‘Hey, Britse Dwerg Dan! Following your column on cows last week’, shouts a drunk Femke at Drie Gezusters, ‘you should write your next column on how tall us Dutchies are!’ Is there supposed to be a link in there somewhere? Am I completely missing something? What the femur was Femke talking about?

The Dutch are tall. Yes. And I am a Britse dwerg. I know. You can stop saying it now. I beg you. For the sake of my self-esteem… please…

But why are the Dutch so tall? I thought it over for a while:

Natural selection has made the Dutch tall so that their heads would be above the water when the dams collapse…

Low lands + tall people = optical illusion…

Maybe you’re just really short, Br— damn it, Femke, get out of my head!

Yet, it is most likely a combination of factors that make the average Dutchman six-foot-one, such as good healthcare, living conditions, genetics, happiness, and, of course, dairy-dieting! Perhaps Femke was talking sense: the more cows (the more dairy), the taller the Dutch get.

So, once again, the Dutch appear to love the D…

A slick-haired Dutchman told me how good it is to be tall. ‘Put it this way’, he said, ‘if a pint was scaled up to the size of your average room, the Dutch would be in there drinking it first, and the rest of you would be left with the dregs, which is something you internationals will have to get used to now Palm Beach has gone.’ Actually, thinking about it now, perhaps that’s why Dutchmen have their hair slicked back: because it scrapes against the ceiling every time they walk into a room!

In anticipation of contention over what defines ‘tall’, I think that we can all agree on one thing: whilst the Dutch may not all be tall, they are most certainly high.