Beejournal

Dear Mark Steel,

Thank you for talking about my great-great-great-great grandfather on your comedy programme tonight. I have always found you very funny; your book on the French Revolution was fascinating, as was your memoir of growing up as a socialist. I was brought up a socialist, and though I would never be so black and white about my political beliefs any more, I broadly agree with your rants on social justice, or the lack of.

But please, for the love of God, wtf is up with you and the Welsh hating? Tonight's show started with a predictable story about how you weren't in the "scary, English-hating bit" of Wales, and mentions of firebombs and (yawn) The Pub Fallacy. I suppose that could be just the normal regionalist joking to soften up the crowd. But you have form. I heard you on the News Quiz one New Year's Eve, for instance, ranting about the Welsh getting upset about Anne Robinson's anti-Welsh racist comments a few years back. The Welsh are always whingeing, you said, what for, I mean, it's not as though the English have ever done anything bad to the the Welsh, is it? After all, it was only our sovereignty and our language that was destroyed, it wasn't as though we were sold into slavery or anything, what do we have to whinge about?

But see, this isn't a victimhood top trumps, you know? Just because culture X had something worse done to them than culture Y, doesn't mean culture Y should just go "oh, well, never mind, we'll just forget all about that then." Good stuff has inevitably come from "our happy union with the valorous English", but so has bad stuff.
It's easy, though, to take the piss out of the Welsh. After all, you're not allowed to be Anti-Semitic, or laugh at someone because of their colour any more, so you have to have someone to pick on, right? And we're all British, so technically you're just laughing at yourself, really. Sure.

Grow up. Get some wit. Make funnies that don't depend on disparaging someone's culture and language, why don't you? Because that's just as bad as the right-wing upper-class bigots whose bubbles you so often puncture.

Yours,
Pissed Off Welsh Expat.