When Robert Burns wrote the couplet "O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us/To see oursels as ithers see us!", it seems unlikely he was talking about TikTok.

Thanks to the social media platform though the people of the UK are getting a view of how at least some of the world views us thanks to a phenomenon called 'Britishcore'.

How do they view us? Well, it's not Edinburgh Castle, Tower Bridge and the Welsh valleys.

One such example features the acoustic Oasis song 'Married With Children' over clips of Boris Johnson, Neil Warnock and a man in an Adidas t-shirt talking about naan bread.

@localbritishgeezer #british #britishcore #nichetok #corecore ♬ original sound - Keaton (Donnie Darko)

That song, a bonus track on debut album Definitely Maybe has proven a popular one, with live videos of Liam Gallagher performing it on his recent tour dubbing it simply 'British Core song' and British slideshow in real life.

Other favourite soundtracks include Blur's 'Parklife' and 'Common People' by Blur, with recurring clips including Karl Pilkington, The Inbetweeners, and Alison Hammond.

One viral clip features an American fan of Manchester United listing the things he wants to do on an upcoming tip to the city, including a 'cheeky Tesco run', and eating a Gregg's sausage roll. Identikit housing estates, graffiti on bins and rain also feature heavily.

The use of Britpop songs constitutes something of an irony, intentional or not.

The movement itself was built on the idea of rejecting the prevailing musical trends of the time, grunge and pop-punk, both of which emerged across the Atlantic.

Read More:

Noel Gallagher said part of his inspiration for writing 'Live Forever' was in response to Nirvana's 'I Hate Myself and Want To Die', Damon Albarn told the NME in 1994 "if punk was about getting rid of hippies, then I’m getting rid of grunge", and Brett Anderson of Slade appeared on the cover of Select magazine in front of the Union Flag with the strapline 'Yanks go home'.

The trend is hardly the first centred around supposed British culture to take over the internet.

In early 2020 a Twitter trend 'British people be like' saw users mocking English accents in text form, for example "British people be like: Black lives ma-aa".

A minor storm was created in 2018 when a producer on The Late Late Show wrote: "The British call Blink-182 “Blink One Eight Two” and I’m not saying that’s WHY they lost the Revolutionary War, but...".

Debate then ensued over the correct way to pronounce the pop-punk trio's name (Americans would have it Blink One Eight Two), to the point members of the band got involved.

Bassist Mark Hoppus maintained the important thing was that the B be presented in lower-case, while the guitarist for the group, whose albums include Enema of the State and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket insisted: "It’s actually— Blink eighteen-two. People have all gotten this wrong for years. Sometimes this can happen with very complex, thoughtful and elevated art."

The message board 4Chan has been referring to the people of these isles as 'Britbongs' for over a decade, and the United Kingdom itself as 'Bongistan'.

This is based on the alleged fact that no-one in the UK wears a watch or can tell the time, and instead refer solely to the chiming of Big Ben before declaring: "oi, it's seven bongs".

(Image: The internet)

The Australian comedian Jim Jefferies, who spent several years living in Manchester, sought to dispel the notion of the Brits being polite.

He said on the Opie and Anthony podcast: "They're proper rude people. No-one tips or anything like that, and their beer is flat. Do you want to know why? They're cheap bastards, they want the beer to the top they don't want any head on it whatsoever because that means they're losing, like, 3% of the volume.

"They used to hate black people in the 70s and had some very racist sitcoms, then in the 80s they had problems with the Indians and the Pakistanis - now they hate the Polish people because the Polish people will do a kitchen for you for half the price.

"The British people are the laziest workers in the world and everything's under-charged. I had some renovations done in my house and of course I got Polish people in. I wouldn't let a British person build me anything, they're drinking 10 cups of tea a day the lazy p****s."

Going further back The Simpsons used The Big Book of British Smiles as a way to convince the children of Springfield to brush their teeth, the crowning glory being a snaggle-toothed likeness of the future King Charles.

The Big Book of British Smiles as featured in The SimpsonsThe Big Book of British Smiles as featured in The Simpsons (Image: 20th Century Fox)

Another episode featured supposedly the most popular sitcom in England, Oh Do Shut Up, centred around a 'hard-drinking yet loving family of soccer hooligans' - "If they're not having a go with a bird, they're having a row with a wanker".

It would all seem a fairly far cry from the traditional depiction of 'British culture' outside of the UK.

While the TikTok trend is all council estates, sausage rolls and Britpop, traditional emblems of Albion abroad were more upper-class concerns.

Think of James Bond, privately educated, sharply-dressed, silver-tongued. The likes of Jeremy Irons, Alan Rickman and Christopher Lee made careers out of playing devious, upper class villains a trope which extended even to children's films: Irons in The Lion King or George Sanders as Shere Khan in The Jungle Book.

Other than high class, low morals the prevailing view was often of a certain campness - Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane has said he based the voice of Stewie Griffin from the show on Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady.

Of course, it's hard to say either extreme really represents the UK, made up as it is of four nations, several classes and a huge array of regional distinctions.

Indeed, depictions of Scotland abroad are largely of the Braveheart or Outlander variety, all kilts, mountains and glens.

A 2007 study of Americans found their view of the typical Scot was "offensive, angry and ginger".

That's probably largely down to The Simpsons, which features a Scottish character in the form of the cantankerous Groundskeeper Willie.

One episode finds him musing: "Brothers and sisters are natural enemies. Like Englishmen and Scots. Or Welshmen and Scots. Or Japanese and Scots. Or Scots and other Scots - damn Scots, they ruined Scotland!"

Meanwhile, the Hungarians have a whole range of jokes based on Scottish people being drunk and tight with money.

In the end neither Downtown Abbey nor the Royle Family represents England in its entirety, Trainspotting and Outlander are not singular visions of Scottish culture and 'Britishcore' is more than sausage rolls, cheeky Tesco runs and Oasis album tracks.

Not that the Brits have any right to complain, mind you. The sitcom 'Allo 'Allo drew 14 million viewers at its peak despite being based almost entirely on the premise that foreigners talk funny, and the less said about Love Thy Neighbour the better. As recently as 2010 Matt Lucas and David Walliams were dressing up as Japanese schoolgirls stalking Martin Clunes, complete with 'comedy' Japanese accents.

Greggs and Britpop seems pretty harmless in comparison, really.