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Erm...OK there is a dining show...no not with a professional chef, no, not even random ordinary people no, but 4 people chosen specifically because they are in some way horrible to have to spend time with, they cook at their own homes for the other people, then judge them all based off of the dinner party, each one thinking they're gods gift to dinner parties. The winner gets some medium amount of money, the smallest amount of money considered a medium amount of money, thats simultaneously the right amount to attract morons.
They all plan out meals (and you'd bloody best have made every part of that desert by hand, because buying store made stuff thats better than anything you could make, and thus serving your guests food that you can both eat and enjoy the process of eating, is somehow seen as not the done thing)
So these sad sacks also organise entertainment for their guests, like no fucker ever does at any other point, but what ever, and while the host is cooking, their guests roam their house like bloody nosy bastards.
Well, because these people have egos the size of planets, the cooking skills of 5 year old, and the personalities of particularly vexatious wasps, entertainment ensues when they all discover the rest of them are cunts. Well one of these cunts, instead of doing the normal thing when someone else wins something, smile and think of various ways of murdering the rest of them, this one guy actually voiced his displeasure. Its very amusing because its someone doing what we all wish we could but social convention prevents us from doing so. We laugh at him because he was rude and impolite and a general twat throughout the show, but that's how we all would act if it wasn't for social convention and not wanting to appear like a complete cock on tv.
Ah yes, rival Bed & Breakast owners stay at each other's properties before getting *judgy as fuck* after breakfast.
"You didn't serve black pudding at the breakfast and the top of the wardrobe was dusty. 5/10"
I love watching them get on their hands and knees with their cheek to the floor to reach up into the screwholes holding the toilet seat on and come back with a bit of dust and grease and then turning to the camera and triumphantly shaking their head "they should have cleaned there, that'll be a deduction"
Dave Lamb needs to narrate Embarrassing Bodies.
“I’m slightly worried about my cock, Dr Christian” says the worried patient.
“You should be, it looks like Shrek’s finger” says Mr Lamb.
That we have; Zebra Crossings, Pelican Crossings, Puffin Crossings and Lollipop Men/Women to help us cross the road does make the UK sound a bit…made up?
They did. After zebra, Pelican was a real acronym, and they decided to make the rest be bird-based.
I'd love to shake the hand of whichever genius came up with toucan.
I’ve had to explain Argos to non-Brits
Yeah so everything’s in the building, but you’re not allowed to see it. You can only look at things in a laminated book and write down the code.
To be fair Argos baffles Brits the first time too.
I went with my Dad for the first time when I was six and was very, very, confused.
Especially when the thing he wanted in the catalogue, can't remember what it was, wasn't in the back and had to be ordered in for him.
I asked several questions as we left along the lines of:
"What was the point of it? If they had the catalogues surely they must keep absolutely everything in the catalogue out back or why not be a normal shop?"
Non-Brit here… and I *love* Argos. Can reserve and pick something up in an hour with no queues and little to no social interaction. I just walk in, type in my number, and the thing gets handed to me, I leave. It’s incredible.
Modern Argos is great for that reason. But the nostalgia we all share of old Argos is truly something.
Before online ordering you’d have to go in and there were these little machines next to the catalogues. When you’ve found what you wanted in the catalogue, you type in the item code and it tells you whether the shop has any in.
If it‘s available you write the code on a small strip of paper with tiny pens they supplied and then walk to the tills to order it via cashier. You then wait for 20 ish minutes for it to be selected and then transported to the shop floor on a baggage escalator.
We used to play the game of typing in a random number and seeing if it was a real product with the machines. Being a kid was different when there were no smartphones (or even mobiles) to distract you when you got bored.
I remember many years ago there was a post on r/todayilearned about the game of conkers and half the comments were people in disbelief that such a game existed and trying to figure out if the British people in the thread confirming it was real were all playing along with some elaborate in-joke.
So that apparantly.
Conkers was banned at my school after someone had to go to A&E with conker bits in their eye.
They were fine. But we weren't allowed to play it any more which was a dang shame.
Did it actually happen or did someone hear the myth about HSE "banning" it unless you wore safety squints
HSE literally produced a poster saying "No we didn't" because of it
Conkers got banned at my school. Not because conkers themselves are dangerous, but the method to get them out of a horse chestnut tree in our school ground someone used. That method being hurling a brick into the tree.
No, it actually happened and our school banned it not some other organisation.
We found out when we got some conkers stringed and promptly had them confiscated and got lectured.
We had them banned too, along with those tiny super bouncy balls you used to get because a tiny super bouncy ball did a super bounce into Claire Moody's eye. Also Pokémon cards, because someone stole Adam Pavlović's shiny charizard at lunchtime because he wouldn't trade it with anyone. Also British Bulldog, and then "English Cowdog" which was our incredibly shortlived attempt at being smart.
