Meanwhile, the stand-up comedian Eddie Izzard had a less welcoming time of it, despite being one of the most original comic talents Britain has produced, because he genuinely is a transvestite, not a man pretending to be a woman for laughs. So while it is undoubtedly true that the Brits love a cross-dresser, it has more to do with the gigglesome naughtiness than it is proof that they are a nation of fey intellectuals who only come out of their shells in drag.
WHAT TO SAY (WHEN SOMEONE IN A PANTOMIME SAYS, “OH, YES, HE IS”): “Oh, no, he isn’t!”
WHAT NOT TO SAY: “Whoa! Is that chick a dude? I’m so outta here.”
Movie 1: The Great Escape
If ever there was a film that illustrated the nature of the special relationship between the UK and United States it’s The Great Escape. It’s a film that makes free with national stereotypes in a time of war. There’s a dour Scot who enjoys a drink, a starchy Englishman with a duty to serve, a few officious German officers with no sense of humour, and a great big Hollywood star who can’t even be a prisoner of war without getting all rule-breaking maverick about it.
In fact, the more times I’ve watched The Great Escape, the more ludicrous Steve McQueen’s antics become. While everyone else in the movie is playing the frustrations and camaraderie of the wartime internees with admirable restraint, quietly digging their tunnels and preparing to make a run for it, McQueen struts and preens, waving his American clothes and his American attitude—and, most baffling of all, his American baseball and catcher’s mitt—in the faces of his captors, and not getting taken out behind the latrines and shot even once.
Even when he’s been caught trying to escape and taken to the cooler to spend some time in isolation, someone lobs him that ball and glove and he is somehow allowed to play with them defiantly while the guards openly fail to mask their irritation at the noise. That not one of them considers just taking the sports equipment off the prisoner and putting it in the bin serves as a partial explanation as to why they also fail to spot the massive tunnels the prisoners are digging under the camp either until it’s too late to do anything about it. The Germans in the movies may be officious, but they’re not very bright.
McQueen’s not even the only American actor in the camp. James Garner is there; so is James Coburn; and they’re not arsing about like he is. They don’t seem to require any special sporting supplies and appear fairly keen to blend in with their surroundings, especially once they’ve managed to escape. Steve merely pinches a motorbike, drives it around until he is spotted, then starts trying to jump over the border into Switzerland in broad daylight. Only his own poor skills as a stunt rider let him down in the end, and he’s returned to the cooler with that bloody glove and ball, while pretty much all the other escapees that the Germans managed to apprehend are just taken to a field and gunned down.
Now, the important thing to bear in mind about all this is that the reason I, and millions like me, can pull details like this out of my head is that I’ve seen The Great Escape many, many times. It’s a film that rewards repeat viewings, with an abundance of terrific individual performances that tell an important story with appropriate levels of jeopardy and black humour.
Brits adore The Great Escape. They love the central theme of the movie, which is all about an oddball collection of men with unique skills coming together to overcome a common foe, a bit like The A-Team but bigger and far less daft. They love that it is loosely based on a real escape, from Stalag Luft III in what is now Żagań, Poland, although only a few of the characters are recognizable from actual people and certainly no one escaped on a motorbike. And they love the idea that you can’t keep British people down, that native cunning, compassion for your fellow man and a bone-deep disregard for authority are all one requires in any situation, no matter how desperate.
And they love the theme tune too. Being a nation that still wears the winning of World War II with a sense of personal triumph, the Brits still love nothing more than to take to the football stadiums of the world, especially when England is playing a game against Germany, and sing the jaunty theme music to the film. They may even carry drums and trumpets in order to play it, but they don’t have to be there. The melody is whistled in the film—the tune is pitched somewhere between “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” and a military cadence—and whistled in real life too.
In a sense, it’s a film in which a lot of people fail to get what they want, and pay a high price for even trying, but that’s something that suits the British self-image too. What happens to those men, even though it has been dramatized out of its original context, is far closer to Shakespeare’s “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers” than anything that happens to the cocky guy with the ball and glove.
WHAT TO SAY: “Damn it! Don’t say ‘thank you’, Mac!”
WHAT NOT TO SAY: “Surely the dirt from the tunnels would have made their exercise yard a foot taller by the time they finished.”
Cocking a Snook
You can’t go around telling everyone that you live in a rigid, class-bound society in which reserve and manners are prized above all things and not expect a little kickback from time to time. That’s just human nature. The great thing about British culture is that everyone, from street drunk to lord of the manor, is aware of this tension, and what’s more, they know exactly what to do to relieve it.
In a totalitarian society where decorum takes second place to authority, a thumbed nose is a dangerous thing, risking the safety of both thumb and nose. But if you can structure things in such a way that it is possible to demonstrate leadership by proving you can take a joke, this can act as a social safety valve. So all figures of authority will be tested at some point using the ritual of cocking a snook, otherwise known as taking the piss, and they had better be able to deal with it or risk an open mutiny. In fact, all potential Captain Blighs should take note: if you can handle being ribbed, you’re all right, and if you also get a round in, you’re practically a local hero. That’s your real Bounty, right there.
