Sheldon Cooper, the gifted but humourless protagonist of the popular TV show The Big Bang Theory, makes a hobby of vexillology, and so often produces his own videos entitled Fun with Flags.
Of course the predictable joke is that the segments are unremittingly dull, and thus far there has been no mention of one entertaining example: Australia's Fighting Kangaroo.
But in general flags are not to be taken lightly, as the so-called Budgie Nine of Australia now know, having recently learned a salutary lesson, one hopes, following their tasteless and disrespectful display of the Malaysian flag on their swimwear.
The great Dr Johnson may have considered patriotism the last refuge of the scoundrel, but there is a huge number of patriots in the world, as it usually requires a concerted effort to challenge one's childhood conditioning. Before I turned five, for example, I was in the serried Monday morning ranks of children who had to swear, among other vows, to honour the flag: boys had to salute said object.
As a result, I have to confess that every time I visited London and saw the Australian flag flying above Australia House in the Strand, my heart lifted a little.
Much earlier, in my first observation of homesickness in action, I watched, shocked, as a Greek friend burst into tears at the sight of the then unfamiliar emblematic blue and white stripes. One of Greece's best soccer teams had come to play against a Melbourne team: the Greeks ran out on to Olympic Park, carrying their flag, and big, strapping Panayiotis sobbed helplessly for quite some minutes.
Each stripe of the Greek flag's alternating blue and white stripes represents a syllable of the declaration Freedom or Death, and just yesterday I watched a young BBC journalist interview a fiery Cretan village priest, who demonstrated his reverence and allegiance by kissing a corner of the flag.
'What would happen', asked the young man, 'if someone came here and desecrated the flag in some way?' The priest did not mince words. Thanatos. Death. The flag, with its white cross in one corner, represents modern Greek history: it stands for the long struggle against the Ottoman yoke, sacrifice, pride, inspiration and faith in Orthodoxy. For all of Greek life.
"I rather like the idea and the sight of the flag on the mountain. We have had stormy weather rather than bombs bursting in air, thank goodness, but the big Greek flag is