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British Humour

Miu Stefania Raluca Diana

The reason why I chose this subject is to


show the true meaning of the British
Humour, considered by many weird and
nonsense, because of the strange manner in
which people are joking and their own way
of having fun, misunderstood by other
people from another countries.

What is British Humour?

In popular culture, British humour is a somewhat general


term applied to certain types of comedy and comedic acts
from the United Kingdom. Many UK comedy TV shows
typical of British humour have become popular all round
the world, and, for good or bad, have been a strong
avenue for the export and representation of British
culture to an international audience, but like many things
the "typical" British sense of humour doesn't really exist.
There are many different kinds of humour, and often
culture and tradition plays a big part in how funny you
may find something, or not. A perfect example of this can
be found in the comments on a post in the "Have Fun
With English" site -Nine Words Women Use.

A to Z of Types of Humour

Adviser: the comic adviser gives uncalled for advice in a Punch prototype. For
example: Advice to people who want to buy a puppy: Don't. You'll often find this
kind of humour in Doctor Doctor jokes.
Anecdote: any interesting event, either having to do with a celebrity or something
smaller, that helps the humourist make a point.
Aside: a thought added as if something the speaker was saying reminded him of it.
Banter: good-natured back and forth joking.
Black (Dark) humour: taking topics and events that are usually regarded as taboo
and treating them in a satirical or humorous manner while retaining their
seriousness. For example: The 1964 Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove was about
nuclear warfare and the annihilation of life on Earth, but it was also very, very,
funny.
Blue humour: humour based on offensive subjects like sex, body parts, and bodily
functions.
Bull: a humourous statement that is based on an outrageous contradiction. Ex:
"The best people have never had kids."
Burlesque: a form of satire. Burlesque ridicules any basic style of speech or
writing. (Parody makes fun of specific writings.)
Caricature: exaggeration of a persons mental, physical, or personality traits, in
wisecrack form.
Clown: to act stupidly, often to make other people laugh.
Conundrum: a word puzzle that cant be solved because the answer is a pun. For
example: Why do cows wear bells? Because their horns dont work.
Epigram: clever, short saying about a general group. Mostly satire about mankind.
Exaggerism: an exaggerated witticism that overstates the features, defects, or the
strangeness of someone or something.
Farce: light dramatic work in which highly improbable plot situations, exaggerated
characters, and often slapstick elements are used for humorous effect.
Freudian Slip: a funny statement which seems to just pop out, but which actually
comes from the persons subconscious thoughts.
Gag: a short joke or quip.

Hyperbole: extreme exaggeration.


Innuendo: "an indirect remark about somebody or something, usually suggesting something bad or rude". Used a lot in
British sitcoms of the 70s like Are you Being Served.
Irony: a leading part of humour. Irony is using words to express something completely different from the literal meaning.
Usually, someone says the opposite of what they mean and the listener believes the opposite of what they said.
Joke: short story ending with a funny climactic twist.
Limericks: five-line rhyming poems, which intend to be witty or humorous, and are sometimes obscene with humorous
intent.
Nonsensism: inclusive of the epigram and the wisecrack, it is any kind of funny nonsense in speaking form. Nonsensism
includes all kinds of absurdity without realistic logic and makes a general observation of absurd reference, often found in
limericks.
Parody: humourous version of any well-known writing. For example: Weird Al Yankovics "Pretty Fly for a Rabbi".
Practical Joke: a joke put into action. You hear an oral joke, sees a printed joke, and feel the practical joke. The trick is
played on another person and the humour comes from what happens. These kinds of jokes are often played on
April Fool's Dayin the UK.
Quip: a smart, sarcastic retort.
Recovery: a combination of blunder and wit, where a person makes an error, and then saves himself with a fast correction.
Repartee: includes clever replies and retorts. The most common form is the insult.
Sarcasm: using witty language to convey insults or scorn.
Satire: wit that is critical humour. Satire is sarcasm that makes fun of something.
Sitcom: (short for Situational Comedy) a funny television or radio show in which the same characters appear in each
programme in a different story.
Situational Humour: this is comedy that comes from your own life. No one in your audience will have heard it and it can
get a group used to you. This type of humour is based on a humourous situation that you have experienced. Situational
humour is the bread and butter of sitcoms like Friends.
Slapstick: a boisterous form of comedy marked by chases, collisions, and crude practical jokes, like slipping on banana
skins. It gets its name from a paddle designed to produce a loud whacking sound, which was formerly used by performers in
farces.
Switching: a common form of switching is changing the main parts of the story, such as the setup or the punch line, and
creating a new joke.
Understatement: making something that is regular or large seem extremely smaller or less. Intentionally down- sizing a
large object.
Wisecrack: any clever remark about a particular person or thing. Wisecracks are quick wordplays about a person.
Wit: a message whose ingenuity or verbal skill or incongruity has the power to evoke laughter.
Wordplay: a humorous play on words with witty verbal exchanges.
Another example of the darker side of British humour (only joking) can be found every year, in theChristmas cracker.

