Not My Cuppa Tay

I'll never get over how many different entry points and gateway drugs there are to the Anglophile obsession.

Case in point: On the ride back from Martha's Vineyard last weekend, my brother-in-law told me that he never realized that I was an Anglophile (so many people express shock at this dirty little secret), but that it must run in the family.

He says while they are channel surfing, my sister always stops if the people have British accents.

I never considered my sis much of Anglophile. After all, I think she had only one Who record growing up and no Beatles albums. Kinks? Who are they?

But for her, loving British culture means Hotel Babylon and those Jane Austin stories they've been airing on PBS.

Frankly, those never did much for me. Nor was I much of an Inspector Morse of Upstairs Downstairs fan ... I tended to like the Britcoms mostly, although I did like that show from the late 80s in which Ian McShane played a crime-solving antiques dealer. (Lovejoy had a much nicer vocabulary than McShane's character on Deadwood.)

I guess the lesson is that Anglophilia takes you tastes and makes them more acute. It doesn't transform you into a new person, with new likes and dislikes ... it just sort of directs them. Jerry Lewis fan? Here's Rowan Atkinson. Ramones fan? Meet The Jam.