IT’S amazing what it takes to make most people proud to be British.

Right now, it’s a talented Scotsman – or young hopeful like Heather Watson – a racquet and a partisan crowd. At Wimbledon, being British is worn like a badge and we are, for this very short time, more than happy to shout our nationalist support for all the world to hear.

You don’t even have to be there to be a vocal nationalist. How many of us at home have been loudly backing British tennis players to win and validate our shared citizenship?

There may not be a Union Jack t-shirt or a red, white and blue painted face in sight, but we are boastful Brits nevertheless.

Just contrast that voluble daily sea of nationalistic fervour with the quiet and determined statement this week by Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Alison McCourt of 22 Field Hospital.

Her success leading the Kerry Town Treatment Unit in Sierra Leone, where Ebola was the truly terrifying adversary, and her subsequent OBE was, she insisted, all down to team work. “It makes you proud to be British,” she commented.

My point is that, when it really comes to it, most people are basically very proud to be Britons. Unfortunately, as Brits we are also highly critical of everything British (until someone from another country criticises it and then, of course, it’s the best in the world).

We don’t appear to value our own country – unlike many people who come to live here from around the world and who appear to rate this country very highly indeed – and employ a constantly negative vibe that has found a welcoming echo in Facebook and all other social media.

We decry all the achievements of the British Empire and wartime heroes because it’s now fashionable to dismiss our remarkable forebears as “imperialists”. We even denigrate British cookery as way down the list of international favourites, and champion virtually any other country’s national and regional dishes instead.

If there is public admiration of heroes in any field of achievement, including sporting, we can’t wait to decry them and what they have done and lionise other nations. And we have a grass-is-greener approach to almost everything non-British, from the arts to holidays.

In other words, we don’t know what we’ve got right under our noses. And, whatever it is, we don’t like it. Perhaps it’s time we just grew up.