I was about 19 years old and threatening to kill myself with a Bic disposable razor (not easy: I was bluffing) when I realized that Women Love Bastards. The revelation arrived like this. I was a heartbroken student, having been dumped by, ah, let’s call her Emilia. For months I mooned about, bereft, wondering why Emilia had chucked me when I was so NICE – attentive, gift-giving, loyal. Then a good female friend – bless her wicked heart – took me aside and said: “Sean, girls don’t like nice. They like a guy with swagger. Stubble. Slightly mean.” She sighed. “I think we prefer bastards, if I’m honest.”
Putting down the razor, I picked up her advice, and I have used it ever since. I’m happy to say it works. You don’t have to be a combination of Charles Manson and Stalin, but women, it turns out, do rather like men with roguish confidence, verging on sweet cruelty, especially in bed and when choosing restaurants. As evidence I offer my only marriage, to a beautiful 21-year-old woman… when I was a grizzled but decisive 54. Sorry. Not sorry.
Here’s my modest proposal to the men of these Satanic isles: stop groveling
Why am I oversharing like this? Because the truth of it recurred to me this week, when the actress Jameela Jamil declared, on an American podcast called Yestergays, that British people are “truly the most evil people in history. They are Thanos. Britain is Thanos.” There was more. Britain is “f*****.” Britain is “going through a race war.” Britain owes India £43 trillion, or maybe it is 79 squillion. And all of this diatribe was delivered, laughingly, from Los Angeles, where Ms Jamil has lived for a decade – having first built her career in evil Britain, at the evil BBC.
But here is the detail that pleases. For about eleven years, Ms Jamil’s partner has been James Blake: melancholy electronic musician and, as the internet gleefully observed, about as pale and privileged-looking as English boyfriends come. If British people are Thanos, Ms Jamil has spent a decade sharing a duvet with the Infinity Gauntlet. That’s eleven years and counting of close-quarters field research into British male wickedness. With no end in sight. One might wonder if she is fulfilling an Occidentalist fantasy.
If so, she’s not alone. Hollywood has known this truth for decades: the British accent is the desirable sound of erotic villainy – think Alan Rickman falling in slow motion off Nakatomi Plaza, or James Bond being a cold-hearted womanizer from Jamaica to Japan. Jaguar built an entire advertising campaign, using suave British actors, on the slogan “it’s good to be bad.” Even Jamil’s chosen insult undoes itself: Thanos is the only character in the Marvel universe with a plan, a work ethic and a decent chin. As slanders go, it is practically a flattering Vogue profile.
So, here’s my modest proposal to the men of these Satanic isles: stop groveling. Put down the Bic. Lean in. When an American at a dinner party asks, eyes shining, whether it is true that your people are the most evil in history, do not stammer about the Royal Navy suppressing the slave trade. Arch an eyebrow. Then say, with a subtle smile: “Oh yes. We’re terribly cruel.”
Ms Jamil, meanwhile, is welcome to keep up the denunciations. Every time she calls us “the most evil people in history,” somewhere in Los Angeles an Englishman’s stock quietly rises. She has, after all, spent a decade proving the thesis better than I ever could: the lady does a lot of protesting – then goes home to bed with Thanos.
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