Long live the quintessential Englishman

Is Stephen Fry being a little ungrateful? Talking at the Royal Geographical Society the other night, he stunned the audience by turning roundly on the quintessential Englishman (QE).

"I wish I had a gold sovereign for every time that phrase is used," he fulminated, "so I could put them in a sock to smack over the head of the next person who says it."

His protestations echo Kate Winslet's recent keenness to stress her humble and impoverished background. But what is so awful about being middle-class or quintessentially English?

Does Fry not realise that he owes the affection in which he is held to the widespread belief that he is representative of some national archetype?

He did, after all play a quintessential Jeeves to Hugh Laurie's Wooster. A role - like James Bond or Dr Who - that should come with a health warning concerning the risks of being typecast for life.

Like it or not, Fry is representative of the sort of notional Englishman who rises from the pages of Dickens or Wodehouse - creators of our best-loved national stereotypes - but he is not of modern Britain. I don't like to think of him operating his Sky Plus or shopping at TK Maxx.

He belongs instead with those great British characters of the past: David Niven, Terry-Thomas and Noël Coward, a gallery of endearing, occasionally roguish charmers.

Working Title's films prove that the English gentleman is still much in demand: the man who has the greatest claim to be known as the ultimate QE is, of course, Hugh Grant.

Yet according to contemporary criteria, today's QE can be a varied creature.

Take Pete Doherty: the young rebel has long been a staple of our museum of national character, lauded equally for his English dress sense and his uniquely English brand of pop.

Another likely candidate is David Beckham: talented athlete, beautiful to look at. And - an important point this - he travels well.

Part of the duty of the QE is to be appreciated for his Englishness all over the world. As such, is it really so bad to be seen as a prototypical Englishman? It should be a source of pride that the QE is still a viable export, something we can say is made in Britain using British ingredients.

But to be a truly successful QE takes work and years of practice.

There is the formal dress (but never over-dress); the furled umbrella clicking against the pavement (never opened, only raised aloft to hail a taxi - sorry hansom); the ability to tell Lapsang Souchong from Earl Grey but to express a preference for builders' brew (I believe Fry did TV advertising for a brand of tea); the encyclopaedic erudition worn oh-so-lightly (but make sure the learning is recondite rather than immediately useful).

And of course the modesty that enables you to downplay all suggestions that you might be either identifiably quintessential or English, let alone both at the same time.