There used to be a programme on UK TV featuring two characters called the Chuckle Brothers. They looked like car thieves and acted like drunken pikeys trying to attract attention in the street while their friends picked the pockets of bystanders.

The Chuckle Brothers look like they come from Darlington or St Helen’s or somewhere. I haven’t got a clue where the fuck they were really from.

Further back, the Krankies, who came from Glasgow or somewhere, set the tone. Ian Krankie was a grinning permed fool who looked like a 70s changing-room loiterer and, in a twist guaranteed to give a generation of children nightmares, Jimmy Krankie was a schoolboy who played his wayward, cheeky son but who was actually his wife.

Confused? How the fuck do you think we felt? After all, there was a programme called Ask Aspel, starring Michael Aspel, in which kiddiewinkies could request clips form the weeks TV. Aspel himself said years later that entire schools of children thought his first name was Ask. What chance did we have with a horrific Scottish schoolboy-son-woman aberration?

Now, of course, the Krankies deserve to be called cults. Yes, cults, the pair of them.

In a quest for ever more complex or clever swearing, we have neglected the pure and powerful simplicity of ‘Fuck off!’

I was in a charming Georgian town recently when this happened; Young man drops Snickers wrapper upon charming Georgian pavement. Old man in hat sees this.
‘Hey. You pick that up!’ says the old gentleman. The youth walks up to the oldster, causing him to recoil in fear.
‘Grandad, fuck off!’ says the young man. His head did a cool, aggressive nod on the word fuck, which improved it. And the sentence was finished in the classical way, with teeth clenched. The whole thing was sublime – pure Tim Roth out of Made In England.

So pick someone you don’t know well and tell them to fuck off today. Maybe it’ll get us our empire back.

We’re talking about football only, here. Scottish people support Scotland first, and anyone who England is playing against second. If Scotland aren’t in, say, the World Cup they’ll support Argentina against England, Germany against England, anyone. If there was a team of baby-eating Nazi kitten-killers the Scots would support them if they were playing England.

The Welsh aren’t like this about football. They are anti-English rugby union, but that’s another rant.

The best thing is, English people firstly support England, then they support Scotland, Wales and Ireland. This makes the anti-English stance of the Scots look childish. The English respect for Scotland as a place and a race just winds up the Scots, with their huge inferiority complex, even further. As Renton says in Trainspotting, ‘I don’t hate the English. They’re just wankers.’ That’s enlightened of him, and I reckon that it’s a direct port from Irvine Welsh’s head.

So, English people - let’s support plucky, crap Scotland in their pathetic sporting endeavours. And let’s keep nicking their North Sea oil.