We’re British, Innit: An Irreverent A to Z of All Things British

Britain is littered with glorious examples of historical architecture, from the spectacular St Paul’s dome by Christopher Wren to the innovation of Charles Rennie Mackintosh as well as a historical array that stretches from Tudor houses to spectacular statement buildings by Norman Foster or Richard Rogers. When it comes to our homes, things are a little less exciting. The fact that we call anything designed after 1900 ‘modern’ could explain our attitude, as does the realisation that most new houses are some kind of Tudor-Georgian-Victorian cocktail, with windows about the size of the defensive arrow slits in old castles. Ask most Britons what they think ‘contemporary home design’ is and they will probably tell you it is a house that comes with the satellite dish already installed.

ARGOS (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

The rich have Harrods and Harvey Nichols, the middle class have Habitat and John Lewis and the poor have Argos, which combines low prices, high security and tacky jewellery under one enormous roof. You can buy your Reebok Classics, Nike tracksuit, sovereign ring (see sovereign rings) and pay-as-you- go mobile at Argos, as well as picking up a plasma screen and a PlayStation 3. In fact, if the store were to branch out into booze, fags and a bit of weed then there really would be no need for Britain’s underclass to shop anywhere else. In fact, if we just built an Argos into the middle of every new estate, put high fences around the perimeter…sorry, where was I? Oh yes, they have a strange system of shopping, whereby you have to select your item from an in-store catalogue, pay at a till and then collect your goods elsewhere in the store. A bit like internet shopping without the internet and with more people in Burberry baseball caps (see burberry) smoking on your way in.

ARISTOCRACY (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

This thoroughbred strand of our society is born to lead, rule and have no chin. The chin was deliberately bred out of the class when it was found to inhibit correct soup eating, shouting ‘yah’ really loudly and certain secret aristocratic sex rituals, the likes of which we can only imagine. The chin also stops the nose being able to get quite so close to the cocaine, for a clean, mess-free snort. Previously entitled to rule via hereditary seats in the House of Lords, the old aristocracy is giving way to a new financial aristocracy who buy their seats in the new ‘more democratic’ upper house. This leaves the old aristocracy more time to murder nannies, shoot stuff and drive around their land wearing tweed (see harris tweed).

ASBOS (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

The Antisocial Behaviour Order is not, as some think, a court order that means you must behave in an antisocial manner, like some magistrate-lead game of Simon Says. Instead, it is an order of merit awarded to those who have proven great skill in the pursuit of being an absolute twat. As sought after as a place on the New Year’s Honours list or a military decoration, the ASBO is a sign you have arrived and done great works among your community, whether it be playing the same Kylie record over and over at ear-splitting volume or punching out anyone who looks at you slightly askance. Winners of ASBOs are given special privileges, which means that they do not have to work ever again. Employers are instructed to not take them on, even if they beg, as their place in society is beyond mere employment.

AUTUMNWATCH/SPRINGWATCH (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

An orgy of frolicking, foraging and fornication, this hidden camera television show lets us see what our wonderful wildlife is getting up to when we are off at work or tucked up in bed. This is fairly passable if you catch it once while eating your dinner from a tray on your knees, but watch it more than once and you may find yourself caring more about a family of ducks than is actually healthy for a sane adult. The topic is interesting though, so what may liven things up is having former Goodie Bill Oddie trade jobs with investigative blowhard Donal McIntyre. That way McIntyre can report on the problems of violence among gangs of blackbirds while Oddie can hole up in a caravan on a Leeds housing estate, commentating on feral youth and the disintegration of society. ‘Aw, look. Here comes one of our crackheads, I think…yes, it’s Dean and is that Tracy with him? Yes it is, and she is carrying their new crack baby. Now over to Kate, who has just caught a lovely happy slapping in Aberdeen.’

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BADGERS (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

Depending upon your point of view, these are either evil tuberculosis-spreading vermin that would eat a baby given half a chance or they are just bizarrely prehistoric-looking creatures that snuffle around woodlands at night eating worms. Some say that they could be as intelligent as dolphins, but as scientists traditionally like to have an early night no one has yet been able to put these claims to the test. Badger-baiting is a popular pursuit among inbred rural folk, who gather around badger setts shouting insults like ‘Come on then, stripey!’ before fleeing into the night.

