Comedian Erich McElroy took his British citizenship test recently and now knows everything there is to know about the UK. Do you?
I moved to the UK from Seattle twelve years ago, it was a good place to prepare for life in Britain, the weather is actually worse. Eventually I thought, I’d stay and get a passport. Having one has made it much easier to steal jobs from British people.
To get citizenship I had to study a bit. I did some reading and also asked my mates to help me. I wanted to make sure I got 100% on the citizenship test, because if you do you get to meet the Queen. I learnt everything about the UK. Well, almost everything.
Here are a few of the facts I discovered, some I found on my own, some I may have made up – just to see if you’re as British as you think you are. Five are actually true, can you guess which ones?
*The United Kingdom only finished paying off the money it borrowed from the United States during World War II in 2006. The money that was saved was used to pay for Prince Williams wedding.
*Winston Churchill was half American. Every morning during the war he secretly read out the US Pledge of Allegiance, alone in his war office, whilst eating a hotdog.
*The UK drives on the left hand side of the road because the British Isle is slightly higher on the Eastern coast then it is on the Western coast. This five-degree slant meant it was easier to drive on the left going North.
*The United States and Britain had a military skirmish in 1859 over a slain pig. There were no deaths in the conflict, except for the pig.
*No one point on the British Isle is more than 75 miles from the sea, which goes a long way towards explaining that funny smell near Coventry.
*The tradition of 'getting the round' started with the ‘Knights of the Round Table’. It was the system put into place to make them stop fighting over whose turn it was to go to the bar.
*The original Land Rover was only car to ever be equipped with a kettle. It was kept under the bonnet and the water boiled off the heat from the engine. The kettle was removed from later vehicles when people kept drinking the washer fluid.
*Life expectancy is higher in the UK than the United States but lower than Macau (a part of China). Life expectancy is Swindon is much longer than it needs to be.
*The first person to dip his biscuit in a cup of tea was King George the III. It was his obsession with soggy biscuits that led people to begin calling him ‘The Mad King.’
*The Act Of Union, that united England and Scotland, contained a ‘prenuptial agreement’, which stated that if the Union were dissolved Scotland would keep the Shetland Islands and that England could never visit. The agreement was called the ‘Islands for Justice’ clause.
Erich McElroy: The Brit Identity is at the Pleasance Courtyard, in Edinburgh from 1-27th August at 4:45pm
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