There is nearly always a grain of truth in stereotypes of national character, and the notion that the English are sexually inhibited is, I'm afraid, quite accurate. We may be as competent and indeed as passionate as anyone else once we actually get into bed, but the process of getting there is often awkward and inept.
The idea that our reserve and inhibitions stem from lack of interest in sex, however, is mistaken. We may find the subject embarrassing, but the English have a keen interest in sex. In particular, thanks to the forbidden-fruit effect of our privacy rules, we have a prurient, insatiable fascination with other people's sex lives, only partially assuaged by a constant stream of sex scandals and kiss-and-tell stories in our tabloid newspapers.
Our interest in our own sex lives ensures that we do our best to overcome our inhibitions, and if we are somewhat inept at flirtation, it is certainly not for want of practice. I have conducted two big studies on flirting among the English and, in the most recent, only one per cent of survey respondents - aged 18-40 - said that they 'never flirted', and over a third had flirted with someone 'today' or 'within the past week'. You would of course get much the same result in any other country, as flirting is a 'human universal', a basic instinct, without which our species would have become extinct a long time ago. If some evolutionary psychologists are to be believed, flirting may even be the foundation of civilization as we know it. They argue that the large human brain - our complex language, superior intelligence, culture, everything that distinguishes us from animals - is the equivalent of the peacock's taiclass="underline" a courtship device evolved to attract and retain sexual partners. If this theory - jokingly known as the 'chat-up theory of evolution' - is correct, human achievements in everything from art to literature to rocket science may be merely a side-effect of the essential ability to charm.
The idea of NASA, Hamlet and the Mona Lisa as accidental by-products of primeval chat-ups might seem somewhat far-fetched, but it is clear that evolution favours flirts. The most skilful charmers among our distant ancestors were the most likely to attract mates and pass on their charming genes. We are descended from a long line of successful flirts, and the flirting instinct is hard-wired into our brains. Even when modern humans are not engaged in mate-selection, we still flirt - all of us practise two types of flirting, which for shorthand I call 'flirting with intent' (flirting designed to lead to mating, and possibly pair-bonding) and 'recreational flirting' (flirting for fun, for other social reasons, or perhaps just for practice). Homo sapiens is, by nature, a compulsive flirt.
So, the English are genetically programmed to flirt, just like everyone else, and we probably do about as much of it as everyone else. It's just that we do not do it with the same degree of skill, ease or assurance. Or rather, about fifty percent of us are noticeably deficient in these qualities. If you look more closely at the stereotype of the sexually challenged English, it is the English male who is most often singled out for criticism and ridicule in this department. A few of the standard jokes and quips allude to the supposed frigidity or ignorance of the English female, but the vast majority are about the alleged impotence, indifference or incompetence of English males. These failings of English men are often assumed to account for any sexual inadequacies or shortcomings among their frustrated womenfolk. In the early eighteenth century, a Swiss commentator60 described English women as 'little spoilt by the attentions of men who give but a small part of their time to them. Indeed most men prefer wine and gaming to women, in this they are more to blame as women are much better than the wine in England'. Many of my own foreign informants made much the same kind of remarks, although they substituted beer for wine, and did not complain about the quality of English beer.
The first two of these charges against English males - impotence and indifference - are unfounded and unfair; they are not based on fact or direct observation, but mainly on an impression created by the third defect of which English men stand accused: incompetence in the art of seduction. 'Englishmen seem little made for gallantry,' observed our Swiss critic, 'they know no mean between complete familiarity and respectful silence.' The average English male may be highly sexed, but he is not, it must be said, an accomplished flirt. He is not at his best when confronted with what one of my male informants called 'a female person of the opposite species'. He is usually either reticent, tongue-tied and awkward, or, at worst, boorish, crass and clumsy61. In the belief that it will help him to shed his inhibitions, he tends to consume large quantities of alcohoclass="underline" this merely results in a shift from awkward, tongue-tied reticence to crass, clumsy boorishness. From the perspective of the unfortunate English female, this is not much of an improvement - unless her own judgement is severely impaired, as it often is, by a similar quantity of alcohol, in which case chat-up lines such as 'Er, fancy a shag?' may seem like the height of wit and eloquence.
And there, in a nutshell, or rather a bottle, is the answer to the mystery of how the English manage to reproduce. All right, I'm exaggerating - but only a little. The role of alcohol in the passing on of English DNA should not be underestimated.
The SAS Test
There are other factors, of course. As part of a public-spirited effort to help the English improve their seduction skills, I once devised a test, based on extensive field research, to locate the best 'flirting zones' - the social settings most conducive to enjoyable and successful flirtation in this culture; I called it the 'SAS test'. SAS stands for Sociability (by which I mean specifically the acceptability and ease of initiating conversation with strangers), Alcohol (an essential flirting aid among the inhibited English) and Shared-interest (environments in which people have interests in common, or a shared focus - settings likely to have the kind of props and facilitators that help the English to overcome their social dis-ease). The results of my application of this test provide some insights into English flirting habits and the unwritten rules of mate-seeking in English culture.
Parties and Pubs
Parties and celebrations are obvious flirting zones, although they do not always score highly on the Shared-interest factor. Pubs, bars and nightclubs, which seem at first glance like prime candidates, actually only pass two elements of the test - Sociability and Alcohol - failing on Shared-interest. In English pubs and bars, striking up a conversation with an attractive stranger is permitted by the unwritten rules (although subject to certain restrictions and caveats), but the lack of an obvious common interest means that one still has to struggle to think of something to talk about. Generic English etiquette provides a universally acceptable subject in The Weather, but without a shared focus of interest, the introductory process still requires considerable effort.
Having said that, one survey showed that 27 per cent of us first met our current partner in a pub, so it is clearly an effort we are prepared to make. My own observation studies and interviews with English pubgoers, however, indicate that the majority of these pairings were probably not the result of someone approaching a complete stranger, cold, at the bar counter, but rather of people being introduced, albeit informally, by friends or acquaintances, the encounter happening to take place in the pub because that is where the English spend a great deal of their time and do much of their socializing.
Clubbers and the 'No Sex Please, We're Too Cool' Rule
Night-clubs score somewhat higher on the Shared-interest factor than pubs and bars, as clubbers usually share a common interest in music. In any case, the problem of initiating conversation is reduced by the volume at which the music is played, which restricts verbal communication to a few monosyllabic shouted exchanges, allowing clubbers to flirt mainly through non-verbal channels. With very high scores on Sociability and Alcohol, night-clubs should in theory be near the top of my English flirt-zone league table but there is a curious and apparently perverse new unwritten rule among a significant proportion of young English clubbers, whereby dancing - and by extension clubbing in general - is regarded as an asexual activity. Their focus is on group bonding, and the euphoric, almost transcendental experience of becoming one with the music and the crowd (which sounds like a version of what the anthropologist Victor Turner called 'communitas' - an intense, intimate, liberating kind of group bonding, experienced only in 'liminal' states). They take great exception to any suggestion that they might be there for the vulgar, crass purpose of 'pulling'.