"THE fatal defect in cows brains seems to have transferred to the two legged inhabitants on the island," was the only rational explanation the Cologne tabloid Express could offer for the outbreak of lunacy among its British equivalents.

"England declares football war on us," declared Germany's leading tabloid, Bild Zeitung, splashing the Mirror's picture of Gazza in a helmet on its front page. "Where did they find a helmet big enough wondered Andy Kopke, the German team's goalkeeper.

The moment had come for Germany to fight back, to launch a satirical blitzkrieg against those cocky Englanders who had been hurling insults at the German people ever since their cows were relegated from the markets of Europe.

Bild tried the hardest. By yesterday morning, its top guns had come up with "11 questions to the English" 11 jibes designed to send Fleet Street's most scurrilous scribes running for their biros. Here is a small sample. "Why do you wear your swimming costumes in the sauna?" "How can your former colonies beat you at cricket?" "When did an Englishman last win at Wimbledon?"

Biting stuff, this, and there was more. Bild's super sleuths, no strangers to making up stories themselves, discovered that the "Germany embassy spokesman" quoted by the Daily Mirror as saying that "we surrender", was in fact the embassy porter, and had said no such thing.

Alas, that was the limit of the Hun's effort to even the score in the propaganda war. Not even Germany's least sophisticated newspaper dared plunge to depths as low as its British counterparts.

Of wars there was no mention. Instead of a rousing call to arms, Bild's menacing head lines were merely followed by a lament. The team had played badly against the Croats, lost General Klinsmann to injury, and, as in the Battle of Britain, England were proving a lot more resilient than strategists had anticipated.

Making in of other nations is not really a German thing, and scoring points by evoking past conflicts is deemed distasteful. In Germany, two weeks of football have produced only one pathetic epithet against the "Pizzas" who held the Krauts to a draw in the first round. Even the Croats, who might have been an obvious target of gallows humour, got away without ridicule. Jingoism, on the evident of the two nations' press, is performed with much greater relish and efficiency in England.

The vitriol that has been flowing from the pens of British tabloid writers ever since the outbreak of the beef war has therefore been particularly hurtful to Germans. The Bonn office of the Independent and the bureaux of other British newspapers are rung almost daily by anguished German colleagues seeking an explanation for the latest Fleet Street stunt. Do the British really hate us so much? they ask, and "What's all this about the war?" "It's a joke," we assure them. "Don't you get it?".

No, the Germans don't get it, although judging by yesterday's evidence, they are beginning to learn. Rather than fanning the flames of nationalism, down market papers are giving their readers crash courses on British humour, and try to explain that all those racist jokes are meant as a harmless bit of fun. "Dogs which bark do not bite," said Bild quoting a German proverb.

"The war? Oh, that was too long ago."