Way of the World Michael Deacon

At the weekend, Gary Lineker granted an audience to The Guardian. And, as is now his custom, St Gary blessed us with his thoughts on a number of crucial issues. For example: what generations to come might think of horse riding.

“Do you think in the future we’ll say, ‘We used to sit on horses, how bizarre’?” he asked his interviewer. “I do wonder. You wouldn’t sit on a dog, would you? I know they’re smaller, but…”

The bulk of the interview, however, concerned the criticism that St Gary, as the BBC’S highest-paid presenter, has received for tweeting his opinions on more controversial subjects, such as Israel, and the weekly protest marches against its bombing of Gaza. St Gary rejected this criticism – and voiced his concern about the ongoing “culture wars”.

“I mean, what is

‘woke’?” he asked the interviewer at one point, in clear frustration. “Having a conscience, having a heart, having empathy? How is that a bad thing?”

Not everyone, it should be pointed out, would agree with this definition of “woke”. Indeed, quite a few people argue that it often means the opposite of “having a heart”. They believe that, to quote Ricky Gervais, it actually means “being a puritanical authoritarian bully”.

Of course, I don’t believe for a moment that this description applies to St Gary. There is no doubt in my mind that, whenever he holds forth on controversial subjects, he is motivated solely by his conscience, his heart, his boundless capacity for empathy.

Sadly, though, that may be the problem. St Gary, I fear, cares too much for his own good.

If so, it would finally explain why on October 7, the day the terrorist group Hamas slaughtered 1,200 Israelis in cold blood, St Gary didn’t tweet about it. It wasn’t because he didn’t care. On the contrary, he was so utterly overwhelmed by empathy and compassion, he for once found it impossible to tweet anything at all. Well, apart from a quick post applauding his former football team (“Super Spurs are top of the league”). His sorrow was simply too great.

Indeed, it was only later, once Israel had begun to retaliate against Hamas, that he was at last able to summon the strength to start tweeting about the conflict and its wrongs. In my view, this is the only possible explanation.

In Neither Here Nor There, his 1991 book about his travels through Europe, Bill Bryson confessed that something had always bemused him about the Dutch.

Their language, he wrote, “sounds like nothing so much as a peculiar version of English”.

He’d first visited the Netherlands with a friend in the 1970s, and they’d both been startled by this strange phenomenon. “We would be walking down the street when a stranger would step from the shadows and say, ‘Hello, sailors, care to grease my flanks?’ or something, and all he would want was a light for his cigarette.”

Visiting the country again for Neither Here Nor There, Bryson had the same disorienting experience. Popping into a small hotel in Amsterdam, he asked if there was a room free.

“Let me check with my wife,” replied the proprietor – before shouting what sounded uncannily like, “Marta, what stirs in your leggings? Are you most moist?”

“No,” she seemed to shout back, “but I tingle when I squirt.”

I think we can be reasonably sure that that wasn’t really what they were saying. Sometimes, though, the

Dutch language truly does appear to be “a peculiar version of English” – as demonstrated the other day by the prominent Dutch politician Geert Wilders. To his 1.3 million followers on social media, Mr Wilders posted a Dutch phrase that means, “We’re having a serious problem.”

The phrase was: “We hebben een serieus probleem.”

I promise: that isn’t a line from ’Allo

’Allo! It’s genuine Dutch. I’ve checked. And ever since I discovered this, I haven’t been able to stop saying it. “We hebben een serieus probleem...”

I must get into Dutch cinema. For an English speaker, the dialogue should be simple enough to follow.

Wife: “Darling, we need to talk. I’m afraid we hebben een probleem.”

Husband: “Probleem? What probleem? I didn’t know we hebben een probleem. I thought our marriage was probleem-free.”

Wife: “No, we are hebben een probleem. Een serieus probleem. The probleem is… I’m hebben een affair. And it’s getting serieus.”

I hope the Dutch won’t think I’m making fun of their language. Far from it. I think it’s wonderful. In fact, I think every schoolchild in Britain should be made to learn it.

After all, we’re utterly hopeless at learning languages, but this looks like one that even we could pick up.