. A blogumn by Fiona Craig What’s wrong with us? We won a shed load of medals this summer at the Beijing Olympics and nobody quite knows what to make of it. Some of the gold medallists appeared on breakfast TV, others on quiz shows but generally the congratulatory backslapping was cringe worthy TV. We’re just not used to winning. Years and years pass with barely a quarterfinal appearance at any major sporting event; cricket, soccer, tennis, ski jumping, you name it – we ain’t won it [recently]. But we’re still devoted to our try-ers. Like Mummies at school sports day, we keep cheering on our little darlings; the English cricket team, the Scottish soccer team, tennis players, Tim Henman and now Andy Murray et al. And when they predictably don’t win first prize, we wrap them up in our unconditional love anyway. “Who cares about those nasty Chinese/American/German big boys, we love you because you tried your best– it’s not the winning that counts, it’s the taking part” Where did this crap come from? You might say it all stems from the demise of the British Empire (no seriously, there’s mileage in this). The Brits ‘ vice-like grip on its far-flung colonies is forcibly loosened so we’re told to take failure on the chin like a man. Good sportsmanship and being gracious in defeat (in sports we created damnit) is rated above all else. Did this attitude of keeping a stiff upper lip ignominiously erode our desire to win? Skip to the hero’s welcome for short-sighted, puny, ski-jumping failure Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards from the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. Need I say more? Failure tunes right into the British sense of humour. We adore the tragicomedy of the looser: David Brent, Alan Partridge,...

. A blogumn by Fiona Craig To really get to the core of the British psyche you have to toddle down the murky corridors of our past. Not to the time of the Roman invasion or the Norman Conquest must we look, but in fact somewhere a little closer to teatime. While mothers dallied themselves in the nation’s kitchens, boiling our fish fingers and sprouts with as much exuberance as a teenage sales girl on prom night, we sat google-eyed, transfixed by the spoils that our walnut-veneered, cathode-ray companion served up. If, like me, you are around a certain age, you will remember with the kind of nostalgia only previously reserved for the blitz, the intoxicating world that was 1970’s and ‘80s children’s TV programmes. Lock any two otherwise sane and rational British adults in a room for long enough and eventually the talk will turn to children’s TV. The programmes we watched in our formative years leave such an impression that we feel compelled to recount them regularly, at any given prompt. There was so much great Kids TV produced in the seventies that it seems unfair to mention only a few here. But do make the jump to read all about them and watch some vids: From Oliver Postgates classics like Bagpuss and The Clangers, through to perenial favourites like Rainbow, Mr. Benn and The Magic Roundabout, there was so much going on back then. Derived from the minds of a generation still buzzing from the high of the sixties, some of the scenarios for these programmes were pretty far out if not downright psychedelic. Take The Clangers for example, a programme which featured a number of small creatures living in peace and harmony on a small, hollow planet far far away,...

. A blogumn by Fiona Craig A Scotswoman weighs in on all things British How to Get Pissed… Properly The Brits love drinking. I don’t just mean a couple of glasses of Chablis with our evening meal like our oh-so-suave French neighbours. I mean we really love drinking as in, a couple of bottles of whatever’s on 3-for-2 at Tesco’s before we’ve even thought about unpacking the groceries, let alone started cooking. Let us not mince our words here, we Brits drink to get wasted, pissed, trollied, blootered, leathered, mashed, paralytic, stocious, (well ok, you get the point). Most of our traditions include some element of toasting something’s or someone’s arrival or departure. For example, it’s our patron saint’s day* Absolutely! Let us demonstrate our patriotism by going to the nearest pub, our shoulders swathed in the national flag, arms held aloft, hands brandishing proudly the umpteenth jar of ale as if it were the FA Cup on finals day. And let us sing, nae, shout our national anthem (or the first couple of lines that we remember from primary school). But most importantly, let us fill our glasses, once more, and drink to our great nation’s patron, “To Saint ……. [who is it again??] ahhh, anyway, who’s round is it?” Millions of all teenagers over the land are literally coming of age on park benches and in bus shelters under the influence of Diamond White** or Buckfast***. It has become a near right-of-passage to have your stomach pumped in the local A&E****  by the time your sixteen! As with their parents, the real benefits of ‘a good night out’ are reaped the day after as you win the admiration of friends and colleagues with tales of the moronic buffoonery that you do remember...