Hmmm. Amusing. Well, I think that Horatio Hornblower would have viewed all this with a rather stern and sceptical eye. "Not fitting of the Queen's forces," he'd say. "Undignified in the extreme. Disgusting, in fact. Put that man to work at once cleaning out the bilges."

Now just how did it happen in the last few decades that American inner-city street culture crawled crassly across the Atlantic and took over the cultural sensibilities of Great Britain, a once noble civilization? What a horrifying development. I blame it on too damned much watching telly! ;-)

Ali G has the whole ugly phenomenon mapped out to its final horrid permutations on his satirical shows for 'da Yoof'.