#3 Sporting Failure

The British  [well the English!] claim to have invented many of the great sports played across the globe. Football, cricket, tennis, motor racing and golf to name but five. So the question has to be asked, why aren’t we any good at any of them?

Most of the iconic images of British sport are in the same vein as the one of Gazza on the left, and they all have one thing in common. Failure at the highest level.

Failure is so deeply ingrained in the mind of  British sportsmen that it must come as second nature.  But hey, never mind, being a loser at least gives you a chance of winning the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award!  For example, Nigel Mansell won it after failing to win the 1986 Formula One World Championship, and Nigel doesn’t even have a personality! Andy Murray must surely be knocking on the door this year after once again choking in a Grand Slam. Goodbye “Henman Hill”, hello “Murray Mount” – the theatre of broken dreams!

Ironically, those British sportsmen who are successful, such as multiple champion jockey AP McCoy and darting genius Phil Taylor, go largely unrecognised. Maybe if McCoy had fallen off Don’t Push It on the run in of this years Grand National he could have been a genuine threat to Andy Murray in this years losers celebration in December?

#2 Foreigners

How many times have you heard your Dad or other,  older, family member moaning about “foreigners taking our jobs” and waxing lyrical about Enoch  “If only they’d listened to him” Powell?

British people love moaning about foreigners. They are to blame for all the things wrong with this country. Without foreigners there would be 100% employment for British people. If we ‘sent them all home’ then there wouldn’t be such a burden on the NHS. They get dole money and houses dished out as soon as they illegally enter the country don’t they? They are responsible for nearly all crime in the UK too apparently!

Truth is that “foreigners” have been here as long as the so-called indigenous Briton. It’s just that British people need scapegoats for their own shortcomings. Can you imagine a day where you don’t interact with someone from another country or background?

Tomorrow why not ask your dad how ‘bloody foreigners’ have ruined his day as he sits at the kitchen table eating his Indian meal while reading the paper that he bought from the Asian corner shop? Then ask him if he’d work on Christmas day too. The foreigners round here do.

#1 The Weather

How many times have you been sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, or aboard the bus – praying that nobody comes and sits next to you – when the ice is broken by a fellow British person who, like you, didn’t really want to chat to anyone but couldn’t handle the uncomfortable silence? Invariably the opening gambit will be something along the lines of “Nice weather for the time of year isn’t it?”  or “It looks like it’s going to rain…” An obsession with the weather seems inherent in all British people. It’s either too hot, too cold, too windy or too wet. It’s always nicer weather abroad, and the summers were always longer and hotter when you were a kid.

British people should be happy to have such unpredictable and changeable weather. A day at the seaside isn’t complete without an impromptu rainstorm to soak your fish and chips, or gale force gusts that blow up Gran’s skirt and expose her huge knickers (much to the entertainment of the children!).  Why do you think cricket matches are scheduled to last the best part of a week? If Britain had tropical weather all year round then where would the fun be in having a pie and a pint round a roaring fire in your local pub? Do we really want a repeat of the drought of 1976? (for those too young to remember, the summer of ’76 was great as a child. It was illegal to have a bath, making every snotty kid in Britain very happy for a few months).

Let’s embrace the British weather. Without it we may find ourselves in an unwanted situation where strangers in doctor’s waiting rooms open conversations with lines like “Are you here to have your piles injected?”