Since the start of the millennium Britain has found new and exquisite ways to humiliate herself. Here, in order, are the most embarrassing moments.
26. Absurd Ennoblements
One can argue – reasonably – that the honours system has always been ridiculous, that singling people out for doing their jobs, and often very specific jobs at that, is inevitably prone to corruption and folly. However, there can be no denying that successive governments this century have taken this to new and increasingly embarrassing extremes. Whether it is the sight of Simon Heffer in ermine, the rotund vision of Sir Philip Green or the very existence of Baron Lebedev ‘of Hampton and Siberia’: the 21st century has seen a surfeit of operators elevated to a station far beyond their due. That the worst of them all (Mandelson) has only recently been arrested is no saving grace.
25. Superinjunctiongate
David Schneider’s into BDSM. Ryan Giggs was knocking on with the Welsh one from Big Brother 7. No, not Glen, the other one. These allegations – posted by ‘Billy Jones’ from a Twitter account – were the first British scandal of the social media age, as the public discovered that various public figures had been issuing gag orders to the press to keep their indiscretions out of the papers. The ‘no smoke without fire’ pyre burned so bright that one MP, John Hemming, used his parliamentary privilege to confirm Giggs’ affair to the Commons.
24. 9/11 Firefighters Among the Daytime Telly Stars
The seventh National Television Awards, were held six weeks after 9/11, and two firefighters who had been first responders to the inferno – Battalion Chief Richard Blatus and Captain Jim Yakimovich – presented the award for ‘most popular serial drama’ to Eastenders in front of an audience comprising the likes of Chris Tarrant, Richard and Judy, Rolf Harris and a visibly weeping David Jason. In itself, it’s an immaculate slice of cringe, but it’s also the perfect distillation of the imbalance of the Anglo-American relationship that has defined almost the entirety of the century so far.
23. John Lewis Christmas Adverts
The phenomenon of mawkish Christmas ads now seems so hoary as to be eternal, so it is somewhat jarring to recall that the format only slightly predates the David Cameron government. John Lewis began the trend in 2007, begetting its first ‘sad, slow version of a pop hit’ the following year. Since then, everyone from Aldi and Lidl to Disney and Chevrolet have joined this throng, throttling the airwaves with unearned pathos and reducing the time-honoured tradition of getting a little bit weepy at Christmas to a tear-jerking slot machine for vendors of tinsel-covered tat. We’re trapped in a gilded schmaltztopia from which we may now never escape.
22. The 2025/26 Ashes Series
When Australia would whip us pasty Poms something horrid at sport, we could at least console ourselves with the fact that the Australians, with the exception of the late, great Shane Warne, were a bunch of humourless automatons, the sauceless descendants of bloodthirsty convicts. What is so particularly awful about the most recent Ashes defeat was not just the scoreline, but also the manner of the defeat, with England’s braindead arrogance – typified by the moronic figure of Zak Crawley – meaning that the Aussies were able to take the spoils on the field while ribbing us rotten off the pitch too.
21. Jamie’s School Dinners
Did you ever try a Turkey Twizzler? Coiled tight like a shock absorber and just as bouncy to chew, they are the culinary equivalent of lost media – rendered extinct by the crusading efforts of a chubby-tongued chef from Clavering, Jamie Trevor Oliver. Few shows have had an impact on public discourse like Jamie’s School Dinners (2004). Barging into cafeterias nationwide, Oliver laid bare the volume of junk being served to the nation’s kids: filling glass basins with chips and Coke and curry sauce until the country could see inside their children’s stomachs. 250,000 people were horrified enough to sign Oliver’s petition. Blair, obviously, took note. The Twizzler was banned within months, and despite a brief and unsuccessful relaunch in 2020, has not reclaimed its place on Gen Alpha’s lunch tray. A true tragedy.
20. TOWIE’s Legacy
One of the current delusions of our present age is that reality TV is somehow less cruel than it was at the start of the century, when shows like Fat Friends were commissioned by guffawing execs in Paul Smith floral shirts. Newsflash: the telly controllers are just as evil as ever. There has been three suicides associated with Love Island, but The Only Way Is Essex is, somehow, worse. Leave the <vajazzling> to one side, and digest how the show has provided reputation laundering for a grotty crew of chancers, some of whom have familial links to the top-top tier of organised crime in this country.
