National Sports

Patriotic believers in our eternal British values will be startled to learn that, despite a certain influx of Roman culture during the United Kingdom's partnership with the Roman Empire, British subjects may have indulged in blood sports other than such traditional civilised pursuits as fox-hunting, badger-gassing and migrant-bombing. A vase found a hundred and seventy years ago in a second-century grave at Colchester, which the Romans were ignorant enough to call Camulodunum, has been subjected to some new-fangled tests; and it transpires that an inscription featuring the names of two gladiators is part of the original design and not, as previously thought, a later alteration. Thus it seems safe to assume that gladiatorial bouts took place in the British Isles despite the inherent decency of the inhabitants, and that certain spectators commissioned expensive mementoes of these occasions notwithstanding the nation's world-beating hypocrisy.