English humour

By alice | February 1, 2007

I’m not sure about the famous American lack of comedy humour Brits go on about so much. I can certainly imagine vast plains of inland USA where the funniest joke anyone makes is something about cows once a year, but here in Austin there is a brilliant local sense of humour that makes me laugh at least as much as anything British. It’s a kind of improvisational self-deprecating laid-back-to-an-extreme borderline self-conscious ultra-good-naturedness that has some things in common with my favourite British comedy. They don’t seem to make too many TV shows that show this off, however. This is a shame.

On the other hand, a quick glance at the US remake of The Office did confirm for me that without the original English tiny facial movements and telling millisecond pauses, this show is definitely nowhere near as good or subtle. And today I listened to this, and it was so amusing, I actually felt a bit nostalgic for Luton, a town north of London near where I mostly grew up. Possibly, the Luton that John Hegley conjoured up with that slow thoughtful deadpan insistently un-posh accent of his, a place of calm witty people with a lot of common sense, never existed anyway. The one I did know about was about the ugliest place in Europe west of Warsaw (which you couldn’t get to in those days anyway)- most of it was a gigantic car factory, since then downsized to nothingness. The centre was quite old but town planners bulldozed most of it to make way for a big concrete shopping centre and some flyovers for all the cars. But I like ugliness, if it’s honest. Diamonds are buried in ugliness. I think they said something a bit like that in the interivew too.

I’ve never seen John Hegley perform, but I did go to see this other performing poet, John Cooper Clarke, at Luton Library Theatre. He is a “punk poet”. I don’t know how many of those there were/ are, apart from him and Attilla the Stockbroker. The term is not an affectation- Cooper Clarke did actually perform opening acts for the Sex Pistols etc back in the days. (I’m not quite that old: I saw him in the 80s, which was a terrible terrible time because punk was over and there was nothing to do except watch Dynasty.) He sort of hammered out the words like a drummer. He said it was easier to remember them that way.

(** link goes to the homepage for the show. At the moment, Hegley and Jupitus is the “most recent” show. This will change in a few days. In a few weeks, the season will be over and they will take them all down again. Free things- you pay for them, with your own work.)

2 Comments »

2 Responses to “English humour”

Colin Glass Says:
February 1st, 2007 at 4:31 pm

My favourite will always be “it man” by jcc
The weather and the folk are just lovely but don’t you just miss the tea! Oh how we laughed :-)

Enjoy
http://www.cyberspike.com/clarke/poemlist.html
–CG

alice Says:
February 2nd, 2007 at 9:09 am

Thanks for the link- lovely.

You’re right about the tea. I self-import mine, but somehow it still doesn’t taste the same. Too quiet, probably. (joke). :)