waving of fists, and – if it’s a particularly warm day – exchange of small-arms fire.
The same applies, of course, on other continents where it’s a bit warm. From Indonesia to Argentina, when people get vexed, they take to the streets, do a lot of waving and shouting and, for some reason, set fire to all the buses. (NB: It’s never really clear why buses come in for so much stick from the local populace. After all, very few buses have tried to suppress democracy. Then again, the bendy ones are almost certainly up to no good – see BENDY BUSES.)
And, of course, in the very cold countries, when people get vexed, they just drink vast amounts of rubbing alcohol, throw chairs at each other in bars made out of ice, and set fire to the buses. But that’s probably more to keep warm than anything else.
So not complaining seems to be an activity confined entirely to the English (the rest of Great Britain, being Celts, have no truck with all that ‘mustn’t grumble’ nonsense and even now are probably looking for some sort of bus to set fire to. The Cornish, not being real Celts, are thinking about torching an ice-cream van.) The English are famous throughout the world for not complaining. Here are some common phrases associated with not complaining and the English:
‘MUSTN’T GRUMBLE
‘WE DON’T WANT TO CAUSE A FUSS.’
‘CAN’T COMPLAIN.’
‘WE DIDN’T REALLY LIKE TO SAY ANYTHING.’
‘THE CHICKEN WAS OFF BUT WE ATE IT ANYWAY.’
‘I DON’T LIKE TO CAUSE A SCENE.’
‘THE WAITER DID POUR THE SOUP OVER ALAN’S HEAD, BUT WE DIDN’T TIP, SO THAT WAS ALL RIGHT.’
‘I’M A COMPLETE CRAVEN COWARD SO PLEASE WALK ALL OVER ME.’
And so on. There is a fear seated deep in the English psyche that by causing a scene or making a fuss or saying anything other than ‘thank you’ to the person beating you up is somehow not the done thing. It’s possibly a suspicion that maybe it’s their fault all along, that somehow they made the nasty hotel receptionist give them a room with spiders in the minibar. And it’s certainly something to do with the English belief that if you ignore something it will go away. Now, while this worked with, say, snoek, the Charleston and East 17, it never helps in a conflict situation. So the solution is clear: people who don’t complain should – without becoming whiners – stand up for themselves and their rights. And then maybe the rest of the world will stop thinking of us as floppy-haired prannets in tweed socks.
PIRATES
Very fashionable. One wonders, though, what other bunch of syphilitic mercenary psychopaths will become trendy next? Lawyers? Couriers? Opticians?
PEOPLE WHO LIKE BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY
One of the most overrated ambitions in the world, particularly in the entertainment industry – the desire to be taken seriously – has been responsible for the death of more fun than, say, hot-air ballooning or the last three Star Wars films. And yet it has spread through every area of modern life.
Obviously, sometimes this is not a bad thing. A brain surgeon who didn’t want to be taken seriously is not somebody you’d like to have rooting around your cranium with a pair of pinking shears. Similarly, few of us would like to be in the same court as a judge who says, ‘We find the defendant guilty of murder and sentence him to be hanged by the neck until – wait! I’m kidding! Fifty pounds’ fine with costs! No! Hanging! No! I’m just messing with you! Yo! I’m also a rapper!’
But the world of entertainment exists for one purpose and one purpose only – to make people who have had a crappy day have a better one. People who are taken seriously – coal miners, shopkeepers, healthcare workers – like to go out, or come home, and not take things seriously. They don’t care that the people entertaining them – clowns, jugglers, Morrissey – are perhaps in some ways silly or daft, they just want to be entertained.
This is not to say (not that it matters) that no entertainers can be serious. If your curse is that you are Ibsen, or Mahler, or Scott Walker, or any of the other great talents who can never remember a joke, let alone tell one, then fine. Be glum and be good at it. But everyone else! Shut up worrying about how important you are!
Sadly, this excellent advice is hardly ever – oh, the epic irony – taken seriously, and so the world of stuff that is meant to make us feel a bit less unhappy is instead frequently filled with gloom. Here is an easy, cut-out-and-weep guide to the major danger zones in the world of Being Taken Seriously:
1. ACTORS. Thirty years in the business, loads of experience, talent to spare (well, some of them) and finally, a nice part as the Reverend Bumblebee in Midsomer Hernias. Millions laughing, fairly genuinely, at your hilarious portrayal of the foolish vicar. Maybe even a BAFTA. Possibly a shag. And what does your actor do? He gets fed up of being typecast as a jolly TV vicar, and jacks it in to go serious. Nobody ever wants to hire him again, he’s not very good at it, and he ends his career playing Death in a room above a pub in Worthing (see also ACTORS).
2. AUTHORS. After their early hits with books like The Reverend Bumblebee in Love and Bumblebee’s Dilemma, which sold by the crate-load and have found happy homes on shelves in bathrooms the world over, authors tend to get a bit gloomy around the onset of middle age (see CHARLES DICKENS). They lose the urge to tell stupid stories, and suddenly seek meaning. They get a bit too much into Martin Amis. And they write a five-million-word novel called Over, or The Now Black. Which does really badly but someone buys the film rights, changes it completely and calls it More Bloody Cartoon Penguins, and everyone’s happy.
3. ROCK STARS. Every rock star ever has started out singing songs called ‘Oo Yeah Woo Yeah’ or ‘Hey Mister Gnome I’m Over Here’, songs that make up for in childishness what they lack in originality. And ten years later, where is your rock star? Off his noggin on wobble juice, standing on a stage dressed as Gardener’s Question Time and singing something deep and meaningful about his life that’s almost as long as his life.
4. COMEDIANS. Again, massive popularity due to one skill – making people laugh – puts them in a position to go off and do what they really want to do, namely play a tramp in a play. Or a ‘Fool’. Or, oddly, a butler. Which is the sort of fact that would worry a butler.
5. TV PRESENTERS. The worst-case scenario of all. Because when you become a TV presenter, you are saying to the world, ‘I know that I am a knobstone, but hey! I am smiley and will not do anything to annoy you.’ But some of them break that contract with the audience, and go and do something really silly like play a serial killer in a TV drama, or marry Bono.
MOBILE PHONE USERS
You can always tell if someone is a complete worthless arse by the way they use their mobile phones. If, for example, they talk without apparent interruption, it’s not because they’re having a chat with someone who’s a good listener, it’s because THEY DON’T KNOW WHEN TO SHUT UP. The reason it sounds as though there’s nobody on the other end is not because they’re so lonely that they have to pretend they’re talking to someone (although that might easily be the case), it’s because they are so sub-crustaceanly rude that not only do they not know the difference between a conversation and a monologue, they don’t care.
This also explains why these worthless nobulons only seem to know one pronoun: ‘I’. ‘I did this’ and ‘I said that’ for hours and hours. In a sane, polite society, surely we could invent a phone that delivers a small electric shock (or even a big, brain-melting one, it’s all the same thing) to anybody who uses the word ‘I’ more than a thousand times in one minute? It doesn’t seem unreasonable (see PEOPLE WITH HUGE EGOS).
PEOPLE WITH HUGE EGOS
Surely there was a time when having an ego was a bad thing? By ‘ego’, this book doesn’t mean ‘a