Losing face over passport photos
Proud UK travellers lead the way in embarrassing mugshots
Travellers from the UK have the most embarrassing and ghastly passport photographs in Europe, if the results of a new survey are to be believed. The poll, which took in some 5,000 people around the EU, found that one in five Britons have a passport photograph so bad that they actively try to hide it from friends and family.
The Daily Express, reporting the story, states that just three per cent of Norwegians are embarrassed by their passport photographs, while just four per cent of passport holders in Germany, Sweden and France feel any shame. Italians are the only nation whose residents feel as bad as those in the UK.
Respondents from both the UK and Italy said they were so embarrassed by their photos that they “felt less shame in being seen drunk, with food spilled on themselves, or with their flies undone”.
The newspaper points out that there may be a valid reason for all this; whereas the average French traveller takes an hour having a new passport photograph taken, here in the UK we are much more likely to duck into a photo booth on the platform of our nearest railway station!
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