War Without Tears

In the pan-European game-show Jeux Sans Frontières national teams from a variety of countries competed in ludicrous games, often dressed in strange costumes.

Former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel took the English translation of the title, Games Without Frontiers, for one of his biggest hits. You must remember that, even if you weren't yet born in 1980. It was a catchy little number, with Kate Bush trilling the backing vocal while Gabriel intoned his lyrics, here's a reminder.

In the song, Gabriel drew a heavy-handed parallel between national rivalries played out on Jeux Sans Frontières and armed conflict between nations.That brought the whole concept full-circle, because Charles De Gaulle had originally proposed the show as an outlet for healthy competition between French and German youth, very much as a substitute for war.

De Gaulle was perhaps all things to all men, but he had experienced war. He knew the stink of bodies in the summer heat, and he was determined to prevent another war in Europe.

The sense of nationality is a quite mysterious thing to me.

Accident of birth made me English. I like to see sports teams made up of players whose accidents of birth have also made them English triumph in competition with teams based on a different set of birth accidents.

Where is the sense in that?

My brain is not up to explaining national bonding, but I know it to exist. I feel it at a visceral level, as a mystic welling of emotion. And so, I am sure, do you.

Whatever team sport we follow, at the highest level matches will be between national teams. And do we want 'our' team to crush 'their' team? To inflict a thumping, bone-grinding defeat? Of course we do.

When we win, we feel good. And when we loose, we don't have to feel too bad. There are no tearful mothers and widows, no dismal flag-draped coffins, no rows of white headstones to haunt succeeding generations.

For quite the best thing about Jeux Sans Frontières was that we didn't see babies with shrapnel injuries, it really was war without tears.