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The UK has its own breed of humor and what gets a Brit laughing may leave outsiders scratching their heads.
Heavy on self-deprecation, almost undetectable sarcasm, and constant deadpan delivery, it can feel like a totally different language.
But fear not, we’ve put together a new piece about the social media magazine 'British Memes' to help you understand (and use!) their jokes just as effectively as they do.
So continue scrolling and happy learning!
More info: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
cats_from_the_void 2 years ago
I see the problem, you were far too kind about it, those who delight in irritating our cat lords must not live
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From Shakespeare’s comedies to Billy Connolly’s command of an audience, Gavin & Stacey’s taste of Welsh whimsy to Derry Girls’ earthy look at life in the 1990s, humor has been central to the history of storytelling across the UK for a very long time.
But if you ask an academic to come up with a description for British humor, they will most likely run into some trouble.
Dr. Ian Wilkie, a lecturer in performance at the University of Salford, said: “Having taught younger American students, they take the British sense of humor to be Monty Python, by which they mean a sort-of slightly erring towards the surreal, very iconoclastic in terms of attacking the big targets, very silly.”
#3
Lemme get the lemons 2 years ago (edited)
Thank you! I hate those awards, because I missed one day off of school before, and despite being told I'm one of the best students, like in the top five, I got nothing. It unfair and stupid Edit: I got a prize for attendance today 🙃
However, Wilkie said that, while those traits can become shorthand for ‘the British sense of humor’, he doesn’t think “that cuts the mustard.”
Dr. Wilkie highlighted that there are already differences in popular humor in the four home nations. It diversifies even more between the major cities, making it difficult to pinpoint a blanket ‘British’ humor.
#7
Michael P (Perthaussieguy) 2 years ago
I grew up in England and now live in Australia. I can confirm both these comments
Paul Neff 2 years ago
You managed amazing mileage in that two hour drive!
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Melinda Layten 2 years ago
In America 2 hours is a short drive and 200 years is a long time, in the UK 2 hours is a long drive and 200 years is a short time. In other words everything is relative. I drive 90 minutes each way to do my weekly shopping and old towns are celebrating their centennials here in Minnesota.
Historyharlot93 2 years ago
I tell people my in-laws are “pretty close to us” because they’re only 8 hours away.
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That Goth Demon (zey/zem) 2 years ago
If you live in Manchester, you only have to walk five mins for a change in accent and different names for stuff.
Clown fish 2 years ago
Well yes because you hit Salford the best City lol
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Verena 2 years ago
Europe: You drive for four hours. You have visited 4 countries, paid with three currencies and heard 4 languages in the radio.
WFH Forever 2 years ago
Four hours and I haven't left Washington State. Heck I can drive almost 7 hours and be in the same state although now at the Canadian border.
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Noname 2 years ago (edited)
In New England, it's kinda like old England as the states are small so you can drive for an hour and have been to 3 states, and each one (CT, MA, RI, VT, NH, ME) has its own accent and vernacular. I love that to Mainers, the rest of us are "flatlanders", even though NH is mountainous and is where Mt Washington is located.
Christos Arvanitis 2 years ago
Yep. in MA milk/ice cream/syrup = frappe and a milkshake is just milk and syrup. In bordering states a milkshake has ice cream in it, except Rhode Island where it can be called a cabinet. And then there is soda, tonic and pop in various states.
Load More Replies... Clown fish 2 years ago
Bap, Batch, roll, oven bottom, cob, barm cake, bara, barm, sofie, bun, scuffler. I think that's all of them? If it isn't please add
mcborge1 2 years ago
Yup, ask for a bacon cob in Leicester you get a bacon roll. Ask for a bacon cob in Hunstanton, you get a puzzled look! :D
Timmy Pillinger 2 years ago
I mean most things get you a puzzled look in Hunstanton
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Jaaawn 2 years ago
Local accent has only changed TWICE in a 2 hour drive?! How slow are you driving?! Move to the next city over from where I am and they speak like bloomin' aliens 😂
Charity Angel 2 years ago
Absolutely! Not only do different towns have different accents, but individual areas of the town are different too. (To a trained, local ear. I suspect outsiders would struggle.)
