A TEACHER friend of mine was explaining, over a drink in the pub, that he has to work the concept of British Values in to his lessons.

Which we thought was odd in itself, given that he’s not a PSE, religious studies or social studies teacher. He teaches music.

“This is a great piece by Vaughan Williams and it makes me want to discuss the weather and say please and thank you a lot. What do you reckon, kids?”

“We reckon you’re barking, sir.”

Quite.

But it also gave us pause for thought as we contemplated exactly what British Values are and what, precisely, marks them out from, say, Swiss Values or Spanish Values.

The only immediately obvious ones there and then were that you don’t jump the queue at the bar — probably a tricky one for foreigners to grasp as there is no discernible queue — and if you buy a packet of crisps, you split them open and share them. Unless they’re Cheese Moments, in which case you’re on your own.

But other values, such as don’t steal and don’t attack anyone, well — they must be Global Values, surely?

So what makes a value uniquely British?

I’ve been thinking back over my travels and have come up with a few possible answers.

1. Kindness to animals

When I was living in Australia news broke one day from back home in Blighty — somewhere in the Home Counties, if memory serves — that two fire brigades had been called out to rescue a cat stuck up a tree. The first didn’t have long enough ladders, so a second engine was called from some 60-odd miles away to rescue Puss and provide the obligatory happy ending.

My pals in Oz couldn’t believe the Brits would go to such extremes to save an animal. I, of course, told them that that kind of thing happens all the time back home.

2. Manners maketh man

Back in the ‘90s, my boyfriend and I were living in Tel Aviv and needed to do some laundry.

At the laundrette, we discovered we didn’t have the right change and we had to ask the man running it if he could change some money for us. He was a nice chap so we asked nicely and were grateful when he helped us out.

“What is it with you English?!” he proclaimed. “Everything is please and thank you and sorry... you have said please and sorry and thank you so many times in the last few minutes. In Israel we don’t bother. You want change, I give you change, that’s it.”

“Sorry,” we said.

3. Queueing correctly

For a while, I lived on a kibbutz in Israel about 40 km from Be’ersheva in the middle of the Negev desert.

To get anywhere, you had to travel to Be’ersheva and then catch a connecting Egged bus to your destination.

At said bus stop — on the way to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, probably— I was impressed to see a queue had formed. There seemed to be hundreds of people waiting for this particular service and we were anxious as to whether there would be room for all of us.

The bus duly pulled in — and absolute mayhem ensued. The queue broke out of its line and turned into a rabble of people clamouring to get through the door.

So queueing, it seemed, was OK while you were waiting, but when the thing you were queuing for appeared, the thing to do was to form a scrum.

I was so taken aback and clueless as to what to do next, I just froze to the spot — still in my place in the queue that was no longer there.

4. The weather is the best topic of conversation

A few years ago I went for a job interview in Nice in the south of France and spent the night in a rather shabby hotel, which had a bar next door.

Determined not to just hole up on my own for the evening, I set off downstairs and bought a drink in said bar.

The south of France is famous for glorious sunshine and blue skies. On this occasion, it was pouring with rain.

“It’s like being in England with all this rain,” I joked to the bartender in French. He scowled and said nothing.

Turns out weather jokes don’t translate, and clearly, our European counterparts aren’t as eager as we are to discuss the elements.

5. Don’t be pushy, it’s vulgar

As a student, I had a landlady who was Dutch. She was very nice, but could be a bit abrupt, I always thought.

One day over a cuppa in the kitchen, we ended up discussing the differences between our nationalities.

“The English always think I’m very rude,” she confided.

“But I’m not. It’s just we Dutch say what we want.

“At a dinner table, for example, a Dutch person would say ‘pass the salt, please’, whereas an English person would say, ‘sorry, would you, erm, would you mind passing the er...’ and pointing.”

Guilty as charged. We’d rather be vague than appear pushy.

... So back to my teacher friend. In a nutshell, what he and his colleagues are charged with is training the younger generation to be animal lovers who will only ever be rude if someone doesn’t obey the queue, who obsess over the weather and struggle to ask for what they want because they can’t stop the words please, sorry and thank you streaming out of their mouths.

Well.That’s what made Britain Great, I suppose.