Are You Being Served was one of the quintessential British comedies, being part sitcom, part music hall and a lot of double entendre. The cast was wonderful and the script really quite forward looking (in a now backward kind of way). So it is with great sadness that I heard of the death of Mollie Sugden, the comic actress best known for her role as Mrs Slocombe in the 1970s series. She is obviously held in great regard around the world as she has since become one of the largest trending topics on Twitter, with even Jonathan Ross adding his tweets to get the tag  #MrsSlocombesPussy (kicked off by, erm, yours truly at the suggestion of Lucy Tweeting) to the top of the Twitter tree.

Mrs Slocombe joins Miss Brahms (Wendy Richard) at the great sales counter in the sky. Rest in Peace, Mollie.

Updated: In a brief look at how USA-centric social networking has become (and how speedy blogging means that even a quick Google search is beyond many journalists) both Mashable and TechCrunch have dismissed the #MrsSlocombesPussy tag as spam, with TechCrunch’s writer even applauding censorship of the term on Twitter.

Just a short entry to say how much I admire the Royal British Legion for taking a stance against Nick Griffin of the odious BNP, who was elected to a seat in the European Parliament recently. Throughout the campaign Griffin wore a poppy lapel badge, which is the symbol of the British Legion, the body who looks after the welfare of former servicemen and servicewomen.

The British Legion were appalled by Griffin adopting their symbol. The British Legion stands up for all British troops, regardless of colour or country of origin, and so they politely and privately asked Griffin to stop wearing the badge. Griffin, whose political views are not so far from the forces the British were fighting World War II, ignored them. So the British Legion then wrote an open letter, making the matter public.

Griffin has, predictably, responded by trying to bat the accusations away as a part of the politically correct agenda, but this brave stand by the British Legion will have angered him and his followers. If you agree with their stance then please do consider supporting their work in some way.

The BNP do not support the rights of Ghurkas to settle in the UK and actively tried to play down the achievements of a black VC-decorated soldier in their campaign, But then this is the party who also say that Dame Kelly Holmes is not a Brit and that Rio Ferdinand, Ashley Cole and Emile Heskey are not English.

The UK has several local authority elections today, as well as the European elections. Please do turn out and vote today.

I won’t bang on about people giving their lives to give you the vote etc, as sometimes abstention can be an option. But every vote counts in the European election, with PR meaning that the far-right have a very real chance of getting elected. The more people that vote, the less chance they have of getting in. With the D-Day anniversary tomorrow I would hate to think of fellow Britons voting or abstaining to aid a group of racists who would have sided with Nazi Germany in World War II.

For the last year I have been saying that the forthcoming general election feels very much like a re-run of the 1979 one. There is a deep depression sitting over the economy, a lame duck Prime Minister, distrust of the incumbent party, a feeling that politicians do not speak for us and the rise of a far right party. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher stole a few items of the very visible National Front’s clothing, sating the public’s need for a reaction to immigration as well as law and order problems. The Iron Lady was able to highlight the fascist roots of the NF as particularly un-British, but she knew that their rise reflected the mood amongst many white Britons, especially working class voters, who were being actively targeted by the bunch of misfits hiding behind the Union Flag.

So, it is nice to see this intelligent piece in the Spectator by Fraser Nelson, which covers some of this ground, specifically the rise of the BNP. This time around it seems that David Cameron is unlikely to take that sharp right turn that saw Thatcher vanquish the NF, largely because the Tories are now ‘nice’ and the Labour adminstration is currently so discredited that he does not need to consider it. But should Labour rally under a new leader and the BNP enjoy success in this week’s Euro elections then expect to see politics being turned back to 1979 and Tory policy wonks whispering that date in Dave’s ear.

Next Monday (8 June) sees the screening of Made In Britain, though sadly not the fantastic Alan Clarke film, starring a very young Tim Roth. This six-part series on the Blighty channel is the latest show from Dom Joly, most famous for shouting into an oversized telephone. Now, I have nothing against posh, chubby former-goths but I find Joly to be something of a dividing line in friendship terms. If someone likes his work then the rule is, generally, that I will not like them. That is just the way that it is. I also judge people by their footwear, but that is another story.

