God Save Our Anthem

www.paulcoia.com

I am not one to jump to conclusions and brand people as stereotypes, but I do make exceptions now and again. I firmly believe, in my caring, non judgemental way, that anyone who rings a TV or radio station to complain is a sad, lonely wallflower who is hated by their neighbours, has too many cats, probably owns a shopping bag on wheels and eats out of Tupperware on park benches.

I read this week that the Colonel and Mrs Angry brigade have picked up their telephones and complained to the BBC about wall to wall coverage of this season’s Six Nations rugby. This, of course, is what happens when the older technophobe generation can’t let off steam by writing a blog each week.

The nub of the complaint is that the Home Counties homeys feel Saturday afternoon TV should be sport free and filled with old black and white movies, although personally I’d rather eat slug pellets off a sweaty wrestler’s bum than watch Bette Davis do her eyebrow acting for ninety minutes.

However, at the risk of sounding as if Mr Tupperware is my best friend, I want to make a complaint too. Even if you hate rugby you’ll recognise my feelings here as my issue is that my team, Scotland, are so bad we couldn’t win a match if the other team were blindfolded and drugged, then bound hand and foot with barbed wire and allowed to play only one half. We are so woeful our players couldn’t find the line if it was made of coke and there was a police sniffer dog strapped to each player.

It’s become so bad I’m thinking of changing nationality. Not to English you understand – after all, I’m annoyed rather than mentally unstable. No, I’m thinking of becoming a Kiwi. A bit of a thigh slapping dance before the match, stick your tongues out at the opposition, grind their faces in your tattoos then home to wander the mountains with Master Frodo. Sorted.

But until my nationality application is heard I’m left wondering why we, the Scots, are so awful at sport. Our football team didn’t qualify, again, for the European Championships this year and it’s a given that we have no tactics, skill, speed, communication, flair or inventiveness. But other than that we’re fine.

I think, however, I’ve identified a reason for our disasters that the commentators have missed. It’s not just the strips which look like my ten year old daughter put them together from off cuts in her dressing up box. I think the real reason we’re losing every game is that we have such a boring, useless, uninspiring national anthem. At the risk of sounding treasonable, it’s time to say The Flower of Scotland is pants. If it’s a flower then it’s a pansy!

As Scottish fans singing God Save The Queen seemed more and more stupid with our resurgence of national identity, we turned a few years ago to a folk song from The Corries about sending the English home again to “think again”. Which is fine when you’re winning, but when you can’t even send the Lichtenstein Over Sixties Ballroom reserves back with a few things to think about then it’s empty posturing. Add to that the sight of Ronnie Brown of The Corries singing it before matches with his ad libbing of “Come On” every few lines and you expect he’ll soon throw in “Get In There”, “You Beauty” and “The referee’s a Hun”. You can see why we’re a laughing stock.

To listen to the Welsh anthem is to be moved to tears by passion and pride. The Italian one seems to me to have the right dose of military sounding noise and the French one might sound like an old Beatles song but is stirring and unassailable.

Because of religious issues over a united North and South team, the Irish get two anthems. One is the traditional one that is even available as a download sung by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers (how cool is that?) and the other is the result of a competition won by Phil Coulter, the man who wrote Shang A Lang and Puppet On A String. Now that’s class.

Billy Connolly pointed out that the English anthem was a dirge and should be replaced by the theme from The Archers and even Lord Goldsmith announced two months ago that God Save The Queen needs updating for a modern, integrated society – perhaps to the catchy God/Allah/Jehovah Save The Queen (Whoever He Is).

I reckon that if Ireland can choose their anthem with a contest then so can we. Let’s have a national X Factor style show to write new anthems for Scotland and England. We’ll get hold of some talented song writers and ask them to write something inspiring we can all sing with pride. Terry Wogan should act as host and we’ll have the English ones sung by folkies in pullovers and the Scots ones by The Proclaimers in kilts. Then we’ll throw it open to a telephone vote.

The passion of the Welsh anthem and the ferocity of the New Zealand Haka must be worth ten points as the opposition get scared even before kick off so, whichever song wins for Scotland, we have to have the fear factor too.

Perhaps we could get Ronnie Brown to sing in tune. It may not scare anyone but at least it would confuse them.