When they changed the name of my west London local from the Queen Victoria to Finnegans Wake I ground my teeth. Every time I pass the place and see the signs out for Craic agus Ceol, the voice of my mother - lover of the Irish language and its literature and music - howls "ersatz" from beyond the grave.
I spent several years as chairman of the British Association for Irish Studies trying to ensure that Irish culture was taught within the educational system at a high level of excellence, and this kind of Paddywhackery grates.
I'm in a tiny minority, of course. Irish pubs - genuine or phoney - are hugely popular in England these days. No doubt in a few years fashion will move on, the brewers will go over to Greek tavernas, and Finnegans Wake will have a makeover and become Helen of Troy.
But just for now, English youth think the Irish are the coolest of the cool. To them, Irishness is Riverdance and mystical pop and drinking too much in places where sociable people teach you comforting phrases about birds never flying on one wing. Temple Bar on a Saturday night is Nirvana for Essex girls and boys: they will be grieved by the recent hotel bans to find their love is unrequited.
Still, even if Irish popularity in Britain is at its zenith, it is unlikely to fall far, for it's based on a solid foundation. A comprehensive poll of British-born adults of all ages taken a few years ago showed that only 7 per cent thought of us as foreign, and the vast majority liked us because we were fun-loving and fluent and had a good sense of humour. That's why most mainland British have Irish relatives and friends and why they have little difficulty in distinguishing between people who want to blow them up and people who simply want to live among them.
They occasionally become irritated by the Irish branch of the grievance industry, but this is alleviated by the fact that their Irish friends are the first to tell them Irish jokes. For one of the most striking aspects of living in England, where most immigrants are concentrated, is how the capacity of the English to laugh at themselves rubs off on the newcomers. Irish, West Indian and latterly Asians schooled in English satire are happy to laugh along with their hosts at such spoofs on their own communities as Father Ted, the characters of Lenny Henry and the sketches of Goodness Gracious Me. But while on a practical, day-to-day level individual British-Irish relationships have flourished, the relationship between the peoples of the two islands has often been less successful. During the 30 years I've been based in England and have frequently been visiting home, I've been constantly amazed at the raw inferiority complex manifested towards the English by people in the Republic of Ireland.
My father, who spent his life trying to drag Irish history out of blind nationalism, used to flinch at the standard BBC accent. My apolitical English husband was bewildered after a jolly evening in Dublin to find his tired and emotional host suddenly screaming at him: "Get out of my house, you f...ing Brit." (The "Brit" adds an extra layer of confusion, since our national inferiority complex seems to be confined to the English.) And in nearly 20 years of being involved in Anglo-Irish do-goodery, I've very often seen Irish officials and politicians showing intense and undeserved touchiness towards English counterparts who mean no harm. The reaction to poor old Patrick Mayhew was a classic. "Toffee-nosed, patronising bastard" was a classic response from otherwise sophisticated Dubliners. I failed completely to convince anyone that Mayhew couldn't help talking like that and that, far from thinking of himself as a superior Brit, he was deeply romantic about, and proud of, his Irish ancestry: the knee-jerk reaction to Ascendancy tones had not left us.
Until very recently I used to think of the Republic as behaving towards Britain like a truculent and suspicious adolescent, brooding about instances of child-abuse and ever on the lookout for slights and determined to demand its rights within the relationship without acknowledging any responsibilities. So it is with joy that I recognise that in the last few years the adolescent has been transformed into an adult and at last is beginning to think of Britain as an equal.
In my British persona I'm a Euro-sceptic, but as an Irishwoman I recognise that Europe has done wonders for us. So, too, has the painfully forged Dublin-London partnership. When Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair stand side by side these days, they are partners in Europe and partners when it comes to Northern Ireland.
When people in the Republic fell over themselves to vote for the Belfast Agreement, they were putting their anti-British past behind them. And when the President, Mrs McAleese, stood beside Queen Elizabeth at Mesen, the Republic came of age in a way which was profoundly moving for the many millions of Irish and Irish-born who love both Britain and Ireland.
It was an emotional moment for me to see a recognition of the courage and idealism that drove my grandfather O'Sullivan to join the British army, and I felt a passionate sense of pride that my country was at last adult enough to face up honestly and honourably to a squalid part of its past. Padraig Flynn said it all in four words: "They died for us."
But there's still a worm in the Anglo-Irish bud, for much of Northern nationalism is still stuck in petulant adolescence. On Remembrance Sunday, as I looked at the representative of the Scottish National Party laying a wreath at the Whitehall Cenotaph, I suddenly wondered why John Hume couldn't be there to honour the dead. And on Wednesday I was disappointed to see neither him nor Seamus Mallon in Mesen. When I asked SDLP headquarters why they hadn't attended, they came up with excuses that were even feebler than they were vague.
One of the main reasons I did not want Mary McAleese to become President was because of her narrow Northern nationalism. It is a tribute to her as well as to the people she represents that she so quickly came to realise that anti-Britishness has no place in an effective Anglo-Irish relationship and that she has tried so hard to acknowledge our complex past.
At Mesen the President was a visual representation of the process of reconciliation. What a shame that both the leader and the deputy leader of the SDLP missed the opportunity to stand behind President McAleese and Queen Elizabeth, shoulder to shoulder with David Trimble.
