Inspired by the queue to see the late Queen Elizabeth II, Mark Thomas learns about the history of queuing and why the British claim to be so good at it. He speaks to Angie Hobbs, Professor of The Public Understanding of Philosophy at Sheffield University, who suggests that the queue for the Queen was the queue Britain had been training for all its life. Archive reveals queuing to be a bit like a classroom for grown-ups. Adults take on improvised roles: the queue joker, the queue grumbler, the passive-aggressive queuer. Mark finds that in truth the Brits are the most grumbling of all the nation’s queuers because they expect things to be done more efficiently than they are. He speaks to Stephen Reicher, Professor of Psychology at St Andrews University, who describes a rehashing of tropes from the war-years and how queueing became a shortcut to “Britishness”. He points to the way in which patience in queuing can be seen to be a bit like the Blitz spirit, fair play, stoicism - employed when a country needs to affirm a sense of national identity during national crisis. First broadcast in 2022