19. Man United’s Post-Fergie Horrors
It was once easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to Manchester United. The puce-faced Fergie was unassailable; his Salford reich built to last a thousand years. And then he tried handing it over. In March 2014, a group of users on RedCafe.net arranged to fly a banner over Old Trafford, protesting Sir Alex’s chosen successor. Fans were given a choice of nine slogans for the jaunt, one of which, finishing in third place, was simply: ‘KILL YOURSELF MOYES’. Little did they know that the worst was yet to come – from comfort-blanket caretakers and creepy Dutchmen to American assistants literally laughed out of the training ground. Moyes would end up their third-most successful manager of the period. United would end up 15th.
18. The Leveson Inquiry
Hutton, Chilcot, Saville (with two Ls) – when we do inquiries in this country, we know how to make a big deal of them. Though no inquiry has caught the public attention like Leveson, where the country watched in vain hope of seeing the bastards and bigwigs of News International atone for their years of smears. And for one foamy moment, we got what we wanted, as an anarchist agitator going by ‘Jonnie Marbles’ smashed a pie tin full of shaving cream into the face of the most powerful man in media, Rupert Murdoch, before he could begin his testimony. Sadly, this wasn’t the opening salvo to Murdoch’s banishment from these shores, and the inquiry ended up changing very little – though we did get to see Andy Coulson doing porridge, which was quite funny in and of itself.
17. Pen Farthing Departs Kabul
As metaphors for the fall of empires go, the flight of Pen Farthing from the last gasp of the latest Anglo misadventure in Afghanistan really feels too on the nose. An ill-spirited ex-Commando with a deeply stupid name and an eye for PR takes off into the skies, accompanied by 150 barking dogs, leaving his staff behind in circumstances not fully understood. Farthing, who was obviously plotting some Bear Grylls-style media career as a family-friendly former soldier, is later revealed to have sent threatening voicemails to Foreign Office staff blocking ‘his’ flight. Oh, Pen, you did turn out to be a bit of a… pen-is.
16. Boris Johnson’s Partymania
While the rest of the country strained under lockdown, Johnson and his cronies drank deep into the night in Westminster, brazenly photographing their rule-breaking for posterity. That someone so manifestly unsuitable for high office had achieved their childhood dream was bad enough, but what made the events so much more unbearable was how well-known the illegal gatherings were, by the police and the media, and how the full extent of them is still to be fully reported.
15. High Cameroonism
Ignore the Oakeshott-confected porcine palaver, and remember this scene. One Direction cling to a stiffened, pink-faced David Cameron on the steps of No 10 Downing Street. It is 2013, and the petri-dish-created boyband sensation is doing a cover of Teenage Kicks for Comic Relief. We are at the high-water mark of Cameroonism. The very notion was embarrassing enough at the time – think of a visibly ‘refreshed’ George Osborne staring into the abyss on the front bench or wearing hi-vis at every opportunity – it looks even more embarrassing in retrospect, considerably more so than Cameron’s chummy selfie with President Xi Jinping.
14. The WAGS at the 2006 World Cup
Victoria Beckham perched on a plastic seat with her caramel-glossy locks and jutting boob job; Cheryl Cole with her jaunty cap and denim jorts; Coleen Rooney in a Juicy Couture tracksuit one-piece. This was the high watermark of noughties bad taste, with the biggest fashion victims being, of course, the British public, as we debased ourselves by giddily scrutinising the long-lens snaps were splashed all over the tabloids.
13. The Passing of HM Queen Elizabeth II
We could write a whole essay on the peculiar fortnight that followed the death of Her Maj, but it was The Queue that offers the highest number of cringe particles. Stretching ten miles and running for five days, the line to view her lying-in-state was both a quiet showing of dignified remembrance and a tawdry calcification of commodified grief, best summed up by the sight of David Beckham queuing for 13 hours and, unrelatedly, attaining his knighthood in the next New Year’s Honours. A fitting lodestar for this saeculum horribile.