A ripe raspberry in the face of those in authority shows the influence of the Shakespearean fool in action: a person of low status speaking truth to power in a colourful, entertaining way. Most stand-up comedians use this very principle, even when mocking their own audience. And the most potent snook-cocking gesture is the V sign, a ripe two-fingered salute with the palm facing the giver (always the other way around from Ringo Starr, please; we’re not spreading peace and love here), as delivered to perfection by yobbish kids telling their elders and betters to eff off.
An unruly youth in action.
It’s a step to one side from the downright provocative—and therefore drearily obvious—single digit, and it calls to mind cheeky young whippersnappers from the Artful Dodger to Johnny Rotten and is used by people in all walks of life, in varying degrees of seriousness. It could be the comedian Rik Mayall playing the would-be street poet and anarchist Rik in TV’s The Young Ones (and getting his Vs all arse-about-face) or the moment in June 2014 when Baroness Trumpington (a real person) flicked the Vs at Lord King (a real lord) in the House of Lords (not a real house). A most regally cocked snook indeed.
Call it a hangover from the feudal system, call it a continuation of the constant ribbing among the gang of mates at the building site or the pub, each with a nickname he violently detests (see: Banter), call it the spirit of Hogarth reborn or the spirit of punk undead, but there is nothing the Brits love like cutting someone lofty down to size. Victoria and David Beckham sitting on thrones at their wedding? Do me a favour. Michael Jackson floating a statue of himself down the Thames? Give it a rest.
When David Blaine came to London in 2003, his plan was to spend forty-four days suspended in a fish tank on a string. It was a feat of endurance that would have been impressive had it not been so palpably unnecessary and yet desperate to appear important. Never has there been a more literal illustration of the phrase “getting above his station”—London Bridge, if you’re wondering—than this particular stunt,
and Blaine had already blotted his copybook by appearing in a notorious British TV interview in which he said and did almost nothing, save for showing an eye drawn on the palm of one hand. Consequently, while he starved himself for the benefit of the world’s media, British wags were attaching burgers and sausages to remote-controlled aircraft, to torment him. They also pelted his Perspex box with eggs and fish and chips and used it as target practice for golf balls.
When presented with a similarly messianic Michael Jackson pretending to heal the sick and cure the lame as part of his performance at the 1996 Brit Awards, Jarvis Cocker of the band Pulp climbed onstage, waggled his bum and flicked the Vs a bit, and was promptly carted off by the police (and quietly released the next day because interrupting pop stars is not illegal). He remains a national hero to this day.
Some impudences are more serious in intent, but still essentially playful in delivery. When Margaret Thatcher died in 2013, some Brits, who weren’t fans, rushed to download the song “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” from The Wizard of Oz to try to get it to number one in the charts, undercutting the seriousness and reverence with which the news had been announced. This rank insubordination caused an angry counterreaction from her admirers, not least those who had been trying to be solemn in the first place. It was quite a to-do.
Even Rik Mayall didn’t manage to escape a similar dig in the ribs when he died a year later, although as an arch-snook-cocker his was more of a salute than an attack. Rather than creating a solemn sendoff, some bright spark put up a blue commemorative plaque in Hammersmith, where the opening credits of his slapstick TV show Bottom had been filmed, featuring a prominent scene of argy-bargy with his comic partner Adrian Edmondson.
It read: “Rik Mayall—1958–2014—punched his friend in the balls near this spot.”
WHAT TO SAY: “Oi, Granddad! Up yours!”
WHAT NOT TO SAY: “I say, do you mind? Get out of my way, you frightful oik.”
Dancing
There’s no stratum of British society in which dancing does not have its place. Whether it’s the full Swan Lake at the English National Ballet or kids at a birthday party doing the Pizza Hut song while playing musical bumps, dancing is integral to all forms of social conduct: more so than sports, more so than any other branch of the arts. The British love of cutting a rug goes back generations.
There are the morris men, traditional dancers who dress in white and wear bells on their shins and perform time-strengthened choreography that may be as much as five hundred years old. Their dances might occasionally seem out of step with flint-eyed popular culture but the tradition has lasted (and it continues to thrive) for so long that even the origin of the name isn’t clear. Some say it’s derived from “Moorish” dancing—which sounds plausible but also carries the faint echo of someone squealing “Hey! Look at me! I’m all foreign!” while dancing about—and there is certainly a whiff of exotic logic to proceedings. There is even some blackening of faces in a few of the older traditions—albeit without any explicitly racial context, damning or otherwise—but, as with anything that old, the true intentions behind these traditions have long since vanished, leaving centuries of eager conjecture behind.
There’s a lot of history, far too much to do justice to in one hit, especially with the different regional varieties and traditions involved, including bells and sticks and a pig’s bladder and swords and a fool and a beast and solo dances and even a competitive dance to win the favor of a “maiden” (sometimes a man dressed as a woman, sometimes not). Viewed from the outside, it’s all a delightful muddle, but one that has clearly been meticulously organized.
