Found this in The Daily Telegraph. Not on the web as far as I can see at a quick scan.
Abramovich, typical Englishman
The citizens of Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia, asked to identify the individual who best symbolised the typical Englishman, have chosen Roman Abramovich. The owner of Chelsea Football Club narrowly defeated Winnie the Pooh, James Bond and Winston Churchil.
As a result, a statue of Mr Abramovich will be unveiled on the city's Karl Marx Street, just a few hundred yards from a statue of Lenin...
Immensely consoling. I now see that I too can become a typical Englishman. One should first develop the ambition of course. The surrealism I have already. Now I just need the cash and the clout. Perception is all.
4 comments:
An instant ASBO for the first person to mention George Mikes.
I've felt highly ambiguous about Englishness ever since the first anti-War march in - when was it? '02? '03? and it's really since then that I've come to notice what a high proportion of exemplar Englishmen are anything but. There always seems to be one in particular who is held to stand for a purist's version of the Breed. But they're never quite what you find down the pub, are they?.. It's Stephen Fry at the moment, isn't it, who's English by Royal Appointment: but he's clever, and witty, and literate and homosexual, open about mental illness and cultural ambition, so clearly not from England at all.
I wonder why they didn't go for John Terry. Hints of violence, sentimental, skinhead, almost sculpturally unintellectual. I expect it's because he looks Polish.
I'm going for Stephen Hawking. The man packs 3 great British qualities into his tiny frame: courage, brains and sense of humour.
Granted that Abramovich may not be a typical Englishman, it would seem that true Englishness is perceived to be a suave teddy bear licenced to kill, with a cigar in his mouth and a turn for stirring rhetoric.
Could it be John Terry in a bear costume?
I might have to steal the phrase 'sculpturally unintellectual' :-)
There's no such thing as a typical Englishman, of course. That's the great thing about living here, as opposed to, say, Scandinavia.
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