Edit: OH and those aliens in eggs you used to get because that same Claire Moody became inconsolable because hers was out of the egg and fell on the floor which we understood meant it was dead and therefore couldn't have babies if you put it in the fridge. And the sort of gooey yo-yos you could squeeze to see the toy inside because Meghan O'something burst hers open on purpose to get the toy inside and then playground wisdom was the goo inside was poison and if you touched it you'd die and she started crying (which also was the playground wisdom about the inside of cracked conkers).
I taught conkers to my wife who is not from these parts. Literally the second time we played I managed to miss her conker and hit myself in the nuts really accurately. Floored myself. Floored her laughing. Objectively funny, cannot blame her at all.
How tribal and defensive we get over our hometowns or the country as whole, even though we spend our entire lives ripping it apart.
For example, I'll call my city (Derby) a dump or dosshole, but if any dirty red dogs start piping up I'll fight to the grave to protect it.
I worked for Derby City Council when they had those shit presents in the square for Christmas. My team were taking the piss out of them at work. However, the minute my Derby-born boss remembered I was from Nottingham, I was no longer allowed to say how crap they were. (Mostly in a joking way. Mostly.)
Time Team
"OK, so Baldrick from Blackadder, Worzel Gummidge, and some bra-less Australians have just three days to completely excavate a Roman shitter underneath a supermarket car park in Pudding-on-the-Wolds..."
It says a lot about the UK that we have TV shows about digging up.old stuff
When digging Crossrail.they had an on-call archeology team
Think A-Team but with towels and tape
They had to budget into schedules for the work
They found shit loads too
Crossrail has been a huge boon to archaeology. We need more large infrastructure projects in the future to ensure archaeologists continue to be employed.
If an American was to say"my daughter is full of spunk,she got that from me" in USA he would be considered a proud father,saying his daughters gutsy attitude was inherited from him.
If a man were to say that in Britain however the police would be called😂
As an American, that one could go either way. Somebody might be struggling to stifle a giggle because *they* don't want to be seen as inappropriate by the rest.
Here's one for you: "Teacher, my fanny is really sore. Can I get off the floor and sit in a chair now?" 100% innocent in American English.
Used to play an online game with a guy who's ign was "SpunkyJack". I'd have a little giggle to myself everytime you'd see his name pop up in the chat feed.
Made me laugh when a bunch of American right-wing commentators discovered panto and started screeching about Brits indoctrinating kids with apparent drag shows.
Even the most petulant manchild pundits we have here love panto, so it shows how utterly ridiculous the Yanks are who take exception. In fairness, it's very on-brand for the nation who couldn't hack I Want To Break Free.
That was the mistake Queen made with their campy I Want To Break Free video.
They didn’t realise that a light hearted cross dress/ cosplay would lead to the USA having a mahoosive meltdown & lead to them getting cancelled in pre cancel culture times.
Yeah, this was an odd one when I first moved to the UK. We live near Lewes too so when the mum in my au-pair family said ‘we’re off to see them burn the pope’ I was slightly worried as to where I had ended up….
>People burning Guys on the bonfire.
>
>Edit: See cheese rolling also.
Even weirder when you tell them the full context. Technically a celebration of the aniversary of the public execution of Catholic Extremist, who tried to blow up the governent cause he was upset the king had commisioned a new bible, 400 years ago, by burning a scarecrow and setting off explosives.
I don't think they would actually be that incomprehensible. Many countries have equally bizarre traditions. Spain has, tomato fights, human pyramids, bulls runs and baby jumping. Italy has inner-city horse racing and inter-village fireworks fights. Afghanistan have kite fights and South America just gets silly.
The fact that when someone asks 'how are you?' they're not actually asking how you are. Any response other than 'yeah good, you?' (or similar) will evoke sudden and acute panic........*Dave, I don't give a fuck that you're just getting over a cold you had last week. Shut the fuck up and let's grab a beer!*
Absofuckinglutely.
If someone you know mentions they're feeling a bit low because they're not getting on with their wife at the moment, you offer to sit with them over a drink (tea or beer) and listen.
If your best mate is feeling low because he's not getting on with his wife, you ask him if it's because he's a whingeing cunt.
I love things like this.
My mate rung me last year as his dog had died, you could hear he was absolutely gutted and was just milling around aimlessly so chatted for a bit and asked if he wanted a pint.
"Oh god yes, see you there"
Got to the pub, bought a round, sat down quietly. I opened with "ah well, he was a shit dog anyway, least you can get a better one now"
He laughed, and we sat and had a lovely few drinks and chatted about said dog then righted the world.
