You're listening to Luke's English podcast. For more information visit teach at loop.co. UK.

Hello everyone welcome back to Luke's English podcast in this episode I'm going to

explore the notion of Britishness including the stereotypes the reality and the complexity of defining Britishness or in fact any other national identity. You'll find that a lot of what I'm saying is transcribed on the page for this episode on Teacher Luke.co. UK, although not all of it has

been prepared in advance and there will be some moments when I go off script and improvise.

So this episode is a mix of scripted and unscripted bits

This might be a long episode because Britishness is a big subject

I have no idea how long the episode is going to be at this stage and if it is really really long

Then I will divide it into several episodes and then you'll just get even more for your money

Which is quite a lot considering it's a free podcast.

So Britishness, that's the topic.

That's what we're going to be looking at in this episode.

So I'm British, right?

I'm British, so I suppose I must be some kind of 19th century cross between a gentleman

and a hooligan with a newspaper and an umbrella under my arm, a cup of milky tea in one hand a pint of warm beer in the other eating a bag of fish

and chips while talking in Shakespearean English about the benefits of the rules of

cricket and the class system before getting blind drunk at a football match, invading

a bunch of developing countries and then sort of apologizing a bit like Hugh Grant, because

basically we're just a bloody nice bunch of chaps who mean no harm and live in a kind of antique world of Downton Abbey where we all just keep calm and carry on while being awfully polite and well-mannered, except of course when we're playing Germany or France at football,

when we all forget our national anthem, before transforming into a gang of brutal thugs

who then smash up the local town and blame it on illegal immigrants

while we continue to eat our bad food under our bad weather using our bad teeth

the whole time making bad jokes in accents that nobody can understand before stopping everything

...