The Unofficial Citizenship Test

For fun I decided to take the official practice citizenship test - that government interrogation designed to check whether immigrants have absorbed enough Britishness to merit a UK passport. 

I am born and bred British and so were three centuries of my family tree.  I scored 53 per cent and failed the test.

Briefly I was stricken. I love warm ale and the sound of hard balls on cricket bats. I own a box set of episodes of Are you Being Served?. I thought I was British to the core. But, according official criteria, I am an imposter.

Then I started to ponder and it struck me that the problem is not with my imperfect national identity but with the questions. You could know how many days a year British schools have to be open, the difference between Hansard and Speaker’s Notes and which year women won the right to divorce their husbands and still nurse a murderous hatred of the British way of life. But noone who sincerely loves Marmite could look an Englishman in the eye and wish him ill.

Something needs to be done about this flawed view of identity and it looks as though it’s up to me to do it. And so, to celebrate impending St George’s Day and with the aid of some oracles from Twitter, I propose to submit a new set of criteria to the government. Being English, I would not presume to speak for the Welsh, Scots or Northern Irish, so my test is purely to test the Englishness of foreign nationals seeking to become One of Us.

Noone should be granted a UK passport unless they can prove that:

1.They accept that the emotional and medicinal solution to all crises is a tea bag.

2. At least one person in their family has bequeathed a sum to a donkey sanctuary.

3. They know what to do with a jar of Branston. Extra points for possession of at least three of the following: Heinz salad cream, Colman’s mustard, HP sauce, Worcestershire sauce, tomato Ketchup, pickled onions. ‘We are,’ says one tweep, ‘a nation defined by our condiments.’

4. Pleasure is crouching behind The Sun in a rain-swept wind-shelter in Bournemouth.

5. They prefer sausages without any recognisable meat in and chocolate without recognisable chocolate in.

6. They keep a minimum of three pairs of Wellington boots in their hallway for emergencies and for putting the bins out.

7. They can discourse fluently on the weather of the previous, current and coming weeks for a minimum of ten minutes.

8. For solemn social occasions they must be able to discourse with equal fluency on the shortcomings of the NHS and provide details of least two family case studies, real or borrowed, to back up their argument.

9. They strip their bodies and clothe their washing lines upon the first chilly ray of spring sunshine.

10. They demonstrate appropriate reverence for the throbbing, thrusting proof of English male virility – a Black & Decker power tool.

11. They gather for the sacred ritual of the Sabbath, appropriately equipped with a chamois leather and a car vac.

12. They agree that no pint of warm beer is palatable without a loudspeaker blasting quiz questions about the US Open Championship and the 2010 finalist of The X Factor.

13. They can plant red and salmon pink begonias in symmetrical lines.

14. They can taste, blindfold, the difference between an Oreo and a Bourbon Cream.  

15. They own at least one domestic item bearing a Kath Kidston design.

So are YOU fit to be called English? Register your score below. Warning: candidates who achieve a score of 12 or less may be required to surrender their passports.