BAKED BEANS (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

An essential part of the fried breakfast (be it the English, Scots, Welsh or Northern Irish variation), baked beans are very much a national favourite, so much so that supermarkets are often willing to sell them at a loss just to get customers in to their stores. They know that we cannot resist a can of beans for 7p, even if we know they are the ones scraped from the remains of truckers’ breakfasts at transport cafés on the M6. Also eaten on toast, jacket potatoes or with chips, baked beans are worth £300 million in sales per year in the UK. The cost in environmental terms of our taste for the saucy haricot beans is still to be measured, with invisible methane clouds said to hang over many greasy spoon cafés (see greasy spoons) and most building sites.

BANDSTANDS (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

The discarded condoms, the crushed cans of lager and the remains of a joint on the floor: nothing says relic of an age gone by like a bandstand. These ornate structures were built in our town parks and on cliff tops, mostly during the Edwardian and Victorian era, to provide a focal point for musical appreciation by the masses. Sadly, though, the masses discovered Radio 1, record players and, eventually, MP3 players, all of which left the bandstand to the winos, hoodies (see hoodies) and skateboarders. Some bandstands have enjoyed a revival of late, thanks mostly to local historical organisations.

BANGERS AND MASH (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

Like it’s cousin, pie and mash, this traditional dish of sausages and mashed potato ensures that every Briton gets the necessary combination of protein and carbohydrate without too much excess of chewing or worry about what kind of organs lie within the meaty part of the meal. Often served with onion gravy and a side serving of English mustard, bangers and mash is a staple dish in many pubs. If the pub you are in is a gastropub then you will be told all about the provenance of the sausages as well as the name of the farmer who grew the spuds. You will then be charged £12.95. Bangers are so called because they are fat sausages that are likely to split open with a bang as they are cooked. You can always tell a good banger chef by his terrible complexion, which should be marked by hundreds of splashes of scalding hot fat emanating from exploding sausages.

BATHS (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

One thing that we took from the Roman invasion was the enjoyment of baths, so much so that a home is now considered incomplete without one. Showers are all very well to use on a holiday abroad, but our economy relies upon the vast range of products we use to spice up the time we spend wallowing in our own filth and dead skin, from bath salts and bubble bath to scented candles and portable radios. Many Brits feel so at home in the bath they choose to end their life in it, often committing suicide upon hearing their football team’s result on the radio or after calculating how much in debt they are due to all the money they have spent on scented candles and bath oils.

BEACH HUTS (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

While our Mediterranean cousins simply take a G-string and some Factor 30 to the beach, we Brits have all manner of stuff we need to carry with us, from lilos to gas stoves and kettles. To save carrying this on every trip, and to provide somewhere to shelter from the inevitable rain, we have the beach hut, which is nothing more than a simple promenade-based shed. But in recent years these have become prime slices of real estate, with a beach hut in Southwold, Suffolk costing about the same as a commuter- belt terrace. Artist Tracey Emin famously sold her Whitstable beach hut to art collector Charles Saatchi for £75,000, though he didn’t even get a spot on the promenade or a two-man dinghy included in the price.

THE BEATLES (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

Possibly our finest export product of all time, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr put British culture at the top of the tree when they took the world by storm in the 1960s with their Liverpudlian accents and mop-like hair. Lennon outraged Americans by proclaiming the band to be bigger than Jesus, a statement that, ironically, lead to huge record sales as everyone rushed out to buy Beatles albums to burn. God got his own back on the band, though, by having Lennon gunned down in New York, morphing Harrison into a hippie bore and making Starr best remembered as the voice of Thomas the Tank Engine. Saving most of his ire for McCartney, God created the Frog Chorus and Heather Mills, knowing that Paul could not weather the embarrassment of both.

BED AND BREAKFAST (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

Where you see these words outside a hotel you know that you are guaranteed two things. These things are a bed and a breakfast. What they will be like is anyone’s guess, but by law you will be obliged to say ‘Lovely, thanks’ when asked by the proprietor how you found either. Many B&Bs have modernised in recent years, with most installing indoor toilet facilities and ceasing the morning ceremony of slopping out. Others are said to have done some light dusting. Breakfast food will have carefully been selected from a vast array of local suppliers, though this is mostly because the eggs are cheapest at Asda, the bacon at Lidl and the sausages at Iceland (see iceland). Tinned plum tomatoes are a compulsory part of the breakfast, even though no one has used them in this way at home since 1974.