British Comedy Films


There are numerous British comedy films, in
the past we produced the notable Ealing
comedies like The Lavender Hill Mob and The
Man in the White Suit, the 1950s work of the
Boulting Brothers; Private's Progress, Lucky
Jim, and I'm All Right Jack, innumerable
popular comedy series including the St
Trinian's films, the "Doctor" series, and the
long-running Carry On films. Some of the best
known British film comedy stars were Will
Hay, George Formby, Norman Wisdom, Peter
Sellers and the Monty Python team. Other
actors associated with British comedy films
included Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas,
Margaret Rutherford, Irene Handl and Leslie
Phillips.
More recent successful films include the
working class comedies, Brassed Off, The Full
Monty, the more middle class Richard Curtisscripted films Four Weddings and a Funeral,
and Notting Hill and youth-oriented, popculture films like Shaun of the Dead and Hot
Fuzz.

British TV Comedy

Although many popular shows of recent years began life on BBC radio, there have been many
successful and influential series which were designed purely for TV. Following the success of
Hancock's Half Hour, the sitcom became firmly entrenched in the UK's television schedules. Some
of the most successful examples include "As Time Goes By", Steptoe and Son, Dad's Army,
Keeping Up Appearances, The Likely Lads, Fawlty Towers, The Good Life, Are You Being Served?,
Yes Minister, Only Fools and Horses, Absolutely Fabulous, Red Dwarf, The Vicar of Dibley, Father
Ted, Blackadder, One Foot in the Grave, Some Mothers Do Ave Em, Porridge, The Thin Blue Line,
The Office, Coupling and Game On.
The BBC has generally been dominant in television comedy, but the commercial stations have also
had some successes. ITV's most successful sitcoms were generally produced in the 1970s,
including Rising Damp, On the Buses, George and Mildred, Man About The House and the now
unfashionable Love Thy Neighbour. In recent years the commercial station Channel 4 has been
more successful than ITV with situation comedies. Some of the better-known examples are
Chelmsford 123, Chance in a Million, Drop the Dead Donkey, Spaced, Father Ted, Black Books,
Peep Show, Green Wing,The Inbetweeners and The IT Crowd.
Other formats have also been popular, with sketch shows, stand-up comedy, impressionists and
even puppet shows finding success. Although impressionists experienced a lull in popularity in the
1990s, the recent success of Dead Ringers (another BBC radio cross-over) has been notable.
The most notable comedy satires are the ground-breaking 1960s series That Was The Week That
Was, ITV's controversial puppet show Spitting Image. British satire has also washed over into quiz
shows - popular examples include the news quiz Have I Got News for You and music-based Never
Mind The Buzzcocks.
One of the most influential sketch shows was Monty Python's Flying Circus, a comedy from the late
1960s and early seventies that introduced us to such luminaries as John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael
Palin, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam. The Pythons went on to produce several
feature films and had a profound influence on British comedy. They themselves had been
influenced by The Goons and Spike Milligan's Q series. Python found surprising popularity in the
United States in the 1970s, as did the less cerebral humour of Benny Hill and his ITV sketch series
The Benny Hill Show.
Other notable sketch-based series include Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, French and
Saunders, Absolutely, Little Britain, The Catherine Tate Show and The Fast Show.

