If you're Going to London and Have a Sense of Humor, Mingle with the Brits Because No One is Funnier!
 

London visitors-if you're going to London, go to the pubs, go one the city walks, mingle with the Brits as much as you can because they have the best sense of humour on the planet. They have no qualms about starting rediculous queues and laughing about it, or mocking the Queen, British history, politicians, architecture, or anything else. One cabbie told me that if people were starting things, an Italian would start a restaurant, a Russian would start a revolution, and an Englishman would start a queue! The Thames River cruise operator pointed out an old building on the right bank and said it was a favorite of Prince Charles, who has a special affection for old, crusty things; and another Brit noted that had I not flown on British Airways in the past, they'll certainly take me for a ride at 13 GBPs on the London Eye. Theie wit and humor is second to none.
Mark

Thank you Mark. Have you ever been to www.londonlantern.com ? They take articles, travel tips etc. from the readers. - If I were you, I would submit that. (Are you a professional writer?) It was really good. :)

Lady "L" and I absolutely agree: the best of the very best!
M

I agree, my friends in London take me to their "locals" and I'm always amazed at how much fun it is to meet some(not all, mind you) that are so funny even when they joke about my being an American.

Sure it's funny if you are into cruel, sarcastic humor that overwhelmingly puts people down. That seems to be the only type of humor a lot of Brits know.

Disclaimer: I am married to a Brit.

Chris has a good point. We watch a lot of British TV and have several British friends (and we're moving to the UK next month) and they are big into humor based on someone else's humiliation, the more painful the better.
Some of the smartest and funniest people I know come from *New* England, not Olde England, which is why Boston is one of my favorite places to visit.

Agree, the Brits )generally) do have a great sense of humour. Not based on put-downs and humiliation as some suggested (although I can imagine some nations reading that wrong), but more based on a sense of the ridiculous. One only has to watch Brit comedy TV to see the difference. Mind you, even within Britain the differences are noticeable. The Scots are bawdier, the Irish more whimsical. Anyone seen Billy Connelly?

British humour is the best. Especially the telly. It is so understated compared to American comedy shows (which are still funny - just different).

I love Monty Python, Billy Connelly - who I met - sort of - he was in the same restaurant as me in Queenstown. And The Office hahaha.

Going to Britain next year - can't wait.

L

Twoflower, we're not "some nation" reading that wrong. My husband is half British. His mother is British. And they are the ones who believe the most strongly believe that British humor, especially these days, is often based on the humiliation or putdown of someone else. Even some of the Brits we know here in Brussels think it's a little weird to get so much pleasure at others' expense.
And FWIW, some of the most popular comedy shows in the UK are...American. The Simpsons and Seinfeld (reruns) have always gotten very high ratings in the UK.

My dear, it's satire. Humour where no one "loses" at their expense isn't humour. Read private eye: www.private-eye.co.uk. Topical/Satirical publication, very dry, very amusing.

I've tried to watch Friends, humourless throughout! The gags are predictable, one sees them coming. British humour is the most complex, and complete in the world.

Whatever people's views on hunour may be, let's get this claim about the popularity of US shows in some context.

Never since the days of 'I love Lucy' or the Dick Van Dyke Show has US hunour been anything more than an (very) minority niche in this country. The highest ever UK audience achieved by a Simpsons episode was 4.58 million in 1998. That compares with 24.3m for Only Fools and Horses in 1996 and 23.9m for To the Manor Born in 1979.

Even today, with British comedy going through a drab patch and audiences fragmented, a Vicar of Dibley rerun will get an 11-12m audience. By contrast, the Tony Blair episode of the Simpsons got 1.1m (half what the national sheepdog contest used to get before they axed it because of low audiences).

The other stuff - Friends, Seinfeld et al - get even more pathetic audiences. This is rarely appreciated in the media, since most journalists like these quirky cult shows, and are always too lazy to read the TV rating columns in their own papers, and generally too innumerate to understand them anyway.

Truth is, that although many posters on this site like foreign TV, few other people do. The only foreign programmes that get into Britain's top 30 each week are Australian. In most of mainland Europe, only the odd Latin American soap ever overtakes domestic shows.

Almost invariably, US or other foreign stuff pads out the schedules when most of the audience is asleep or at work. Or is on the minority channel, somewhere between the sheepdog trials and the Esperanto lessons.

I would not say that Irish are whimsical per se in their humour. I think what the "Oirish" stereotypes amke us out to be. It's more self depreciating.

U.S. Humour is more slapstick in your face and British is either subtle or toilet humour.

Billy connelly is a world unto himself!

Just my take on it :-)

I don't care much for U.S. comedies today either although I do think Seinfeld is (was?) funny. Todays humour consists of the reality shows like swapping moms. Talk about laughing at someone else's expense. I'll take the British biting wit anytime although when I think about it, it resembles a New Yorker's sarcasm.
Mark

FlannerUK, I meant highly rated in the critical sense. Even on Dead Ringers, they lamented the loss of The Simpsons on BBC 2. As for the "numbers" ratings, there are a lot more choices on TV now than in the I Love Lucy days (thank goodness) so your comparison doesn't hold water. The Simpsons, Seinfeld (which is only shown in reruns now anyway) et al are highly rated by UK critics AND UK comedians.
I don't buy that British humour is so much more complex. For every Dead Ringers, there's a My Hero piece of dreck. In the U.S., people only see the best of UK comedy...they don't see all the crap.
As for the cruelty in current British humor, Mike Myers (whose parents are from northern England) also described the viciousness of British humor...
We're not talking about only TV shows...it's what passes for humor on the streets. About half the guys working for my husband are British. They find nothing so funny in real life (not TV life) as seeing someone else be humiliated. Go into any British/Irish pub in Brussels and what gets the biggest laughs are seeing someone else brought low, especially if they DON'T deserve it.

I like British humor as well, but to say that it's so much more complex than American humor is way overboard. I watch BBC and I've watched "My Family", insert American actors and you couldn't tell the difference, in fact, I think that show is rather simplistic.

Btilke:

Your words were "some of the most popular comedy shows in the UK are...American"

Simply untrue. Operas get higher ratings than US comedy.

Cult following does not constitue being "most popular". Nor does critical acclaim. Nor even does being liked by me (I'm very partial to The Sopranos, for example,though the appeal of Friends really is hard to fathom) Popularity is precisely quantifiable - and US comedy simply turns Brits off.

It didn't once, though, and it might be worth thinking about why it's lost its appeal.

I have watched boxsets of Sopranos (it's best enjoyed all at once to aid continuity), it's not typically American, its humour is much more black, and European. It's not brilliant, but out of all the American shows it's one of the best.

I am with twoflower and m_kingdom2 on this: The humour of the Brits is probably a bit too wry to be understood universally, but I can't see it as humiliating. It certainly does require some willigness to self depreciation and "self irony" but that would be best described by twoflower's term of "sense for the ridiculous".

BTW I recently read a study on humour (which in itself might be considered paradox), which claimed that Northern European nations have a completely different perspective on what humour is than Southern European ones. There is even a completely different view on this between Northern and Southern Germany.

This thread actually to me becomes sort of funny due to the earnestness with which we discuss humour here, but never mind...:-)

The reason the Sopranos is good is that HBO produces and shows it. This would never be allowed on "regular" TV due to lkangage and content. Only cable these days seems to be producing the better shows.

BTilke - I have seen mostly younger British men behave this way with a few pints (No offence to anyone mostly city boys!) but an Irish crowd would not humiliate their friend or colleague. It's not acceptable over here or the others would avoid you.

I believe that the writers of My Family are American.