I haven’t been back to the UK since the Russian Old New Year concert in Trafalgar Square. I’ve thought about it, but for no longer than fleetingly (as we’ve run out of baked beans…)

I’d been considering a bit of a social experiment on that trip though, because I’d been reading Watching the English: The hidden rules of English behaviour by Kate Fox, and with my metaphorical sociologist’s cap wedged firmly on my head, I thought I could partake in a little participant observation…

It was eye-opening, to say the least, but that wasn’t because of the behaviour as such, it was more a little bit of surprise at the abundance of Amy Winehouse eyes (I’m not talking glassy or bloodshot, but the exaggerated cat-eye makeup curl) after the French fashion conservatism (some would say refined, classic and sophisticated… but really, it all boils down to unambitious and uninspired).

But my quest was for appearances of another sort. Disillusioned with some previous rudeness in Paris, I was on the search for that legendary English politeness.

Like reserve, privacy humour, weather-talk, class-consciousness, anti-intellectualism and eccentricity – politeness is considered to be one of those essentially or stereotypical English characteristics.

Fox sums it up as irrational excesses of politeness, such as ‘Excuse me, I’m terribly sorry, but you seem to be standing on my foot’ or ‘With all due respect, the right honourable gentleman is being a bit economical with the truth.’ Only in England would you hear – or find yourself uttering – something like that!

My experiment didn’t get off to a good start. I wasn’t let out of my seat enclosure into the aisle by two men, and had to push through – apologising profusely – to continue my social experiment. We’d barely shuffled forward, but I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to test the willingness of the English to queue like sheep (quoting Hungarian humorist George Mikes, Fox writes that ‘an Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one’). I was sorely disappointed as an exasperated shout echoed across the carriage:

‘Oh for f***’s sake, it’s only a train!’

Hmmm… and that was the point I abandoned that little ethnographic test (until I realised that Fox had also identified ‘hooliganism’ and ‘hypocrisy’ as quintessential English stereotypes, so I feel I had an academic victory!)