A FOOTBALL chant popular with the Neanderthal branch of the Ingerland Supporters' Club, to be sung at Johnny Foreigner once the Channel has been safely negotiated, goes: "If it wasn't for the English you'd be Krauts ?" While the ditty certainly lacks historical accuracy, evidence was brought this week to render it even more nonsensical. You see, we English, we proud patriots, are probably "Krauts" ourselves.

According to scientists (who for once have stopped playing internet poker and looking at mucky pictures online to do some real work), the Anglo-Saxon invasion of this sceptred isle 1,600 years ago was so successful that the genetic characteristics of the native Brit were wiped out, leaving us with a population with mainly Germanic genes. As they say, you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family.

Now while this news will undoubtedly come as a shock to Mr Piers Morgan and anyone else who studied history at the university of the Victor comic (Achtung, Tommy! For you ze war is over"), there is some sense to it. After all, our Royal family is German, our cultural arrogance is German and our appetite for beer and fighting is certainly German.

And it's not a bad time to be German. The marvellous organisation of the World Cup and the wonderful welcome received by everyone who went has definitely changed our perception of the country. And they've got a woman Prime Minister, which is a bonus.

Perhaps Noel Coward had it right in his 1943 composition (probably introduced by Sir Jimmy Savile on that week's Top of the Pops): "Don't let's be beastly to the Germans, when our victory is ultimately won. It was just those nasty Nazis who persuaded them to fight, and their Beethoven and Bach are really far worse than their bite ?"

SO IF we're now all Germans, it is entirely appropriate that the word of the day should be 'schadenfreude', defined by my dictionary as "a malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others".

The cause of this malevolent glee is the thought of a certain Omar Bakri sitting sweating on the quayside in Beirut while Israeli missiles rain down all about him. Bakri, of course, is the race-hate "preacher" who spent 20 years on the dole in this country while hailing terrorists as "magnificent martyrs" and praising those behind the 9/11 atrocities.

When he nipped off to Beirut to snap up a £150,000 luxury apartment (and where did that money come from? ) the jug-eared and muddle-brained Charles Clarke had a moment of unusual sanity and banned him from ever returning. Bakri did a "not bovvered" and replied that he "never wanted to see the place again".

Strange, then, that he should turn up amongst 2,000 British evacuees in the port on Thursday, trying to blag a place on board HMS Bulwark. Top marks to the embassy official who spotted him and promptly told him to clear off.

Schadenfreude indeed.

THE THEME continues, this time with a nod to Gabriel Fahrenheit, the German physicist who devised the temperature guide with which we are all familiar.

Did you notice how many television weather forecasts reverted to Fahrenheit this week, ditching the ridiculous and nonsensical scale invented by Swedish astronomer Anders Celcius?

(You're getting value for money on the trivia front this week, folks. ) There's a very good reason for that.

Fahrenheit is eminently sensible. In simple terms it starts at 0 degrees and goes up to 100 degrees. You therefore know exactly where on the scale you are between freezing and boiling.

Celcius is a Euro-nonsense imposed on us by the traitors and quislings of the BBC. They can waffle on all day and I still haven't got a clue whether to don a T-shirt or a jumper.

It's telling that when the weather becomes the big story, the socalled modernisers quickly revert to a scale we all understand.