Forget country houses and crinolines, foppish urban comedy or classic gangster nostalgia, when it comes to the perfect celluloid representation of Englishness, nothing, it seems, can beat a story about naked welders.

The Full Monty, the film about a group of unemployed Sheffield steel workers who put on a strip show, has been voted the favourite English movie of all time, beating classics such as The Italian Job and more recent hits such as Four Weddings and a Funeral.

In a poll conducted to coincide with St George's day, 5,000 readers of Empire Online, the movie website, voted the 1997 film the finest to emerge from the land of Lord Olivier, Sir Michael Caine and the Carry On films.

The film, starring Robert Carlyle and directed by Peter Cattaneo, won an Oscar for best music and was nominated for three others. It became the highest grossing British film upon its release, a record that is under threat from the newly released Bridget Jones's Diary, which, last week, achieved the UK's highest-earning opening weekend.

Catherine Hanly, editor of the Empire Online site, expressed surprise at the preference, with the Caine classic The Italian Job coming second and Four Weddings and a Funeral sixth among the eight offered to web browsers in the poll. "I'm most surprised by how low down Four Weddings came," she said. "As the third highest grossing British movie of all time, it obviously doesn't impress our readers that much."

The English, she speculated, identify more with naked northern failures than with middle-class home counties thirtysomethings moving from one friend's wedding to the next. "Given that the Full Monty is a real triumph over adversity tale, it's the perfect movie to represent the English on St George's day," she said.

The film, which culminates in an entirely naked strip show or "full monty", became a surprise hit in the US, spawning a Broadway stage show.

However, while it has been criticised by some for portraying a cliched image of northern poverty, it is not without its high-profile admirers. Prince Charles celebrated his 50th birthday in 1998 by staging a memorable re-enactment of one of the film's dance routines during a visit to a Sheffield unemployment office, a gyrating number to the tune of Donna Summer's Hot Stuff.

Home choice

1 The Full Monty 29%

2 The Italian Job 23%

3 Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels 22%

4 Withnail and I 8%

5 The Third Man 6%

6Four Weddings and a Funeral 5%

7Get Carter 5%

8 The Ladykillers 3%