Load More Replies... Paul Scheermeijer 2 years ago
Drive 2 hrs in the Netherlands and you need a pasport. Your not in NL anymore
Gianna B D 2 years ago
Medieval England: You ride your horse for an hour and this random peasant woman thinks you're speaking French when you ask for eggs.
AliJanx 2 years ago
Live in Florida, Texas, California (etc) and drive 4 hours and get NOWHERE.
The Rock Obama 2 years ago
Drove 4 hours from Jax to Tampa, the only thing that changed was the city. (Please get that joke, please!)
PigeonPenelope 2 years ago
4 hours can still be the same state even...or where I live, like 100 miles on I5 during rush hour
Marvin HeartofGold 2 years ago
S**t everyone in my area goes "to the lake" frequently on weekends when it's nice. By "the lake" we mean Lake of the Ozarks, a few hours drive away. This is a normal thing around here. Hell my kids partner live near the lake and we barely consider it a long distance relationship.
Anne Watson 2 years ago
I’m from West Yorkshire. Hubby from Nottinghamshire. The bread roll argument is a daily thing in our house even after 22 years of marriage
Buzz Covington 2 years ago
After moving there, I had a sales agent bragging that they would have my order to me in three days! I said “Sorry mate, I just drove across your entire country in three hours…. Not impressed.”
Lynn Morello 2 years ago
From Sydney to Perth is a 3 day travel. So we made a holiday out of it and turned it into an 11 day tourist trip.
D. Pitbull 2 years ago
Canada is a massive country. I often forget this. A German friend once told me they moved in with another friend "on the other side of Germany" but then also said they'd have to go back to their old place the next day to take care of something. I was like "But.. but... how are you getting so much time off work???" they're like "uhh, it's 2 days..." - yes, me not realizing it's only a few hours and not, y'know... 2 weeks to drive across Germany
Sandra Gleeson 2 years ago
You live in Australia and drive 6 hours to get to the end of your road:/
Spannermonkey 2 years ago
Nah. On A & B roads, two hours will just get youu to the motorway and 2 hours on the M road is only 5 miles because THERE'S SO MANY MILES OF F&&^$G CONES FOR ROADWORKS THAT AREN'T HAPPENING.
Scott Rackley 2 years ago
I can drive one hour and people call carbonated beverages by the wrong name
barn owls ️ 2 years ago
my own state takes 3 hours to get out of. i live in a relatively small state
BluRaven 2 years ago
It’s takes four hours from my house just to get to the state line of the next US state, let alone even the same section of the US— a lot of American mentality (good and bad) can be explained by the fact that we discuss driving distance from point A to point B in terms of hours, not miles. This is the way we combine time wasted in city area traffic areas with just shear distance of highway miles.
Natty Tempest 2 years ago
Can someone please explain where/why/what possible reason 'sweedish meetballs' are called "goojies" to one particular customer who is adamant it has nothing to do with Goujons or goolies.
Cydney Golden 2 years ago
Do you seriously think people in the north understand people from the south in America??
Amelia Honeychurch 2 years ago
As an American who has visited the UK many times, I agree that this statement is completely true.
Riley Quinn 2 years ago
Massachusetts, US is a mere 190 miles wide, yet you'll find the accents change from non-rhotic (Central/Eastern MA) to rhotic (Western MA). And that's just among the English speakers.
Richard Fieldhouse 2 years ago
If you pick the right place to drive, I think you could easily pass through twenty different accents for someone with a good ear for such things.
sylvantic 2 years ago
American here. I can drive 4 hours and still be in my state. I live in one of the bigger states, but I'm fairly sure that in any direction I drive I'd still be in the same state (or I'd be drowned. That's an option as well). And, if I get to a new state, the accent hasn't changed at all (although people wouldn't refer to those long big roads with no stop signs or lights that you drive really fast on the same). If I drive for 6 or 7 hours I can get to a different region, but it's not that different, and arguably my starting place is also part of that region...