Anyway, the concept of Made In Britain is that Joly is banishing non-British items from his life, in a kind of interior decorating mirroring of the policies of the British National Party, only with less one-eyed idiots spewing bile. As you can imagine, there will be interesting revelations about what you can and what you cannot find when you try to kit out your house with only British goods.

I tried something similar myself for a Guardian feature on Christmas shopping last year and everything took three times as long to source. My conclusion was that you can manage it if you have plenty of money to spend and are, for example, willing to purchase your mum a John Smedley jumper (I must admit a weakness for their knitwear) instead of an M&S one. I found a television almost straight away, but had a nightmare finding anything that my nephew would consider cool enough to wear.

I don’t expect Joly’s efforts to reinvigorate the British manufacturing base, but it will be interesting to see what he comes up with. Though I may have to watch through my fingers lest I accidentally laugh and discover self-loathing.

The 7-page website of Conservative MP Angela Browning is, perhaps, the most costly per-page piece of coding ever done. At the cost of almost £10,000 to the taxpayer, the frankly rather flimsy website was created (with code obviously spun from gold and diamonds) and maintained by Parliamentary Liaison Services Ltd, who are run by a former Tory campaigner. The company has links with various MPs, as this story from last year’s Times reveals. The Times must be kicking themselves about not digging deeper back then, as this may have turned up some of the scandal we are seeing revealed every day.

It certainly looks, in my opinion, as if it may now be a time for an investigation that goes further than MPs and takes in those who are providing services to them as well. It seems the Taxpayer may make an easy mark for MPs and their associates. We are already paying out for hundreds of MPs who employ family members (what, no equal opportunities on sex, age, disability?), often at exhorbitant rates. If we are to clear up this mess, we need to do it well and for good. It is all very well for MPs to blather on about ‘the market’ when talking about our health care etc, but if they can’t search around for market rate web designers or secretaries then they are obviously not fit to be in charge of our money.

The very British affair that is the MPs’ expenses scandal looks set to run and run, perhaps for even longer than The Mousetrap. For me, the issue is not about the odd packet of HobNobs (as I can actually see how they could be a justifiable business expense, for entertaining constituents etc) but the flagrant disregard for any sense of decency or morality among so many of those claiming for mortgages that do not exist, landscaping schemes most could only dream of and the process of ‘flipping’ for profit.

So, you could be forgiven for feeling sorry for Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, who has come out of the debacle relatively unscathed and fairly blameless. Dorries shot to front page fame as a result of her name cruelly being used in the Damian McBride/Labour List email scandal, though she has tried to grab the limelight again today in a round of radio interviews that have spun off from her blog. She has been whining about the pressure on MPs over the scandal, as well as positing the rather odd conspiracy theory that the strory did not come from a dodgy disc and could actually be a strategy by the reclusive Telegraph owners to: ‘destabilise Parliament, with the hope that the winners will be UKIP and the BNP’. Hmmm. She may be right on how the scandal will allow minor parties to gain ground at local and European elections in June, but the conspiracy theory sounds just that.

Anyway, that may all become irrelevent, as a Bank Holiday is always a good time for a revolution (lots of time to plan, possible mix of warm weather and beer) and we could well see Joanna Lumley installed as Prime Minister by the end of the long weekend. In her cabinet could be Esther Rantzen, Lynn Faulds Wood and anyone who is female and was big on TV in the 1970s and 1980s. Other possible candidates include Felicity Kendall, Sally James, various Dr Who assistants and Joan Collins. Rumours abound that ‘Trisha from Grange Hill’ could become Minister for Education, whilst Floella Benjamin will run the MOD. Remember, you heard it here first.

Update: NB Nadine Dorries’ blog has now been taken down.

Update: The contemptible MP Andrew McKay has now decided to stand down at the next election, after claiming his constituents were behind him.

