In the latest farcical round of Brexit negotiations, a Downing Street ‘source’ has announced an odd new strategy, sending the leaders of the other EU nations each a DVD box set of one of the nation’s favourite sitcoms, “’Allo ‘Allo”.
Speaking at a press conference, he or she made the following statement:
“Listen very carefully, I shall say this only once. These bloody foreigners need to understand English, so we are sending them an instruction manual that any idiot can learn by, and if the frogs, krauts and eye-ties can all speak English in ‘Allo ‘Allo, then they can speak it to us.”
The ‘source’ was quick to deny the rumours circulating that the idea came to her/him after the other EU leaders all called him/her “you stupid man/woman” in unison.
“The spirit of ‘Allo ‘Allo is the true spirit of Britain and Brexit. It was about two plucky British airmen who were trying everything they could to get the hell out of Europe, only to be thwarted at every turn by a bunch of foreigners, held prisoner in various undesirable locales, before finally escaping in the end.”
The fact that the British Airmen were only very minor characters in the series was completely lost on the source, as they focused on them as if they were the only heroic characters in the whole series.
“That’s not true, there was one other hero, that Englishman who was disguised as a policeman.”
That would be Officer Crabtree, whose mangled attempts at French – or should that be “French English”? – were one disaster after another, and who could barely pronounce one word correctly in any given sentence?
“That’s the man – refusing to bow down to Johnny Foreigner. Why should he bother perfecting their language anyway? English is the only language anyone should ever have any need of.”
Unconfirmed rumours are currently circulating that they are going to test it out first on Donald Trump. Who knows, maybe it will even teach him to say a civil good moaning.