Tuesday 27 February 2007

Not funny any more

Half a century ago Michael Flanders wrote A Song of Patriotic Prejudice, consisting of vigorous—and, by and large, well-deserved—insults aimed at foreigners, including the Welsh, Scots and Irish. He introduced it with a complaint about our lack of a really good national song, noting that, for example, the Americans have My Country T’is of Thee (which, cheekily, they sing to the tune of God Save the Queen), the Scots have Scotland for I (which should properly be Scotland for Me), and so on.....

“And what do we have for an English national song? Jerusalem! Oh, and There’ll Always Be an England. Well, that’s not saying very much, is it? I mean, if it comes to that, there’ll always be a North Pole, so long as some dangerous lunatic doesn’t go and melt it.

How we laughed!

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