Virginia Blackburn

CAN I be the only person to have experienced a moment of disbelief on reading that Britons face an average of 84 awkward or embarrassing situations every year? According to a new report, that’s how many times we do something cringeworthy, such as forgetting someone’s name mid-introduction, but that can’t be right. It must be much, much more. We Brits are born to be embarrassed, it’s in our DNA. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a newborn British baby experienced a flush of shame as it emerged from the birthing canal for all the bother it has just caused its mother. As someone once pointed out, we are the only nation in the world in which someone will say: “I’m terribly sorry, old man, but you’re standing on my foot.”

Ours is a culture in which awkwardness infests every pore. Fawlty Towers, The Diary Of A Nobody, Four Weddings And A Funeral, among many others, are all based on our propensity to squirm in any situation.

Years ago I saw a movie called Crossing Delancey, in which the heroine is torn between two men of very different social backgrounds and there is one scene in which the workingclass suitor turns up at a reading given by the middle-class type. The entire cinema tensed itself for the inevitable humiliating clash of different values – but it never came. Because this was an American film set in New York and they just don’t do toe-curling, red-faced, excoriating mortification over there.

I’m sure it makes us into a nicer people. If you accidentally spill a drink on a fiery Latin bloke, chances are he will punch you. Do the same thing to a Brit and he will apologise.