12. Corbynmania
From his partisans chanting his name at music festivals while rushing on crushed-up pills, to the right-wing press frothing that Islington North’s answer to Chairman Mao was threatening Downing Street, the political ascendancy of Jeremy Corbyn elicited extreme reactions across the land. Corbyn’s own refusal to call time on his time in the frontlines, however, might be the most embarrassing thing of all, and the lonely, desperate moniker of ‘Your Party’ grows ever more poignant as Corbyn fades back into the crotchety irrelevance that defined the greater part of his political career.
11. The Publishing Career of David Walliams
Everything about the former Mr Lara Stone makes you think: hold on a minute, what’s wrong with this freakshow? A comedian doing televised endurance acts for charity and having intimate dinners with the Royal Family… wait… hang on a second? Walliams’ time may now be coming to a close, but we have the good people of HarperCollins to thank for his vast fortune, as the Jocastas and Arabellas on the executive suite floor propelled the magus behind ‘Hide the Sausage’ (Google, if you dare) to a near-uncancellable role as a star children’s author, would you bloody believe it.
10. Captain Tom’s Golden Spree
The last 11 months of Captain Tom Moore’s life are essentially without parallel. He began the pandemic as an infirm, unknown 99-year-old, and ended it a knight, a colonel, a chart-topping singer and GQ Man of the Year, his doddering frame beamed above the Thames by drones during the worst New Year’s Eve in living memory. We were so psychotically thankful for Captain Tom’s laps that we gave him everything he ever dreamed of – a year-long orgy of gratitude that culminated in a free trip to Barbados, which killed him. His funeral was then broadcast as a four-hour livestream on the Guardian’s YouTube channel, and shortly after, there were allegations about financial misconduct at the charity named after him. Only we could make him, only we could break him.
9. The Formation of Change UK: The Independent Group for Change
The 20th century produced more iconic images than we could possibly number here. One photo, however, sums up the mournful, halted spirit of the 21st century better than any other: that of the MPs of The Independent Group eating a Nando’s in 2019 as they boldly set out to ‘change our broken politics.’ A gathering of people from the Labour and Tory parties who had never heard the word ‘no’ before. There was, in fact, already a party for those people in the Home Counties who wanted everything to just go back to how it was in 2007, and they’re called the Lib Dems, and so Change UK – the final iteration of their increasingly complex branding – finally wound up amid Anna Soubry’s gin-soaked tears in spring 2020.
8. The Rehabilitation of Alastair Campbell
If you live in north London and you fancy a refreshing morning dip at the Parliament Hill Lido, beware: you run the risk of walking past Alastair Campbell, occupying the communal showers with his trademark glare. It’s a sight that will make you think how imposing the Burnley bagpiper has been on the British century, from his unforgettable involvement in the Iraq War’s dodgy ‘dossier’, to the sheer arrogance with which he assumed the mantle of leading the Remain movement in the post-Brexit vote, with predictable and parlous consequences. One thing that sums up the man: he never uses the astonishing reach of his podcast to promote anyone but himself. (Well, occasionally his daughter, a woman on whom our good manners dictate that we will not pass comment.)
7. The Gambling Act of 2005
If you’re a 16-year-old football fan, there’s a chance you will have seen Ray Winstone’s floating head dispensing betting tips every weekend of your life. This you can attribute to the Gambling Act 2005, and its drastic liberalisation of the ‘gaming sector’. Betting duly affixed itself to the furniture of football: pre-game, half-time, stoppage-time, on your laptop, off your phone, anywhere. Winstone’s talking head has helped make bet365 one of the few business success stories this country has seen since the millennium. The Stoke-based Coates family are now the 16th richest in the UK, with a £9.45 billion fortune. Meanwhile, last October, the Gambling Commission estimated that 1.4 million Britons have an active problem with compulsive betting. Cheers, Raymondo!
