How to be a Brit

with
some rude remark; in Italy they would howl and burst out in ribald laughter; in
Greece they would set fire to the shop. But you are in England, among tolerant
and understanding Britons who are waiting patiently not so much for their meat
as for their turn to chat with the butcher.
    5. On entering or leaving
the shop you do not greet the shopkeeper. Your first words should be: ‘Have you
got...’ or ‘May I have...’ your last: ‘Thank you’. In between, as explained,
you may discuss any subject from the shopkeeper’s grandchildren to Arsenal’s
chances against Liverpool, but never say ‘Goodbye’ or ‘Hallo’, or ‘Cheerio’, or
‘Grüss Gott’ or ‘Ciao’.

SEX
     
     
    I have never been so much abused for anything I have written as
for the shortest chapter I have ever produced in my life, a chapter on the
sex-life of the English. People kept pointing out to me that the English
multiply somehow and survive as a nation. This, surprisingly, is true.
    Nowadays they also point
out that London is — or was, for a time — the sex capital of the world. Let
them believe it, it makes them happy.
    The sex-life of the English
is in strange contradiction with their placid temperament. In everything else
(e.g. queueing, driving) they are reserved, tolerant and disciplined; in their
sex life they tend to be violent and crude. A surprisingly large number of
Englishmen like to be flogged by ladies wearing black stockings and nothing
else; they believe that those ubiquitous places where women strip and show
themselves stark naked to an audience, for a modest fee, are evidence of
virility; they think that the high circulation of porn magazines is a sign of
high sexuality and not of high neurosis. They fail to see why sweating, topless
waitresses should put you off food and sex at one and the same time.
    They also fail to see that
a beautiful woman’s knee in elegant stockings is more alluring and exciting
than the sight of a naked sexual organ. They are misled by their noble
democratic principles which proclaim that justice must not only be done but
must be seen to be done. They think that it applies to the female organ, too.
It must not only be there; it must be seen to be there.

    People have asked me many
times — with an ironical glint in their eyes — if I still believed (as I wrote
in 1946) that ‘Continental people have sex-life; the English have hot-water
bottles.’ Or do I agree that things have changed and progressed? Yes, I agree,
things have progressed. Not on the Continent, where people still have
sex-lives; but they have progressed here because the English now have electric
blankets. It is a pity that electricity so often fails in this country.
    The fact remains that
England may be a copulating country but it is not an erotic country. Whenever I
try to personify sex in England, Lord Longford or Mrs Whitehouse spring to
mind. Girls are being taken to bed, to be sure, but they are not courted; they
are being made love to but they are not pursued. Women are quite willing to go
to bed but they rarely flirt with men. Ladies between the ages of eight and
eighty (let’s say eighty-five) come back from Italy outraged and complaining
bitterly about the crude wolf-whistles. Crude they may be, but they do make
middle-aged ladies feel twenty-five years younger, wanted and desired, and
these complaints are just disguised boasts. When bishops, retired brigadiers or
at least young executives start wolf-whistling in this town of ours, then I may
believe that London has become — well, not the sex capital of the world — but a
budding sex-village.
    Another thing that has
changed in the last decades is the position of homosexuals. It is a far cry
from the inhuman persecution of Oscar Wilde to public demonstrations that
homosexual marriages should be legalised. (I have heard of a grafitto at an
American University which claimed: ‘Legalise necrophilia!‘ But this is not a
popular movement here, as yet.)
    I have only one serious
objection against homosexuals. They are the most humourless bunch of people on
earth — as homosexuals. As individuals, I am sure, they must be like the rest
of us: some endowed with an exquisite sense of humour, others crushing bores. But
as a group it is a different story. The persecution of the Jews generated some
of the funniest, most self-critical and self-deprecatory yet cleverest jokes on
earth; persecution of homosexuals has created jokes only against them, never by
them.