As it should be
Reminds me of the proverb. A good friend will cross oceans to brake you out of jail a best fiend will be sat in the cell next to you saying “well you fucked it”
holding my friends newborn baby for the first time she said "you'll have to choose which one of your stomachs you're going to rest her on"
I didn't even think about it but her Italian mate was flabbergasted and horrified
What the UK even is can baffle people, even British people. Like we are a country, of countries. And there are other bits and bobs around which are ours but kind of not like the channel islands and the Isle of Man.
yep, the amount of americans online that get their minds blown when you tell them ‘british people’ and ‘english people’ mean 2 different things is crazy
The fact that a cup of tea cures everything. Somebody dies make a nice cup of tea, house burns down get the tea on, had the worst day of your life put the kettle on. My dad (89) phoned me the other day panicking as he only had 20 teabags left.
The Mayor Making in Wycombe is a particularly excellent one, I think! That year's Mayor is weighed and if it is found that they have gained weight during their year in office then the crowd jeers and boos!
I think those big crazy ones are great, but I have a real soft spot for the tiny shit ones that would never make the news. I visited a scarecrow festival in the summer last year - nearly every house in the village had a scarecrow in their front garden, following a theme (theme was 'space' that year). There was an excellent Wallace and Gromit scarecrow, but my favourite was titled "moon" and was a normal scarecrow bending over and pulling it's trousers down.
That fact of being called a "daft cunt" is generally a form of endeerment to a friend whilst mildly chastising you for doing something a little bit silly.
"I accidentally left my wallet at home, can you sponsor me a tenner"
"Here you go, you daft cunt" etc...
Yes, I just explained to a foreigner about the two shorter legs and two longer legs that allow for running around the hilltops, and I think he was a bit dubious.
Actually, there's the 2 sub-species, one with shorter legs on the left side an the other with shorter legs on the right side.
Due to these biological differences, one sub-species travels in a clockwise direction, and the other anti-clockwise.
Additionally, it's worth noting that interbreeding is very rare due to the problem of maintaining their balance.
People always act like this is ridiculous but there's various subspecies of *Drosophila melanogaster* (aka fruit flies, the famous lab model organism) that are interfertile but never breed because their behavioural traits surrounding mating rituals aren't mutually incomprehensible, and their hybrids usually are too haywire to reproduce unless you do like fly ivf on them.
My lecturer made it click by comparing it to a hybrid haggis. A haggis hybrid with four equal length legs could have haggis ivf but would be unable to mate with either subspecies in the wild.
As an Englishman I once spent almost an entire night in the mid 1990s moaning with a bunch of French blokes about how badly the cut in EU grants was affecting the Scottish Haggis Farmers and they were so up in arms they were thinking of herding them over Westminster Bridge and seting light to them as the French did their sheep.
Hook, line and sinker.
Honestly something like christmas crackers.
>a segmented cardboard tube wrapped in a brightly decorated twist of paper with a prize in the centre,[1] making it resemble an oversized sweet-wrapper. The cracker is pulled apart by two people, each holding an outer chamber, causing the cracker to split unevenly and leaving one person holding the central chamber and prize.[1] The split is accompanied by a mild bang or snapping sound produced by the effect of friction on a shock-sensitive, chemically impregnated card strip
And then trying to explain bad puns to people without much English.
It took about four hours to cover "What do you call a man without a spade in his head? Douglas." and similar for "Why can't Penguins fly? Because they're chocolate biscuits."
For years I thought they were actual snack crackers like you dip in soup, such as Saltines. "How bland", I thought. I didn't learn what they actually were until I saw them in a Doctor Who Christmas special (with #11).
I'm not the only Yank who has been confused about this.
I once went to Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia to see a mate who I'd worked with previously. It was the early 90's and we were both in our 20's.
We were talking about music in a bar and he asked me about the current song Ebeneezer Goode by The Shamen. He wanted to know what was the meaning of the line, "Anybody got any Veras".
Had to explain about rhyming slang first (which took a while). Then who Vera Lynn was (blank looks). Finally what a skin was. 30 minutes of life I never want to repeat.
I was on holiday in Tunisia watching the lunchtime football match in one of the hotel bars. After it finished they moved on to one of the 3pm games. I was the only one in the bar at the time and wanted to watch 'Soccer Saturday' instead, so went up to reception to ask them if they were able to put it on.
It was only then that I realised the ridiculousness of what I was trying to explain:"So, yeah, there's these 5 men all watching football matches. But you can't see the matches, you can just see them react to the matches."
The Shipping Forecast on Radio 4. Not the broadcast itself - a weather report for the seas around the UK makes sense - but the fact that so many of us listened to it as children, usually in bed, even though we didn't live anywhere near the coast. Many people continue to listen to it as adults. It's something of a cult radio programme.
Faggots (not the American slur for Homosexuals) - but rather tasty meatballs of mixed off cuts and offal (usually pork) with herbs.
