Three interesting reports reach my ears: The secret of British humour is in the genes, say researchers; Britons are only happy when miserable, says an American – and Germany to buy ’Allo ’Allo.
The last item is bound to make us happy. Constable Crabtree, speaking broken French in English and dubbed in German, will be worth watching with subtitles. I think we should buy it back.
Anyway, the most popular item on German TV every New Year’s Eve is an eight-minute sketch Dinner For One starring our own Freddie Frinton and May Warden, which was made in 1963 in black and white.
It’s shown five times during the evening and is loved not just in Germany, but across Europe, including its newest fans in Estonia. It has not been shown in the UK.
I don’t know what that says about us, or them, I just thought you should know.
Freddie played a brilliant drunk and the sketch could never be shown now.
Those whose business it is to nag us about our health would go into a froth about booze causing so much entertainment.
They’d have banned a lot of the old seaside postcards, pointing out the dishevelled red-nosed jolly drunk may look funny hanging on to a lamp-post wondering why no one was in when there was a light on upstairs, but think of his liver in 20 years time.
Freddie wouldn’t have stood a chance today and, besides, our humour has moved on, to ‘sarcasm, self-deprecation, cruelty and humiliation’, say Canadian researchers.
It all sounds so disapproving but, don’t worry, it’s in our genes, they say. They don’t mention innuendo and I have got at least a dozen innuendo genes.
They reckon we have more negative humour than anywhere else, which might explain why US journalist Eric Weiner complains in his book we are only happy when miserable.
Well, of course we are. What is there to be happy about? The weather? The government? The food? Everything and everyone is against us, as a country and personally, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
We get up but we get knocked down again. Our cup of life is always half-empty.
If it were half-full it would not be funny because there is no humour in sunshine and success.
Whoever laughed at someone not slipping on a banana skin?
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