Alfred, who is proud to sport the very same hairstyle he has been wearing since he was ten, is an ungrateful and self-deluding homosexual. As evidence I point to his fundamental silliness, his lack of reality contact, and his use of the word "hopelessly" in this context.
"I was at a dinner recently. The host became increasingly rude about Americans, even though he happened to be married to one," says Diane Kordas, a jewellery designer married to a banker. "I confronted him and he became even more unpleasant. He said: 'Don't you know that everyone hates America?' " She shrugged it off.
She shrugged it off? She was invited to this man's house to endure gratuitous insults, and she just bore them? To anyone who was so clumsy and arrogant as to speak this way to me, I would have spoken coldly, in the manner the British understand: "I beg your pardon. I was under a misconception: I thought you had extended hospitality to me and did not realise that it was the custom in this house to insult and deride invited guests. Good evening to you." And I would have thrown down my napkin and left, never to return.
It is always so satisfying to make a great scene like that and make one's attacker look like the vulgar fool he is.