An American tourist has nailed everything of value in our country that we tend to take for granted

Dear Scott Waters, you are a 66-year-old photographer from Florida but I think I love you. In a simple list of observations posted on Facebook after he had made his fourth visit to the UK, Waters has wittily nailed everything of value in our country which we tend to overlook or take for granted. And he has achieved it in that delicious, Forrest Gumpish American faux-naivety at which we Brits sometimes sneer.

Here are a few things which he considers make Britain stand out: “There are no guns. Pubs are not bars, they are community living rooms. All the signs are designed with beautiful typography and written in full sentences with proper grammar. There is no dress code. Black people are just people; they didn’t do slavery here.”

At the end of the roll call – which includes more than 100 observations, from quirky notes on electricity (“Their wall outlets all have switches, some don’t do anything”) to sensible advice on alcohol (“Avoid British wine and French beer”) – he ironically posts, “there are still no guns”.

It is always fascinating to have a mirror held up by an outsider. Of course, the stranger will highlight things the resident will never have noticed, but in his quiet humour, Waters has acknowledged things which all those Visit England tourism think-tanks never seem to hit upon. He leaves out the very things politicians and well-meaning celebrities continually drone on about: there is not a single line on Shakespeare, Beatrix Potter, the Queen, or Duchy Original biscuits. He couldn’t give two hoots about heritage fudge, our use of irony, red buses, marmalade, Monty Python or the National Trust shop.

Instead, Waters says that we love the radio and our TV is great, beer comes in full pints and HP Sauce tastes better than its US rivals. He also values our manners (“Almost everyone is very polite”), our cuisine (“The food is generally outstanding”), our lack of uniformity (“Everything is just a little bit different”) as well as our political nous, concluding: “Obama is considered a hero, Bush is considered an idiot.”

It is enough to make one want to close the national tourist board (or all five of them, as Waters sagely observes: “Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Cornwall really are different countries) and draw up a brochure from his list, for, as my 18-year-old daughter said: “It makes me feel proud of Britain.” No wonder the Facebook post has been shared more than 50,000 times. What British citizen, in 2015, would write: “When you do see police officers they seem to be in male and female pairs and often smiling”, even if the observation was true?

Waters makes our country seem charmingly old-fashioned as well as racially integrated and daringly green (“Instead of turning the heat up, you put on a jumper”). It is as well observed as the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony – which, again, was not based on the ideas of a tourist board, or indeed a politician.

Accuracy in observing national character often comes from unexpected quarters. Who could have predicted that a TV food show presented by an 80-year-old cook and a Liverpudlian baker would celebrate our multicultural and tolerant society – and, in doing do, make a state-educated mum of three of Bangladeshi heritage the toast of the nation? No doubt Waters would have joined in the cheers.