There are some things so irrationally, quintessentially British that they defy categorisation, or even explanation.
I’m not talking about quaint traditions or innocuous national tics like warm beer, queuing, or risking life and limb by chasing a cheese down a hill.
Rather, I mean those acts of collective psychosis that must leave visitors to these parts standing mouths agape, with a hand slapped to their forehead, thinking “what in the name of jumping Jehovah is that?”
Things like the way in which our media attains a form of sycophantic, North Korean zen when reporting anything to do with the royal family; the unspoken requirement that our prime minister must have attended one of two elite universities; and, of course, the institution of the BBC scandal.
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This now, almost weekly, occurrence comes to dominate most of our media coverage and national discussion and leaves us all questioning, not only our norms and values, but – it can often seem – the very nature of existence.
Most peculiar is the way the BBC itself reports these events – obsessively and penitentially, like some early medieval monk thrashing himself with a cilice, in an act of institutional self-mortification.
I often wonder what foreigners must think when they hear a BBC presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme – the BBC’s flagship news show – solemnly reporting that the BBC had been approached for comment but that no-one was available. Only in Britain.
The latest outrage to rock the corporation is the reporting of allegations from numerous people that Gregg Wallace, co-presenter of one of its most popular television shows, engaged in a pattern of inappropriate sexualised behaviour, going back several years.
Wallace, a........