Blimey, y’all!

The British consulate-general in Atlanta estimates some 350,000 British nationals live in the six-state Southeastern region — more than 20,000 of them in metro Atlanta.

Yet mere numbers can’t account for how endlessly fascinating we clumsy Yanks find the Brits within our midst.

Maybe it’s the accent.

“I was told by a friend that I could tell anybody off and the way I would go about it, they wouldn’t know they’d been told off,” said Julian Bailey, who grew up 30 miles north of London and now lives in Powder Springs.

Or, more likely these days, it’s that looming royal wedding.

Typical of Americans, we’re going even more gaga over the April 29 nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Just ask the folks at Taste of Britain in Norcross. They nearly sold out of a first shipment of official Royal Wedding china mugs in under two weeks — the majority of them snapped up by non-Brits.

Blimey. It’s like we all want to be British, at least for the next couple of weeks.

So let’s give it a go, shall we? Here’s how to get your Brit on in metro Atlanta, according to the experts — the expats from Britain among us.

Step 1: Study English as a first language

Michael “Mick” Britton literally wrote the book on being a Brit in the Deep South, including the many different ways we have of saying the exact same things.

“My wife is forever saying, ‘What did you say?’ ” said Britton. The author of “Driving On the Wrong Side of the Road,” Britton moved to Birmingham, from the U.K. (that’s how most expats refer to their homeland, the United Kingdom) and is married to an American.

As organizer of the 500-member-plus “Brits in Atlanta” meetup group, Bailey often hears about newcomers who have made the mistake of going in someplace like Office Depot and requesting “rubbers” for their school-age children. We call ’em “erasers” here.

On April 29 — or “29 April,” as it’s known to Brits — Atlanta British Consul-General Annabelle Malins will “get my glads on” — dress up — to host “A Royal Wedding Reception” benefiting the Starlight Children’s Foundation at the Crowne Plaza Ravinia in Dunwoody. And when Levin asks her women friends, “Does everyone fancy getting together for a natter and a glass of wine?” it sounds so much nicer than what she describes as the U.S. equivalent: “Hey there, a bunch of us girls are hittin’ it.”

Speaking aside, apparently the expat Brits listen better than we do, too.

“Sometimes when you’re on the phone here it can be a hindrance because they want to talk to you forever,” said Sharon Sullivan, who moved to Covington from Rugby, England, six years ago. “You’re calling about something that needs to get done and it starts with ‘I love your accent,’ and then you have to tell them the whole story of how you got here and then there’s a million more questions. Sometimes I think I should just get a recording. Mostly, though, it’s nice they’re so interested in me.”

Hmmm ... even the cable company?

Step 2 : Become a Brit-wit

Expats report that British humor is quite different from the American equivalent.

It’s funny, they swear. It just might not seem that way to anyone not from the U.K.

“We have a very dry sense of humor and if you don’t realize that, you can think what we’re saying is quite cruel or unpleasant,” said Britton. “People [from] over here might do that, but then they immediately say, ‘Just k-i-i-dding.’ You have to know what we’re doing to get the joke.”

Same thing with “banter.” That’s what it’s called when supporters of rival football clubs — aka soccer, with apologies to our British readers — gather to watch a match.

Apparently, it’s all very good-natured.

“The two sets of fans will stand, literally, two feet apart,” explained Sanjay Patel, 33, a native of Warwick, England, who moved here in 2001 to work in his family’s commercial property development business. He’s a “huge” Liverpool football guy and helped start a fan club here — all of which makes him something of an expert on banter. “The fans are all joking with each other and singing and chanting about each other’s teams and fans. It’s great fun.”

On Saturday mornings, Patel says, Brits gather at the Brewhouse Cafe in Little Five Points to watch Premier League football games broadcast live from the U.K. and, presumably, banter. On May 1, many will put their money and feet where their banter is.

