Guy Fawkes is a historical hiatus, and every year we celebrate his mediocrity - Saturday October 30, 1999

You might think that GB doesn't know how to party - we've all been to too many knees-ups where you eat spongy quiche and end up chicken-dancing to Come on, Eileen. Bonfire Night should really be called Night Of The Damp Leaves - Guy Fawkes must turn in his grave like a sausage on a rotisserie at the sight of us piffling ninnies. We stand around in silly woolly hats going "Aaaaaah" as a pathetic amount of glittery bits come off some lame-arse device 10 feet above our heads, risibly described as a "rocket". Until you go to Lewes, that is. This picturesque Sussex town literally goes flaming berserk. Locals (affiliated to different bonfire societies) turn every street into a river of fire as they process with blazing torches to the beat of enormous drums, race burning tar-barrels down the High Street and obliterate enormous papal thrones in Niagara-style explosions of fireworks. Best of all, they drag a bungalow-sized effigy of the Year's Most Iffy Person through the streets, before blowing it up in front of baying crowds. I've seen Bill Clinton and Slobodan Milosevic bite the dust (when, oh when, will it be Jim Davidson's turn?) - the Eurovision Song Contest was always the wildest night of my year, but I've had to revise my opinion.

Last year it went a bit pear-shaped, however, when Sue caught a fleck of firework- fallout in her eye and we spent most of the evening in a makeshift ambulance in the company of two volunteers, Les and Derek. I don't think their training covered the minutiae of ophthamology, as Les pinned her head back while Derek slooshed lemonade over her eyeball. When Les offered her a mini-Scotch egg, the event really lost its hot-blooded fiesta-of-fire feel, and became Damp Leaves GB again.

 
"Remember, remember, the fifth of November" goes the saying. I have to say, it's a saying that I find fairly redundant - after all, it's pretty easy to remember the fifth of November, in that it tends to fall between the fourth and the sixth. A more useful national saying might well be, "Remember, remember to wash your pants every week, and then we might progress towards being the most hygienic nation in Europe."

We celebrate St George's Day, because St George killed a dragon. We celebrate Christmas Day, because the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus, the Son of God. And we celebrate Guy Fawkes because... he nearly blew up a very large building. Guy Fawkes is the Elizabethan equivalent of Tara Palmer-Tomkinson: someone who became famous for failing to do anything noteworthy whatsoever. He is a historical hiatus, and every year we celebrate his mediocrity. You can't get more British than that. It's akin to the Brazilians taking a national holiday to commemorate coming second in the 1998 World Cup.

In those days, thinking about doing something bad, but failing to actually do it, was a capital crime. A crime for which Guy was hanged, drawn and quartered. I've never understood the barbarism of that practice; especially the drawing part. I mean, who'd want a picture of a man hanging?

Now we celebrate Guy by hanging around in a field, waiting for something underwhelming to happen. With jacket potatoes. My first school bonfire was a disastrous event. I was young and eager to impress my peers with my zealous pyromania. When asked to light the Catherine wheel, I did so with extraordinary vigour. It was an easy mistake to make, in that it was coincidentally the name of a girl in my year. Strange, she never spoke to me after that.