BEEFEATERS (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

These distinctively attired guards at the Tower of London (see tower of london) have the official name of Yeomen Warders, but they are much better known as Beefeaters by the tourists who photograph them. The Yeomen live in the Tower grounds with their families and some are responsible for the welfare of the Tower’s ravens which, legend tells us, protect the landmark. The name Beefeater is thought to have come from the fact that their duties afforded them a generous amount of meat from the king’s table back in the fifteenth century, when they would have first been guarding the Tower. This link with meat lead to the name and likeness of a Beefeater to be used by a chain of grill restaurants, which serve steaks and fried chicken but are forbidden from serving raven.

BINGE DRINKING (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

What government ministers call ‘a binge-drinking crisis’ many of us simply call ‘Friday night’. For generations the British have lived with licensing laws that were designed to make sure World War I munitions workers didn’t roll up drunk each morning, which meant that we all drank steadily until about 10.30 pm and then tried to cram in another three pints before closing time at 11 pm. This bred a nation of drinkers who saw drunkenness as a guilty pleasure and downing pint after pint as two fingers up to the ruling classes. With the introduction of longer licensing hours, stronger beer, alcopops (see alcopops) and the chance to be on TV shows like PissedPeople Throwing Up 2, the problem of binge drinking has become more visible. Back in the day, six pints of mild would make you want a nice sit down and possibly a pickled egg. But modern industrial-strength chemical lagers and energy drinks mean that those coming out of the pubs are wide awake and have energy to burn, which leads to fights. The artificial colours used in curry house favourites and kebab shop chilli sauce just add to drunken hyperactivity. The patron saint of binge drinkers is Kerry Katona. Legend says that if you see her face in the bottom of your glass then you will make it safely home and not be sick on your shoes.

BISTO (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

There is no British food, from kippers to haggis (see haggis), which cannot be improved immeasurably by the addition of gravy. The basis of good gravy is Bisto gravy browning, though some lazy types do prefer the instant gravy mixes offered by the same manufacturer. Bisto did swear by its slogan ‘Aah, Bisto’ for some years, which was supposed to signify the olfactory joy of catching the scent of its gravy. This was later abandoned, however, when it became clear that the slogan was what school children were saying to one another when they had produced a particularly pleasing and pungent fart.

BLANKET (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

No picnic, car journey or bed and breakfast stay is truly complete without the blanket. This sometimes itchy sign of our defiance of all things European is our woollen riposte to that foreign invader the continental quilt, the very name of which implies a deep distrust. What other piece of knitwear could serve as lunch table, be used to warm a grandmother’s knees and provide your bedding? We certainly didn’t build an empire toting around something stuffed with goose feathers, and which required a ‘tog rating’, whatever that is.

BLITZ SPIRIT (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

Signifying our ability to simply get on with things under the most trying of circumstances, this term comes from our stoicism during the bombing raids of World War II, especially those in 1940/41. As a nation on and under fire we pulled together, watched each other’s back and, most importantly, made sure that everyone had a cup of tea on the go at all times. Filmmaker Humphrey Jennings directed a short film at the time called London Can Take It, encouraging unity and a general ‘Is that the best you’ve got/you call those bombs?’ attitude from the populace (see stiff upper lip). The call for the Blitz Spirit is often made in times of crisis, such as the July 2005 London bombing campaign, though some believe that this community ideal cannot be properly attained without the mass ingestion of powdered egg.

BLUE PETER (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

Very much the official BBC view of how children should be seen, Blue Peter has been an institution of British broadcasting since 1958. The show has always represented an idealised middle-class view of childhood, with its repertoire of craft activities, good works, animal husbandry and nature study. This all went along jolly nicely until the ITV network started to show Magpie in 1968, a programme that, if some middle-class parents were to be believed (see class), was tantamount to Satanism. Magpie presenters just lolled around in a stupor, urging viewers to attack the Blue Peter garden, plant Sherbet Dib-Dabs on the BBC show’s presenters and make them senselessly rig competitions to decide the names of pets. But it was Blue Peter’s optimistic altruism that dealt the show’s ethics one of its greatest blows when in 1981 it broadcast a short film about cerebral-palsy sufferer Joey Deacon. Within days, Joey mania had spread across the country, with children imitating Deacon’s guttural attempts at speech and labelling anyone weak or different as a ‘Joey’. The slang term persists to this day.

