It's a poll of teenagers

Mark Steyn in The Corner:

Fictional Heroes

If I lived in contemporary Britain, where polygamists are entitled to claim multiple welfare benefits per spouse and where The Three Little Pigs is ruled ineligible for a government award lest it offend Muslims, I'd be inclined to believe Richard the Lionheart, the Duke of Wellington and Sir Winston Churchill never existed. And so it seems:

LONDON (AFP) - Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real. The survey found that 47 percent thought the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

It's a poll of teenagers. Oddly, the Yahoo-AFP story linked by Steyn does not say that. It says "UKTV Gold television surveyed 3,000 people." It makes a difference. French or EU psyops? We don't check every single story to find out if it's been distorted this way. We can't. But someone, presumably the stringer at AFP, decided to leave that little detail out. Bad journalism, bad! No donut for AFP today!