I moan, therefore I am British

Aside from a fiercely patriotic appreciation of Marmite and the mild disappointment secretly felt when stepping out to find the weather flawless and thus un-complain-about-able, what sets me apart in the exotic mixing pot of my corridor as being especially British? Or even, for the sake of some red-and-white controversy, English?

It's come to worry me that my flatmates probably think the answer lies with my uncanny ability to own half the Tesco homewares department without using anything other than a kettle '” while my Chinese friends turn the kitchen into an emporium of delicious smells every night, I cower in a corner with a Pot Noodle and can of Red Bull like an exile from the land of nutrition, sure that at any moment Gillian McKeith will arrive and start prodding me with a courgette.

When someone asks to learn how to cook traditional British fare, we show them Spag Bol made with ketchup.

But just as I start to believe my British heritage boils down only to an encyclopaedic knowledge of Kinks lyrics and the belief that John Cleese, Stephen Fry and Griff Rhys Jones should one day get together and run the country, an opportunity presents itself for a show of extreme, foolhardy Britishness like no other.

Even above the art of competitive Hobnob-dunking and synchronised pre-Christmas parsnip warfare in the aisles of Sainsbury's, this activity demonstrates the perfect combination of stamina, determination and daftness to such extent that I truly, honestly regard it as our national sport. Ladies and Gentlemen: queuing.

Yes, my oriental friends may have a winning way with soy sauce and New Year shindigs, but when you need several hundred people to stand behind one another in a state of mild agitation for the best part of a day, no one will do it like the Brits.

There are varying types of queuing, each with their own individual challenges and degree of difficulty, from the warming-up-exercise that is queuing for the shower in the morning (extra points awarded here for those who manage to maintain a grip on both their towel and their sense of perspective while flatmate X shampoos his chest hair without a care in the world) to the professional-standard queuing Olympics otherwise known as Chessington World of Adventures, where the line-standing marathon is only one of many events designed to push human endurance to its very furthest extremities.

Others include the seven-hour cross-country hike required to locate the right car in the right sector of the right car park at the end of the day, and the consumption of enough carbonated soft drinks to power Professor Burp's Bubble Works for near on a month.

Never have I felt such a huge sense of queuing achievement, though, than after this Friday night.

Our trip to East London club Fabric (or if I'm being accurate, our trip to the pavement outside it) threw up every obstacle to queuing success in the book.

It was cold. It was night time.

There were sadistic bouncers, giddy on power and the thrill of wearing the same black bomber jacket and mike headset as five other burly men, working through their rage at not making it into the Marines by inflicting it on us.

There was a hot dog stand mere feet away on the other side of the railings, emitting the kind of smells that you know the taste will never live up to but drive you to hallucination anyway. There were full bladders, the less said of which the better.

And there was British spirit. There's nothing like being communally cheesed-off to help you bond with complete strangers '” I like to think it's the same make-do-and-mend morale that our grandparents championed in the war, this ability to take a grim situation and turn it into one of mirth and recipe-swapping.

I met a nice young man from Peckham and advised him on his university applications.

I played several very accomplished games of I-spy and I learned the best way to sweet-talk a bouncer into letting your friend back into the queue after he's left to relieve himself in a nearby alley.

Another British trait to be admired, of course, is knowing when to give up.

Which we did, after four hours of hardcore queuing, and went to get kebabs.

Accounting this story the next morning to a flatmate, she looks puzzled and asks "so why was it that people queued for so long? Was the club meant to be that good?".

"Oh no", I reply, "It was so we could moan about it afterwards". And you can't get more British than that.