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    The Wicked Wit of England
    The Wicked Wit of England
    The Wicked Wit of England
    Ebook156 pages2 hours

    The Wicked Wit of England

    By Geoff Tibballs

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    About this ebook

    The Wicked Wit of England is a celebration of British humour, featuring a collection of stories, anecdotes, quips and quotes that capture the various idiosyncrasies of the English character.

    If there is one thing that first-time visitors to England find mystifying - along with our obsession with discussing the weather, our pride in making the perfect cup of tea, and our impossible-to-decipher slang - it is our unique sense of humour.

    Have you just been insulted? Or was the slight merely a demonstration of affection? Was that a genuine compliment? Or is the ever-present sarcasm in English conversation at work again? The dark, dry and often ironic humour of the English can be difficult to get your head around, but there's no doubting its essentiality at the heart of English culture.

    As well as celebrating this classic humour, The Wicked Wit of England encompasses the various idiosyncrasies of the English character - the social awkwardness, the constant need to apologize, the stiff upper lip, and the love of queuing, to name but a few. Containing a varied collection of stories, anecdotes, quips and quotes featuring English people from all walks of life, from Quentin Crisp to Frank Skinner and Stephen Hawking to Thora Hird, this book might not help outsiders fully understand the English, but it might help them tolerate us a little more.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMichael O'Mara
    Release dateNov 1, 2018
    ISBN9781789290318
    The Wicked Wit of England
    Author

    Geoff Tibballs

    Geoff Tibballs has written many bestselling books, including Senior Jokes (The Ones You Can Remember), Seriously Senior Moments (Or, Have You Bought This Book Before?) and The Grumpy Old Git's Guide to Life.

    Read more from Geoff Tibballs

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      Book preview

      The Wicked Wit of England - Geoff Tibballs

      INTRODUCTION

      If there is one thing that first-time visitors to England find mystifying – along with our fondness for eating chips out of old newspapers, our nostalgia for the shipping forecast (even though most of us have never ventured out to sea in a trawler) and the fact that not all men wear bowler hats to work – it is our sense of humour.

      ‘Ah, you English and your humour,’ they will say, with an air of suspicion, unsure as to whether they have just been unexpectedly praised or routinely insulted. It is easy to sympathize with them, for English humour encompasses a number of different styles. It can be surreal or satirical, dark or sophisticated, bawdy or genteel. It can be used as an assault weapon to mock or attack or as a defensive mechanism to guard us against having to express emotion. For not only do we sometimes laugh at others, we also possess a healthy ability to laugh at ourselves. And nobody does irony or sarcasm like the English. If Olympic gold medals were awarded for sarcasm, we would top the leader board every time.

      Then there are the puns. Puns have always suffered from a bad reputation. Indeed many Americans unflatteringly call them ‘groaners’. Yet as someone somewhere once said: ‘A good pun is its own re-word.’ Let us not forget that in a poll to find the funniest film one-liner, the winner was ‘Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got in for me!’ – a straight forward, albeit very clever, pun. Although the line in question is usually credited to Carry On Cleo screenwriter Talbot Rothwell, it was originally penned by Frank Muir and Denis Norden for their post-war radio series Take It From Here. With Rothwell struggling to meet his deadline, Muir and Norden generously offered him some old scripts and gave him permission to use the famous line. It restores your faith in human nature to see that there is honour amongst punsters.

      For many of us, a pun at school may represent our first attempt at humour. My father had a sharply developed sense of wordplay. I remember a dinner with some family friends at a restaurant in Southport in the 1970s, with him sitting at the far corner of the table so that the waitress had to reach across to hand him his food. ‘It’s a long stretch,’ she sighed. ‘Ah,’ he replied, quick as a flash, ‘but you get time off for good behaviour.’ I can’t recall whether or not she appreciated the joke and the swiftness of its execution, but I do recall wishing that I had thought of it first.

