I’ve been abroad for several weeks now, primarily among Americans, and this has resulted in the wrenching open of my eyes to the bizarre, unique paradox that is the British stereotype. ‘You’re so British!’ they’ll say as I correct them on a fine grammar point. ‘You’re so British!’ they’ll say, as I finish my eighth pint in six minutes.
There are two key British stereotypes, you see. There is the prim and proper, sensible and upstanding, tea-drinking Telegraph reader. The Kinks’ Well Respected Man, that person who complains in a restaurant when they aren’t quite satisfied with their meal. The embodiment of ‘Very British Problems’; a perennial wearer of Christmas jumpers who probably also harbours a secret yearning for the days when Africans were referred to as ‘barbarians’. The kind of person who keeps a Winston Churchill commemorative plate in their wardrobe for ‘special occasions’ and knows all of Prince George’s middle names.
This is, in the minds of so many unsuspecting Americans, the mold for all Britons, the standard to which we hold ourselves, the ultimate pinnacle of English social achievement. But those people are wrong, and they find this out, in a baptism of fire, when they encounter the second British stereotype. And this happens, for so many unfortunate victims of fate, when they cross paths for the first time with the quintessentially British horror show that is the stag party. Watch the look on the Bostonian tourist’s face change as the groom approaches, white Ralph Lauren shirt torn open and smeared with vomit, his carefully constructed comb-over strewn across his pallid face as he throws back his head and screams “THERE WERE TEN GERMAN BOMBERS IN THE AIR!’
Shock turns to panic on the American’s face, a hot mix of terror and disgust, made ever worse by the dawning realisation that they were wrong. British people aren’t like Basil Brush at all. They are monsters, twisted monsters. The stag party draws closer. The American stands there, dumbstruck in his quarter-length shorts and baseball cap, paralysed by confusion. His friend tries to drag him away; stragglers in the face of a swarm of undead. Targets. The horde draws closer, with the best man at the fore, one bottle of fosters in each hand, arms spread wide, spittle flying from his lips as he yells out, with the urgency and passion of a dying warrior:
“Mate, where’s the nearest kebab shop?”
The American comes to his senses. He jerks into action, stumbling to safety in the last remaining second, as the party sweeps by like the Wildebeest from The Lion King; all twelve of them engaged in a haunting chorus of ‘Rule Britannia’ as they pour into a McDonald’s and try to order beers. It’s 5PM.
Our American friend will live to see another day, but the illusion, for him, has been shattered forever. He has been down the Rabbit Hole; he has seen through the looking-glass, and his life will never again be the same.
Herein lies the complexity of stereotypical Britishness, the confounding paradox that eternally defines the Brit on the world stage, the source of endless shock and horror for those of other nationalities as their chosen presupposition is shattered before their eyes.
Be aware, naïve reader. You have been warned.
Louis Moran 