside Reading

  We read compulsively, anytime, anywhere. In many English homes, you will find what I call ‘bogside reading’: piles of books and magazines placed next to
the loo, or even neatly arranged in a special rack or bookcase for reading while sitting on the loo. I have occasionally come across the odd book or magazine in loos in other countries, but bogside reading does not seem to be a firmly established custom or tradition elsewhere in the way that it is in England. There are many English people – particularly males – who find it very hard to defecate at all unless they have something to read. If there is no proper bogside reading, they will read the instructions on the soap-dispenser or the list of ingredients on the can of air-freshener.

  A cynical friend pointed out that this might have more to do with the English propensity to constipation than our love of words, but I am not convinced. It is often said that the English are obsessed with their bowels, and judging by the contents of people’s bathroom cabinets (yes, I always snoop – don’t you?) and of chemists’ shelves, we do indeed seem to use more than our fair share of constipation and diarrhoea remedies, suggesting a constant struggle to maintain some elusive ideal state of regularity and solidity. But are we more obsessed than the Germans? We do not, as they do, construct our lavatory-bowls with a little shelf for the anxious inspection or smug contemplation of our faeces (at least, I assume that’s what those shelves are for: they seem to have no other discernible purpose). In fact, our bogside-reading customs indicate a degree of embarrassment about the whole process: we would rather distract ourselves with words than focus too intently (Germanically? anally?) on the products of our bowels. But maybe this is just more English hypocrisy.

  The unwritten rules of bogside reading state that the books and magazines in question should be of a relatively unserious nature – humour, books of quotations, collections of letters or diaries, odd or obscure reference books, old magazines; anything that can be dipped into casually, rather than heavy tomes requiring sustained concentration.

  Bogside reading, like pretty much everything else in an English home, is a useful class-indicator:

  •Working-class bogside reading tends to be mostly humorous, light entertainment or sports-related – books of jokes, cartoons, maybe the occasional puzzle- or quiz-book, and perhaps a few glossy gossip or sports magazines. You will also sometimes find magazines about hobbies and interests, such as motorcycles, music or skateboarding.

  •Lower-middles and middle-middles are not so keen on bogside reading: they may well take a book or newspaper into the loo with them, but do not like to advertise this habit by having a permanent bogside collection, which they think might look vulgar. Females of these classes may be reluctant to admit to reading on the loo at all.

  •Upper-middles are generally much less prudish about such things, and often have mini-libraries in their loos. Some upper-middle bogside collections are a bit pretentious, with books and magazines that appear to have been selected to impress, rather than to entertain,94 but many are genuinely eclectic, and so amusing that guests often get engrossed in them and have to be shouted at to come to the dinner table.

  •Upper-class bogside reading is usually closer to working-class tastes, consisting mainly of sport and humour, although the sporting magazines are more likely to be of the hunting/shooting/fishing sort than, say, football. Some upper-class bogside libraries include fascinating old children’s books, and ancient, crumbling copies of Horse and Hound or Country Life.

  Newspaper Rules

  When I say, in support of my claims about the English love of words, that around 80 per cent of us read newspapers,95 some of those unfamiliar with English culture may mistakenly imagine a nation of super-literate highbrows, engrossed in the solemn analyses of politics and current affairs in the pages of The Times, the Guardian or another big, serious-looking paper. In fact, although we have four of them to choose from, only about 16 per cent of us read the so-called ‘quality’ national daily papers.

  These quality papers are also still known as ‘broadsheets’, because all of them used to be twice as wide (and twice as tall) as the tabloids. I could never understand why they were such an awkward, unwieldy size, until I started watching English commuters reading them on trains, and realised that readability and manoeuvrability were not the point: the point is clearly to have a newspaper large enough to hide behind. The English broadsheet is a formidable example of what psychologists call a ‘barrier signal’ – in this case more like a ‘fortress signal’. Not only can one conceal oneself completely behind its outsize, outstretched pages – effectively prohibiting any form of interaction with other humans, and successfully maintaining the comforting illusion that they do not exist – but one is enclosed, cocooned, in a solid wall of words. How very English.

  Tabloids, otherwise known as the ‘popular’ press, are smaller (although still large enough to conceal one’s head and shoulders) and somewhat less challenging, both intellectually and physically.

