October 15, 2007

• > The poll was conducted to mark the launch of a new UKTV digital television channel called Dave They really have run out of names, haven't they?
• Milligan, and he's no.2, so all is well.
• Some missing Brits: Eddie Izzard, Ben Elton, Billy Connolly, Bill Bailey, Richard Curtis, Steve Coogan, Harry Enfield, John Sessions, Pamela Stephenson, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Peter Richardson.
• Chapman. And not Cleese.
• And Shirley, Quid is not a Brit..?
• dunno. made an assumption, so we're both asses, I suppose.
• quid = Ozzie
• A tangential question: Is Andrew "Dice" Clay the Benny Hill of American comedy?
• i stand corrected. i am an ass.
• there, there ...
• I like the idea of Liam Gallagher being considered witty
• Sorta in the Yogi Berra school, as it were.
• I vote dingles for wittiest Brit! And that smelly guy, you know, the one with the Pokemon paintings or whatever. He's pretty funny. LOOKING!
• And Pleggywegs is pretty witty too, when he's not insulting me! Actually that was pretty funny ... Plegosaurus #1!
• So an Irishman was the wittiest Briton? Joke's on us here.
• I don't know a lot of British folk, so I am going with Margaret Thatcher: You don't tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive. A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us. I owe nothing to Women's Lib.
• Irishmen at slots 1 and 2, Abiezer.
• Ireland was part of the UK in Wilde's day.
• Ireland has never been part of Britain, rocket88. You can follow the lengthy row at the Wikipedia talk pages if you want to parse it ad nauseum.
• I'm sure history is always being revised...and I know better than to get my facts from people who are still arguing whether Han shot first...but wasn't there an act of union in 1801? Or did I dream it?
• You dreamed it. Recall in your dream that one of the gentlemen in the giant white wigs was wearing vintage 1985 Air Jordans. That should have been the first clue to you that this memory was a dream. Also, you may have noticed the hairless naked dwarf in under the signing table. That wasn't a piece of bread he was coddling. It was a Blackberry.
• Here's a big Can-Am vote for John Cleese, more due to Basil F. than Monty P.
• Ah, right rocket - it's a nomenclature thing. Hence why we're still "Great Britain and Northern Ireland." The only term with British in it that encompasses Ireland is "British Isles" and some object to that. I think that's the wiki page with the great long argument I referred to. But a Brit would be from the island of Britain (Scotland, Wales, England, Cornwall). hence people in Ulster could daub "Brits Out" on walls without implying they were becoming more forthcoming about their sexuality.
• Stan Laurel. I just rented a compilation of Laurel and Hardy shorts and they weren't only funny, but had a sweetness to their humor which is almost totallty removed from comedy as practiced today. The closest that I can think of is Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean, but even that doesn't come close.
• My ex, alas.
• quid = Ozzie Irishmen at slots 1 and 2, Abiezer. Therefore, with that reasoning in mind, I vote Quid as the ultimate funny Brit!! *and Mr. Wingo wins. Yeah, Wingo!!!! I will admit, he can be kind of a smartass, though.
• The funniest folks ever? Well, there's Richard Pryor, and then there are other people who are funny. I love Fawlty Towers, and quote it so much friends shun me, so I'm going to mention Connie Booth (who's credited with co-writing them).
• A tangential question: Is Andrew "Dice" Clay the Benny Hill of American comedy? NO! Mr. Hill may have been a bit lewd, but it was always done gently and with tongue firmly planted in cheek. And it was always done lovingly, too - you got the idea that he really loved the female soecies even as he objectified them sexually. And it was usually the lecherous, single-minded man who ended up being the butt of the joke rather than the woman herself.
• I'm not sure if we have an equivalent for Benny Hill - Rowan and Martin, maybe?
• > The only term with British in it that encompasses Ireland is "British Isles" and some object to that. You mean the Hibernian Archipelago?
• I'm not sure if we have an equivalent for Benny Hill You lucky bastards
• But they just import him anyway - crazed fools! rory - was it Parnell who coined the derogatory 'West Briton?" Perhaps "The Tea and Cake Isles?" I think we could mostly agree on that, though of course the various cake cults would be at each other's throats.
• And the question of milk first or after. Scratch that idea.
• I thought the "milk in first" was a class thing in England? Nancy Mitford: U and non-U and all that. The "European when it suits us" Isles?
• I haven't read Nancy (she's on my list), but Decca Treuhaft satirized her sister's satire in something she entitled (if memory serves), "You and non-you," Decca's You being something other than her eldest sister's U. [I had a good Jessica Mitford collection, but it was liberated by a nice neighborhood junkie.]
• MonkeyFilter: I know better than to get my facts from people who are still arguing whether Han shot first. Good point about Laurel & Hardy = Mr. Bean squidster. Hadn't thought of that. *drops quarter, stares aghast as it rolls under TUM's skirt*
• MIF or TIF, apparently from Nancy Mitford. Though my own preference is for tea with an absence of cow juice.