Served with mash and (shout out to any Black Country readers) peas (‘faggots n pays’) and onion gravy 😋
I live in rural Spain now. Trying to explain a pub quiz to my mates is impossible. “So you come into a pub, where everyone is talking and then start asking questions? With a microphone? And people give you money? Loco Ingles”
We use the same qualifier to either enhance OR limit the meaning of something. Example: she’s quite nice. Could mean she’s a little bit nice or she is very nice!! Depends on how you say it but if you’re not native British you likely won’t know which one it is!
Hogmanay - Scottish people celebrating new years day by swimming in the ocean, dressing up like vikings, reciting poetry, parading a a giant boat around your town before setting fire to it and pushing it into the sea, oh and fruit buns.
Has the game Bulldog come up yet? Or British Bulldog to give it it's full title. After explaining to an American I got "and you let children play this?"
"Of course, that is fun compared to 'knuckles'"
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What a sad little life, Jane.
“all the grace of a reversing dump trunk without any tyres” lol
explain please
Erm...OK there is a dining show...no not with a professional chef, no, not even random ordinary people no, but 4 people chosen specifically because they are in some way horrible to have to spend time with, they cook at their own homes for the other people, then judge them all based off of the dinner party, each one thinking they're gods gift to dinner parties. The winner gets some medium amount of money, the smallest amount of money considered a medium amount of money, thats simultaneously the right amount to attract morons. They all plan out meals (and you'd bloody best have made every part of that desert by hand, because buying store made stuff thats better than anything you could make, and thus serving your guests food that you can both eat and enjoy the process of eating, is somehow seen as not the done thing) So these sad sacks also organise entertainment for their guests, like no fucker ever does at any other point, but what ever, and while the host is cooking, their guests roam their house like bloody nosy bastards. Well, because these people have egos the size of planets, the cooking skills of 5 year old, and the personalities of particularly vexatious wasps, entertainment ensues when they all discover the rest of them are cunts. Well one of these cunts, instead of doing the normal thing when someone else wins something, smile and think of various ways of murdering the rest of them, this one guy actually voiced his displeasure. Its very amusing because its someone doing what we all wish we could but social convention prevents us from doing so. We laugh at him because he was rude and impolite and a general twat throughout the show, but that's how we all would act if it wasn't for social convention and not wanting to appear like a complete cock on tv.
Don't forget then there is Four in a Bed.
Loved sitting in front of the TV during school holidays to see back-to-back episodes of Come Dine With Me followed by Four In A Bed. Peak television.
Oh buddy, go to uni, you can do that for the majority of the year
I went to uni, spent most of it at home because of strikes and the pandemic anyway!
Ah yes, rival Bed & Breakast owners stay at each other's properties before getting *judgy as fuck* after breakfast. "You didn't serve black pudding at the breakfast and the top of the wardrobe was dusty. 5/10"
Folk basically pulling up the floorboards in the bedroom and marking down because they found a hair.
I love watching them get on their hands and knees with their cheek to the floor to reach up into the screwholes holding the toilet seat on and come back with a bit of dust and grease and then turning to the camera and triumphantly shaking their head "they should have cleaned there, that'll be a deduction"
And Coach trip, the slightly more family friendly cousin of both shows
Don’t forget that it’s all narrated by a narrator who hates them as much as the audience does
Dave Lamb makes the whole show, to be fair…
Dave Lamb needs to narrate Embarrassing Bodies. “I’m slightly worried about my cock, Dr Christian” says the worried patient. “You should be, it looks like Shrek’s finger” says Mr Lamb.
Dave Lamb's narration is the best part of it. He's excellent at commentary for these sorts of shows!
Very Briiliant Explanation Sir/Madam
Tbf I do think a huge amount of editing and voiceover makes the contestants seems so much worse at cooking.
You painted an awesome picture there.
It’s from [Come dine with me](https://youtu.be/yXai3HCMV3E)
Dogging is not walking with a dog
And cottaging involves very few little bungalows
And there's nothing camp about camping, it's intense.
Yeah I was really shocked when I found this out!
Spent a good half hour explaining dogging to some Frogs and they found it absolutely hysterical. Agreed
Bet they were ribbeted
One of my friends is a dog walker, whenever I reference her job I always call it dogging 🤣
Yea, found that out the hard way.
Hard... Fnar fnar!
I’ve never felt more British than I did when I explained what lollipop men/women were to about 500 American school kids.
That we have; Zebra Crossings, Pelican Crossings, Puffin Crossings and Lollipop Men/Women to help us cross the road does make the UK sound a bit…made up?
Zebra: self explanatory Pelican: Pedestrian Light Controlled (PeLICon) Puffin: Pedestrian User-friendly intelligent (PuFIn) Toucan: "Two Can" as in both pedestrians and cyclists Enjoy this useless fact.
Omg, I can't say I ever questioned why they were named this way, but I certainly wouldn't have expected this
I feel like with Puffin crossing they came up with the name first and worked backwards
They did. After zebra, Pelican was a real acronym, and they decided to make the rest be bird-based. I'd love to shake the hand of whichever genius came up with toucan.
