Anglo-Danish Relations dealt a severe blow
Not my social gaffe, but I put my hands up to being the twisted instigator of the worst moment in one young lads life;

At last years Roskilde festival, (think Glasto but with a lot more Swedish girls), we got chatting in one of the backstage areas to a lovely Danish family, who despite our quite obvious state of inebriation, decided this was a great opportunity for their fourteen year old son to get some practise for an upcoming English exam by getting some tips on grammar and pronunciation from real live English people.

Despite the tremendous noise coming from the adjacent stage (Turbonegro : VERY metal), it didn’t take long to realise that the lads grasp of English far surpassed most British school leavers, so we quickly advanced to the advanced topic of, er, shall we just say the more Anglo-Saxon phrases...

Simply because he was so good at English, we started with truly advanced swearing like "Flange" and "Jap’s Eye" which soon descended into a competition between us Brits as to who knew the most obscure (and therefore funny) profanity, during which the Danish kid just looked more and more crestfallen because he didn’t understand a bloody word we were saying. Feeling sorry for him, somebody suggested "Wanker", to which his eye’s lit up like a Christmas tree. Here at last was a word he actually knew and unable to contain his juvenile joy he shouted "Yes! I know Wanker!" at the top of his voice, which wouldn’t have been a problem ten seconds earlier when the band were still playing at 120 decibels, but he’d timed the outburst to coincide with a sudden silence in the set. About two-hundred people, including his Mum, Dad and about ten Aunties and Uncles turned as one to see who the foul-mouthed little bastard was...

The shame, the shame.
( Linbox has a serious dunk habit, Wed 21 Apr 2004, 1:58, Reply)