Last month in Croatia an old Serbian guy told me a joke about the British, the French, the Germans and the Swiss. I’m shaky on the details but it concerned a vision of paradise in which the engineers were German, the chefs were French, the lovers were Italian, the Swiss were in charge of organising everything and the police – or the “bobbies” as my Serbian friend Slobo called them – were British. I felt a light swelling of pride at this Dixon of Dock Green characterisation of law enforcement in my home country. As for the punchline, I’m not sure how we got to it but there was some kind of muddle in which the Italians were put in charge of organising everything, which led to the policing being done by the Germans, the engineering by the French, the British did the cooking and all the lovers were Swiss.
Now, there’s a lot of crass national stereotyping to unpick here. German coppers seem OK to me, and our Renault drives very nicely. As for the Swiss, while I’ve never had a Swiss lover, I can’t imagine what they might lack for in the bedroom. My friend told me he once offended a Swiss bloke with this joke, and now he had offended me. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard my home country’s food casually disparaged in my earshot. And I’m not having it. Having spent three weeks travelling around Europe this summer, I know for sure that, depending on the criteria, we’re the best.
