Next time I hear a Brit going on about “dumb Americans” I can at least have the happy glow of knowing we are not alone. From here .
Basically, the news article is about a survey recently done where a quarter of the respondents thought that Winston Churchill was a myth, 47 percent thought Richard the Lionheart was made up, and over half thought Sherlock Holmes was real.
Brits, I am not attacking you, ok? I know that every country has its morons, and that survey must have gotten hold of a good portion of them for those kind of results. I am also sure that if you did a similar survey in the U.S. you’d get similarly stupid results.
Yes but it’s a survey of UKTV Gold viewers, it’s a bit like interviewing the Alabama Creationists Union* as a cross section of Americans and being surprised that their answers were a little bizarre.
*I made this group up but apologise if it’s real. I still maintain that if they do exist they will likely be about as astute as UKTV Gold viewers.
You have to understand their answers in context, though: what they meant to say was that Sherlock Holmes was based on a real life person, who did everything that the literary Sherlock Holmes did, and who was also named Sherlock Holmes. Makes a lot more sense that way, see?
When I somehow become rich, I think I would like to set up a house-building and property company and I would, of course, register it at Companies House as “Sherlock Homes”. I would have offices in London and in Edinburgh, (only to start with, mind, 'cos my empire would soon go global, oh yes) and I would have free advertising from the sillier sorts of media because they would publicise it for me purely because of the name. And I would see about getting Gerry Rafferty to do a publicity/advertising song for it.
Yeah, all right, I know it has probably been done already. Another great idea turned to dust. Woe is me.
Well, he was, to a great extent, only the chappie upon whom Holmes was based was the rather more prosaically named Dr. Joseph Bell.
And now I wonder whether “Sherlock” was a invented name, or whether it existed before. Hey ho, a’ Googling I will go.
I also wonder how UKTV Gold can possibly think it has surveyed “a quarter of Brits”, although I suppose, to be fair, that was just Yahoo’s headline.
ALSO, we all know that Winston Churchill was most certainly not real: he is merely a made-up name commonly used to describe the appearance of all newly born babies.
I’m getting the impression that UKTV Gold might not be the most academically rigorous institution over there… might I ask why? Is it a tabloid type station?
From what I recall, they weren’t claiming to have surveyed a quarter of the British population. The headline referred to the fact that a quarter of the people surveyed thought Winston Churchill was fictional.
:: sobs quietly in corner ::
