Insofar as Americans think of our country at all, it is the Britain of George the Third and the Boston Tea Party (although when The Madness of George III was released in America, it had to be renamed The Madness of King George so cinema-goers wouldn’t think it was a sequel). This was brought home to me in 1995 when I went back to the States to work for Vanity Fair. I happened to fly into JFK on July 4th – Independence Day – and the famous Manhattan skyline was lit up by fireworks. I turned to my fellow passenger, a gentleman called Bryce, and told him that news of my arrival must have reached my hosts in advance.  “It’s true what they say,” I joked, gesturing towards the fireworks. “You really are a welcoming people.”  “Doncha know what’s happening here?” he said. “We’re celebrating the fact that we got rid of you people.”  Rather than regard Britain as an important strategic partner, most Americans think of us as their former masters – and it’s as if they threw off the yoke of Hanoverian oppression last week, not 239 years ago. The average American regards himself as a plucky little underdog and to buttress that self-image it’s important to keep the country’s colonial past alive. That explains why Brits are so often cast as villains in Hollywood films. Having said that, I once asked the actor Alan Rickman about this – he played the baddie in Die Hard – and he had a different explanation. “It’s because we can act, dear boy,” he said.  Alan Rickman playing the baddie in 'Die Hard' (Rex)  Those Britons who conform to the colonial governor stereotype are much more likely to succeed in America – and not just on the West Coast. During the five years I spent in New York, I came across far more British aristocrats than I ever have in London, and even those limeys from humble stock often behaved as if they were first cousins of Marie Antoinette. (I remember going to a fancy dress party hosted by Kate Moss and being surprised to discover an army of dwarves running around. It turned out she’d come to the party as Snow White and hired the dwarves to complement her costume.)  The alternative was to behave like a stage cockney from the Dick Van Dyke tradition, and, almost as common as faux aristocrats, were public schoolboys talking in a London “street” slang that doesn’t exist outside Guy Ritchie films. During my time in New York, I came across dozens of these types, nearly all of them working for large investment banks on Wall Street. They’d figured out that the key to success across the pond is to conform to an Upstairs Downstairs view of Britain in which you’re either at the top or the bottom of the social pyramid. If you were somewhere in the middle, like me, Americans simply couldn’t work you out. Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, once told me I was like a British person born in New Jersey - that is, ordinary rather than a pantomime Brit from central casting.  One mistake I repeatedly made was to correct Americans’ misunderstandings about “the old country”. For instance, I always bridled when members of the American media referred to the Times as “the Times of London”. They just took it for granted that because their Times had “New York” in its title, ours had “London”. Not surprisingly, they weren’t at all grateful when I pointed this out, any more than they were when I said no one other than Americans referred to Tony Blair as “Prime Minister Blair”. My friend Chris Ayres, then the Times’s LA correspondent, took a much more sensible approach. He had business cards printed with “the Times of London” embossed on them in large, black letters.  A businessman wearing a bowler hat and reading the Financial Times (Rex)  Not to say that the impression most Brits have of the States is any more accurate, in spite of our stalker-like obsession. One common mistake is to assume that America is a more “classless” society than ours. Not true if you look at the data on social mobility. If you’re born in the bottom income decile in the United States, your chances of ending up in the top decile are lower than they are in the United Kingdom. Far from being the land of opportunity, America is second from bottom in the social mobility league table, just above Brazil.  We also have a distorted view of just how libertarian America is. When asked about polygamy in a 2008 survey, 58 per cent of Britons thought it was legal in some parts of the USA. In fact, polygamy is illegal in all 50 American states, including Utah. By the same token, 31 per cent of Britons in the same survey thought Americans are not entitled to emergency medical care if they haven’t paid their insurance premiums. In fact, all Americans have a legal right to emergency treatment – and that pre-dates the introduction of Obamacare.  A man guiding a London bus through thick fog with a flaming torch (Getty)  The other thing to say in defence of Americans’ distorted view of Britain is that it isn’t always a million miles from the truth. The terrorism expert who described Birmingham as a no-go area for non-Muslims was quick to apologise, but he could have pointed out that there are several parts of the city where whites fear for their safety at night – a finding of a 2009 report for the Department for Communities and Local Government. Not long ago, Christians from all over the country held a rally in Birmingham after a West Midlands Police Community Support Officer told two locals that preaching the Gospel in the Muslim-dominated Alum Rock area was a “hate crime” and they risked being beaten up if they continued.  I returned to New York in 2008 to be a judge on a food reality show and abandoned any attempt to buck the stereotype. Instead, I played the part of a cad straight out of Downton Abbey and was named “Reality Villain of the Year” by the New York Post. If there are any Muslim Brummies heading to America, I advise them to make a B-line for Fox News, where they can explain how they turned their city into an IS-style caliphate. They’ll soon be on their way to Hollywood.
The Fox News claim that Birmingham is a "totally Muslim" city throws new light   on the divide between the US and Britain - and reminds us that it's a not-so   special relationship after all