You can't write about British TV comedy without mentioning Mr Bean.


Mr. Bean is a British comedy television series of 14 half-hour episodes
starring Rowan Atkinson as the title character. Different episodes
were written by Rowan Atkinson, Robin Driscoll, Richard Curtis and
one by Ben Elton.
Based on a character developed by Rowan Atkinson at university, the
series followed the exploits of Mr. Bean, described by Atkinson as "a
child in a grown man's body", in solving various problems presented
by everyday tasks and often causing mayhem in the process.
During its five year run the series was hugely popular in the UK; in
1992 there were 18.74 million viewers for "The Trouble With Mr.
Bean", and the series has received a number of international awards,
including the Rose d'Or. The show has been sold in 200 territories
worldwide, and has inspired two feature films and an animated
cartoon spin-off.
Another ground breaking comedy series, Black Adder is a historical
sitcom, it is set in a different historical period over four series.
Blackadder and Baldrick are the main characters, and in each series
they are accompanied by different characters. In 2000 the fourth
series, Blackadder Goes Forth, ranked number 16 in the "100
Greatest British Television Programmes", a list created by the British
Film Institute. Also in a 2004 TV poll to find "Britain's Best Sitcom",
Blackadder was voted the second best British sitcom of all time,
topped by Only Fools and Horses.
The 1990s and 2000s saw the rise of a new breed of British
comedians who have made innovative contributions mainly in the
form of sitcoms, but Vic Reeves Big Night Out influenced the style of a
whole new generation of comics. Programmes such as Green Wing,
Peep Show, Black Books, Spaced, Smack the Pony, Big Train, The
Office, and Extras have used editing, surreal humour and cultural
references to great effect. A loose clique of stars, including Simon
Pegg, Dylan Moran, Jessica Stevenson, Mark Heap, Ricky Gervais,
Tamsin Greig and Bill Bailey have revolved around these series, with
the most obvious acknowledgement of this coming in the scene in the
film Shaun of the Dead when the two groups of survivors troop past
each other, with cameos galore.

British Radio Comedy

Radio comedy in Britain has been almost exclusively the preserve of the
BBC, and a number of British radio comedies achieved considerable
renown in the second half of the twentieth century.
In the 1940s and 50s variety dominated the schedules, and popular
series included ITMA and Much Binding in the Marsh. In the mid 1950s,
however, two notable series emerged which would help to shape the
future of radio and television comedy in Britain. The Goons (Peter
Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe) starred in their own anarchic
series The Goon Show which ran throughout the 1950s. At the same
time, the BBC was also running Hancock's Half Hour starring Tony
Hancock, the first of a new generation of comedies based around
believable characters and situations. Hancock's Half Hour later
transferred to TV and was phenomenally successful throughout the
'50s, running concurrently on radio and television until 1960.
Another notable radio show was the double entendre-laden Round the
Horne (1965-1968), a sequel to the earlier series Beyond Our Ken,
which ran from 1959 to 1964.
Later radio shows made use of the panel game format, including the
long-running Just a Minute (from 1967 to date) and I'm Sorry I Haven't a
Clue (from 1972), which in turn influenced TV series like Have I Got
News for You (from 1990) and They Think It's All Over (from 1995).
BBC Radio has continued to be a breeding ground for new talent and
many programmes have transferred successfully to television in recent
years, including Whose Line is it Anyway?, Goodness Gracious Me,
Knowing Me, Knowing You and Little Britain.
BBC Radio 7 is a good source of comedy radio.