Shadow 2 years ago (edited)
Same with Canada. From west to east (let's say Gatineau to Percé), 12 hours and still the same province. If you go south to north you can't because there aren't many roads...
Lesley Robinson 2 years ago (edited)
You can drive south to north in BC or Alberta. Not sure about Saskatchewan. But I guess they don't build many roads just to get to other parts of the Canadian Shield.
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Mojo Flizash 2 years ago
Truth. I drove from Daytona FL to San Francisco CA and it took 4 1/2 days.
Susan Bosse 2 years ago
Four hours and you haven't even left Texas. Accents are definitely different.
Karri Berkowitz 2 years ago
South Floridian: 4 hour drive same state completely different languages.
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One example is the Scottish brash-with-a-twinkle style of Billy Connolly or the more gentle approach of his compatriot Susan Calman. “Scottish people like witty jokes, there is a lot of respect for learning and that it likes quite hard-hitting jokes, ones of mockery,” Wilkie explained.
While he noted there are similarities between Glaswegian humor and that found in other port cities, such as Liverpool, that Scottish style might not necessarily translate into a Welsh sense of humor or a broader English one.
Attending a comedy night, with many different acts, would show how difficult it is to categorize humour along geographical lines.humor
“You may laugh at different aspects of their schtick, but it would then be difficult to say, ‘well, there’s a British sense of humour’ because of the disparate kind of approaches and world views coming across.”
Another element worth considering is how much the humor of other countries has influenced British comedy.
If you’ve sat and enjoyed the exaggerated characters in Fawlty Towers, the characters and scrapes they find themselves in reflect the sketches of the Commedia dell’arte, a form of theatre from 16th Century Italy.
Among other elements, it involved a series of recognizable characters from all aspects of society engaged in witty dialogue.
Surrealism, long considered a staple of British humor was, as Dr. Wilkie describes it, performed by: “Dadaists from countries that we may choose not to think of as particularly funny, such as Germany."
“They were doing surrealism to the nth degree, quite deliberately as a performative art, in the early part of the 20th Century. I think it’s something we like to appropriate in a way and imagine that we’re the custodians of it, but it’s not culturally specific at all.”
#23
Take me to dinner first 2 years ago
For a second I forgot bird had a different meaning in this context and was like "wow that's oddly specific..."
With Monty Python held up as a good example of leftfield humor from the UK, the Carry On… series of films suggests a national affection for a less sophisticated bawdiness loaded with double entendres.
While they did enjoy popularity outside the country (Carry On Nurse ran in Los Angeles for more than two-and-a-half years on its initial release), Dr. Humor Wilkie doesn’t see the humor contained within the 30 titles of the franchise as something that defines a nation.
#24
“Carry On… kind of made fun of itself in its day, it was already slightly self-consciously old-fashioned and seaside postcard, but people could enjoy it because they could say, all bets are off really, we’re going to see something that’s sexist, end of the pier and a bit silly and that was fine,“ Dr. Wilkie explained.
#27
Anxious&Bored Bear 2 years ago
Hate those hypocrites who say work harder: your college education was paid for even when you were failing, your job was nepotism, and your wealth was inherited.
#28
Michael P (Perthaussieguy) 2 years ago
At least ALL of them would come home without getting shot at.
#30
It’s these different styles and presentations of comedy by British performers that. Dr. Wilkie believes make it impossible for an academic to point, with confidence, at various elements and state categorically that they alone make up the nation’s famed sense of humor.
