OK, even we Yanks aren't this out of touch...

Apparently many Brits have trouble telling where reality ends and fiction begins...

Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll which shows nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth, while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.

The survey found that 47 per cent thought the 12th Century English King Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

And 23 per cent thought World War II prime minister Winston Churchill was made up.

Hmmmm..... I can't help wondering if there isn't a whiff of a setup in this, much like the poll about 10 years back showing more Gen-Xers believed in UFO's than believed that Social Security would be there when they were 65. (Moral of the story being, ask 2 widely-separated questions, make sure the wording on one is heavily slanted, and you can get whatever results you want.)

Still... Even assuming there's a modicum of truth in this. But what were the actual questions? That Richard the Lionheart existed? Or that he actually did all of the various things attributed to him? (After all, there was a Saxon warlord named Arthurius...but that hardly makes the grail-quest legends historically accurate.)

[h/t: Paddy, at Cliff Schecter's]