Why I hate British films

It was Colin Welland who first uttered those terrible words ‘The British are coming!’ at an Oscar ceremony, back in 1982 — clutching his gold-plated statuette in his northern paw and grinning from beneath his deeply northern moustache. Colin had won an Oscar for having written the screenplay to Chariots of Fire, a film about some British people who could run quite fast, particularly Eric Liddell (or ‘speedy uncle Eric’ as we were wont to call him). Chariots of Fire possessed all of the qualities we have later come to associate with British films — resolutely well-meaning, somewhat stilted, implacably middlebrow and moderately sensitive, utterly devoid of sex, sin and glittering panache. And with a staggeringly irritating soundtrack by Vangelis.

Since then, every subsequent Oscars ceremony has been portrayed by our media as a sort of replacement World Cup quarter final for people who find football a little outré. It has become one of the very few manifestations of belligerent patriotism to which I cannot possibly append my name — and frankly I do not know anyone else who leaps up and down with nationalistic fervour because Nick Park, of Wallace and Gromit fame, has won the animated film award once more.