Grumblecore: How Britain Has Turned Moaning About Britain Into an Industry

The second series of Channel 4's Very British Problems started on Monday, and like the dutiful citizen of Queen Lizzie's quirky realm what I am, I slapped a couple of soggy crumpets on a plate next to a steaming mug of Tetley's, closed the curtains and settled down on the sofa to watch it, content as Peppa Pig in her own shit.

If you haven't come across the show before, then try to imagine an hour spent listening to British celebs remembering stuff that's happened to them. The series is based on a Twitter account of the same name, a Twitter account with 1.29 million followers, that tweets #relatable observations about being British for the masses, day in day out. Y'know: being awkward, queueing, voting for the Tories etc. Last night's episode, "Very British Problems at School", saw the celebs (and by celebs I mean people who are probably on a Google Doc somewhere entitled "WILL BE A TALKING HEAD FOR £250 AND AN UBER EXEC HOME") tackling the indignities and inconveniences of school. Remember school? Yeah, so does David Tennant.

There was plenty to discuss about school. James Corden remembered forgetting his PE kit. Romesh Ranganathan tried to pass the plot of The Inbetweeners off as his own lived experience. Rob Beckett, a comedian who looks like Owen Jones made of plasticine, recalled that his nickname was once "Jaffa nips". It was a wild, Proustian sojourn deep into the the psyche of both the individual memory and the collective consciousness, and reminded me a lot of when I was at school. I too had teachers, and sex education classes. I too grew pubes. Je suis Jack Whitehall.

Obviously Very British Problems isn't made for people like me; it's made for your dad. He's probably texting you about it right now. But the programme and its Twitter account, and substantial range of merchandise, are part of a wider cultural malaise in our society. The desire not only to moan, but the weird fetishisation of it. The glorification of mindlessly wittering on about the weather, or health and safety, or Facebook, or teenagers, or the price of Freddos. You see, 15 years ago, Freddos used to cost 10p, now they cost at least 20p and sometimes as much as 50p – much to the tutting amusement of grown adults who are still apparently buying and eating Freddos.

The cult of complaining has grown in strength and stature over the last decade or so, but one of the original forefathers of the scene can be found in the Grumpy Old Men series which ran from 2003 to 2006, essentially giving a platform to drunk uncles, allowing the dazzling minds of Rory McGrath, Tony Hawk (not the skateboard one, the one who wrote a book about hitchhiking around Ireland with a fridge) and Arthur Brown to lament the volume of people's ringtones and how many tits there are on TV and how political correctness has actually, when you think about it, gone quite mad – except you can't say mad, now can you? Bonkers.

Grumpy Old Men was a big hit. Apparently watching the flotsam and jetsam of panel shows washed up in badly decorated central London pubs, talking about how much they dislike being able to see people's thongs, is not only a passable form of entertainment, but somehow a process of demon exorcism. When Anthony Worrall Thompson describes how his dog "still tries to mount things" even though he's been neutered, he is tapping into a shared identity, a collective "id". All of us, on one level or another, are Rick Wakeman being charged extra by airline for having golf clubs in our luggage.

Whether or not it's directly responsible, Grumpy Old Men shares a lineage with the now burgeoning industry of "grumblecore". Buzzfeed lists, Twitter accounts and you-know-you're-British-when memes, all shaking wry fists into the sky, telling the u-less spellings of "colour" to "get in the sea". An army of ticked-off Brits who can't believe people don't pick up dog shit. School-leavers self-flagellating with skipping ropes, deconstructing cheese and pickle sandwiches, and referring to all those who stand in their way as cockwombles. Your mums, dads, sisters, and brothers are all getting in on it. They can't believe Skips taste different. They are outraged that Americans don't eat beans on toast. They all remember chalk.

Most of the time, this obsession with whinging is put down to some sort of British humility. A stiff upper lip that means we stumble through life never saying anything about the things that really "grind our gears". Only, if that were the case, then surely we wouldn't spend so much of our time sharing and commenting on these inconsequential minutiae. It seems, that in a desire to define ourselves as a nation who 'get on with it', we are instead on our way to mistakenly believing we are only people in the world who suffer social anxiety, or get tired, or use umbrellas, or barbecue when it's sunny. We've become so proud of our ability to remember and notice things, and it's neither healthy nor impressive.

It seems that the real British problem is a deluded, self-indulgent perception of our own significance. That, and delayed trains! Only in Britain!

Follow Angus on Twitter

More on VICE:

Reasons Why London Is the Worst Place Ever ITVBe Is an Insult to Every Woman in Britain

I Went To the Very First Filming Session of Katie Hopkins' New TV Show