So much for the 1386 Treaty of Windsor and any semblance of respect for one’s hosts, the culture of alcoholic excess and sexual promiscuity in England’s ‘rotten society’ has been exposed in the latest bestseller to sweep Portugal’s literate classes.
‘Bifes Mal Passados’ is a personal account written by a Portuguese professor based in London who portrays the English as ‘violent animals’ and accuses them of being drunk, dirty and sexually promiscuous.
Joao Magueijo is a 47-year old physics professor at Imperial College London and spent seven years as a fellow at Cambridge taking advantage of the right to work within the European Community and the literary freedoms found in Portugal since the end of dictatorship in 1974.
Magueijo claims that England has “one of the most rotten societies in Europe, possibly the world,” in his frank personal assessment of English life covering eating habits to personal hygiene and sex.
“I never met such a group of animals. English culture is pathologically violent. The English are unrestrained wild beasts and totally out of control.”
“It is not unusual to drink 12 pints, or two huge buckets of beer per person, even a horse would get drunk but in England it is standard practice.”
Reserving his most acerbic comments for his host country’s cuisine, the sensitive professor claims that the English diet is “deplorable” with fish and chips consisting of a thin layer of fish covered in inches of batter which is so oily “it makes you want to wash it with detergent before eating.”
Magueijo's description of the social mores surrounding oral sex should further increase the exodus of young Portuguese males searching for job satisfaction in England.
In an interview Magueijo said he wanted to destroy the myth of English superiority versus Portuguese inferiority. “The English have spent the past 200 years making fun of us, it now is our turn to make fun of them.”
“I am thankful to England for the working climate I was offered. But then there is all the rest.”
The book so far has sold over 20,000 copies.
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