The United Kingdom of Idiosyncrasies

The more I interact with the British, dare I call it, culture, the more confounding it gets. I must admit that a lot of my preconceived notions were consigned to the trash can as I embarked on a journey of discovering these quirks.

To begin with, like most outsiders, I would expect the British English to be grammatically impeccable and liberally sprinkled with queen-sized expressions and metaphors. However, I have been disappointed on more than one account. Not only is the language, written and spoken, very pedestrian in quality, but it also frequently hits appallingly abysmal lows bordering on cheap slang. No doubt, it would be incomprehensible if they spoke in archaic Shakespearean English, but we certainly don’t need graduates from Oxford to be able to differentiate between ‘now’ and ‘know’.

I had always believed that the British cherish their literary heritage more than the hair on their heads. Mythical, it seems to be, for, a young man from Cheshire playing ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ did not know that George in Enid Blyton’s Famous Five was a girl. Probably he is potty about the Potter books! Potter-mania has swept across England like Bird flu. It certainly won’t affect me, I am a vegetarian. (Now that was my lame attempt at British humour). I had been to a particular bookstore in the city center a couple of times, mainly for the delectable coffee, and I happened to be browsing through the ‘Humour’ section. It was dejecting to find that most themes were sleazy and most authors were American. I must, however, accede that the humour in some of the talk shows more than make up for the lack of satire in writing. The radical shift in focus from books to electronic media for entertainment is a global trend, and I probably should not be attributing it to the Brits alone.

Talking of global trends, as in politics, the Americans are definitely calling the shots in every sphere of life here. Most of the music is American based. Now again, what were the US country music awards doing on prime time UK television? The US sitcoms like Joey and Friends rule the tube. British cinema neither has the global coverage of Hollywood nor the mass appeal of Bollywood. It doesn’t even have the Kung-fu of Chinese films. The fashion is largely French driven and the electronics Japanese. Such is the force of globalisation in the UK that the local vegetable market is thronging with Spanish tomatoes and Belgian capsicums. So his Royal Highness Prince Charles had to pose along with his favourite pigs in their sty to endorse the organic farmers’ products!

What astounded me the most was the complete irreverence towards tradition and religion. I suspected the Brits, like most monarchy driven cultures, would have been fiercely conservative. The British society is perhaps still orthodox by and large but they are certainly not very passionate about their religion. I am stunned that despite their Christian leaning, they don’t consider it blasphemy to convert a parish chapel into a pub! As a concession they christened it ‘The Parish’.


Anurag Mathur wrote about the inscrutable ways of the Americans, perhaps inspired by some of his own personal experiences. I most certainly find the British very peculiar, and definitely not on the high pedestal that I had elevated them to. But it would be a long way before I chronicle it in a ‘novel’ style, for, I surmise what I experienced was just the tip of a whole iceberg that can sink Britannia.