Generally speaking, it's better to be American abroad than English; as hostile a reaction as you're likely to get almost everywhere, you can always pretend to be Canadian. When we get embarrassed by our countryfolk, we just have to look to the middle distance and be more quiet. Sorry, the truth is, I'm not even that embarrassed - this is Cape Town, home, for the next, er, given period of time, to some cricket. There is nothing intrinsically shaming about travelling for sport (though that is emphatically not what I've done), not even if, en masse, you have a twee nickname, like "barmy army". There's nothing shaming about moving around in crocodile formations of 50, like a school trip for grown-ups, and I'm way past berating people for travelling halfway round the world and refusing to eat anything but egg and chips (I love egg and chips). No, what makes people point and stare and hits the front page of the Cape Argus, is this: you gather enough English men (and by "enough" we can mean "two") and drop them into a holiday atmosphere, and the first thing they'll do is start dressing like women.  The barmy army favours schoolgirl chic for 2005, interpreted thus: large blond wig, in pigtails; white shirt, tied at waist; miniskirt of totally mysterious provenance (do their wives run up these garments for them? Or did they all drop into their local transvestite store before leaving?); long socks; and stilettos (ditto with the mystery). It's no accident that you don't spot any slutty nurses or saucy barmaids in the crowd; at some point, in between chartering their barmy planes and discussing their fantasy batting orders, a large number of men agreed that the funniest lady-outfit to pack would be Britney, and it would be funnier still if they all did the same. Bet Lynch is so last year.  This isn't just a cricket thing; it's also a rugby thing, an Ibiza thing, a stag-night thing, a Newcastle-on-a-regular-Saturday thing. The only people who don't do it are football crowds, which I suppose is because prosthetic breasts really undermine your credibility for when you want to have a fight after. Possibly, this makes the cross-dressing a statement of benign intent - a kind of macho white flag, announcing that fights will only be undertaken in the direst of circumstances, since there are Wonderbras involved here, and they're all definitely, positively, on a short-term loan.  And this would dovetail with the rough-hewn symbolism of dressing like females in the first place, a signal that they intend to behave as such, limiting themselves to drinking until they're sick and possibly having unplanned sex, but deter minedly not in the mood to glass anyone in the face. But still, why dress as women? Why not rabbits, or clowns?  Clearly, one's sense of one's own masculinity is immeasurably enhanced by being in a group with a lot of people who are also men. The interpolation of just one individual who isn't male will have a feminising (I'm steering clear of the word "civilising") influence so great that it's often   cost-effective for nightclubs to let women in for nothing, since they pay for themselves by preventing breakages. So, if you wanted to experiment with gender ambiguity, to experience the sensation of clothing that would otherwise be considered aberrant, there's no better time to do it than when your true gender identity is most unassailable.  This explains why the barmy army is a good situation in which to experiment, but not why they want to experiment in the first place. Clearly, it's meant to be funny; the hilarity totally passes me by, but then, so does Jacques Tati. And Green Wing. You could argue that women have carte blanche to wear men's clothes at any point, so get no frisson from the idea; I would counter that we're broadly steered away from men's pants, but you don't see us going Y-front crazy on hen nights (oh no, we favour little flashing horns, like sensible people).  There are really only two possibilities - either men have a genuine fear of their oft-peddled "feminine side" and express it in this carnivalesque way with the aim of neutralising it; or they all carry a secret desire to obviate women completely, each fulfilling the role of women for one another, because we're so bothersome. This is a pretty big either/or, though - could somebody with a Britney outfit please write in to clarify. With a photo.