Awfully British Fake Facts – Part 1

Awfully British Fake Facts - Part 1

1) A lot of countries think that all Englishmen drink tea, play cricket, work in accounting and wear bowler hats all of the time but this is untrue. We do not wear our bowler hats on Sundays.

2) The average human body is made of 90% water but the average English body is made of 90% tea. Without tea we die.

3) Tea can solve any and every problem. Aliens invading? Have some tea! Sprained your knee? Have some tea! Run out of tea? Have some… oh wait… I guess there is ‘one’ problem it can’t solve.

4) Big Ben has to be wound by hand each morning and is named after Ben McFiggin (‘Big’ to his friends) who was the first man to have this responsibility. Everyone still remembers the day he overslept as, “the day without time.”

5) The fog in London is so thick that it is unsafe to leave your house without a bell or whistle and a long length of rope. A 24 year old man was recently found wondering around lost in the fog after a failed attempt to visit the bakers. He had been 17 when his mum had sent him out for bread.

6) We choose a new queen every ten years based on who looks the most like the stamp.

7) Shakespeare was a fictional character but Sherlock Holmes was a real person.

8) Each Englishman owns their own red double-decker bus.

9) When a group of English people are alone together within their natural environment they will still use words such as, “ye olde,” “yonder,” and, “forsooth.”

10) The phrase; “an Englishman’s home is his castle,” is a miss quote and is infect meant to be, “an Englishman’s home is ‘a’ castle.”

11) The English are constantly cast as the villains in movies because we are considered (by the Americans) to be a little bit evil. However, this is simply not true. We are not a little bit evil we are very evil. We feast upon the fear of others to sustain our own life force. Nothing pleases us more than stealing candy from small orphan children or robbing sweet old ladies of their pension. However, we are very polite while doing so. There is no need to be evil ‘and’ uncivilized.

Want to read Awfully British Fake Facts? Check out Part 2 of this list.

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Stuart

Stuart is an accident prone Englishman who has been living in the Netherlands since 2001. Even his move to the country was an unintentional accident, the result of replying to a cryptic job advertisement he found one day in a local British magazine. Since then he has learned to love the Dutch (so much so that he married one of them) and now calls the country home. He started the blog Invading Holland in 2006 as a place to share his strange stories of language misunderstandings, cultural confusions and his own accident prone nature.

21 Responses

  1. Dragonlady says:

    Tea, Yuck can’t stand the stuff. Just found out I’m Scottish so thats why I don’t like it. Mind you I don’t like whiskey either, but I do like haggis.

  2. Tiffany says:

    This is excellent – thanks for dispelling these myths about the English! I’m now boiling water for tea as this post cave me a craving for it. I’m already coming up with things to tell the Dutch about Americans (can we say “field day?”). Thanks for the laugh!

  3. ahulme says:

    I am 5ft 6 and tell all Dutch people I am tall where I am from. Well I am from up north so its nearly true.

    When I say I am from Manchester the Dutch always say Manchester United or Ciry. I say I don’t like football that’s why I was thrown out of Britain.

    I also claim to understand cricket and explain how the Dutch should embrace it. Truth is I have no idea of the rules, its just a day out with beer.

    Tea however is another matter I even have a tea pot at work with a tea cosy and can’t go 2 hours without a brew. PG tips can’t beat em.

    Great site..

  4. Jania says:

    I came back to Texas from NL 6 weeks ago. I should’ve told them all Texans own a derrick, live on a ranch and wear ten gallon hats. Wish I had thought of doing a little storytelling to liven up my trip. Cute idea!

  5. Jania says:

    Oh, and if out of tea, the all-time English problem-solver, then “eat!” In other words, can’t use “tea” per se to solve the problem, we can use its hidden word jumble e-a-t to solve it! And who doesn’t like to eat! Tea again to the rescue! tehehe

  6. Nederlanse Jonge (at heart anyway) says:

    Here’s something else I learned about the British (from an Australian): Q: Where do the British hide their money? A: Under their soap. I don’t really get (understand) this, but I thought you might.

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