JC can be our saviour from twerps

I BLAME John Cleese. When he merrily goose-stepped his way round the Fawlty Towers dining room then urged his staff not to mention the war, he gave a generation of British twerps permission to mention the war.

He didn’t mean to, of course. As well as getting his usual laugh out of socially inept snobbery, he was ridiculing people who wouldn’t get over the war.

Which in those days was probably most of us. But how many of us noticed? Of course people like you and me did, because we’re sensitive and intelligent. But the twerps didn’t.

They only noticed that he’d made a joke of it. It was funny. And it proved we were still superior – Jerry might have BMW but we won the war AND we have a sense of humour.

British twerps have been mentioning the war at every opportunity ever since.

Like those England fans recently banned for doing a Basil at a game against Germany – in Germany.

Like the bloke I saw on telly whose reason for voting Brexit was that we’d fought two world wars to prevent Europeans bossing us about, blithely ignoring the fact

I guarantee there’ll be a Stuka dive-bombing someone, somewhere

that most of Europe was on our side in both wars and the Common Market was created expressly to help prevent another one.

Like the TV channels that thrive on endlessly showing documentaries about every aspect of the war as if there was anything that we hadn’t already heard a hundred times before. Turn your telly on any time, any day, and I guarantee there’ll be a Stuka divebombing somebody somewhere.

What a sad, strange, deluded people we are. Like Theresa May’s Tory Party, we won but somehow feel we lost and can’t help wondering how we might have done it better.

So can we save ourselves from Basildom? Or can only John Cleese save us?

He doesn’t seem to have much on his plate these days other than trying to scrape together the cash to pay his wife alimony.

So I suggest the Government offer him a sizeable sum in guineas (Basil strikes me as the kind of man who’d like payment in guineas) to go on the telly, shed tears of repentance and ask the nation not to mention the war. Seriously.

That would be his finest hour.