6. Sachsgate
‘I’d like to apologise for these terrible attacks, Andrew Sachs,’ Jonathan Ross said, sat at the Radio 2 studio desk, tittering, as the host, his pal Russell Brand, sang into the answering machine of Manuel from Fawlty Towers. The resulting segment, where Brand boasted of sleeping with Sachs’ granddaughter to an audience of 400,000, gave the BBC its first tabloid scandal since Peter Sissons and his overly jaunty tie. ‘Sachsgate’, as it came to be known, was an embarrassing affair for all involved: the Mail on Sunday got to land a punch on the national broadcaster; Ofcom were emboldened as a national enforcer of good taste; and worst of all, it allowed Brand to escape to Hollywood and marry Katy Perry, who, if we were to expand this listicle across the Atlantic, would be an entry of her own.
5. The Prince Andrew Interview
The ersatz Prince Andrew’s position as a punching bag within British media serves two purposes: as a venting system for those of us who think spending a decade cavorting with the world’s most famous paedophile is a bad thing, and as an utterly inconsequential rage funnel the British establishment can deploy as if it’s doing something about the former. Stripping the former Prince of his titles, making lewd jokes in his direction and parading him in the stocks for his Newsnight interview – and its two subsequent high-gloss dramatic reenactments – has thus far stood in for justice-adjacent red meat for a public who’ve been primed to forget that everyone should be equal under the eyes of the law.
4. Megxit
Meeting for a first date at Soho House. Megan booting her father out of proceedings. The renovations at Frogmore Cottage. The publication of Spare. The pirouettes of rage from the Daily Mail. The flight to Montecito. The interview with Oprah. George Clooney, supposedly, being invited to the wedding supper despite never having met the happy couple prior to their wedding day. The High Court case. A cavalcade of cringe quite unlike anything else this century has seen.
3. Galloway on Big Brother
George Galloway has fallen a long way since the heights of being an irrevocable ally of Saddam Hussein. He now dwells in a sort of sub-incel exile in Shanghai, his YouTubing facilitated by a bemused Chinese Communist Party. Still, though, his most embarrassing moment was when he was filmed wearing a skin-tight red jumpsuit, pretending to be a cat on Celebrity Big Brother. As embarrassing as Galloway’s self-debasement was in isolation, it becomes even more so when you view it as the Helen of Troy moment that launched a thousand ill-advised forays into media by politicians. From the presence of Alan Johnson on The Masked Singer, to Ed Balls playing a ukulele badly at the Royal Variety Performance, via the eternal ubiquity of Gyles Brandreth, and ending with the balding pate of Matt Hancock, we now have an entire genre of failed political men – and it is exclusively men – who, having finished getting their kicks from Westminster, fill that gap in their emptying lives with light entertainment.
2. Brexit
A lot, you might have noticed, has been written about the separation of Britain from the EU. The immediate and long-lasting relegation of an entire country’s financial and political outlook remains the central headline, though the period of High Brexit ejected cringe nuggets on a daily, even hourly, basis. David Frost attending negotiations without paperwork. FBPE maniacs swooning over Lady Hale’s spider brooch. Boris Johnson extolling the virtues of a ‘Full British Brexit.’ The devolution of the British body politic as wave after wave of boring technocrats were sieved out of government, in ever-finer competence-catching sieves. Brexit hasn’t created all the UK’s many problems, but it has made every single one of them worse, and so obviously so, that there can be few more embarrassing things any country has ever done.
1. Tony Blair Doing ‘Am I Bovvered’
Blair is so closely adjacent to or directly responsible for so many incidents on this list that our top entry may as well just be a giant picture of his grinning, vampiric face. Choosing, then, a specific moment to encapsulate the second-hand cringe that the erstwhile Prime Minister allowed to seep into every area of national life, is difficult. Or is it? Blair was at his strangest and most embarrassing when he was purporting to be normal. The state of British comedy in the early 2000s is another seam of deep and highly enriched embarrassment, reaching its zenith with Catherine Tate’s unfunny catchphrase repetition. Blair’s collaboration with the latter thus provides the single most embarrassing moment of the century so far: the sight of the First Lord of the Treasury pointing to his own grinning, maniacal visage and repeating the words, over and over again, ‘Am I bovvered?’ We have absolute confidence in stating that this was the very moment that clanged the bell for the country’s current decline, the moment we sank, giggling into the sea.
