A Joke Of A Country

Back in 1985 Billy Connolly did a celebrity stand up show. ‘An Audience With Billy Connolly.” It was a big deal, broadcast on Channel 4. He was at the top of his game. I had that show on tape and watched it many times.

Some of the phrases he used and the way he pronounced words — making a gag out of ‘Jojoba’ shampoo sounding like ‘October’ were gloriously simple. Like a the very best ads, it was current, you had to get the reference to fully the gag, but there is no real enemy. It’s good clean fun.

There is a sketch about the National Anthem. The gag is that the UK (Connolly is proudly Scottish) is in a shit state (remember this 1985) because our national anthem is slow and boring. He says during the Olympics we’re still singing it while other countries are lapping us. These ‘emergent countries’ are full of vim and vigour, proudly striding forward at breakneck speed.

He makes up some lyrics to one of their national anthems:

We come from Jebroviah and we don’t give a shit.

We’ve got a national debt of 50 squillion pounds and we don’t give a monkeys.

How we laughed at the idea of a country not giving a shit. Ha, that’s not us we thought. How we laughed at the idea of not giving a monkeys about anything. Because that’s what tin-pot countries do.

And we’re not a tin-pot country. We’re Great Britain, or probably in this case, Ingerlund.

With Brexit, Partygate and now the Rwanda refugee shit show it’s painfully clear that we are now Jebroviah.

We’re the joke.