I told you I was ill! The genius of our great British understatement

WHEN Spike Milligan died, the comedian’s headstone was famously inscribed with: ‘I told you I was ill.’

Now the joke has been named among the greatest examples of a quintessentially British tradition ... understatement.

Sir Alexander Fleming’s modest remark about his discovery of penicillin, namely: ‘One sometimes finds what one is not looking for’, has also made the top 20.

Yet the best example of British understatement was considered to be the mildmannered exchange between the Earl of Uxbridge and the Duke of Wellington, as the Earl’s leg was blown off by a canon during the Battle of Waterloo.

The Earl reportedly said: ‘By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg!’ to which the Duke responded: ‘By God, sir, so you have!’

The exchange was later credited as the inspiration for a scene in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, in which an English Army officer has his leg bitten off by a tiger.

In second place on the list was an update by British Airways pilot Eric Moody on June 24, 1982, after his plane was caught in a volcanic ash cloud. He reportedly told passengers: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.’ Thankfully, the plane landed safely.

The Queen’s response when asked how she was after the Brexit vote also made the top 20, in 15th place. After some thought, she remarked: ‘Well, I’m still alive anyway.’

The list was compiled by Sheffield University historian Dr Tom Dowling as part of a ‘Britishness’ study for Privilege Insurance.