True Brit

I love this country, you know! Nowhere else on the planet could throw a Nationwide Poll of National Heroes and come up with a list as entertainingly potty as the one we've come up with.

This is a poll up there with another crackpot 'Best Ever' list published a month back, that voted some hideous dirge by Clifford T Ward as Britain's Most Loved Song. Of course it's good old Auntie Beeb up to its old tricks.

The list of course is a hoot. Take a look for yourself. what kind of oddities have made the list! There's room in there for three Beatles (wot, no Ringo?) , a witch and a hobgoblin (JK Rowling and JRR Tolkien) and a roomful of old Queens, including Boy George, Freddie Mercury and the three Lizzies.

There's the usual historical pinups Flo Nightingale, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, James Watt and Captain James Cook, and a few happy rebels like Guy Fawkes and Johnny Rotten.

But there are a few on the list that beggar belief. What kind of Alf Garnett crap is still going through enough minds to get Enoch Powell on the list? Never mind the fact that the list is whiter than Margaret Thatcher's backside, voting an ignorant flat-earther like Powell into any kind of hero list proves that many of our fellow citizens are pretty bitter and twisted. At least there's old Willie Wilberforce to counter his argument.

But the one that leaves me gasping for air is the presence of Princess Dianorexic herself. Not content with an Evita style Hysteria fest a few years ago, the royal slapper has long been enshrined in English history as the patron saint of slimming and shopping. But now the Great Brits are about to put her on a pedestal that even she would have been embarrassed by.

The greatest British woman of all time? Ahead of Elizabeth 1st and good old QE2? And there was me thinking she'd been chucked out with last year's News Of The World Souvenir Di Dies issue.

Now don't get me wrong - I loved the Loose Cannon on the Royal Yacht routine with the best of 'em. Prince Charles thought he'd married a nice compliant baby maker, and it turned out she was a firecracker just waiting to go off. She was pure soap opera adding some cheap daily drama to the dim-bulb business-as-usual royal pageant.

Millions of us got a Dianagram via the tabloids and we lapped it up. Di, bored stupid and not bright enough to keep herself occupied, loved the public reaction and hammed it up for the cameras. Shagging rugger players and the international playboys while playing the poor princess locked in the Tower. This was public spectacle of the highest order - a high class peep show that seemed to get more and more over the top as the weeks went by.

She was the last silent movie superstar, and when she talked to Panorama it was just like the Talkies and Technicolor all over again.

But the talkies proved to be short lived. Millions mourned the closing of the Diorama. The great British public had loved its star to death and wept real tears of regret and remorse.

Meanwhile inside the Palace, the bit part actors on the Royal stage had to get by without a script. Poor old Liz Two had to lower her flag and bow to people power. The public was now used to its royalty flirting with the camera and the old Pomp and Circumstance didn't have the glam that the public was used to. It's taken the public time to adjust...

But clearly the lady hasn't died in the hearts of the public. She's now up there with the all time historical greats, bringing a distinctive whiff of Chanel to the pages of our history books. She'll be on the history syllabus by the end of the decade and the di-ification will be complete. In the future you won't have to be great to get into the history books. You'll just have to look great. Future history will not be able to tell the difference.

Blogga.