One of Britain's most senior tourism chiefs (ooh, what an important man) has warned that bad service, grumpy staff and poor hygiene risk putting off foreign visitors, destroying our tourist industry and costing 50,000 British jobs this year alone.

“We've had a period in which people could get away with not being of the highest quality,” Christopher Rodrigues, the chairman of VisitBritain, said on Thursday. “But we're now in an environment where you have to do quality. Poor value for money and poor service cost jobs, and will cost more jobs in a recession.” He went on to say that “threadbare towels”, “a previously owned bar of soap” and “a grumpy person who says ‘we don't do breakfast before 8am and we don't do it after 8.12am'” will no longer be tolerated (I know, I know, 12 whole minutes for breakfast, he must have been thinking of the Ritz) and, effectively, that we are going to have to smile and serve and grovel our way out of the financial crisis.

All this by way of preparation for the Prime Minister's launch, the next day, of a £6 million campaign to publicise how the collapse of sterling has made Britain more affordable for foreign tourists.

Doesn't it make you proud? Britain may be cold, miserable, rude and dirty, Gordon Brown seemed to be telling the world's holidaymakers, but at least it's cheap! Soon, presumably, impoverished Thai students will be backpacking round England with guidebooks telling them how to survive on two dollars a week. Rowdy Lithuanian bachelors will book stag parties in Park Lane because the booze and hookers are so ridiculously cheap, and Congolese tabloids will offer their readers £1 booze cruises to Folkestone. And they'll all go home staggered by the misery, rudeness and filth.

With this in mind, I thought it would be a good time to issue some simple survival tips to foreign travellers coming to Britain in 2009. 1 Do not pay full price. When shopping in Britain, bear in mind that the price marked is only a guide, it is always best to haggle.

Prices in Harrods, for example, may look ridiculously cheap to you, but locals cannot afford to pay even this much and if you pay more you will make life harder for them in the end. Do not damage their frail local economy with your powerful rupees.

2 When speaking to staff in shops, hotels and restaurants do not expect them to be solicitous, kind or helpful. What do you think they are, your bleeding butler? Effing nerve. What did your last servant die of?

3 If you do decide to make some purchases, do not forget that Savile Row suits and shirts from Jermyn Street may seem incredibly good value and look great with a tan when you're in that holiday frame of mind, but all that ethnic tat can look pretty ridiculous when you get it home.

4 Never ask a salesperson for help finding an item in your size or preferred colour - they will merely stare at you blankly as if you are an escaped lunatic and then tell you that everyfink is out on the floor. If you absolutely insist that they go and check the stockroom they will walk round a random corner, count to 30 and then go on a tea break.

5 Do not expect to find a full range of products in shops. Most shops in Britain are in receivership and merely flogging off old stock before being boarded up.

6 If taken by locals to a restaurant such as Garfunkel's, Nando's, or any number of chain pubs offering “Traditional Roast Dinner!!!” on a big red banner strung across the roof, do your best not to pull faces or vomit - for the natives, eating in these places is considered a treat.

7 Take a good supply of colourful pens with you to give to the children who will flock around you asking for presents. And if you want to be really popular then give them knives, British children treasure these more than anything.

8 Light bulbs, on the other hand, make great gifts for grown-ups, as the traditional British light bulb is being phased out by bleeding-heart environmental scaremongers who want to plunge Britain into darkness.

9 It is always important to carry a supply of clean needles when travelling, but if you are likely to find yourself in hospital while staying in Britain it is also advisable to pack a full body antiviral protection suit, anti-bacterial scrub down unit, and, if you are going to be in overnight, a bed.

10 Do not be put off if the people appear cold or standoffish towards you. They are not even nice to each other unless they are being bombed.

11 Don't forget to take part in the national pastime of binge drinking. With the recession in danger of putting a stop to this great British tradition, the Wetherspoon pub chain has started offering pints of beer at 99p a go. “Bottoms up!” - as they say when, after ten or eleven of these drinks, they drop their trousers and stand on their heads on the road outside.

12 And for God's sake, don't mention the cricket.

Research by Australian scientists has shown that spending two or three hours a day outdoors dramatically reduces a child's risk of becoming short-sighted. This, they claim, is because sunlight triggers the release of chemicals that prevent distortion of the eyeball and cause myopia.

Advocates of the more old-fashioned, Hairy Palm Theory of diminished eyesight will simply see it as proof that little Australian boys are too shy to masturbate outdoors.

Meanwhile, at the University of Utah, Professor Elizabeth Cashdan claims to have proved that hormones secreted by ambitious working women diminish the waist-hip ratio, with the result that the hourglass figure is in danger of dying out in advanced Western societies.

I was all set to rant against yet another beautiful thing lost in the name of female emancipation when I turned the page of the newspaper in which I had read this, and saw that scientists are on the verge of bringing back to life such extinct species as the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger and even the dodo.

Phew, I thought. What problems progress causes, progress itself can solve. Another few months of serious genetic research and we'll be able to clone all the curvy girls we need.

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