British celebrities in the US – unless they’re Dame Judi Dench or Adele and too famous for the normal rules to apply – have one advantage in common: a signal-jamming ability to be seen as they’re not seen at home.  Even their names sound different to American ears.  I remember first thinking this years ago, when Pop Idol became American Idol and Nigel Lythgoe went from LWT to Fox.  To Americans “Nasty Nigel” had none of the connotations it does in Britain, that air of something effete and suburban with its inadvertent nod to Mike Leigh.  David Frost was less ridiculous in the US than at home; Hugh Grant more straightforwardly charming. ( The exception is Simon Cowell, who is exactly the same wherever he is, either because he’s intrinsically transatlantic, or because he doesn’t seem to come from anywhere in particular, bar perhaps Transylvania). 

Which brings us to Milo Yiannopoulos.  The oddest thing about his rise and now fall is to consider what rightwing Americans saw in him in the first place.  I suspect they did not see what even their political sympathisers in Britain did, which is a type of idiot most of us know well.  If Yiannopoulos had stayed in Britain, or come to prominence before the internet, he would have plateaued as the loudmouth in a suit and sunglasses, a version of that guy most of us have been trying to avoid since school and who even then, while doing his party piece for his cronies, probably thought of himself as a “provocateur”. 

Milo Yiannopoulos book deal cancelled after outrage over child abuse comments Read more

In the US a lot of people think Yiannopoulos is awful, but they think he’s awful because he says awful things, not because he says awful things while styling himself as a estate agent on a night out.  It is almost impossible to communicate his combination of offensiveness and ineffectiveness to those without a deep cultural sense of how British people use the word “tool”. 

The same goes for other Brits in the US.  An American friend recently posted an admiring remark on Facebook about “former British parliamentarian Louise Mensch”, on whose Twitter feed – what are the odds? –  she had stumbled upon a vaguely reasonable opinion.  I forget what it was now, but seconds after she posted, several British people jumped in to try to explain who Mensch is. “ She’s obviously a controversial figure!”  replied my friend, gamely, not understanding at all. 

And how could she?  It’s not just Mensch’s opinions, or biography, but the feeling evoked by the very words “Louise Mensch”, just as the words “Nancy Pelosi” make some American friends shudder.  I understand their reaction, but I have no real way of understanding the cause, other than that it has something to do with the American class system.  I could live in New York for 50 years and I think this would always be opaque. 

As for Yiannopoulos, the word “blowhard” has been applied to him by American journalists – and, technically, I guess that’s what he is.  But it’s not quite right for a guy from Kent, who without the cloak of his Britishness it’s hard to believe would ever have got any traction. 

Fine whine by the subway

“Be a little sensitive to my situation, too,” said a guy into his phone, while standing outside the Bedford Avenue subway station in Brooklyn.  I stopped to listen; I love other people’s phone arguments, the best of which always take place at the mouth of the subway, because they can’t stand to hang up and go in. “ You’re being controlling,” he said. “ No.  No.  No.  NO.”  Whoever this guy was arguing with, I was on their side.  Whining is whining, wherever you are. 

Blog that took me back home

The smallest things can trigger my homesickness, and this week it was a line in a blog about Jeremy Corbyn.  The blogger re-quoted something said by a northern voter in the wake of the resignation of Labour’s MP for Copeland, in Cumbria, triggering tonight’s byelection.  The voter’s assessment of Corbyn was that he is so thoroughly useless, “he should just be sat on a barge somewhere going up and down”.  It was so perfectly put, so particular in its grammar and usage, it summoned whole worlds.