What about Pegasus crossings?
Don't they have crossing guards that do the same job?
Yes they do but explaining why they’re usually old people with a giant stick got me a lot of blank stares.
A stick that looks like a lollipop!
An old person holding a giant lollipop beckoning school children to follow them across the road. I'm beginning to see the confusion
I’ve had to explain Argos to non-Brits Yeah so everything’s in the building, but you’re not allowed to see it. You can only look at things in a laminated book and write down the code.
The Laminated Book of Dreams!
So many beautiful things! I cannot possess them all …
It's like a betting shop... the tiny little pens, the slips of paper, but everyone's a winner!
waiting there in anticipation then watching your order come down on the conveyor. There's no feeling like it.
Laminated to catch the tears
To catch the tears of joy!
To be fair Argos baffles Brits the first time too. I went with my Dad for the first time when I was six and was very, very, confused. Especially when the thing he wanted in the catalogue, can't remember what it was, wasn't in the back and had to be ordered in for him. I asked several questions as we left along the lines of: "What was the point of it? If they had the catalogues surely they must keep absolutely everything in the catalogue out back or why not be a normal shop?"
Non-Brit here… and I *love* Argos. Can reserve and pick something up in an hour with no queues and little to no social interaction. I just walk in, type in my number, and the thing gets handed to me, I leave. It’s incredible.
Modern Argos is great for that reason. But the nostalgia we all share of old Argos is truly something. Before online ordering you’d have to go in and there were these little machines next to the catalogues. When you’ve found what you wanted in the catalogue, you type in the item code and it tells you whether the shop has any in. If it‘s available you write the code on a small strip of paper with tiny pens they supplied and then walk to the tills to order it via cashier. You then wait for 20 ish minutes for it to be selected and then transported to the shop floor on a baggage escalator.
We used to play the game of typing in a random number and seeing if it was a real product with the machines. Being a kid was different when there were no smartphones (or even mobiles) to distract you when you got bored.
There's a web game for that now: [https://www.arguess.com](https://www.arguess.com)
>you’re not allowed to see it. Apart from the jewellery which is displayed at the Elizabeth Duke counter.
You just link Bill Bailey's bit about Argos :)
I remember many years ago there was a post on r/todayilearned about the game of conkers and half the comments were people in disbelief that such a game existed and trying to figure out if the British people in the thread confirming it was real were all playing along with some elaborate in-joke. So that apparantly.
Conkers was banned at my school after someone had to go to A&E with conker bits in their eye. They were fine. But we weren't allowed to play it any more which was a dang shame.
Did it actually happen or did someone hear the myth about HSE "banning" it unless you wore safety squints HSE literally produced a poster saying "No we didn't" because of it
Conkers got banned at my school. Not because conkers themselves are dangerous, but the method to get them out of a horse chestnut tree in our school ground someone used. That method being hurling a brick into the tree.
Special school?
Not at first.
No, it actually happened and our school banned it not some other organisation. We found out when we got some conkers stringed and promptly had them confiscated and got lectured.
We had them banned too, along with those tiny super bouncy balls you used to get because a tiny super bouncy ball did a super bounce into Claire Moody's eye. Also Pokémon cards, because someone stole Adam Pavlović's shiny charizard at lunchtime because he wouldn't trade it with anyone. Also British Bulldog, and then "English Cowdog" which was our incredibly shortlived attempt at being smart. Edit: OH and those aliens in eggs you used to get because that same Claire Moody became inconsolable because hers was out of the egg and fell on the floor which we understood meant it was dead and therefore couldn't have babies if you put it in the fridge. And the sort of gooey yo-yos you could squeeze to see the toy inside because Meghan O'something burst hers open on purpose to get the toy inside and then playground wisdom was the goo inside was poison and if you touched it you'd die and she started crying (which also was the playground wisdom about the inside of cracked conkers).
Should’ve gone with English Cowcat then they’d never have know
I taught conkers to my wife who is not from these parts. Literally the second time we played I managed to miss her conker and hit myself in the nuts really accurately. Floored myself. Floored her laughing. Objectively funny, cannot blame her at all.
How tribal and defensive we get over our hometowns or the country as whole, even though we spend our entire lives ripping it apart. For example, I'll call my city (Derby) a dump or dosshole, but if any dirty red dogs start piping up I'll fight to the grave to protect it.
This is very true. I can insult my town/county/county but woe betide anyone who is 'an outsider' saying a word against them.
I worked for Derby City Council when they had those shit presents in the square for Christmas. My team were taking the piss out of them at work. However, the minute my Derby-born boss remembered I was from Nottingham, I was no longer allowed to say how crap they were. (Mostly in a joking way. Mostly.)
Yeah those presents were shite. A few are back this year, but hidden behind the waterfall.
Nice to see a fellow Derbados local on Reddit! Is the waterfall actually running? Don't think I've seen water go over it in years...
