Here's a fun article on British rudeness from John Walsh in The Independent. Officially, he's writing about "Rude Britannia," a pop art show at the Tate Britain, but the article meditates, generally, on the nature of British bawdiness. The writing is awfully funny, and the author registers, finally, a phenomenon I've been commenting on for years: The peculiarly British fascination with bums! Here's my favorite bit:
God we're rude, aren't we? The British are so rude. We're obsessed with bums, tits, willies, lavatory humour, vicars, knickers, smells, foreigners, fat tummies, fat slags, Fat Les, fat wrestlers, Benny Hill, Carry On Up The Khyber, Viz, Private Eye, men dressed as laydeez, women dressed as anarchic schoolgirls, sitcoms that offer howling tsunamis of verbal abuse, from The Young Ones to The Thick Of It. We love to see an irate, fictional British hotelier smacking his Spanish waiter around the head. We admire the host of BBC2's Newsnight when he roasts politicians with scarcely believable belligerence. We quiver when a middle-aged, redheaded quiz-show hostess tells her guests how thick, ugly and badly dressed they are. We lap up radio shows in which grouchily opinionated men insult members of the public who hold views contrary to their own. We celebrate Christmas by buying our loved ones "lavatory books" with titles like Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Complete Shit In Pants?
Never mind the buttocks. Enjoy it all here: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/naughty-by-nature-why-has-britain-become-so-rude-1995950.html.
~CD
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