Well actually it's a country I owe an awful lot too- I'm half Welsh, 50% of my family are Welsh and a lot of my ancestors also were Welsh. Even more than that though, the good people of Wales actually saved my life while I was living in Paris. Without them I could well have perished in a gutter like so many disgraced PE teachers.
One Parisian Saturday night I got a little tipsy in a bar with mates and got the night bus home at around 3am. Bus number 13, which is apt due to the slightly inconvenient events that were about to unfold.
I was a little tipsy so when I saw everyone standing up despite there being free seats next to the gangstas at the back, I scooched in next to them. Hell, I thought, hundreds of aristocrats got their heads chopped off so that people like me could do this. Like the scarlet pimpernel, I plugged in my mp3 and waited...
A chap sitting across from me who looked like Flava-flav started looking at me, grinning with his gold teeth and mouthing something. Alarmingly, he didn't have a clock round his neck. If he'd been the real deal we could have just done some beat-boxing but this guy was more interested in in my crown jewels, both literal and metaphorical. I grinned stupidly and tried to concentrate on Kylie Minogue blasting in my ear drums. Suddenly the bastard came over and shoved his sweaty hands in my coat pockets! Empty thank god. Then he tried my jeans. Now, I was wearing very tight anti-ferret trousers so the pockets were dangerously close to all that I hold dear in the world. To defend my dignity I brought my hands down to stop him with a resounding scrotum-saving "smack".
Flava-Flav's boy(z) took offence at this. His mate, who looked like a cross between a Turkish butcher and Pat Butcher sauntered over, jabbed me in the chest and (in French) shouted: "How dare you stop my friend from feeling your crotch for pennies and suchlike". What do you do in this situation? Speak English or accented French to him, and suddenly he'll know I'm a foreigner and thus a rich source of travellers cheques and marajuina. I had to say something, so I spoke Welsh. An old poem I'd learnt once about the best time to go to the bog to ensure good digestive transit...
He was dumbfounded. The ancient Celtic consonants spouted from my lips like machine gun fire. Images of druids, cheese on toast, rugby and crazy drunken nights out in Llanelli were too much for him to comprehend. Had this guy ever played pinball on the pier at Llandudno or drunk Brains at the Horny Ram Tavern in Ffestiniog? Possibly not.
"You are French? German? English?" he demanded.
"Ar i'ach a gach a bore..."
He shouted again, too loud this time. The other passengers were getting shirty.
"Ar afiach gach yn hwyr". I tried to supress a smug grin.
The bus driver roared from the front. "Oy wot choo doing you slaaaaaag?"
Nuff said. Pat Butcher and Flav were chucked off the bus and some old geezer let me sit next to him.
"Actually I'm not Welsh at all" I told him.
He looked at me as though I was an escaped asylum patient and we drove on...
That's why the next time you're in Wales, learn the entire Welsh language. You never know when it might come in useful. Next time a copper tries to arrest you, read some Welsh poetry to them and they won't bother you again.
The system works boyo.
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