Are you agreeable and calm? Bet you’re a Scot (with apologies, if not terribly sincere ones, to Ed Miliband and David Cameron who might, currently, have a different view on this). Are you extroverted, disagreeable and reckless? Then you’re a Londoner, with no apologies, at all, to Boris Johnson.
Open and agreeable? You’re from North Wales. Introverted and neurotic? Sorry, South Wales! And if you lay claim to be both conscientious and laid back, you are commuting, on purpose or not, between the South of England and the West Country.
The University of Cambridge, no less, has produced the first personality map of the nation. It’s nothing new, of course, this somewhat cavalier ascribing of sweeping traits to swathes of people and places, although it makes a fine change for us in North Britain not to be dubbed “dour” and “tight” but instead, to be described as “outgoing, social and talkative”; that is, of course, when we’re not being accused of sabotaging democracy, sticking our noses in where they’re not wanted and spending other people’s taxes on unreasonable things like retaining the National Health Service in a form that Aneurin Bevan might actually recognise.
If you’re going to go the whole hog with national stereotypes, the ironic words of the great Flanders & Swann’s Song of Patriotic Prejudice are hard to beat. The Welsh “sing far too loud, far too often and flat”, the Scots are “boney and blotchy and covered with hair” and the Irishman “sleeps in his boots and he lies through his teeth.”
The continent doesn’t escape, either: “The Germans are German, the Russians are red and the Greeks and Italians eat garlic in bed.” No cliches there, then…
But it’s a lot of fun, especially when it takes in political habits. This survey claims to have identified high levels of neuroticism correlating with voting for the Labour Party, for example, which is maybe why Alex Salmond is currently rubbing his hands with glee. Especially as he is currently the leader of precisely nothing but a heart-felt chorus of constituency workers carolling “A Gordon for Me”.
Hence also, perhaps, David Cameron’s attempt this week to ingratiate himself with a certain tranche of the electorate by assuring us that he isn’t actually going to be around for that much longer even if we do vote for him and his party in six weeks’ time. Although to many, it’s a big assumption to be confidently not seeking a third term before the second one has been secured.
Perhaps it would be unkind to point out the axiom that all political careers end in failure. And if the example of the re-invented and re-interred Richard III is anything to go by, it could easily take 530 years for rehabilitation and the strewing of roses in front of your hastily re-assembled bones.
AS YOU do more and more as you get older, I found myself saying goodbye to two late and much lamented friends this week, former Daily Express journalist Donald Stewart and musician Michael McBride. Very different in background, they were both extremely talented and successful in their chosen professions and made friends of people from all walks of life.
There was quietly spoken Donald with his love of order and almost courtly manner, belied by his complete change of character once behind the wheel of a car. Then there was warm hearted, outgoing Michael, universally known as The Maestro, a pianist and singer of the highest calibre who not only encouraged generations of pupils and students during a distinguished teaching career but who also made a huge contribution to choral music in Dundee and beyond, particularly as choirmaster of St Andrew’s Cathedral and St Ninian’s in Menzieshill. A devout Catholic, he was well described as a one-man ecumenical movement with the knack of making everyone of any faith or none feel welcome, comfortable and special.
A top-class accompanist, sympathetic and supportive, he played for me on many occasions. I don’t THINK it was me he meant when he once described a struggle with a female soloist, to whom he had been nothing but the soul of kindness and generosity. “I gave her every key but the one to the outside convenience,” he sighed, “but she still didn’t get it!”
Warmth, fun, genuine ability, wit, a love of life, family and friends – these men had all of these and more. Everyone who knew them had a Donald story and a Michael story, many of which were re-told with pleasure, laughter and the odd stifled sniffle this week at a memorial gathering for Donald and at Michael’s funeral on Tuesday.
Above all, they were both gentlemen – and gentle men. I’ll miss them.