I think the problem wasn't Jim's or my own cut-and-paste, per se, nor any "transatlantic person's" failure to comprehend Diane, but the fact that Diane's original formulation "more English than the Royal Family isn't" doesn't actually mean anything, on either side of the Atlantic.

Nonetheless, the basic point of her post was clear. My relatives, who are English Jews, in order to claim they are English must "ponce about, pretending to be English," but, luckily, this practice, also known as "the practice of immigrants (however far back) concealing their roots," is dying out.

I think most people on this thread have already disagreed with her on this, so we need say no more.

On the other hand, Diane's statement that "a South African Jewish comedian is scarcely representative of either Englishness or of culture" expands the question about Sid James's work a bit.

One can legitimately ask Sid James's work in the Carry On films counts as "English," which was Lizzie's original claim. James was in a series of English films, directed at an English audience, in which he played English characters. Certainly in many other countries, if an immigrant was so fully adopted into a country's cultural scene, especially from one of that country's former colonies, his work would count as part of that country's culture. This is, therefore, open to debate. Diane is welcome to her opinion that it isn't English culture, but this is by no means obvious or uncontroversial. Others can with equal justification say that it IS English culture.

Suggesting, as Diane does, that the films aren't an example of "culture" at all is using a values-based definition of culture. In this scheme, some artistic productions are culture and some aren't, and the arbiter uses his or her values to decide which is which. This is the same understanding of Culture that allows many English people to devalue folklore, or as Diane would say, "tradarts."

Luckily, this understanding of culture has been pretty forcefully rejected by those who study culture. We have learned that a series of popular films like Carry On can tell you as much about ordinary people as either so-called "high culture" (such as Shakespeare) or so-called "subcultures" (such as punk.) So within the British-pioneered discipline of "Cultural Studies," these films are, in fact, regarded as part of English culture.

In an article from the BBC online, here, Andy Medhurst, lecturer in film, media and cultural studies at Sussex University, said of the films that "They capture the way people living humdrum lives with limited horizons found a release in comedy. They seem to encapsulate an everyday life in Britain of that time."

Peter Ackroyd mentions the films in his book Albion - the Origins of the English Imagination, where he suggests that they are typically English, and moreover that they represent a stratum of English humor that goes back to middle English mystery plays.

English? Yes, many people think so.
Culture? Yes, many people think so.
English culture? Looks that way to me.