#31
Pink Princess 2 years ago
Red telephone boxes look so cool and posh and aesthetic and then you have the one on the right
#33
Shyla Bouche 2 years ago
There's a really nice frozen custard place about 45 min. away from my parents. They'd make the trip once a month or so, and bring the dog. He got a spoonful of everyone's custard. Once they went, and it was cold, rainy, and crowded. They decided to go to the Baskin Robbins across the street. They got their ice cream, and a paper bowl so they could share with the dog. He wouldn't eat it. I guess he decided that if he was going that far, it had to be the custard or nothing.
“No, I wouldn’t say there is a British sense of humor,” he concluded. “I think the best you can hope for is some big, beacon terms (eg. sarcasm, understatement, self-deprecation), that maybe, over a fair amount of time, might hold water."
“Comedy and humor have always been so open to counter-examples that you can never really pin anything down. It’s like trying to nail jelly to a wall.”
However, if you'd like to see more 'British Memes,' fire up our first publication on this fun little project.
#36
Anxious&Bored Bear 2 years ago
Same in the US: rich people find loopholes to get out of paying taxes, so the taxes on the workers get increased.
#40
Chihuahua Mama 2 years ago
I actually feel it's a win if you haven't set foot in Dubai. Seems like a soulless place
#42
Michael P (Perthaussieguy) 2 years ago
Everyone was enjoying the Donner Kebabs at the Christmas Party. Then they ran out. So they started on the Blitzen Kebabs.
#44
Susan Bosse 2 years ago
They have use of full lanes in my city, whether one or a gaggle of them. Tons of cyclists around here. HATE getting behind them but good on you for exercising. Now get out of my way. I have snacks at home.
#46
The Original Bruno 2 years ago
Is this like East Coast/West Coast snobbery of middle America? I looked up why people hate Birmingham. Most common answer was that it was riddled with crime, but the crime rate (63) is only marginally higher than London (54.9). (Actually, it was quite odd how similar crime rates are across UK. The worst had a crime rate only twice as high as the best. Some American cities have crime rates several times higher than others: New Orleans, Detroit and St. Louis have murder rates more than 10 times higher than New York's.)
#48
Auntriarch 2 years ago
The first person to win Deal or No Deal, her long term boyfriend left her a couple of weeks before. Not the same scale, but it did give us a nice warm feeling
#49
cats_from_the_void 2 years ago
oh you poor intellectually deprived dears, why would the government waste valuable tracking devices on you?
#50
Lemme get the lemons 2 years ago (edited)
Well to be fair, if you're on enough *illegal medicine* it can happen again
#52
Michael P (Perthaussieguy) 2 years ago
Twist: It wasn't part of a 'Meal deal', he was actually asking you out but saved himself by using this tactic :)
#54
Everybody Say Love! 2 years ago
The "Sorry" at the end is the epitome of being British. Someone walks into you, you say sorry xD
#58
Auntriarch 2 years ago
Not any more. Life is short, have the starter. Especially if it's scallops
#59
Fluffypanda 2 years ago
Oh yes and it's always when I need him to NOT take his sweet time to do it
#61
The Original Bruno 2 years ago
President Clinton wishes he had come up with this idea. The Eat Out to Help Out scheme, I mean.
#63
Delta Dawn 2 years ago
please tell me cba means can’t be arsed, because I’m going to use that from now on
#64
Scrapiechick 2 years ago
My old landlord used to do this thinking it wouldn't count and formal communications when I sued him for 3x my deposit hahahahaha
#65
Cat Chat 2 years ago
I laugh every time I get into the turn lane for my street, which looks like I'm sneaking in early for the turn lane for the light just past our street. Car after car starts following me to jump ahead, too. Then they are stuck behind me, where as if they drove passed me and got into the lane when they should have, would already be through the light. 🤣
#71
#73
Sami-Jo Ross 2 years ago
I tried balancing an opened water bottle on my forehead with the same results.
