JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK: In a world where height matters, I've made my peace with being the wee guy in the family - it's time Scotland did too

Daily Mail​

12-06-2025

When my family arrived at the home of a great aunt in St Andrews who hadn't seen us in a while, she bade me the following frank greeting: 'Aye, I see you're still no catching up with your brother.'
She was referring to my stature. She took one look at us and noted that the nine-year-old remained half a head shorter than the 10-year-old, just as he had done since we were three and four.
My reply to this has been quoted back to me many times in family circles. I think they thought it showed a degree of acuity under fire.
I told Auntie Cathie: 'I didn't know it was a competition.'
Years passed and I grew taller. But so, damn it, did my brother. By 20, he had overtaken my 6ft 3in father. Me, I pulled up a cruel quarter of an inch short of the 6ft mark.
It has been my lot in life to remain forever noticeably lower to the ground than my father and, indeed, his father before him.
If that were not bad enough, I've had to watch my older brother match them inch for inch and, more recently, see his sons rocket skywards, flaunting the family gene that somehow passed me by.
And I told Auntie Cathie it wasn't a competition. Of course it's a competition. And I'm in last place. That eats at a guy.
A scientific study now underlines what I knew all along but wasn't prepared to admit to a plain-spoken aunt peering into my tender soul the moment I entered the room.
Size matters. Shorter men really are jealous of taller ones. Deep down, they are dismayed by the differential and, naturally – as we imagine ourselves civilised and 'above' such things – in denial about it.
This suppressed sense of inadequacy manifests itself in what we have long recognised as 'short man syndrome' – the observable truism that the quickest male tempers are most often the preserve of the diminutive.
The Australian study, published in Evolutionary Behavioural Sciences, finds that smaller men are more likely to be encumbered with exactly the kinds of hang-ups we would expect – intrasexual envy, jealousy, competitiveness.
At the extremes of the syndrome, I'd suggest they are way more confrontational too – and paranoid, and out to prove some point that their more altitudinous counterparts don't feel worth proving.
Is it just my imagination or, when tensions simmer, is it ever the tall guy who winds the short fellow up more profoundly than anyone else present? Am I off beam, or does the threat of a violent episode double if a lady is watching?
Something primordial awakens in some of us – a rage against the natural order of the living world which suggests the bigger beasts get the spoils.
Yes, by dint of growing up in a family of giants, I can quite see how short man syndrome gnaws at a person's self-worth. I may have been in denial about the height race but was quite open wanting to take him down in every other area of fraternal competition you can name. Why? He was bigger than me. It wasn't fair. So I was coming for him.
I look at the land where I live and I see a lot of me as a 13-year-old in it. Scotland doesn't think it is fair either. England is bigger than it. They grew up side by side and Scotland is the perennial little brother, never catching up or coming anywhere close.
In the sport we care about most, we lose against England more often than we win because they are bigger than us. Just like I did with my older brother, we dedicate ourselves to putting one over on them. We run that extra yard, push that bit harder because it's them and it's not fair.
Ask not whether short man syndrome is a thing because it indubitably is. Ask instead whether Scotland is suffering from a severe case of small country syndrome.
The evidence, I fear, is all around us – in our politics, in our cringe, in our chippiness and in our tantrums.
You will hear some rational arguments for Scottish nationalism which are worth a theoretical whirl. It's about addressing the democratic deficit, getting the government we vote for, tailoring economic policy to our specific needs, re-engaging with the EU.
You will hear appeals to patriotism – indignation that we proud people with our own flag and history and identity allow ourselves to be governed by next door when, of course, we do no such thing.
Some Scots will invoke a sense of moral superiority over our neighbours. Others will argue – still more fancifully – that the last 18 years of SNP rule at Holyrood have proved we're up to the job of independence. They have proved only that while some of us might be, the SNP certainly isn't.
But through all the prattle it is the primordial rage that I hear most loudly – the small country's wrathful protest against its own lack of stature.
Some of us with the syndrome, I suspect, would not only enjoy putting on the platform heels that independence would bring, but also revel in the schadenfreude of seeing the remainder of the UK lessened – even, perhaps, torn apart.
It's not just about winning when you're a small chap. The big guy must lose too.
Our cringe makes us miss the wood for the trees. Our contribution to the world stacks up against any small nation in it. We invented the telly, for goodness sake.
It took a while but in time I made my peace with the fact I was the wee guy in my family. There are more ways to grow up than vertically and I think I must have found one of them.
Wouldn't Scotland benefit from a little maturity on the matter too? Must grievance and resentment forever be our default setting?
The plain fact of the matter is while there is almost certainly scientific grounding in the notion of short man syndrome there is no reason why susceptibility to feelings of inadequacy should translate to small countries.
Indeed, many around the world seem much more comfortable in their skin than the big ones. Is the idea that we would be one of them just as soon as we separated from England – that a national personality shift towards sunnier dispositions would ensue on the declaration of independence?
I am not sure personalities work like that. I think we have grown so accustomed to blaming others – particularly big bruv across the Border – for all our woes that we would find ourselves in crisis the moment we realised our troubles are home grown and, largely, always were.
Independence is not what I want and I hope never to see it. I cannot shake off my affinity with the whole UK any more than I can warm to those in my corner of it who blame everything on everyone but themselves.
But, if it ever happens, the road to it would be a deal smoother and the transition less traumatic if we lost the small country syndrome right now and started acting like the grown-ups we would surely have to be.