Why we English hate ourselves

I NEED to sell some apples. Second only to the harvesting of puffballs, it can be a useful second income, sometimes running into three figures. This time last year, I sold a few boxloads of Discoverys from Suffolk through a local greengrocer in Hammersmith, but the life expectancy of any Askew Road retail outlet not selling alcohol, bargain bathroom utensils or plumbing equipment is less than 12 months, and inevitably my outlet has since closed. So this year I tried Fulham.

"Apples? English apples?" The greengrocer reacted to my enquiry with what seemed to be genuine rage. He led me to an apple display at the back of the shop. "You know what I call those? I call them shit. Because that's all they're worth. I can't give them away."

"People don't like apples any more?"

"I'll show you what they like." He pointed to the front of the shop and a box of larger apples, glowing with bland, shiny tastelessness. "New Zealand. Double the price. Half the flavour. Yet still they buy them. Suddenly all people want is foreign stuff. What's wrong with this country?"

Alarmed that an innocent sales pitch had prompted what might become an assault on my delicate liberal sensibilities, I was relieved when a Fulham type in her late twenties drifted in from the street. But the tirade continued, in a low, angry mutter. "They don't buy English apples, that lot," he said, nodding in the woman's direction, as she checked out the herbs. "Used to. Not now. It's like football - all nifty little foreigners. Tony Adams?" He thrust out his chest and squared his shoulders in a parody of the solid, English-as-roast-beef central defender. "Forget it." I bought a lettuce and left.

As a general rule, philosophers of the street can safely be ignored. There's no reason why an angry Fulham greengrocer should have any deeper insight into life's eternal verities than a Fascist taxi-driver or a brainless actor on the Des O'Connor Show, but events over the past few days have made me wonder whether the Fulham Alf Garnett may not have been on to something.

Glenn Hoddle, for example, seems to have become a new national hate figure. Even before our lads got stuffed in Stockholm, he was mocked in the tabloids, who bewilderingly have taken to portraying him as a teapot. Yet it seems like only a couple of months ago that we all rather liked Glenn. He had been a great player, and seemed a decent club manager. By footballing standards, the conduct of his private and business lives seemed relatively straightforward, if a touch too aggressively Christian for some. He managed to get the England team to the World Cup where, apart from a few dodgy selection decisions, his campaign was thought to be generally rather successful.

What went wrong? Why did he suddenly become loathed, in the same way that every England manager of recent years has been loathed? His support of a faith-healer as an aid to football management was slightly embarrassing, it was true. The publication of his kick-and-tell World Cup diary revealed a certain lack of dignity and judgement. But nothing quite explains the venom and contempt which he now has to endure.

Unless the greengrocer was right. Perhaps there is something self-loathing within the national psyche that, at the slightest excuse, will find expression in a contempt for all things English. Last week, the novelist John Lanchester, as he interviewed Julian Barnes, was to be found bemoaning the fact that, while English fiction is thought internationally to be in a healthy state, it is regularly held up to ridicule by the small army of critics and media academics who influence literary opinion in this country.

In politics, it's noticeable that within the very circles where the result of last year's election was greeted as a bright, long-awaited new dawn, a bitter disenchantment with the new establishment has become evident. Every new rumour - that the V&A Museum may be renamed, that Trafalgar Square may be pedestrianised, that the Royal Family may be made more accountable - is held up as another example of the Government's obsession with a naff popularism. It's as if already the new cynics have forgotten how far we have travelled since the days when we had a hopeless, floundering government, when Michael Howard was on the radio every morning patronising us, and when characters like Rhodes Boyson and David Evans were taken seriously.

This is dangerous ground, of course. The last great campaign of patriotism was launched by Robert Maxwell. The need to be proud of English success has recently become a rallying cry of Jeffrey Archer. Perhaps I had better eat those apples myself.