  Since the last edition of this book was published (in 2004), three of the four broadsheet papers have adopted a smaller, more manageable, tabloid format – amid much vociferous protest from traditionalists. The Daily Telegraph resisted the change, and was rewarded with increased circulation. But people still use the terms ‘tabloid’ and ‘broadsheet’ to distinguish the ‘popular’ from the ‘quality’ papers.

  There is also a further distinction between ‘red-top’ and ‘compact’ tabloids – the latter regarding themselves as both more serious and ‘classier’ than the former, although it could be argued that the compacts are merely more coy, hypocritical and self-righteous. The red tops unashamedly feature photos of topless models, for example, while the compacts’ paparazzi photos of almost equally scantily clad ‘celebrities’ are presented as ‘showbiz gossip’ stories, which may even include disapproving comments on the amount of flesh revealed. The Daily Mail, the archetypal compact, panders to the fears of the less-educated middle classes, and is endlessly mocked for its obsession with house prices, while the Sun, the bestselling red top, is more squarely aimed at a working-class readership, and is more likely to get irate about the price of beer. The philosopher Julian Baggini summarises the difference between these two papers as ‘the Sun + money + fear = the Daily Mail’. A nice point, but I would quibble slightly with the ‘money’ element, as social class in England is not determined by material wealth: the Daily Mail appeals to those with higher social aspirations – those who self-identify as ‘middle class’ and are anxious to proclaim and maintain this status – rather than simply those with higher incomes.96

  Broadsheets are favoured by the higher social classes – upper-middle, upper and the more educated middle-middles. Within these groups they also serve, to some extent, as signals of political affiliation (unlike the tabloids, which are all essentially conservative). Both The Times and the Daily Telegraph are somewhat to the right of centre – although the Telegraph, also known as the Torygraph, is traditionally regarded as more right-wing than The Times. The Independent and the Guardian balance things out neatly by being somewhat to the left of centre – again with one, the Guardian, being seen as slightly more left-wing than the other. The term ‘Guardian-reader’ is often used as shorthand for a woolly, lefty, politically correct, knit-your-own-tofu sort of person. This is England, though, so none of these political positions is in any way extreme; indeed, the differences may be hard to discern unless you are English and familiar with all the subtle nuances. The English do not like extremism, in politics or any other sphere: apart from anything else, political extremists and fanatics, whether on the right or the left, invariably break the all-important English humour rules, particularly the Importance of Not Being Earnest rule. Among their many other sins, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Franco were not noted for their use of the understatement. No such totalitarian leaders would ever stand a chance in England: even leaving aside their ethical shortcomings, they would be rejected immediately for taking themselves too seriously. George Orwell, for once, was wrong: 1984 would be unlikely to happen in England; our response to Big Brother (the original, not the television programme) would be ‘Oh, come off it!’ and a lot of
mockery. This is effectively what happened to our own would-be fascist leader Oswald Mosley – the vast majority simply found him ridiculous and treated him as a pathetic joke.

  The people who read the broadsheets occasionally lower their printed barrier signals to look down their noses at those who read the tabloids. When broadsheet readers complain about the awfulness of ‘the press’, which they do constantly, they usually mean the tabloids.

  A MORI survey found that more people are ‘dissatisfied’ than ‘satisfied’ with our national press, but the margin was quite small, and, the researchers pointed out, ‘filled with an irony’. The balance against the press was tipped by broadsheet readers (the minority), who are much more likely to say they are ‘dissatisfied’ with our national press than tabloid readers (the majority). Broadsheet readers are unlikely to be dissatisfied with the papers they actually buy, say the MORI researchers, so they are presumably expressing dissatisfaction with newspapers they do not read. The press as a whole is condemned by ‘people who don’t actually read what they take exception to!’ Fair point. The English love to complain, and the English educated classes do have a tendency to complain noisily about matters of which they have little or no knowledge. But I would hazard a guess that the broadsheet readers are in fact quite likely to be expressing dissatisfaction with the papers they do read, as well as the ones they don’t. Just because the English buy something, it doesn’t follow that we actually like it, or are even ‘satisfied’ with it, and it certainly doesn’t mean we won’t moan and complain about it. Given an opportunity for a pointless whinge – such as a MORI researcher showing interest in our opinions – we will complain about pretty much anything.