hello everyone so British humour hilarious to some a complete mystery to
others and for other people completely unfunny us Brits are known
for having a unique but also good sense of humor but for some cultures it can
seem quite bizarre or even cruel so in today's lesson we are going to try
to unravel the mysteries of British humour and we're going to find out
exactly what does tickle our funny bone I'm going to give you lots of examples
in each case about seven different types of British humour these will hopefully
help you to understand British comedies are also even just normal TV shows
so a great place to start with British humour is of course sarcasm we're an
extremely sarcastic nation which means when we say something
it isn't always what we mean in fact it can be the opposite and we do this for a
humorous effect or even maybe to criticize or to hurt someone's feelings
but mostly it is delivered to be funny the classic example of course is if it
is tipping it down with rain outside and you turn to your friend you say lovely
day isn't it? Another example of sarcasm that really made me laugh recently was I
went to a conference and at the beginning of one of the presentations
everything seemed very disorganized they were late the speaker was late then the
audio wasn't working lots of things were just going wrong and the person who was
sitting next to me turned to me and said oh well it's good to see that they're
organised worth every penny isn't it? This just really made me laugh because
obviously it was the complete opposite of that so sarcasm can be very amusing
when it's done with the right tone of voice it's all in the delivery
if sarcasm is particularly mean it can be described as cutting so cutting humor
is where it's probably a bit too near the bone we would say meaning it's a bit
too close to hurting their feelings it's almost like you're cutting them so we
can say oh that was a bit cutting if it does seem a little bit too mean now
great examples of TV shows where you can see sarcasm are black Adder fantastic
show absolutely love that show also the IT Crowd The Office the British version
of course and also you could look at the comedian Jack Dee he's extremely
sarcastic so I'll put links to some of those in the description box below
thinking my God I I die in 12 hours what I really need now is a hug from a
complete prat... here I was thinking it was you and all the time it was my fault
well I must be punished then mustn't I...you're a naughty boy Fawlty. Number two is very similar this one is irony
and there are two types of irony that we can talk about that is verbal irony
and then situational irony probably a lot of you will be familiar with
situational irony certainly if you've heard the Alanis Morissette song 'Isn't
it Ironic?' it's basically where something happens
and it's almost like events have conspired against you life has somehow
played a trick on you we can also call this Murphy's Law so for example if it
rains on your wedding day if you had the most beautiful summer and then on your
wedding day it rains this would be very ironic and sometimes this can be funny
it can be amusing you can laugh about it it's just like that how bizarre that
this would happen even negative events can be funny if there is irony involved
so for example imagine you have a heart surgeon and he dies you found out he's
died and somebody says to you what did he die of and you say well a heart
attack you might start to laugh because it's ironic verbal irony actually seems
a lot like sarcasm again it's sort of turning something on its head so we see
the opposite or we can see the funny side of something I'm gonna give you an
example of this guys imagine two people have gone for a bike ride and one
realizes that there's a puncture in one of the tyres so they stop and leave the
bikes near a lake and they couldn't have some food but then when they come back
they realize that one of the bikes has gone into the lake and it's the bike
with the puncture and obviously the person will be saying oh my goodness my
bike my bike but the other person can turn to them and say oh well at least you
don't have to worry about that puncture now the next one is deadpan humour
deadpan humor and it's called deadpan because we need to have a straight face
to make this kind of joke so our face almost needs to be expressionless so
dead in a way and basically it's where we say something that isn't true but
because we have such a good straight face the person will believe us and it
makes it all the more funny when they realize that we're joking if you can't
make this kind of straight face or this deadpan face your joke won't succeed now
I have a good story to share with you about this because my boyfriend happens
to be very good at deadpan humor he's very good at tricking me and having this
straight face but this time it wasn't me that was tricked so I think a lot of you
know that we're having a baby girl and we went on holiday at the beginning of
the pregnancy we went off to the Caribbean to have a lovely baby moon
while it's still just the two of us and the flight attendant was asking me why I
wanted decaf tea and I said that oh I'm pregnant
I can't have tea and she started to get excited and say oh do you know what you're
having a boy or a girl I said we don't know and she said well what would you like to
have what would you like it to be? And my boyfriend chimed in and he said well
mine and the flight attendant's face she was like she didn't know what to say
because she she believed him because he was so good it was so convincing the way
he went mine I want it to be mine then obviously I said he's joking don't
listen to him but he was very convincing and it was a very funny if a bit
embarrassing situation for me there's a British TV show called Black books which
is great for deadpan humor and also again that comedian Jack Dee he's very
good with deadpan humour and sometimes also Ricky Gervais they're all good at
this deadpan humor it's a real talent if you can do this I went to a proper
showbiz party recently and Brad Pitt was there and they say never meet your
heroes but I think Brad handled it really well next one puns I just love
this one puns are so much fun and extremely
British we love a good pun our newspapers absolutely love having puns
in their headlines so a pun is a play on words meaning that often a word is used
because it has a double meaning so you play on the fact that there's a double
meaning or it can be that you slightly change a word so it becomes another word
but it's still recognized as the original a little bit so we still have
that kind of double meaning now English is an ideal language for making puns
