Dara O. Briain - Tickling the English

an imprint of

PENGUIN BOOKS

MICHAEL JOSEPH

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England

www.penguin.com

First published 2009

Copyright Dara O Briain, 2009

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Quotes reproduced from: A Natural Curiosity (copyright Margaret Drabble, 1989) by permission of United Agents (www.unitedagents.co.uk) on behalf of Dame Margaret Drabble; The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner, published by Black Swan and reprinted by permission of the Random House Group Ltd; The Architecture of Happiness, published by Penguin Books (copyright Alain de Botton, 2006), by permission of United Agents; and Empire (copyright Niall Ferguson, 2008).

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future editions of this book.

All rights reserved

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

ISBN: 978-0-14-193257-6

This book is dedicated to all the letters of the
alphabet, but in particular, to big S and little o.

It was about one in the morning. I was in the passenger seat of a rented car on the M4. The car was being driven by a man called Damon. We were heading back to London after Id done a gig at a theatre called the Playhouse in Weston-super-Mare.

The night had been a huge success, thanks mainly to the audience, who were chatty and interactive. In particular, there was a man called Chris who had an answer for everything.

He told us how his appendix went away. He told us about the game he plays with his step-son where he lays a hammock on the ground and attaches one end of it to his car, the other to a tree. Then he accelerates away, tautening up the hammock and firing his step-son into the air.

And when we thought we had heard all we could from Chris, he told us that he had been on the game-show 3-2-1 in the seventies, won a cruise, brought his family but that his daughter had contracted a form of TB which had been eradicated in the US for many years so they had to spend the entire cruise in the cabin.

All in all, it was a very funny night.

So, were driving home contentedly and one of us decides to put on the radio. It was late, so the phone-ins were in full flow on every station and the one we settled on was getting heated.

The topic was a new international survey that placed England in the top ten countries to live in, worldwide. In Ireland, I remembered these surveys appearing intermittently, and a good result was always regarded as a bit of a pat on the back.

Next on the line is Susan from Dorking. What do you want to add, Susan? asks Dave, the host of the radio phone-in.

Well, David, I just want to say that this is clearly a joke. I mean, look around you. Look around you. This country is going to the dogs.

What do you mean, Susan? says Dave, deftly drawing Susan out.

Well, the schools. And the crime. And the NHS. Its all going to the dogs.

Lets move on, says Dave, moving on. Next up is Mike from Kettering. Mike, what do you think of this, then? One of the best places in the world to live?

I think they must be thinking of somewhere else, Dave. They clearly havent walked around the England I know. Kids are running rampage, twenty-four-hour drinking, teenage mums. Its a bloody mess, Dave. A bloody mess.

Dave took the next call.

Its Kevin from Gloucester. What do you think, Kevin, are we living in one of the top ten countries in the world?

Theyre having a bloody laugh, Dave, thats what I think. A bloody laugh.

And so the callers continued. Voice after voice decried the survey as inaccurate, misleading and poorly researched; England was a terrible country to live in. The evidence was insurmountable: failing institutions, rising crime, disastrous public-building projects. Citizens were depressed and angry and in constant danger. If the knife crime didnt get you, the MRSA would.

Not one of the callers could say that they had lived in any other country, but all of them could say, hand on heart, that England didnt deserve to be in any top ten. The place was a mess.

Now, obviously, its a little dubious to base a snapshot of the nation on the sort of people who phone in to radio stations late at night. Until that moment, though, I would have based it on the people I had just spent two hours laughing with in a theatre in Weston-super-Mare.

In just one evening, Id encountered a people who were clearly good-humoured, charming and spontaneous, but also, it appeared, terribly, terribly brave, given the appalling conditions they find themselves living in. And they handled this bravery in a stoic way, only under the most intense pressure resorting to phoning in to radio stations to counter any reasonable assertion that things arent really that bad here.

How could the people of England be so happy while, at the same time, reserving the right to be so desperately unhappy?

Next time I tour this country, I said to myself, Im going to try and find out whats up with that.

So thats what I did.

I always thought there was something funny about England.

When I was a child in Ireland, we would watch Thats Life! on the BBC on a Sunday night, and see the locals roar with laughter at funny-shaped vegetables or dogs that said the word sausages. Ill be honest: we laughed too.

And then Esther Rantzens tone would darken, and the show would suddenly become very serious. Without warning, we would be plunged into the miserable lives of children growing up in damp public housing, or watching parents who filled their childrens bottles with fruit juice and rotted their teeth, shamed or, the one Ill always remember, hearing the heart-wrenching story of an elderly couple duped out of their life savings by a travelling con-man.

On that particular occasion, Esthers chorus read out the testimony of the old couple and the authorities, and we all shook our heads at the cowardly nature of the crime. Then Esther showed us a photo-fit of the con-man.

Maybe youve seen him, she said, staring straight down the lens. Maybe he approached you, maybe you saw him at a petrol station, a pub or a restaurant. Look around you. Maybe hes sitting in the room with you right now.