#74
Gustav Gallifrey 2 years ago
Not likely. In Australia, they'll advertise e.g. table saws for $99.00, and you go there at opening time to get one and it turns out that maybe 4 were allocated to the three Aldi stores in your town, and somehow (mysteriously) they've all already been sold.
#76
Cat Chat 2 years ago
So, my 23f missed Mother's Day this year, but visited a couple of days ago. I showed her the poems her little sisters gave me hanging on the wall (unframed). Then showed her I still had the framed one she gave me at the same age. She started crying and I was like "yeah, your Mom still loves you!" She replies "No, and I only say this because they are asleep - I'M STILL THE FAVORITE!" 🤣
#83
Donkey boi 2 years ago
I'm wondering if anyone, well anywhere, has experienced the likes of the Colin & Cuthbert scandal. I mean do our American friends know the feeling to pick a side on such a raw topic? Do our passionate European neighbours have enough passion to enter this arena? Have our Asian fellows ever felt on the brink of anarchy over such a sensitive topic?
#84
#90
Alex Bailey 2 years ago
Hah, had lovely sun for weeks and my garden is suffering. No rain even forecast for the south east. Hosepipe ban looming.
#92
Auntriarch 2 years ago
That's not Barbara whose husband ran off with a footballer is it? I mean I can understand why she got into yogurt after that
#95
Auntriarch 2 years ago
Amazing how many adverts have "maxi" on them. RIP Maxi, greyhound of distinction
#96
#98
CwtchyMama 2 years ago
Ok but have you heard his podcast " help I sexted my boss " I'm pushing myself every episode
#103
#104
GenericPanda09 2 years ago
I used to work for the company that set up the clubcard scheme when it was just a guy and his wife that set it up out of their back bedroom, and was later bought outright by Tesco... my advice don't use one, that amount of data on you isn't worth an extra 7p off a can of beans every month. They analyse and sell ALL your shopping habits to EVERYONE willing to pay for it, one day they'll have coca cola in selling them it, the next pepsi will be in buying the same data on you. Stopped buying codoms this month? Next month your offers will probably be about nappies or some other baby stuff. All sold to you as doing you a favour, but in reality exploiting the f**k out of you.
#105
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#110
Heather Resatz 2 years ago
If you have parents that are good for you to stay with, bless you!! Do it!!
#112
Donkey boi 2 years ago
Scampi Fries. Great if you're eating them! Shocking if you're smelling someone who's eaten them!
#113
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#116
Brooklyn Roffman 2 years ago
Has anyone else’s pollen allergies been acting up more than usual?
#117
#118
Tucker Cahooter 2 years ago
The footnote "* restrictions do not apply for members of the UK Government" has been omitted from the post
#119
#121
Nikki Sevven 2 years ago
No, because I stop for a hot second and remember how much I hate doing laundry.
#122
ynyrhydref56 2 years ago
I take it this is about Madeleine McCann and not the precocious French schoolgirl of the cartoon. 😜 I was so confused for a second.
#123
#124
TotallyNOTaFox 2 years ago
Could have been worse - imagine being german and taking part in the contest....
#127
Nikki Sevven 2 years ago
And here we are only halfway through 2020v3. Only six more iterations left.
#128
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What do you think ?
Julie Snelling 2 years ago
Finally a thread where the Americans don't understand half of what is being said. I get fed up of being the one saying "I don't know what this means" or "I don't know who that is".
Jime Yeannes 2 years ago
Is this a joke? Because I am from Argentina and I understood all of them...
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Michelle Rutherford 2 years ago
I'm still laughing at the 'Birmingham' one. These are all so true #BritishLife
Julie Snelling 2 years ago
Finally a thread where the Americans don't understand half of what is being said. I get fed up of being the one saying "I don't know what this means" or "I don't know who that is".
Jime Yeannes 2 years ago
Is this a joke? Because I am from Argentina and I understood all of them...
Load More Replies... Michelle Rutherford 2 years ago
I'm still laughing at the 'Birmingham' one. These are all so true #BritishLife
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