It takes more than clothes to make an Englishman

Apparently Sheik Mohammed is terribly embarrassed by the horse-doping scandal at his stables in Newmarket. Quite right too.

But if I was him, I would be far more embarrassed by the multitude of photos of him in a really badly tailored top hat and tails that all the papers are (quite deliberately, I’m sure) carrying today. He looks like a pretend Englishman in a small village’s rep. society play, with a hat two sizes too small and trousers around a foot too long. Quite awful.

It would be like me wandering around Dubai in a Lawrence of Arabia costume made for Ronnie Corbett…