Just A Minute

I decided to transcribe the relevent paragraph:

     There is an awful lot of guff talked about the English Sense of Humour, including many patriotic attempts to prove that our sense of humour is somehow unique and superior to everyone esle's.  Many English people seem to believe that we have some sort of global monopoly, if not on humour itself, then at least on certain 'brands' of humour - the high-class ones such as wit and especially irony.  My findings indicate that while there may indeed be something distinctive about English humour, the real 'defining characteristic' is the value we put on humour, the central importance of humour in English culture and social interactions.
     In other cultures, there is 'a time and a place' for humour; it is a special, separate kind of talk.  In English conversation, there is always an undercurrent of humour.  We can barely manage to say 'hello' or comment on the weather without somehow contriving to make a bit of a joke out of it, and most English conversations will involve at least a degree of banter, teasing, irony, understatement, humorous self-deprecation, mockery or just silliness.  Humour is our 'default mode', if you like: we do not have to switch it on deliberately, and we cannot switch it off.  For the English, the rules of humour are the cultural equivalent of natural laws - we obey them automatically, rather in the way that we obey the law of gravity.

On 3/23/07, Sarah Falk <minerva.moon@ yahoo.com> wrote:

One of my English LiveJournal friends once made a beautiful post on
her observations on what British humor really is. I can't find it at
the moment, but one thing I remember her saying is that it "reduces a
situation to its lowest common denominator". You're given a situation,
an occasion, and are told, "Well, there it is." The humor is not
thrown at you; instead your mind comes to it and rejoices in the fact
that it knows that everyone else appreciating the humor has come to
the same conclusion.

--- In just-a-minute@ yahoogroups. com, Dean Bedford <dbedford@...> wrote:

> You've pretty much summed up there an example of the use of irony in
> humour. So perhaps broadening the discussion a little into what I hope
> will be a potentially more interesting area...
>
> It's often said that the difference between British and American sense
> of humour (humor for our American friends!) is that the British love
> ironic humour. And that's why a lot of British comedy doesn't translate
> to American markets. A lot of the humour in JAM is definitely ironic,
> almost all of the material around Nicholas certainly but a lot of other
> stuff as well. My favourite line when Aimi Macdonald is counting up
> "one, two, three...:" on the subject roulette, and after a wrangle over
> a challenge, Peter Jones says "can we get on, I'm very anxious to get
> into the 30s!" That is an excellent example of ironic humour.
>
> Much of the humour of Kenneth Williams is highly ironic. The shouting
> about his gold-spun hair, the way he will praise Nicholas one minute
and
> call him a "great nit" the next, etc etc.
>
> I've never been sure that irony isn't a part of American humor though.
> For example, I'm just watching this week a DVD of The Cosby Show and a
> lot of the humour there is through the characters teasing each other
> ironically.
>
> I hear people say who they think is funny - the reality is we all
have a
> different sense of humour and to say someone "simply isn't funny"
always
> seems to me to be a dangerous comment to make. The British TV comic,
> Benny Hill was hugely successful for a very long time. For those who
> haven't seen him, his humour was based around him chasing after, or
> being chased by buxom young women, and on double entendre. To me the
> humour is stale and repetitive - but millions if not billions found him
> absolutely hillarious.
>
> Perhaps any Americans on the list might like to comment on the
> differences as they see them between American and British senses of
> humour, and perhaps why they feel themselves they like this very
British
> comedy show JAM. I rather doubt the average American would find Kenneth
> Williams funny - or Paul Merton or Clement Freud for that matter. Or do
> you think they could have made it big in the US if opportunity had
> struck.
>
> And what else makes you laugh - especially American comedians/comedy
> shows...
>

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