WE NEED A HERO. I read about it in the paper. We’re holding out for a hero till the end of the night. He’s gotta be strong. And he’s gotta be fast. And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight. He’s also gotta be British.
But who, you ask, has made this plea for the coming of a British hero? Is it peacekeepers in the Middle East looking for an Englishman to lead the way in southern Lebanon? Nope. Is it embattled air travellers out of Heathrow desperate to know that someone is protecting them as they take to the skies? Nope. Is it Angels, the Shaftesbury Avenue fancy dress shop that has supplied costumes to parties thrown by rock stars such as Sir Elton John? Could be . . .
In response to “customer gripes about the lack of British heroes”, it seems that the famous party costume shop has launched a search for a British superhero on its website, encouraging customers to post their suggestions, which should include the name and powers of the posited superhero and an image of what his or her (all-important) costume might look like.
And so the search is on for a British answer to Superman and Batman. Isn’t it rousing? The original superpowered do-gooders debuted in American comics in the late 1930s and early 1940s as a desperate creative response to the dastardly incorporeal duo of Depression and War. And now Britain is finally getting on the case, 70 years later, because Sir Elton is fed up with everyone coming to his parties as Wonder Woman.
But what would a British superhero be like? The American ones are faster, stronger, X-ray visionier than other men, and so proud of it that they give themselves names such as “Flash” and “Green Arrow”, and wear clingy outfits to show off their muscles. I just don’t think an Englishman blessed with special powers would be like that.
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When a British Clark Kent saw a plane falling from the sky, he’d rush into a phone box to change into something even more starchy and formal. His special name would be “Kenty” or possibly “The Kentstable”.
And instead of a flying sports car in the shape of a bat, he’d have a small van with “A1 Crime Fighting Solutions” written on it. Possibly with an 01 phone number that he hadn’t got around to updating.
A British Wonder Woman wouldn’t slink around in a red, white and blue bathing suit, flying an invisible plane and herding bad guys with her golden lasso, she would wear stout shoes she got from an advert in The Guardian, carry a book of Su Doku puzzles and tell everyone to calm down while she made a nice pot of tea.
While strength and speed are treasured in America, we British cherish different qualities, and would want to see them exacerbated in our costumed crimefighters. How we would thrill to the exploits of Wellbroughtupman. “Politer than a speeding train!”; “More unflappable than a mighty atom bomb!”; “See him offer his seat to an old lady on the bus!”; “Cheer as he chastises the feckless Hoody for spitting in the street!” In the monthly issues of Mustn’t Grumble Comics we would watch as Phlegmatic Man’s whole life fell apart while he kept his chin up and refused to complain. And in The Adventures of Littleold Woman we’d see her being nice to cats.
Superheroes apart, we have been without heroes of any sort in this country for some time. It’s why people bang on so much about Churchill. Mrs Thatcher was as popular as she was with the Tories largely because they suspected that, when she ripped off the jacket and blouse, underneath she was really . . . the mighty Churchillman! The problem with David Cameron is that, nice as he is, we all know that when he tears his shirt off to reveal the hero underneath he is, at best, the Green Cross Code Man. Or possibly Tufty the Squirrel.
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Beckham is gone, Blair is going, Boy George is sweeping the streets. We are sort of at war — some of us more than others — and while not in a depression, we are all a bit depressed. It wouldn’t take much.
Hosepipe Man would be a start. In a heroless, leaderless nation, some people think that what we need is some sort of a John Reid. John Reid, for example, seems to think so.
And while Reid’s rather ungracious lunge for the hero’s baton may have riled us, we Brits will mostly agree that he is fitter for heroic purpose than John Prescott. He is, after all, flinty, small-eyed and preachy. Prescott, on the other hand, is fat and can’t talk properly. He looks, if anything, like the sort of doomed, rumbling planet a hero struggles to flee before it explodes.
But, of course, you can’t go to Sir Elton’s party dressed as John Reid. What Britain needs is a superhero instantly recognisable, modest, polite, unthreatening, dressed in a monochromatic uniform — say, white — with some item of headgear a bit like a cowl but kinder — a Sikh patka, for example.
He must be very good at something terribly British, like, perhaps, left-arm spin bowling. And like Superman with his kryptonite allergy, he must have potentially lethal weakness, such as batting and fielding.
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He must be unquestionably popular with Englishmen everywhere; they must cheer his every move. He needs a name in everyday life that is hardly suggestive of his superhuman status — something like Mudhsuden Singh Panesar — and a snappy heroic monicker that nobody will ever forget. And then, finally, we may look up into the skies over Britain and ask: “Is it a bird? Is it a plane?” No, it’s Super Monty.
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