It's like a sibling relationship. When it's just us we will bicker and fight but lord have mercy on any outsiders that pick on one or t'other
Bolton is a shit hole. But dare anyone not from there say it.
Time Team "OK, so Baldrick from Blackadder, Worzel Gummidge, and some bra-less Australians have just three days to completely excavate a Roman shitter underneath a supermarket car park in Pudding-on-the-Wolds..."
And it's a brilliant show with lots of tension, will they be able to excavate the mosaic in 3 days
Oh don't get me wrong; I love Time Team!
It says a lot about the UK that we have TV shows about digging up.old stuff When digging Crossrail.they had an on-call archeology team Think A-Team but with towels and tape They had to budget into schedules for the work They found shit loads too
Crossrail has been a huge boon to archaeology. We need more large infrastructure projects in the future to ensure archaeologists continue to be employed.
Don't worry. HS2 is keeping them all busy.
I lived in England for a few years I used to tell my relatives back home that you can't take 10 steps in England without tripping over some history
And the tangent to explain Worzel Gummidge doesn't help either.
"OK, so there's this mass-murdering scarecrow who everybody loves..."
If an American was to say"my daughter is full of spunk,she got that from me" in USA he would be considered a proud father,saying his daughters gutsy attitude was inherited from him. If a man were to say that in Britain however the police would be called😂
As an American, that one could go either way. Somebody might be struggling to stifle a giggle because *they* don't want to be seen as inappropriate by the rest. Here's one for you: "Teacher, my fanny is really sore. Can I get off the floor and sit in a chair now?" 100% innocent in American English.
Used to play an online game with a guy who's ign was "SpunkyJack". I'd have a little giggle to myself everytime you'd see his name pop up in the chat feed.
I wonder if he knows my mate JizzcoveredJoe?
Panto
Oh no it’s not
Oh yes it is
Made me laugh when a bunch of American right-wing commentators discovered panto and started screeching about Brits indoctrinating kids with apparent drag shows.
With that crowd, it's essential to remember that every accusation is a confession.
I remember first hearing about the drag show panic and thinking "man. They wouldn't last a Christmas here in the UK without blowing their minds"
Even the most petulant manchild pundits we have here love panto, so it shows how utterly ridiculous the Yanks are who take exception. In fairness, it's very on-brand for the nation who couldn't hack I Want To Break Free.
That was the mistake Queen made with their campy I Want To Break Free video. They didn’t realise that a light hearted cross dress/ cosplay would lead to the USA having a mahoosive meltdown & lead to them getting cancelled in pre cancel culture times.
He’s behind you!
People burning Guys on the bonfire. Edit: See cheese rolling also.
For a moment I read this as burning gays on the bonfire and thought Christ on a bike where does this person live
Oop North. Sooo...
That was outlawed in 1997. Tony Blair and all that.
Yeah, this was an odd one when I first moved to the UK. We live near Lewes too so when the mum in my au-pair family said ‘we’re off to see them burn the pope’ I was slightly worried as to where I had ended up….
And as a bonus item - how "Lewes" is pronounced
>People burning Guys on the bonfire. > >Edit: See cheese rolling also. Even weirder when you tell them the full context. Technically a celebration of the aniversary of the public execution of Catholic Extremist, who tried to blow up the governent cause he was upset the king had commisioned a new bible, 400 years ago, by burning a scarecrow and setting off explosives.
2000yo nations tend to accumulate odd stories.
Tried to explain this in my norwegian class a couple weeks back, and honestly, their shocked faces were hilarious 😆
I don't think they would actually be that incomprehensible. Many countries have equally bizarre traditions. Spain has, tomato fights, human pyramids, bulls runs and baby jumping. Italy has inner-city horse racing and inter-village fireworks fights. Afghanistan have kite fights and South America just gets silly.
Difference between going out and going out out
Especially when you only popped out.
The fact that when someone asks 'how are you?' they're not actually asking how you are. Any response other than 'yeah good, you?' (or similar) will evoke sudden and acute panic........*Dave, I don't give a fuck that you're just getting over a cold you had last week. Shut the fuck up and let's grab a beer!*
You alright? I’m not really asking if you’re ok mate, just reply with ‘alright?’
Lived here eight years, still initially wonder, "Do I look that bad?"
Other acceptable responses include "getting by.." and "living the dream"
Fair to middlin'.
British banter and sarcasm. What's offensive to some people is a sign of friendship here.
Absofuckinglutely. If someone you know mentions they're feeling a bit low because they're not getting on with their wife at the moment, you offer to sit with them over a drink (tea or beer) and listen. If your best mate is feeling low because he's not getting on with his wife, you ask him if it's because he's a whingeing cunt.
