How to be a Brit

the burglars and robbers, instead of going to burgle and
rob, sit at home watching The Lone Ranger, Emergency Ward Ten and Dotto.
    7. Television has undeniably
raised the general level of culture throughout the country. Some people allege
that it has killed the habit of reading and thinking — but there is no truth in
this. I have yet to meet a person who gave up his methodical study of, say,
early Etruscan civilization in order to be able to watch more of Sunday Night
at the London Palladium or who has stopped reading Proust or Plutarch because
he could not tear himself away from What’s My Line? or Spot the Tune. I believe
that in most cases the devotees are better off watching Army Game than
listening to one another’s conversation. And
this brings me to my last point — overleaf.



ON THE ART OF CONVERSATION
     
    The main and the
most glorious achievement of television is that it is killing the art of
conversation. If we think of the type of conversation television is helping to
kill, our gratitude must be undying. The trouble is that it has not yet killed
enough of it. Some of it is still alive and flourishing in Britain.
    A few days ago I was
observing two sisters and their brother at a seaside resort. The sisters —
around sixty years of age — lived at Bexhill and their brother, a few years
younger, at Folkestone. These three — because of the great distances involved,
amounting to something like fifty miles — had not met for over ten years. The
reunion was a happy and uproarious occasion. They had so much to tell each
other that they often stayed up chatting till after midnight. I could not help overhearing
a great deal of their conversation. It went like this:
    brother: It struck me
when I was out before supper, that the wind is going round to the south...
    its
sister: Yes...
definitely. What do you think, Muriel?
    muriel: I couldn’t
agree with you more. Yes. Southerly. Definitely. Yes.
    brother: I don’t like
south winds. Not in these parts. Do you, Grace?
    grace: Oh no...
Heaven forbid. No south winds for me. Not in these parts. What do you think,
Muriel?
    muriel: I couldn’t
agree with you more. No south winds. No, thank you. Oh no. No, no, no.
    brother: Get a lot of
south winds at Bexhill, Grace?
    grace: Not a lot. A
fair amount. We get our fair share of south winds. You know how it is. One has
to take the rough with the smooth.
    brother: I like west
winds, personally. West winds are fun.
    grace: Oh yes. I do
enjoy a good west wind. We often get west winds at Bexhill, don’t we, Muriel?
    muriel: Fair amount. I
couldn’t agree with you more. Not too much though. But we mustn’t complain,
must we?
    grace: No.
    brother: Yes.
    grace: Yes.
    muriel: Oh yes...
definitely. I couldn’t agree with you more. grace: No.
    brother: Oh no.
    muriel: Yes.
    And so on, and so on. I
listened for another hour or two, then I jumped up, went to the television set
and shouted:
    ‘I am thirsty for the
pleasures of the pure intellect I Dotto for me! ‘

ON ADVERTISEMENTS
     
    All advertisements
— particularly television advertisements — are utterly and hopelessly
un-English. They are too outspoken, too definite, too boastful. Why not evolve
a national British style in television advertising instead of slavishly
imitating the American style of breathless superlatives, with all their silly
implications (buy our shampoo and you’ll get a husband; buy our perfume and you
are sure to be attacked by hungry males in Bond Street; smoke our pipe-tobacco
and you will become a sun-tanned Adonis)? I feel sure that the effect of these
advertisements could be vastly improved if they were made more English. Some
ads, for example, could be given an undertone of gambling:
     
    grapirex: It may relieve
your headache. Or, of course, it may not. Who can tell? Try it. You may be
lucky. The odds against you are only 3 to 1.
     
    Or:
     
    Try your luck on bumpex Fruit Juice. Most people detest
it. You may be an exception.
     
    Or appeal to the
Englishman’s sense of fairness. A beautiful, half-nude girl (you cannot do
without them in any advertisement, British, American or anything else) might
call to the public:
     
    S.O.S. We are doing badly.
Business is rotten. Buy Edgeless Razor Blades and give us a sporting chance.
Honestly, they’re not much worse than other makes.
     
    Or appeal to the
Englishman’s inborn honesty:
     
    Use bubu Washing Powder. By the way, have you ever tried the whiteness test? Here is Mrs Spooner