Storm in a tea cup?

A shaven-headed, half-naked, heavily-tattooed footy thug urinating skillfully into a delicate china tea-cup. Not your conventional billboard advert. But this is precisely the image chosen by Brussels to front its new Eurostar advertising campaign and promote tourism to our great capital.

The set of publicity images coincides with the launch of the new high-speed train service which now takes travellers from the Belgian capital to the centre of London in only 1 hour and 51 minutes.

The slogan alongside the stereotypical English football hooligan reads “Attention, London is just around the corner.” And apparently, according to variations of the campaign, so is Hitchcock with a knife, John Cleese doing a silly walk and a Teletubby standing in a Royal Sentry box.

The advert, aimed solely at the Belgian tourism market, apparently sets out to be “humorous” and depict the British nation as eccentric, cosmopolitan and cutting-edge, according to Lesley Retallack, Head of Press and Events at Eurostar. Translation – this is what Good ‘Ol England is full of, enter at your peril.

Well. You can imagine the reaction as soon as the images hit British soil. Even though this particularly abhorrent specimen of mankind can indeed be found across the country, I'm sure many an Englishman would like to think that we have a little more on offer.

The Belgians are trying to cover their backs against this inevitable tirade of eye-watering insults by pointing out the rather tenuous cultural parallel between the pot-bellied, brute-faced thug and the little bronze Belgian hero, the Manneken Pis. Ok, so the posture may be almost identical. But one is a cheeky little scamp, the other a fully-grown adult.

Arguably, this rather hard-hitting portrayal of England is far more accurate and insightful than the sickly, saccharine-sweet images we are forced to swallow in films such as Notting Hill, Wimbledon and Love Actually. According to these totally warped, suagr-coated portrayals of life in the capital, London Town is fit to bursting with cloned copies of the dreamy eyed, sensitive, near-on perfect man. And what is more, you can make him fall head over heels in love with you, and say things like oopsie-daisy, by simply standing in the way and making sure he spills an orange juice (freshly squeezed) all over you.

The new ad, in contrast, has not so much as a glimpse of gallantry in sight. Crude it may be. Bad taste perhaps. But tongue in cheek most definitely.

I can’t help but feel that our European friends are secretly chuckling away in their lace cushioned homes and munching on their chocolate waffles. And good on them. Funny isn’t it. It used to be that the Belgians were the boring ones and the Brits were the ones with the sense of humour. Now who’s got the last laugh?