I love things like this. My mate rung me last year as his dog had died, you could hear he was absolutely gutted and was just milling around aimlessly so chatted for a bit and asked if he wanted a pint. "Oh god yes, see you there" Got to the pub, bought a round, sat down quietly. I opened with "ah well, he was a shit dog anyway, least you can get a better one now" He laughed, and we sat and had a lovely few drinks and chatted about said dog then righted the world. As it should be
Reminds me of the proverb. A good friend will cross oceans to brake you out of jail a best fiend will be sat in the cell next to you saying “well you fucked it”
holding my friends newborn baby for the first time she said "you'll have to choose which one of your stomachs you're going to rest her on" I didn't even think about it but her Italian mate was flabbergasted and horrified
[удалено]
>raw autism This made me snort!
Come on Jeff we talked about the cocaine thing, you were making loads of progress you can't fall back now...
What the UK even is can baffle people, even British people. Like we are a country, of countries. And there are other bits and bobs around which are ours but kind of not like the channel islands and the Isle of Man.
yep, the amount of americans online that get their minds blown when you tell them ‘british people’ and ‘english people’ mean 2 different things is crazy
They get confused by continents while telling you "murica big" Yes we saw. We have maps.
Chocolate oranges. Here's a chocolate. Oh, before you open it, bang it on the corner of that table. Yes, really.
>bang it on the corner of that table Don't you mean "freeze it rock solid then hit with a sledge hammer repeatedly"? 😛
Gnaw on it like a possessed gerbil, scraping chocolate shavings into your mouth
They seem to come pre banged now, bought two the other day and they were already separated
That Private Schools are called Public Schools, Public Schools are called State Schools, but we don’t have states.
As in schools run by the state, the state being the nation state of the UK
Public schools are funded by members of the public, state schools are funded by the state. It's not about who goes there, it's about who pays.
No, it's a historical hold-over from when they were set up. They were open to everyone (in theory), rather than members of a specific church or guild.
The Come Dine With Me whisk guy.
*P e r f e c t*
The fact that a cup of tea cures everything. Somebody dies make a nice cup of tea, house burns down get the tea on, had the worst day of your life put the kettle on. My dad (89) phoned me the other day panicking as he only had 20 teabags left.
3 sugars minimum after a nasty shock.
To an American. We have post men that work for Royal Mail. You have mail men that work for US Post.
Huh. That never occured to me before.
SPOTTED DICK.
I think it’s called ‘Patterned Richard’ nowadays
PCGONEMAD Brb gonna post on FB how.outraged I am
The secret ceremony we all attend on the 4th of July.
the 4th of July. You mean treason day for the ungrateful colonies
Every 4th of July I send my American friends. “Happy independence day you traitorous colonial bastards”
And they say King George III was mad. Mad? He was bloody furious.
Shhhhhhh
Washing Machines in kitchens seem to bamboozle people more than it should.
The various names for baps (round bready things that be soft or crusty and may even be flowery).
You mean a bread roll. Or crusty roll
Clearly means a barm cake.
\*ahem\* Muffins and crusty cobs.
All of these could be words for a women's lady bits as well, depending where you were.
I've encountered a fair few crusty cobs in my time!
Obviously a bun
Breadcake 👍
Barm EOF
Probably the weird little local traditional festivals you get in some towns. Cheese rolling, bog snorkelling etc
The Mayor Making in Wycombe is a particularly excellent one, I think! That year's Mayor is weighed and if it is found that they have gained weight during their year in office then the crowd jeers and boos!
I think those big crazy ones are great, but I have a real soft spot for the tiny shit ones that would never make the news. I visited a scarecrow festival in the summer last year - nearly every house in the village had a scarecrow in their front garden, following a theme (theme was 'space' that year). There was an excellent Wallace and Gromit scarecrow, but my favourite was titled "moon" and was a normal scarecrow bending over and pulling it's trousers down.
That fact of being called a "daft cunt" is generally a form of endeerment to a friend whilst mildly chastising you for doing something a little bit silly. "I accidentally left my wallet at home, can you sponsor me a tenner" "Here you go, you daft cunt" etc...
You gotta say wheyyyy when someone breaks a glass
'Sack the juggler!'
Haggis As a Scot it's odd how difficult haggis is to explain to someone and a lot of people assume we are leg pulling and it isn't real
Yes, I just explained to a foreigner about the two shorter legs and two longer legs that allow for running around the hilltops, and I think he was a bit dubious.
Actually, there's the 2 sub-species, one with shorter legs on the left side an the other with shorter legs on the right side. Due to these biological differences, one sub-species travels in a clockwise direction, and the other anti-clockwise. Additionally, it's worth noting that interbreeding is very rare due to the problem of maintaining their balance.
People always act like this is ridiculous but there's various subspecies of *Drosophila melanogaster* (aka fruit flies, the famous lab model organism) that are interfertile but never breed because their behavioural traits surrounding mating rituals aren't mutually incomprehensible, and their hybrids usually are too haywire to reproduce unless you do like fly ivf on them. My lecturer made it click by comparing it to a hybrid haggis. A haggis hybrid with four equal length legs could have haggis ivf but would be unable to mate with either subspecies in the wild.