Over the years, the morris men have had to clear a space next to the break-dancers, street dancers, free-runners and parkour enthusiasts, not to mention those buskers who paint themselves silver and pretend to be statues. Taking your moves out onto the streets has never been more popular, except you’re far more likely to see genuine street dancers at a properly organized competition or flashmob than popping the caterpillar on an unfolded cardboard box in the shopping precinct. As with all aspects of hip-hop culture, the Brits are well represented with b-boys and b-girls, and specialist crews battle for supremacy with other crews from all over the world. There are beginners’ street-dance and breakdancing sessions all over the country, and kids’ movies are riddled with wisecracking urchins who can bust a move in order to settle an argument.
This isn’t a recent development; the relationship between Brits and black pop culture has been one of worship and curation for decades. The 1960s mods may be remembered as devotees of the Who, but it was the sweet grooves of Motown, Jamaican ska and soul that really oiled their Vespas, and they would habitually load up on pills and dance all night to the latest releases from Detroit, Kingston and Memphis. A few years later, this utter devotion to ‘60s soul would create its own dance scene in the clubs of northern England, Scotland and Wales; a scene of such mythical potency the music itself was corralled in its name. Northern soul was, on the face of it, just a bunch of people getting together to have a bop to some old records, but it carried rules and expectations and one-upmanship and a kind of enviably fierce passion—there were badges with a clenched fist on them and the slogan “Keep the Faith”, for example. You took certain shoes to dance in, the floor would be covered in talcum powder to facilitate spins and slides, and the dancers would embark on a display of competitive peacocking of legendary proportion.
This set the template for every dance culture since—be it disco, hip-hop, electro, house, acid house, techno, UK garage or beyond—there are experts, there are hedonists and there are weekend ravers, and everyone gets together to sweat their cares away until dawn. Other, older forms of dancing have had their moments of extreme popularity, like Brazilian samba dancing, which has livened up many a wet parade through the streets of provincial towns. Then there are Irish ceilidhs, Latin American salsa nights and fitness dances like Zumba. And that’s before we even mention Strictly Come Dancing.
For the past handful of years the autumn television schedules have seen a showbiz standoff between ITV’s The X Factor (singing, some dancing) and the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing (dancing, obviously). The latter is the sequel to the long-running ballroom show Come Dancing, which was relaunched and renamed in tribute to the Baz Luhrmann film Strictly Ballroom.
These relatively archaic references are almost entirely lost in popular culture, and now the name makes absolutely no sense, especially when you consider the British love of both innuendo and pedantry—Strictly Famous People Dancing would at least be accurate—but it is an astonishingly popular show, so no one appears to have been put off. And as proof of its enduring influence, enrolment for ballroom dancing classes has increased dramatically since the show began in 2004.
Not that this endless carnival of dance-floor excellence would stop British dads from putting a tie around the head—sweatband style—and doing that embarrassing dance to old ska records at your cousin’s wedding, but that’s dads for you.
WHAT TO SAY TO A DJ: “Of course, I was into this tune before it was cool.”
WHAT NOT TO SAY TO A DJ: “Haven’t you got any proper music?”
The NHS
To put it bluntly, the only reason there is a National Health Service is because of the Second World War. With families giving up their husbands and sons and homes, sending their children off to live with strangers in the countryside, and pulling together to try to fend off the unpleasant attentions of the German army, there was no possibility that society would simply go back to the way it was once the fighting had ceased. Everyone played a part in the war effort, and in the immediate aftermath everyone would continue to play a part in pulling Britain back together.
That’s the only applicable lens through which to view the NHS. It’s not a hallmark of a socialist state; it’s the reward for a country that made a supreme effort to unite—from all sides of the political spectrum—in order to prevent invasion and then had to keep pulling together once the thr
eat had gone, because too many previously closed doors had been blown open. Sometimes literally.
That’s not to say it was welcomed with open arms when it started or that it continues to operate free from criticism now. There will always be British people who are vehemently opposed to the idea of a national health service, who point out that it is one of the largest employers of people in the whole world, who maintain that nationalized industries breed inefficiency in a way that would never be acceptable to privatized firms handling the same workload, and who complain that the service is abused by people who won’t take care of themselves and should not be funded by hardworking taxpayers.
Moaning about the NHS is definitely a thing Brits like, but that’s basic human nature when presented with something that appears to be too good to be true: “Universal health care with no financial obligation? Ranked number one in the world* and funded by the state? But . . . but . . . I didn’t get you anything except these meagre taxes and National Insurance contributions. I feel a fool.”
Or to put it another way, they moan about the NHS in the same way people moan about overbearing parents or a needy best friend. The love remains unstated because it’s the most obvious, least interesting thing to comment upon. But if the NHS is threatened, that’s when the rows break out. Those arguments about employment and efficiency became pretty heated, especially when it started to look like private firms had secured NHS contracts to do, in effect, a worse job for the same money. Public money. And the last few years have seen the heat go up a notch, as the media narrative got stuck on austerity and then went looking for spongers to attack. That’s individual spongers from a poor background, you understand, not those private firms.
Stuff Brits Like Page 6
