The prospect does nothing to dampen Heertje’s enthusiasm for the satirical news quiz which is broadcast – unsubtitled of

The prospect does nothing to dampen Heertje’s enthusiasm for the satirical news quiz, which is broadcast – unsubtitled, of course – in Holland every week. I’d do the same if they came to Holland,” Heertje acknowledges. We’re not as paranoid as the English.”Heertje is well aware that he is probably being set up as a Tub-of-Lard- type butt of the jokes on Have I Got News for You tonight. Even as we speak, Angus Deayton will no doubt be polishing up his lines on Dutch caps and red-light districts “I’m sure they’ll try and make fun of me. “Nobody wants to be part of Europe,” Heertje reckons, “it’s the same in Holland, but we don’t make such a fuss about it. In England, they’re more afraid, they feel they have to defend themselves against something that’s not going to happen anyway You won’t suddenly have to eat French food.

I hate to tell you this but you aren’t a superpower anymore.” Our Euro-scepticism – or should that be phobia? – is equally comical. All the British are known for is combining the two.” Heertje’s chief source of gags, however, is our enduring delusions of grandeur. “The British want to be a superpower, they feel everyone should choose them as a leader Mrs Thatcher was saying that just the other day. “If you need a drawing to tell you what right and left are, you shouldn’t be out on the streets at all.”He also finds humour in comparing the two countries “All the Dutch are known for is drugs and football.

“I can show them things they’ve seen all their lives but have never questioned before.” He points to the absurdity of having an arrow accompanying the “Look Left” sign at a zebra-crossing. They have been particularly taken by his outsider’s view of them.”They like it when someone from the outside looks in,” he says. Once they got over the apparent contradiction in terms represented by a comedian from the Low Countries – by his own admission “nobody can imagine the Dutch being funny” – British audiences have been more charmed by Heertje. He closed his set in the US by musing: “I think it’s a beautiful country…

now I understand why you stole it from the American Indians.” The comedian reveals that his wishy-washy liberal opinions about gun control did not play well in Texas. “In Holland we’ve got a problem with child abuse too, but this is really serious.”The one drawback of Heertje’s act is that he can stray into the territory of hectoring Ben Elton-esque: “a little bit of politics, ladies and gentlemen” preachiness. Can you imagine an American comedian making gags in fluent Dutch about cycle-paths or drainage systems in the Netherlands? He went on to consider that peculiar form of American torture which involves putting children in Country and Western outfits for the 4th July celebrations. “They looked at me like ‘who’s Jerry Wiggin?’,” Heertje laughs.