Those who drank ginger beer on the stairs of public houses in nineteen fifties' Bath would sometimes hear the disjointed slivers of jokes echoing up from the saloon bar. They would often open with the frisson-loaded words "There was an Englishman, a Welshman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman." During the telling of this joke there always seemed to be an Englishman, a Welshman, and an Irishman present. But none of them ever appeared to take offence.
'Cracking Jokes in Public Houses' was the title of a celebrated article penned by Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic (resident of prefab number three) in the Twiverton Literary Supplement (TLS) in April 1955. The article began by disputing the claim that April is "the cruellest month." It then declared that every philosophically-inclined pub goer should always keep a copy of Freud's Psychopathology of Everyday Life in a handbag or back pocket. The article ends by inviting readers to mull over the significance of the following quotation that appears on page 161 of the 1938 Pelican edition of Professor Dr. Sigmund Freud's path-breaking book.

Goethe said of Lichtenberg:
"Where he cracks a joke, there lies a concealed problem."

In the "There was an Englishman, a Welshman..." joke it seems clear that the "concealed problem" is the national one. Drinkers who meet up in Bath public houses are not just saviours of the brewery industry. They are also citizens of a multi-national state. Tensions between its different national groups have sometimes taken on a lethal form. In the post-war calm of the nineteen fifties this "concealed problem" seemed to be at long last a manageable one. This meant it coud be joked about. That, at least, was how it seemed when viewed from the bucolic vantage point of the Cheddar Cheese Straws and ginger beer laden stairs.
An odd thing about the old man's drinking circles (and what odd characters they were) was that they included Englishmen, Welshmen, and Irishmen, but never any Scotsmen. Given the epic nature of the journey from Glasgow to Somerset this was not so surprising. A train ride and an overnight ferry would take you to Dublin by the next day. A train ride and a bus journey would take you to the South Wales valleys in a couple of hours.
So what would happen if a kilt-wearing Scotsman had been present in the saloon bar when the "There was an Englishman, a Welshman..." joke was being told? Would the "concealed problem" of the national question have suddenly reared its ugly head? This is what you wondered as you flicked through the pages of the TLS and sat on the public house stairs.