The funniest quotes about being English

As it's St George's Day - and Jeremy Corbyn is even calling for it to become a new Bank Holiday - what better time to salute the healthy dose of humour and self-deprecation synonymous with England?

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Here are 24 of the funniest quotes on what it means to be English, from English people of note - and the observations of visitors:

"An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one" - George Mikes

"The tearoom lady called me love. All the shop ladies called me love and most of the men called me mate. I hadn't been here twelve hours and already they loved me" - Bill Bryson

"What? Sunday morning in an English family and no sausages! God bless my soul, what's the world coming to!" - Dorothy Sayers

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"To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day" - W. Somerset Maugham

(Photo: Shutterstock)

[On saying goodbye] "You go through a ritual that takes forever" - Stephen Mangan

"Growing up in the English countryside, I feel like I'm in a Jane Austen novel when I walk around" - Lily Collins

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[On Midsomer Murders] "Only in the English countryside could violent death remain something that is 'cosy'" - Liz Williams

"Do we have carjacking in England? No, but thanks for asking. We have people who clean your windscreen against your will..." - Douglas Adams

"I live in the English countryside, so I'm surrounded by magpies" - Kenneth Branagh

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"England sometimes feels like 50 million people driving around a motorway forever" - Paul Kingsnorth

"What other country...could possibly have come up with place names like Tooting Bec and Farleigh Wallop, or a game like cricket that goes on for three days and never seems to start?" - Bill Bryson

(Photo: ITV)

"The English are not a very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity" - George Bernard Shaw

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"The English are not happy unless they are miserable" - George Orwell

"English people don’t like to be told ‘enjoy your meal’. They will enjoy their meal if they feel like enjoying it. It is advisable not to command them such things in case they have other plans with their meal, such as preferring to dislike it" - Angela Kiss

"English rain feels obligatory, like paperwork" - Maureen Johnson

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"England doesn't have summer, it has continuous autumn with a fortnight's variation here and there" - Natasha Pulley

"The sun doesn’t live in England; it comes here on holiday when we’re all at work" - Benny Bellamacina

"Nothing beats snow. Normally we get one day a year - and you have to hope it snows overnight, so you can be snowed in" - Michael McIntyre

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"I'm leaving because the weather is too good. I hate London when it's not raining" - Groucho Marx

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[On football] "Being an England supporter is like being the over-optimistic parents of the fat kid on sports day" - John Bishop

"There's an accent shift, on average, every 25 miles in England" - David Crystal

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"The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes" - Thomas Beecham

"We do not regard the English as foreigners. We look on them only as rather mad Norwegians" - Halvard Lange

[On apologising constantly] "The readiness of the English to apologise for something they haven’t done is remarkable" - Henry Hitchings

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