In the 1988 film A Fish Called Wanda, the buttoned-up English barrister played by John Cleese, bowled over by the vitality and carpe diem directness of Jamie Lee Curtis’s feisty American criminal/hooker, attacks the awful emotional reserve of the British, summing it up in one memorable phrase – “hair clenched in embarrassment”.
Like everyone else, I laughed.
But, to be honest, I find the traditional embarrassability of the British, their disinclination to indulge in overt displays of emotion, both endearing and admirable.
Just after the death of the Princess of Wales, I attended a dinner in Cambridge with acquaintances who had graduated at around the same time. We fell to discussing the public’s reaction to the event (Diana Spencer’s demise – not our reunion dinner). One otherwise perfectly sensible Englishman said it was wonderful that the nation had finally learned to express its emotions.
I said I found it revolting: I still do.
In effect, 1997 marked the point where the British people started to forget how to be British. Until then – no matter what a few self-hating lefties and a lot of envious foreigners might claim – the British saw their habitual display of emotional reserve as a strength, not a weakness: they viewed restraint, decorum and self-control as innately virtuous. Allied to a pronounced sense of humour and an ingrained sense of fair play, emotional reserve is a virtue. While most of the rest of the world reacted to tragedy by succumbing to the vapours, the British either put on a bloody good pageant or got the warships out of dry dock and set about trying to put things right.
Of course, there’s a reason why the British have so assiduously cultivated the habit of emotional guardedness: they are, at heart, a romantic, Nordic people, given to excessive drinking, public disorder, raucous laughter and low humour. And they don’t much like authority.
That’s all very well if all you want to do is conquer other countries for a spot of rape and plunder, but if you want to rule those countries and build a long-term empire – or indeed, to enjoy the benefits of a prosperous, settled, modern democracy - you need to learn to defer gratification and to control your natural exuberance. And to cultivate a certain mystique, an aloofness.
That, the British learned to do in spades – especially the Middle Classes.
There are periods, true, when it strikes one that they may have learned the lesson too well. When silly, self-important politicians produce a flood of ridiculous rules governing every aspect of our lives, and an expensive army of mean-spirited, joyless bureaucrats set about imposing them with malicious verve (for our own good, of course), you know that the pendulum has swung too far the other way.
But, on the whole, British self-control has served the nation well. After all, Britain has punched above its weight economically and politically for much of its history.
So, here’s a plea: now that the socialists have wedged us once more firmly down the crapper economically and socially, let’s revive the habits of deferred gratification, self control and emotional guardedness, and let’s start by recognizing something this nation used to know instinctively: there are certain private experiences which should remain private, and which should not be shared with the public.
On Sunday night, five million Britons watched their Prime Minister discuss his love for his wife, and describe what one assumes was the single most awful experience of his life – the moment his first child died in his arms.
I have no doubt whatsoever that Brown’s reaction to that dreadful experience was genuine. But the context in which he chose to share the memory robbed it of all poignancy: it tarnished and cheapened it. It was one of the most sickening things I have ever witnessed, and it made me feel ashamed for this country, and for the man himself.
Obviously there is room for public figures to reveal deeply personal experiences in public: but not in the context of an exercise designed purely and solely to boost the revelator’s chances of remaining in office.
Good God! What have we become?
Brown’s toe-curling appearance reminded me of a recent TV performance in which another well-known figure revealed intimate details of his and his wife’s private life. On that occasion, it was the comedian Rob Brydon whipping a live audience into a frenzy of laughter by describing in overwhelming and distasteful detail the birth of one of his children.
A father would do that just to get a few laughs? I repeat, what have we become?
Now, it’s not hard to figure out why John Cleese feels the British are too buttoned-up. The Second World War was the last time this nation had to call on every one of its innate and learned virtues over an exhaustingly long period. Cleese’s childhood coincided with one of those periods when a tired, battered nation was trying to rebuild itself while in a state of exhaustion. It didn’t have much choice but to be buttoned-up. He would have been six when the deeply boring Clement Attlee came to power, and 11 when Churchill, by then a tired old man, returned as Prime Minister. So adults may have seemed a bit preoccupied – a bit short on the old joie de vivre - and hankering for a quiet, normal, placid life after the huge dangers and upsets of war. I imagine that most of them were completely shagged out. Besides, I doubt if there was enough money around to support a riotous, carefree “just say yes to life” sort of existence in any case.
It would be ridiculous to compare most us to our brave, hardy and self-sacrificing predecessors, but we are a bit battered and tired now, to be honest. And we don’t have as much money to spend as we used to. A lot of that’s down to the nation having forgotten many of its old virtues – there’s plenty of violence and low laughter, of course, but, egged on by the Political Class, we seem to have forgotten about self-control, and deferring gratification, and emotional guardedness.
I reckon we need all of them back. And fast.
The BBC is about to get rid of that hair-clenchingly embarrassing wretch, Jonathan Ross, and that’s a start, but there’s so much more we could do.
Let’s start by asking public figures to please not go on television and try to ingratiate themselves with us by talking about things they should keep private. Start locking up the shameless sluts and yobs who regularly invade our town centres to demonstrate their utter lack of physical and emotional continence. Let’s demand that TV “comedians” regularly taking four-letter dumps in our sitting rooms start to show us all a bit of respect by undergoing verbal toilet training. Let’s ask the art establishment to support art that celebrates the beautiful and serious rather than the ugly and trivial – just for a bit, while we catch our breath. And let’s publicly flog – right there and then – the next footballer who takes a dive during a televised match: that should reintroduce an element of honesty into the game. And let’s order up some old-fashioned wooden stocks and stick every sodding little half-inching shoplifter and car thief in one for at least a week. And a gibbet to deal with the next banker who stuffs his pockets with our money or TV executive who seriously imagines they’re worth half a million quid’s worth of license-payers’ money. And let’s punish any half-witted teenage trollop who gets herself knocked up, and the selfish knuckle-dragging sperm donor who knocked her up in the first place (if she can remember who it was). And let’s, please, insist that any contestant who ever again cries during a TV talent show is immediately disqualified. For life!
In short, let’s get good and embarrassed about what we’re rapidly becoming. A ten year hiatus during which we rediscover the concept of shame, the pleasure of living in a well-mannered, decorous society, and the strength and self-respect to be derived from not sharing every aspect of your private life with the general public, and not insisting on “having it all now” - whether you’re a schoolgirl or a banker - would be enormously welcome.
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