Right. Today is St Georges Day in the UK. If you look back 2 years ago, you will see I did a fantastic blog about what happens in the UK on 23rd April. It’s pretty hilarious, and well worth a read again. However, you know, it’s a serious business this blog writing, so I thought I’d better do a proper one about St George himself.

It’s funny. On St Patrick's Day, everyone wants to be Irish. We all claim some Irish heritage, often really tenuous. ‘I like green, therefore I’m Irish. I had a pint of Guinness. I once snogged Colin Farrell’. That type of stuff. But on St Georges Day, not many people though want to be English. Even our Patron Saint was Italian.

The most famous story about St George is that he slayed a dragon. I mean, I don’t want to burst any bubbles, or come across as some wacko conspiracy theorist, but, you know, dragons. Really. And grown men still have dragons tattooed on them. Signifying the dragons in their life that they have slain. Whilst sitting on their fat arses drinking weak lager. Makes you proud. Anyway, we’ll get back to the dragon story in a bit (spoiler alert…..there are no such things as dragons. Grow up).

It’s not known when George was born, but he was known as George of Lydda, and he died on 23rd April in 303 AD. Lydda is now known as Lod, and it’s in Israel. But he wasn’t born in Lyyda, or Lod, maybe he liked it so much he moved there, long before the Geneva Convention, but according to tradition, and Wikipedia, he was a soldier in the Roman Army. But that doesn’t make him Italian either really. And ‘according to tradition’??!! So is it fact?, is it a tradition?, I’m so confused. Whoever invented Wikipedia needs locking up. On trumped-up charges. Or certainly defamed, falsely accused and extradited to a country that still enforces the death penalty. So that’s Israel and Julian Assange in one paragraph. ‘You’re on very thin ice for a man of your Jaffa Cake Intake’.

So George was in the Praetorian Guard for Roman emperor Diocletian, but was sentenced to death for refusing to recant his Christian faith. The Praetorian Guard was an elite unit of soldiers who were like bodyguards, proper hard men. He looked after Diocletian, because Diocletian was a bit of a tool, always shooting his mouth off and wanted to get rid of Christians. Little did he know that George was one of those Christians. Anyway, a couple of hundred years later, he was canonised and became a Saint, because he was hard as nails and a man of honour. Following the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, St George's Day became one of the most important feast days in the English calendar. Oh. Agincourt was when we battered the French during the Hundred Years War. God, the 100 Years War. That's another story. A bit like your Civil War. But ours was about beating the French (which we can all agree on is not a bad thing.) Yours however was a bit more sinister.

So we celebrate St George for beating the French and killing a dragon. So the dragon story. Apparently the story goes that St George rode into Silene (modern day Libya) to free the city from a dragon who had a taste for humans. I mean, he gets around a bit. Airplanes and cars hadn’t been invented, yet here he is, in the 6th Century, popping up all over the world and killing stuff. And how stupid can we be.

‘Yeah, so this dragon was eating everyone, so an Italian fella turns up and kills him’.

‘Italian, you say. Are you sure? I mean, they’re not the most renowned fighters. The smallest book in the world is the Italian Book of War Heroes’.

‘I swear, he flew in on a Delorean and killed a fire-breathing reptile, 200 years after he died’.

‘And it’s back to you guys in the Fox Studio’.

So today, here in England, we celebrate St Georges Day by going to work in the pouring rain and wishing we were Irish.

However, it’s probably sunny over there, so get stuck into some chocolate at The Queen's Pantry. There’s probably some special offers on. But be careful…..I hear there’s a fiery dragon there.