The “Atlanta Premiership Playoffs” will feature fans of four clubs — Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal — taking each other on in a fundraising playoff at Austin Field in Little Five Points. All the money raised will go toward renovating the J.D. Sims Recreation Center on Boulevard and funding a “Soccer in the Streets” program for local youth, said Patel, who’s on that organization’s board.

Sounds like great fun. Unless Liverpool wins.

Just k-i-i-dding.

Step 3: Decide ‘We are not amused’ by sweet tea

There are no coffee breaks at Taste of Britain, where all five employees hail from the U.K.

“We drink tea all day,” said owner Edna Berkshire, pausing for emphasis. “Hot tea. Everyone from England drinks it with milk.”

Debate rages on whether the tea or the milk properly goes in the cup first (Malins is a milk first-er), but there’s no disputing how much expats miss home cooking.

Both Taste of Britain, which Berkshire has owned for 19 years, and the Corner Shop on Marietta Square exist to fill that void left by a general lack of frozen steak-and-kidney pie, prawn cocktail “crisps” (aka potato chips), non-“streaky” bacon Crunchies and Bangers (candy and sausages, respectively) at Publix and Kroger.

“They come in here a bit dazed, and they look around and they ‘ooh’ and ‘aah,’” Berkshire, a native of Essex in East England who moved here as a young bride 53 years ago, said of the expat newcomers she regularly sees.

Just as challenging for Brits, it seems, is finding a true pub here.

It has nothing to do with Georgia’s Sunday alcohol restrictions and everything to do with the special place pubs hold in British hearts and minds.

“The pub is the social center of the area of town you’re in or the village you’re in,” said Julian Bailey, a place where customers often store their own glasses behind the bar. “Rather than sit at home and watch TV, you’ll go to the pub.”

One place that comes close to matching that description, several expats and Anglophiles say, is the Manchester Arms in College Park. The Arms’ fish-and-chips recipe is handed down from the original owner’s great-grandmother, and they serve Boddington’s Ale, first brewed in Manchester in northwest England in 1778.

What they don’t serve is sweet tea. And it says so right on the menu.

“You’re at a British pub, you want authentic,” Anna-Kathryn Robinson, who owns the Arms with her husband and is — shhh! — a Mississippi native, laughingly explained. “It’s a tiny place. We don’t have room for sweet tea. Drink a beer.”

Step 4: Embrace your British side. And your American side

Wherever they go in metro Atlanta these days, all expats hear some variation on the same question:

“‘Have you got your invitation to the [royal] wedding yet?’” Sullivan repeated. “They’re teasing me on that one — I think.”

Maybe not. Author Britton swears everyone in the U.S. assumes all Brits live in London and that “with the U.K. being such a small place, we all do bump into the queen or the royals on a regular basis.”

They don’t, but much as Americans can’t stop talking about the Clintons or Palins, many expats have their own highly developed views on “the royals.” Sullivan thinks Queen Elizabeth II might step down due to age and make young William king, bypassing Prince Charles because he married a divorcee (the former Camilla Parker Bowles). Levin, whose parents live near Charles’ Highgrove House estate, calls him “a nice man” and expresses wonderment over her American friends’ unhappiness if she says “anything bad” about his first wife.

“I say ‘Diana was a nice person, but she was human,’” Levin said. “I’ve noticed Americans seem to be more royalists than Brits.”

To Taste of Britain’s Berkshire, that makes sense — “We’re more used to them, because they’ve always been there,” she said — although even she’s surprised by just how much interest Americans have shown in this royal wedding.

Then again, a refusal to self-edit is largely what this country was founded on. And while expats here hold onto their British-ness with extreme pride — “It’s all pomp and circumstance and nobody can pull it off like us,” Bailey says — they admit they’re tickled when they discover a bit of American-ness creeping into their habits.

“I actually have become a lot more confident living here,” Levin said, recalling a recent restaurant visit where her salad didn’t contain the usual number of candied walnuts. “In England, I would’ve said, ‘Oh, how lovely,’ and just let it go. Here I stood up for myself and asked for more walnuts.”

And got them. Undoubtedly the accent helped.