      Of course, different parts of the country possess different senses of humour. As many a professional comedian will testify, what plays well in Dorking is not always well received in Halifax. We used to live in Bedfordshire (until medical tests showed that I was Luton intolerant) but having married into a northern family I have come to appreciate all facets of English humour. What I do know is that without it we would not have been able to produce the likes of P. G. Wodehouse, Victoria Wood and Stephen Fry, nor would we have been able to lead the world in so many fields down the centuries. Winston Churchill and Stephen Hawking, to name just two, were not only great Englishmen but also great wits. So in addition to our intrepid explorers, our pioneering scientists and our sporting champions, we should all raise a glass to the wicked wit of England.

      CHAPTER ONE

      PECULIARLY ENGLISH

      Certain things can be considered peculiarly English – our love of queuing, our stiff upper lip, our natural politeness (although this can be sorely tested by the vagaries of public transport) and, of course, our obsession with the weather.

      A VERY ENGLISH RIOT

      When riots broke out in London in 2011, photographs showed groups of opportunist masked looters breaking into and stealing from a convenience store. Even so, commentators on social media were quick to see the funny side of it as the picture showed the looters queuing to wait their turn to climb in through the smashed shop window and help themselves. Only in England, they said, would thieving looters actually form a queue. One described it as ‘the most English thing I have ever seen’, while another wrote: ‘Even when looting the English are more civilized than Americans shopping on Black Friday.’

      The English turned queuing into an art form because it embodied our sense of fair play and civility, which is why queue jumping is considered one of the most heinous crimes in the country. A drunk can start swearing loudly on public transport and we’ll just tut disapprovingly; a couple can be having rampant sex in the salad aisle in Waitrose and we’ll simply step over them to reach our intensely sweet, full-flavoured, cherry vine tomatoes; but woe betide anyone who tries to jump a queue by pushing in. For they will feel the full wrath of the English descend upon them.

      Yet during the Second World War, when housewives had to wait patiently in line for rations, queuing was seen as anything but fair, because elderly people and mothers with babies found it problematic to queue for long periods. As a result, they risked losing out on essential foodstuffs. To right the injustice, the government eventually introduced a priority queuing system – long before budget airlines did the same – whereby a label was attached to the ration books of expectant mothers, saying ‘Queue priority, please’. A popular English joke of the day saw a shopkeeper asking a young woman: ‘Excuse me, miss, are you pregnant?’ To which she replied: ‘Well, I wasn’t when I joined the queue.’

      ‘When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.’

      SAMUEL JOHNSON

      COME RAIN OR SHINE

      Although we moan constantly about the weather, secretly we are just grateful that in general we are not subjected to hurricanes, typhoons or prolonged droughts. We always try to look on the bright side, applying a Micawber-like optimism to the prevailing conditions. ‘It’s definitely easing off, Neville,’ we’ll say as the deluge slows to a downpour. ‘That cruise ship has gone from the back lawn.’ And if someone exclaims, ‘Is that a tiny patch of blue sky I can see in the distance?’, the news is greeted with a wild rejoicing that is just one step away from hanging out flags and bunting. However, we have learned from bitter experience never to trust the weather, knowing that it can change in an instant, which is why no self-respecting Englishman ever leaves home for work in the morning without an umbrella. To set off for the daily commute without an umbrella would be as unthinkable as failing to put on trousers.

      We also love our weather-related proverbs, such as ‘red sky at night means either a fine day tomorrow or the house across the road is on fire’. Another old wives’ tale states that if you see cows lying down in a field it is an indication of imminent rain, and if they are standing up the weather forecast is dry. However, we know from years of dismal summers that whilst it is true that the sight of cows lying down in a field means that it will soon rain, when they are standing up, it simply means that the grass is too wet for them to sit down!

      The weather has a difficult job in trying to earn our approval. If it is under fifteen degrees Celsius, it is too cold, but over eighteen and it is too hot; only in that small window in-between are we truly happy, and even then only if it is not raining or blowing a gale. Gardeners and farmers, in particular, are hard to please. Indeed the familiar English pub sign of ‘The Jolly Farmer’ is as much an oxymoron as, say, ‘The Generous Taxman’ or ‘The Wise P.E. Teacher’. Jerome K. Jerome perfectly summed up the English attitude to the weather in his book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow when he wrote: ‘We shall never be

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