Being the author of a book and a blog with ‘British’ in the title, I have been somewhat surprised not to receive more nudge-nudge emails or comments from supporters of the far right, believing the word ‘British’ to be simply code for ‘white’. But the Brits are, as a people, obviously far more decent, polite and distrusting of the likes of the BNP than I had imagined. True, there has been the odd comment from those on the left, re: my use of a bulldog and the Union Flag, but you can’t please everyone all the time.

Anyway, with the European elections on the horizon and the collapse of any trust in the mainstream parties there has been a rising profile for the BNP, with some pundits mooting their success at the ballot box. Just in case anyone reading this is in any doubt as to the politics of the BNP, or their inadequacy for office, they need only look at a few stories from this weekend’s newspapers.

First there is the shameful and cowardly verbal attack on Johnson Beharry, over his being awarded the Victoria Cross. The BNP, which supports the ‘repatriation’ of non-whites living in the UK, had already shamed itself by opposing the case of Gurkhas who wish to stay in the UK, calling them ‘mercenaries’. In a bizarre attempt to stem history and logic itself party leader Nick Griffin also claimed that neither Rio Ferdinand or Theo Walcott could be considered English. I assume, following this logic, that he goes to his local to boo England whenever they play and would not celebrate an England victory in a major tournament. Wanker.

Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker has an amusing swipe at the BNP in his column, starting with the production values of their recent party political broadcast, which was truly inept in its delivery. He also points out that the values of the BNP are far from British. We are an adaptable and accepting people. Yes, we do not always agree on thorny issues around nationality, immigration and asylum, but we pretty much concur that voting for a party (who shamefully display a picture of Churchill on their website, despite one of the leading lights of the party describing him as ‘a f***ing c**t who led us in to a pointless war against other whites standing up for their race’) is akin to voting for the forces that our fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers fought in World War II. The irony is that if the BNP were in power at the time then we would all be speaking German by now. The BNP are not British, innit.

Ah, but what about the BNP’s ‘British jobs for British workers’ promises? Well, it seems that they can’t even run to British photographers and models for their campaign materials, so I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one. They also used a picture of a former-British soldier without his permission, putting words into his mouth.

The video below (the production values of which make it look like it was made by Powell and Pressburger when compared with the BNP’s efforts) caught my eye on Conservative scribe Iain Dale’s blog. Not sure who is behind the campaign (Dale says someone at ConHome), but it puts across an interesting message, lest you may just possibly still be considering putting your X in the BNP box on election day. Get out there and vote. Vote anyone but BNP. But turn up, as that way you don’t end up with elected politicians who want to check the racial purity of your neighbours and march them to the docks if they are not quite white enough.

Have written a short blog today for The Guardian about The Apprentice and the show’s attempts to re-brand my home town of Margate. You can read it over at the TV blog page.

May Day has become something of a confused holiday in the UK in the late 20th- and early 21st-century, being a mish-mash of remembrance of pagan things past, the Christian ideals that attempted to usurp them and the idea of the day as a worker’s holiday or International Workers’ Day. Recent Conservative governments sought to break the idea of a link with a trades union holiday and the current Labour administration has done little to reverse that. Though political activists have sought to bring that spirit of workers’ power or, at least, rebellion back to the day with many (usually non-labour related) campaigns or protests being linked to the day.

Most of us now spend the day stuck on an A-road on the way to Ikea, the seaside or visiting relatives, with morris dancing, marching under a union banner or organising rumbles between mods and rockers now being something of a minority pastime. Whether this is simply a sign of the times, a reflection of the growing distaste for communality or simply our love for the lure of the shops is hard to say. It would certainly be good to have at least one holiday in the country that is about some sense of togetherness and bringing the UK together as one, or as towns, villages or neighbourhoods. Perhaps something similar to some of the US holidays, which take the name of individuals or events, rather than simply being ‘bank holidays’. But would anyone be interested? What if we called a holiday and nobody came?