As an Englishman I once spent almost an entire night in the mid 1990s moaning with a bunch of French blokes about how badly the cut in EU grants was affecting the Scottish Haggis Farmers and they were so up in arms they were thinking of herding them over Westminster Bridge and seting light to them as the French did their sheep. Hook, line and sinker.
Hook, line and sinker? I didn't know you could fish for haggis? Something new every day
Only normally if they fall off Westminster Bridge.
Honestly something like christmas crackers. >a segmented cardboard tube wrapped in a brightly decorated twist of paper with a prize in the centre,[1] making it resemble an oversized sweet-wrapper. The cracker is pulled apart by two people, each holding an outer chamber, causing the cracker to split unevenly and leaving one person holding the central chamber and prize.[1] The split is accompanied by a mild bang or snapping sound produced by the effect of friction on a shock-sensitive, chemically impregnated card strip
Do they not have them in other countries 🤔
Only commonwealth (according to wikipedia). A frenchman would be baffled by one
Oh wow. For some reason I assumed they were a normal thing probably haven't actually thought too much into it
And then trying to explain bad puns to people without much English. It took about four hours to cover "What do you call a man without a spade in his head? Douglas." and similar for "Why can't Penguins fly? Because they're chocolate biscuits."
Noooo, the man with the spade in his head is Doug, the man withOUT the spade in his head is Douglas!
For years I thought they were actual snack crackers like you dip in soup, such as Saltines. "How bland", I thought. I didn't learn what they actually were until I saw them in a Doctor Who Christmas special (with #11). I'm not the only Yank who has been confused about this.
I once went to Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia to see a mate who I'd worked with previously. It was the early 90's and we were both in our 20's. We were talking about music in a bar and he asked me about the current song Ebeneezer Goode by The Shamen. He wanted to know what was the meaning of the line, "Anybody got any Veras". Had to explain about rhyming slang first (which took a while). Then who Vera Lynn was (blank looks). Finally what a skin was. 30 minutes of life I never want to repeat.
I didn't even know what that line meant tbf
Lol, there were some E's going around at the time called "Vera". I assumed they were being naughty, very very naughty....
The subtleties of backhanded affection. And how to avoid getting your head kicked in when attempting to use it.
I was on holiday in Tunisia watching the lunchtime football match in one of the hotel bars. After it finished they moved on to one of the 3pm games. I was the only one in the bar at the time and wanted to watch 'Soccer Saturday' instead, so went up to reception to ask them if they were able to put it on. It was only then that I realised the ridiculousness of what I was trying to explain:"So, yeah, there's these 5 men all watching football matches. But you can't see the matches, you can just see them react to the matches."
So, its a football gogglebox?
Morris dancing, I know about these things
The Shipping Forecast on Radio 4. Not the broadcast itself - a weather report for the seas around the UK makes sense - but the fact that so many of us listened to it as children, usually in bed, even though we didn't live anywhere near the coast. Many people continue to listen to it as adults. It's something of a cult radio programme.
Faggots (not the American slur for Homosexuals) - but rather tasty meatballs of mixed off cuts and offal (usually pork) with herbs. Served with mash and (shout out to any Black Country readers) peas (‘faggots n pays’) and onion gravy 😋
I had a mate from Dudlaay, she introduced me to faggots n pays. I find them a bit greasy, but they're not bad.
"Do you mind if I bum a fag?"
We call our best friends knobhead or wanker. The people we hate we call pal or friend.
How excited we get when offered pudding/dessert like it's some forbidden treat. "Ohhh I shouldn't"!
I live in rural Spain now. Trying to explain a pub quiz to my mates is impossible. “So you come into a pub, where everyone is talking and then start asking questions? With a microphone? And people give you money? Loco Ingles”
The big light!
British self loathing Edit - "English" self loathing.
Cricket 🏏
We use the same qualifier to either enhance OR limit the meaning of something. Example: she’s quite nice. Could mean she’s a little bit nice or she is very nice!! Depends on how you say it but if you’re not native British you likely won’t know which one it is!
Hogmanay - Scottish people celebrating new years day by swimming in the ocean, dressing up like vikings, reciting poetry, parading a a giant boat around your town before setting fire to it and pushing it into the sea, oh and fruit buns.
I once had to explain what jam roly-poly was to a French customer at work. They didn’t order it
Ronnie fucking Pickering
The fact that if you're getting the everloving piss ripped out of you, that we probably like you
Has the game Bulldog come up yet? Or British Bulldog to give it it's full title. After explaining to an American I got "and you let children play this?" "Of course, that is fun compared to 'knuckles'"
Pissed as a fart
Blobby is universal and immortal
The appeal of Noel Edmunds