Nicholas Watt, political correspondent
Wednesday November 20, 2002
The Guardian

It is billed as the greatest special relationship on earth; two countries bound together by common bonds stretching back centuries.
But most Americans are so ignorant of their kinsfolk in Britain they believe the UK is a far off country "somewhere" in the Middle East, according to the outspoken tourism minister, Kim Howells.

"Very often people do not understand the title of the country," Dr Howells told MPs of Commons culture select committee yesterday. "In America, people had heard of London, some had heard of England, no one had heard of the United Kingdom - they thought it was somewhere in the Middle East."

A spokesman for the culture department said Dr Howells, who hit the headlines when he dismissed this year's Turner prize shortlisted entries as "conceptual bullshit", was making a light-hearted comment. Americans should not take offence, the department said, because he had been just trying to illustrate the importance of using familiar expressions.

England and Britain are well known brands, they said, but the UK hardly registered. Even high-placed Americans struggle with the title. Foreign Office mandarins had to have a quiet word with American diplomats in 1998 after the CIA world factbox said that 1801 marked the date of the UK's "independence".

Dr Howells' remarks yesterday came as he admitted that UK tourism chiefs had "failed to persuade visitors to venture beyond London. Asked about a multi-million marketing campaign to persuade tourists to visit other parts of Britain, Dr Howells said the tourism boards had "dismally failed".

Meanwhile, the culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, rejected a charge by Ian Reynolds, chief executive of the Association of Travel Agents, that ministers were taking a laissez faire attitude to tourism, applying insufficient focus and resources.