Author: Purple Brolly

Sir Noel Coward (1899-1973) was a prolific playwright, composer and actor, whose wit shines through all his work. His signature tune was his ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’, first performed in 1931. It is said that he created it during a trip through the Vietnamese jungle, without even needing to write it down. It refers to various countries with “tropical climes” where the inhabitants know to keep indoors at the hottest time of day, whereas the “Britishers” do not.

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun
The Japanese don’t care to,
The Chinese wouldn’t dare to,
Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one,
But Englishmen detest a siesta,
In the Philippines they have lovely screens,
To protect you from the glare,
In the Malay states there are hats like plates,
Which the Britishers won’t wear…….

Coward was alluding to the British having a gung-ho spirit to the point of lunacy, but it also illustrates a certain British resistance to adopting local customs in foreign lands. Today the meaning has been rather muddied, so the title is either taken to say that the British stay out sunbathing for too long, or simply that, it’s hot!

(Top image: Jessica Paterson at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is known the world over and is the oldest and biggest state broadcasting organisation. It began operations on 1st January 1927 from its headquarters in London, having been converted from a Limited Company by the granting of a Royal Charter. Its mission was to use the new technologies of radio, then television and now the internet as well, to ‘inform, educate and entertain’ the public.

The BBC is funded mainly by the TV licence fees paid by all UK householders using its services, supplemented by the revenue from international sales of its programmes. It has never allowed advertising on any of its channels. The Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport is the governmental point of control for its £5 billion annual budget.

During the early decades, it built up a widely accepted reputation for impartiality, fairness, morality and high standards. However, this has taken a severe knock in recent times. This is particularly noticeable in its coverage of news and current affairs, some of which is extremely unbalanced. Its gold-standard website has also been criticised for being too all-encompassing, thereby stiflng smaller specialist websites which do not have the financial backing enjoyed by the BBC.

(Image: Alexander Svensson at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

Once the city coffeehouse trend of the 1700s had faded, it was the gentlemen’s clubs which slipped into place and gradually became more refined and exclusive. At their peak there were four hundred such clubs, for men only, but today there are far fewer. Membership criteria ensure that only the select few are allowed in and the hefty annual fees can only be afforded by the rich.

Most clubs are aligned with certain interests, such as the armed forces, theatre or sports, and they tend to be regarded as Tory territory.  Their luxurious facilities include bars, restaurants, gaming rooms, libraries, gyms, swimming pools and bedrooms. They are valued by their members as a haven of quietude and privilege.

Most of the prestigious gentlemen’s clubs are concentrated in the St. James’s area of London, just across from the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace. The oldest is White’s, founded in 1693, which includes royalty on its members’ list. Brooks’s and Boodle’s both date from 1762 and then a spate of clubs opened in the first half of the nineteenth century. This coincided with the Houses of Parliament being partially burnt down in 1834 and MPs needing to have alternative private meeting-places.

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