World war twee: the hideous triviality of our times

I remember the moment I first understood that we, the British, had a national character. It was in the mid-1970s and my family and I were watching a clip from an American TV show which was being shown to us by ITV for a giggle. It was a celebration of the love between mothers and daughters. A hyper-glamorous mother walked down a marble stairway on the left, her young daughter descended an identical stair to the right, and they met at a gently tinkling plastic fountain.

Over the soothing sound of the water they took it in turns to stare gooily into each other’s eyes and emote. The daughter lisped something along the lines of ‘You are my guiding light, Mommy’; the mother said something like: ‘You are the light of my life and I bless each day.’ This was repeated several times, to hoots of derisive laughter from the ITV British studio audience and from my own folks in the living room.