BLYTON, ENID (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

With hundreds of books written and hundreds of millions sold, Enid Blyton is probably Britain’s best loved and most read author. Her writing may be considered dated and restricted, as well as occasionally racist and sexist, but you can be sure that more Britons have read her work for pleasure than have ever opened up those leather- bound Complete Works of Shakespeare (see shakespeare, william) that languish on so many shelves. The Noddy stories are still extremely popular in book form and on television (though now stripped of the golliwogs), but it is the Famous Five and Secret Seven series that are the archetypal Blyton books that we Brits have a fondness for. These promise adventure, secret hideaways, idyllic childhoods, swarthy strangers and lashings of ginger beer once the mystery is solved. Blyton claimed to have written entirely from her imagination, though if you consider the bizarrely fantastical content of some of her fantasy stories like Folk of the Faraway Tree alongside the fact that she wrote as many as 10,000 words per day then you could be forgiven for wondering what the hell she was putting in her tea.

BOAT RACE (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

Ostensibly a simple rowing race between two universities (see oxbridge), this contest somehow clambered its way up the roster of sporting events of national importance to sit alongside the Grand National and the FA Cup Finals and became a regularly televised spectacle. The first race between Cambridge and Oxford universities’ boat clubs was in 1829, with both teams being named ‘blues’ after the colour of their blood. The race is from Putney to Mortlake, which is 4 miles and 347 yards. The point of the race, for the general public at least, is that at least one of the boats should sink, though this has not happened in the actual race since 1978, when the light blues of Cambridge went under.

BOND, JAMES (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

The dashing MI6/Secret Intelligence Service agent, created by writer Ian Fleming in 1952, was named after the author of a book about birds he happened to have at his Caribbean home. The first Bond novel was 1953’s Casino Royale, with the huge success of the series dictating that they be turned into films. The Bond film has been a hugely successful franchise since Sean Connery first starred in Dr. No in 1962, though Fleming himself saw actor David Niven as more the archetype of 007. Speculation over who the next actor to play Bond will be always makes for a large number of column inches in the press, with Daniel Craig being the current incumbent. Bond is known for his love of fast cars, fast women and nifty gadgets. The Aston Martin DB5 is the classic Bond car, though the luxury motor manufacturers have never thought to market a model with a working ejector seat. The Bond film is always a favourite on television at Christmas: their simple plots and the likelihood that they will be repeated mean that even the most inebriated, unconscious member of the family can follow the story-line.

BOUDICA (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

Queen of the Iceni people in the east of England at the time of the Roman invasion, Boudica (or Boudicca or Boadicea) was one of the most fierce and fearless British women of all time: she was even scarier than a night out with Scary Spice, Pat Butcher and Anne Robinson. Boudica is famed for taking on the Roman forces and destroying Colchester, St Albans and the fledgling city of London, leading a rebel army in a fit of ransacking and destruction not seen on a similar scale until closing time on Oliver Reed’s stag night (see stag nights). Boudica was eventually defeated somewhere in the Midlands around 61 AD, though not before thousands on both sides had died. Fatalities are thought to have been fewer on Reed’s stag night, though no accurate records for casualties on either historic occasion are available.

BOWLER HATS (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

For around 100 years from its invention in 1850, the bowler was the dominant British hat, transcending class headwear rules and leaving an enduring image of the Brit as bowler- hatted. The hard felt hat was designed by James and George Lock and manufactured by the Bowler family milliners for the Earl of Leicester. The Bowler was initially used as a riding hat, though it soon became popular with bankers and civil servants, offering a halfway house between the top hat and the flat cap. The Bowler was later adopted by some manual workers, who prized its protective raised dome. It has largely fallen out of fashion now, though it did enjoy a resurgence in the late 1960s, thanks to the film A Clockwork Orange. This brief revival was most confusing, as you couldn’t tell who was a slightly eccentric outmoded banker and who was a psychotic film fanatic bent on a bit of the old ultraviolence.

BOXING DAY (#ulink_a39a12c5-7827-56f9-911e-ccdc43741933)

While the rest of the (Christian) world gets on with life as normal from about 5 pm on Christmas Day, we draw the whole thing out by adding Boxing Day on 26 December. The day is said to be when servants were given their ‘Christmas box’, usually some kind of bonus, by their employer, though its name may also be derived from this being the day when drunk or hungover members of the aristocracy were most likely to beat (or ‘box’) their charges. This tradition of fisticuffs on Boxing Day was continued by football fans, as the day saw local derby matches played between teams such as Liverpool and Everton as well as between Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. Fans of these teams still have songs in their repertoire that boast ‘We shall fight for ever more, because of Boxing Day’. I am sure that some families would be only too willing to echo those sentiments.