Julian Tan - British Humour - Six Years and I Still


Don't Get It

"...Who apparently can be heard on the Wi-Fi in the morning," muttered


Jeremy Paxman behind the dusty Hitachi screen.
The room erupted into another long burst of hysterical laughter, palms
beating thighs into discs of red submission and eyes squeezed so tightly it
forced tear ducts into duty.
"Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!" cried one of my British friends as I pulled an
awkward smile, my brain now racing furiously to translate the humour.
Half a second, then one second, then two - the window to exercise herd
mentality was shutting me in!
Ah, whatever, I thought to myself as I tightened my diaphragm to echo the
chorus of boisterous laughter in the room.
Although embarrassing, such a charade occurred with surprising regularity. I
did not want to be the only nitwit who didn't understand the witty and
sophisticated makeup of British humour, especially coming from a
Commonwealth country - notice how Iorthographised 'humour',
notorthographized 'humor'.
And so, ever since I arrived in England almost six years ago to embark on
university life, I've actively made a conscious effort to learn the angle of
British humour. Yes, you heard that right. In the name of research, I've spent
many hours watching back-to-back Youtube clips ofBlack AdderandMonty
Pythonafter trawling the World Wide Web for explanations as to what it
meant for humour to be dry... As you could probably tell, it was a desperate
situation. Faking laughter during efforts to socialise at university quickly
became exhausting before grating away quietly at my own self-esteem -I had
to do something!
Intent on being able to explain why British humour was NOT an oxymoron, I
made a huge effort to improve my understanding of it. Here's what
experience and copious amounts of Youtubing has taught me.

Firstly, irony and heavy sarcasm are the bedrock of British humour. If it were pouring outside, the joke would be to
comment on the lovely weather (an extremely stale English classic). Morsels of unpalatable quality could invite
commentary of gratitude and amazement. It is as if it is 'Opposite Day' every day in Britain. To make matters even
more confusing, the delivery of British humour is almost always deadpan which means that there will be no sign in
red neon lights telling you 'This Is The Joke'. There is a lot of reading between the lines to be done and so as result of
this, you might find yourself in situations where you just cannot tell if it was harmless banter or a serious
conversation that you were having with a British friend. They are a breed that express abhorrence for something by
saying it is "a bit much for their taste", so a little ambiguity in their dealings is to be expected.
Finally, subjects of humour typically involve mockery of failure, both yours and theirs but mostly yours. It might seem
insensitive and if you were anywhere outside Britain, you would probably be right. But joking about your dead
grandfather or your cousin's dyslexia is completely acceptable in the country of tea and scones, so long as it is done
in jest. Why else would you have an extra 'u' inhumourif not for the fact that the joke is most often onyou?
All this can be very frustrating, particularly to someone who has probably watched one too many episodes of his fair
share ofFriendsand who's fed on American pop culture his entire life. But there are actually many things that I really
admire British humour for. For one, it teaches you not to take yourself too seriously through its strong theme of selfdeprecation (a harsh way to learn this, but effective nonetheless), which I feel is very important in this day and age. It
also makes light of tough situations, which is a good thing because when things look grim, it definitely helps to laugh.
But most of all, I like that the very nature of British humour does not encourage over-sensitivity or self-entitlement,
two things our generation, Generation Y could learn to live without.
But for all that British humour is worth, I've come to terms with the fact that whilst I understand why dry humour
might tickle some people, my brain is fortunately or unfortunately wired differently to function at a different
wavelength. I will readily admit now, even in social situations, that despite six years of being in the UK, British
humour to me is as funny as watching furniture. And for me, that's OK because university life is enriching and
interesting for reasons such as this. I don't believe that it makes you intellectually inferior or any less witty for not
finding British humour funny. And there is certainly no need for you to pretend to like something just to fit in. Just be
yourself.
Nothing shows more courage in our society than a rejection of conformity anyway.

In conclusion, British Humour is a type of


interesting comedy, if people will try to pay
a little attention at all the words used as a
form of sarcasm. Some people appreciate
this kind of humour and some not, and some
understand it and some not, but if you really
want to give British Humour a chance , you
will never regret it and you will never
consider this as wasted time.

Bibliography

http://www.learnenglish.de/culture/britishhumour.html
http://
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/julian-tan/british-humour_b_4013
114.html
https://
www.google.ro/search?q=british+humour&biw=1680&b
ih=925&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=K0eCVNKkC4Ks
U6GegpAG&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ
http://astore.amazon.co.uk/english-films-21?_
encoding=UTF8&node=1

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