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10th Jul 2016

People are still making that one same Andy Murray joke

It's *still* going

Tom Victor

When Andy Murray first burst on to the tennis scene, it didn’t take long for one line to start doing the rounds.

If he won, English fans were proud to hail the Brit as one of their own, but he was back to being Scottish – not British – whenever he suffered a defeat.

Here are a couple of examples from back in 2008, the year that a 21-year-old Murray reached his first Wimbledon quarter-final.

https://twitter.com/markpentleton/status/847165765

Now, as anyone who is familiar with photos of John Terry celebrating in full kit will tell you, there’s nothing people like more than repeating a joke until it has stopped being funny, and then repeating it some more for good measure.

Hell, we’re still seeing people changing the subtitles on that famous Hitler speech Downfall (released in 2004) for a variety of news items.

But there’s something almost uniquely enduring about the Murray gag. Is it funny now? When did it stop being funny? Was it ever funny? Who knows.

Anyway, with Murray taking on Milos Raonic in the 2016 Wimbledon final, we thought we might track the development of the joke over the years.

Here it is in 2009.

https://twitter.com/chimp80/status/2468728233

By that point the backlash had already begun. That’s seven whole years ago, folks.

Not much had changed in 2010.

https://twitter.com/sam_needs/status/17637918924

Or 2011.

https://twitter.com/candlishh/status/93469569561268224

Or 2012.

https://twitter.com/MeganD_96/status/222737604620189698

Still, this would surely change in 2013, when he won at Wimbledon for the first time.

Oh.

https://twitter.com/rossifier2015/status/356146518211837955

2014 saw the Scottish Independence Referendum, and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, giving us a chance to put it to bed once and for all.

But instead we only found ourselves talking about it even more.

With 2015 came the post-referendum backlash, of course.

https://twitter.com/connorthomson22/status/623447411986460676

Could 2016 be the year that the British/Scottish line finally dies a death? What do you think?

https://twitter.com/FraserTrivett11/status/752138803012374528

Roll on 2017.

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