Crafty ways to catch out spies

IN THE stories of my youth, Nazi spies parachuted into England but it never did them any good. Faultless though their disguises were and impeccable their accents, they always made a single crucial error which showed that they were not English. They overtipped by a shilling, they asked for a pint of beer at 3.30pm, they didn't know who won the FA Cup in 1934. An English patriot would drop a hammer on a disguised German foot and the spy would cry out: 'Schweinhund]'

The principle remains a good one. Here are some phrases that are a sure sign you are talking to a parachute spy landed in our midst for some alien purpose.

'No, no, I'll pay, I'm sure you paid the last time, didn't you?'

'Sex is a vastly underrated

activity.'

'I think a bit of 'healthy vulgarity' is, in fact, rather disgusting in educated people.'

'Don't concern yourself with the washing-up. I've done it

already.'

'Those abandoned donkeys should be turned into soap.'

'How extraordinarily nice to meet you. Do tell me about yourself in great detail.'

'If you are going to listen to The Archers then I shall have to leave immediately.'

'So he's a baronet; why should that in any way alter what I think of him?'

'All this no-smoking-on-

trains nonsense, light up if you want to] Enjoy yourselves]'

'That dog should be put down.'

'You are scum.'

'No. You are wrong.'

'You vixen, you minx, that

psychic musk you are giving off is maddening, I must have you, and immediately, in this lift, or I shall kill us both]'

'I don't care if you are the ticket collector, you can go and boil your head.'

'The British economy is based on superficial service industries such as banking and finance; there is no depth in its manufacturing section and increased productivity is still the only secure economic base for any country that is not a Third World, gang-run tax haven.'

'The recession here will never end because there is no reason for it to do so. There will be a slow but inexorable decline over the next 10 to 20 years until Britain produces something that people overseas actually want to buy. The only way to do this is to fire British managers and replace them with Japanese.'

'The exchange rate mechanism is a necessary discipline for a self-indulgent, under-performing, backward-looking economy such as ours.'

'American television sit-coms are so much funnier than ours. Till Death Us Do Part hardly compares with its US counterpart. Cheers is endlessly more amusing than Fawlty Towers, and we have nothing to compare, in terms of timing, content and style, with The Simpsons.'

'The British Foreign Office is an object of international ridicule. It is as well that foreigners are too polite to say so in public.'

'The trouble with Britain is that it has been enfeebled, demoralised and incapacitated by its sense of humour.'

'My child is extraordinarily intelligent - he reads Schopenhauer, you know. He doesn't understand it all - but he doesn't agree with it all, either.'

'Whistler, of course you know, was American.'

'Holbein, of course you know, was Dutch.'

'Shakespeare, of course you know, was Austrian.'

'Dickens? Very second-rate.'

'Why do people like things written by John Mortimer?'

'Those filthy creatures with coal all over their faces - are they miners? Why are they allowed to live like that? Can't their holes in the ground be closed up and they be found jobs in shops or something?'

'The French are so much cleaner than the English, and their agriculture is far more advanced than ours.'

'Who is the one they call Princess Di?'

'I don't put all my learning in the shop window. I don't put a fraction of what I know on

display.'

Now, whatever the purpose of these aliens, these moles, spies, agents, whatever it is they are doing in Britain, it is not to our advantage. Some sedition, some urge to spread despondency, some plan to infect the nation with the bacillus of foreign thought. Call the authorities immediately. If there are no authorities available, put a bag over the head of the speaker and, looking neither right nor left nor waiting for women or children, run.