The shoe shiner at my firm today explained to me that Americans really like getting their shoes shined whereas the British don’t have it done. The reason for this, she explained, can be found in British public (i.e. private) schools where only “fags”, as she put it, shine their shoes and then all the other rich boys beat them up.

Americans, by contrast, she explained, love getting their shoes shined because they are “fond of animals” what with all that killing and beef and skins. Also all the horse riding out and about in the free. “We don’t do all that in England.”