The BBC's final short-list of the 10 'greatest Britons' of all time is a mildly depressing one. Yes, we've got Darwin, Newton, Shakespeare and whizzy Izzy Kingdom Brunel, all right and fair, and good to remind ourselves that we invented bridges and gravity, and killed God. Then we move on. Churchill, Nelson, Cromwell, Elizabeth I, Diana and Lennon. Three soldiers - one whose bloody exploits got Ireland into the mess from which we're still stumbling to recover, one who nursed a quietly vicious little lifelong love of eugenics - one murderous queen, one lucky blonde clothes-horse. And the vain twanging fraud.
Lennon has been exuberantly demolished down the years by Ms Julie Burchill, but could still take a kicking or two, mainly because it could be argued that it was his narcissistic emoting, never shot through with the tiniest ray of intellectual rigour, which began the Liverpudlianisation of Britain and turned us into a country that fills its gutters with tears for girls we've never met and scrawls mawkish thank-yous to the most privileged woman this land has ever known. You go, girl. But the truly worrying thing about Lennon's being voted in is what it says about us, the people of Britain, and our taste in music. Lennon wrote music for people who don't like music.
He's one of the handy tell-tale giveaway signs. The kind of people who possess his records are the kind of people who buy in, all the time, to marketing; he is seen, by them, as in some way iconic, or even iconoclastic, so they're proud to have the stuff on the shelf, even though actually listening to it would leave them unable for a while to drive or operate heavy machinery.
You know them. I know them. And Lennon's a handy way to spot them; but he's not the only one. Here's a scenario, girls and boys. You have been chatting to a person of the opposite sex, in a bar or club, and end up being invited back for 'coffee'. You will have approximately 10 minutes to decide, quietly, whether you will sleep with them; you are vaguely attracted anyway, but a few pointers would be an advantage. Here they are.
First, for men. The kettle is chuckling away, and she's doing something susurrating with the curtains or the cat. But you must, by law, leave the flat immediately if you spy any of the following: Lennon, obviously; any music by Simply Red or Phil Collins; any compilation album of classical music with a nature picture on the front on which the first track is either Pachelbel's 'Canon' or 'Für Elise'; a copy, by the bed, of Captain Correlli's Mandolin; a can, anywhere else in the bedroom, of Glade, for spraying afterwards; an amusing poster featuring a monkey.
Girls, you have it even simpler: A black Playboy bedspread; a PlayStation; a car manual; anything by John Lennon.
Actually, he's not that useless after all. Imagine that.
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