because we have so many homophones meaning words which sound the same and
may even look the same but have different meanings
some of them do of course have different spellings now of course the best way to
explain puns is by looking at some examples so there's this one which is
very easy to understand which I don't think is particularly funny but at least
it's easy to understand so there's a new Mexican restaurant opening in the local
area and the newspaper printed an article about it and the title was this
we've bean waiting for this not the best one but of course bean has a double
meaning there and Mexican food has a lot of beans so I guess still a little bit
clever but not that funny I'm going to show you some funny ones now I like to
go on a website which has great puns and we can talk together about which one you
think is the funniest so guys I'm going to read you some puns from a website
called i-news and I want you to tell me in the comments which one is your
favourite we're gonna see if you think they're funny so we've got a man just
assaulted me with milk cream and butter how dairy? so here we have dairy as in
how dare he, but dairy milk cream and butter is of course dairy I think that's
pretty funny okay let's see another one thanks for explaining the word many to
me it means a lot that one's pretty good oh I think this one is a good one for
language students we've got the future the present and the past walked into a
bar things got a little tense let me read some more you might find them
terrible but us Brits we absolutely love them if you want to see more puns then
just look at some British tabloid headlines
so newspapers like The Sun The express things like that if you're up for a
challenge guys try and make a pun below in the comments let's see how you do at
trying your hand at a bit of British humour okay the next one is
self-deprecating humour self-deprecating humour and Hugh Grant if you know the
British actor he is the master of this but we do this a lot in everyday life
and I would say probably British men do this more than British women and basically
it's where we don't want to seem like somebody who is egotistical we don't
really like compliments too much in England we're quite modest and having a
sense of humility rather than being arrogant it's generally considered to be
attractive in British society it's generally thought to be a nice quality
so basically we achieve this by putting ourselves down so by making
ourselves seem less than we are so by making jokes about ourselves so for
example if somebody says to you oh your hair looks nice today and you feel a bit
embarrassed you could say are you kidding me? Looks like I've got a blind hairdresser
I desperately need a haircut or again if somebody says to you oh you look nice
today you could say really I think I look like I borrowed these clothes from
a homeless person and immediately this is going to defuse tension now obviously
there's a certain talent to doing this but as I said it's more that British men
do this than British women let's have a look at Hugh Grant doing it here I
just wondered if by any chance I mean obviously not because I am just some git
who's only slept with nine people but I live in Notting Hill you live in Beverly
Hills everyone in the world knows who you are
my mother has trouble remembering my name next one is the absurd and this is
probably the one that people struggle with the most to understand who aren't
from England you can see this in the Monty Python films such as The Life of
Brian or the Holy Grail but also Mr. Bean is a classic example of bizarre and
absurd British humour absurd humour is often very surreal so it's something
that would never happen in everyday life or it's something that is greatly
exaggerated about everyday life so for example sometimes comedians have bizarre
humour or absurd humour where they observe things from everyday life but they
exaggerate them like the way that everyone in the morning quickly crams
onto a train in 30 seconds like in London and they don't care whether they
have somebody's armpit in their face they just want to get on the train
comedians will exaggerate this and sometimes make this seem very funny or
surreal but they do take it from everyday life I think the funniest part
of absurd humor is when things seem to go so
wrong so everything seems to go exactly against a person that it does become
very funny so Mr.Bean is a classic example of this I absolutely loved the
Mr.Bean movie where he goes to see the painting the really famous painting and
he sneezes on the painting and he can see the painting is wet so then he
starts to wipe it off but he realizes that there's blue ink on his tissue and
he ruins the paintings and he has to steal it and oh my goodness it is just
so funny but it's where in life we kind of make fun of those times where
everything just seems to go wrong we feel like someone is against us life is
playing a joke on us number seven I couldn't do a video on British humour
without including this this is banter to banter and this is I would say a
cornerstone of British culture definitely a cornerstone of British
relationships in the pub with friends and even relationships between men and
women basically it is a witty meaning clever exchange kind of clever back and
forth like a verbal ping-pong of comments between people where you tease
each other so you make a joke to the person but then you expect them to come
back to you now men will do this a lot about haircuts not being able to drink
enough alcohol if they seem like the kind of man who is under the thumb of
the girlfriends and if they seem like the girlfriend is really the boss of the
relationship lads in the pub together will definitely have banter around those
kind of topics girls have it as well but we have it about different things but we
certainly do banter as well I think in relationships between men and women we
also have a lot of banter and sometimes this can be flirting so if a guy likes
you he might start to banter with you but actually it's because he's flirting
with you so if a guy comes up to you in a bar and says oh you look like you're
going to be trouble it's the beginning of witty banter and then you would need
to come back with something equally as funny so it's like verbal ping-pong
really do tell me below in the comments do you do this in your
country and do you find it enjoyable do you like to have a bit of banter right
everybody thank you for joining me on our whistle stop tour through the wordy
quirky and bizarre world of British humour I do hope you enjoyed it tell me
below what kinds of British humour do you find funny and also have a try at
making a pun we'll see you soon on love English bye bye