I see John Cleese has unleashed a shítstorm by the simple expedient of stating a fact

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

Woooah, slow down there big boy. You can't compare Paddies to Sikhs. Sikhs are proud, dignified, natural warriors. Paddies are spud-munching alcoholic wife abusers.

I thought that's what I was saying. Isn't the final question basically asking "How on earth could you think that a Paddy was the equal of a Sikh?"

[Sir C]

I thought that's what I was saying. Isn't the final question basically asking "How on earth could you think that a Paddy was the equal of a Sikh?"

It was mentioning them in the same sentence I objected to. it was rather like saying, 'Do you think Dennis Bergkamp is better than Gervinho?'

[WES]

You are conceding that there is such a thing as a 'white country' - even after just a couple of hundred years - and are instinctively 'othering' those who don't fit that template. You may not be doing it negatively, but you are doing it. That instinct (in a larger form) is precisely what makes people feel alienated when the ethnicity of their city or country changes significantly.

Not at all. I said that for 400 years Canada was almost entirely white and that that has changed in the past 40-50 years. However, I specifically said that that did not make me feel alienated in any way and I have never said and would never say that the immigrants to Canada, regardless of colour, are not Canadian.

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

I'm sure you'd accept that these terms are utterly arbitrary and irrational. Given which, why would you decry reasons for refusing to integrate based on race that are equally (or possibly less) arbitrary and irrational?

I don't. I think everyone should do their best to integrate whilst also adding the best of their own culture to the melting pot that is London.

I want us to have, as a base, the continually evolving British identity, whilst also taking on board the best aspects of all the world's cultures. This gives us stuff like Ska/Two Tone, for example.

And "proper sports" isn't an arbitrary or irrational term. Ours are pwoppa, yank ones aren't.

[Sir C]

Sikhs are pretty mental, tbh. And I've seen them make short work of a bottle of Scotch.

The doorman at Raffles in Singapore is a huge Sikh chap called, bizarrely, Singh. One day I noticed that he was shivering and paler than me. "Singh," I said, "You're clearly not well, you must go home an rest!" He chuckled at my naivety. "It's nothing at all, just an attack of the malaria."

Tough as old boots.

[Sir C]

Nice one Sir C...maybe that'll drag Mr Williams back onboard!

He's too long in the tooth to fall for my bait, I fear.

[Ash]

Bøllocks. It's all about accent to me.

If someone speaks London, then are more London that someone who doesn't, irrespective of skin colour.

If you've got a black man with a cockney accent, a Sikh with a cockney accent and a white man with a Manc accent, which one should be sent to the camps? Not rocket science.

Cockney is dying out, Ganps. The yoots speak ... something else now.

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

It was mentioning them in the same sentence I objected to. it was rather like saying, 'Do you think Dennis Bergkamp is better than Gervinho?'

Point taken.

I have a Sikh mate from Huddersfield who now lives in Stokey but has a broad Yorkshire accent. As I said to him, he now lives in a City where no-one cares about his race or religion by everyone will think he speaks funny until the day he dies.

I just object to the idea that his London-accented kids, born of his white, London missus, would be considered less English by some, simply on the basis of their mixed-race skin colour, than some white northerner.

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

Cockney is dying out, Ganps. The yoots speak ... something else now.

But would not the Yoot-speak spoken by those born within the sound of the Bow Bells count as a Cockney accent?

[Sir C]

Cockney is dying out, Ganps. The yoots speak ... something else now.

I found it very confusing that the three charming young lads who sat in front of me at th'Emirates back when I used to go looked Asian but spoke Jamaican. For a while I wondered whether they were ethnic Indians who had moved to UK from Kingston or Montego Bay. Turned out they were just young Londoners.