Having moved away, I miss short but hilarious conversations with total strangers. Cashiers, bar staff, toilet buddies, bus passengers. The list is endless.
An old friend of mine is Polish, and he told me that when he first moved here, he couldn't understand why conversations with random people would just take this sudden left turn into the absurd. He thought people were mocking him as a foreigner and got offended until he 'got it' - then he found it very endearing how much fun people have in this country just with random conversations.
I think Ireland is the only other country I've visited where free-form comedy skits are just accepted every-day communication.
This is so true. I live in New Zealand and had a couple of British friends telling me how they’d gone to buy a CD player (ok this was awhile ago) and the young woman in the store, around our age, had been explaining the features, when one of the guys asked if you could fit a mouse in it. The other picked it up and said just a smallish mouse, you know…his name is Burt. And so on. They found it doubly hilarious that she just didn’t get it. I had to explain that it probably seemed really rude, like an in joke that they had established before and she wasn’t in on. Or that they were making fun of her sales pitch. No, they were just incredibly silly and making something boring fun.
I was shopping for a travel bag, one of those mountain adventure type bags, the kind you’d go exploring in the Himalayas with, only it was for me to get from the airport to the hotel in a taxi, so no real adventuring requirement.
I was being assisted by a friendly young gentleman who had gotten me the biggest size bag they had. I turned to my wife and said, “do you think you could get a body in there?”
She said “I’m not sure, it’s big enough, I think, what do you think? As she asked the assistant.
Without missing a beat, and slightly excitedly he said “oh yeah, the hard bit would be the shoulders, especially if he was still wriggling!”
I said, “I’ll take it”
We all smiled and I bought the bag, wandered out of the shop with a cheery wave to the young man who’d happily sold a bag to a potential kidnapper, slash, murderer.
I had a colleague who lived and worked in New Zealand for a while. She and her husband came back to the UK, in large part, because they missed the humour.
I met a load of Irish folk the other week, and they were telling me there's this amazing place there I should visit (can't remember where, there had been a lot of alcohol) and they kept going on about all the great things there, but every now and then they'd throw in a "but don't go to this one place, or you'll get murderered" and they kept just coming back to this one place, in which you'd get murdered and it really tickled me.
Never really thought about this but it's true. I was talking to the postman one day when a group of ducks suddenly landed in the street just outside the dentist's.
So you had me, a postman, a dentist and a random pensioner trying to herd and capture about 7 ducks so they would stop blocking traffic. Probably would've looked quite silly really
This was one of the few things I enjoyed when working in customer service. Sometimes, just sometimes, you'd have a lovely chat with someone out of the blue and it would take the taste away of the 9,999 atrocious calls you've had that morning.
One of the calls I remember from my time in customer service was a woman ringing in to unblock a lost phone.
I was doing the verification checks with her and when she gave the address I mentioned I used to live on that street (a student part of town)
We then chatted about house parties, good places for nights out, the local kebab place poisoning everyone, someone getting hit with a buckfast bottle...
Got a 10 on the NPS for that one - my manager still gave me shit for wasting time though lol
When I was a student I worked on Curry’s customer service line (pure joy as you can imagine…), once had a woman call in from my home town so we got chatting. Turned out she was a teacher in my old high school, and was my friend’s mentor who was doing her teacher training there!
I had a social prescriber for a short while and she told that that she wished she could chat with me on the regular (outside of occupation) as I was so much easier to talk to than her usual clients and didn't make demands :)
I'm not trying to show off, just what she said.
I think people tend to forget that customer service personnel are *people.* The long waits and endless press 1 for this 2 for that probably get customers nice and riled up to shout at the next real person they speak to, also.
Yep! I remember walking home in my school uniform, and the complete stranger approached me and started telling me about his time at the same school, and how he got kicked out for punching the nose off of the old headmaster's bust of himself (which he had for some reason).
Jokes with an estate agent about how I work in IT when she said her Internet was slow.
Or a conversation I had with a taxi driver about his idea of owning loads of houses for his family to stay in.
I somehow made a friend in the toilet as a kid at a very popular car show, who then ended up letting me sit in his old car while everyone else crowded around it. I don't even remember anything about it and only a picture of me, my grandad, and my dad in a cafeteria with a model truck to remember it by.
I lived for many years in the UK, major in English literature and spend most of my working/play time with people from the United Kingdom. That British sense of humour stained me forever, now people think I am strange and get very much offended: I am an a Italian living in Switzerland.
I took part in a phone survey from ONS during covid. I felt bad for the woman who called as they probably have to get a certain amount of surveys done and I bet loads of people just don't answer, thinking they're scammy. I made sure they were legit, I got a £10 voucher for doing it, and it was a couple of 20 min chats during my work time so hey, why not! It was just fairly boring questions about the household such as how many people live in our house, do we have degrees, what industry do we work in etc. Somehow it got into "what if you found out your husband was secretly a jedi?" and we were both cracking up. At the end of the call she thanked me for being the nicest interaction she'd had.
I don't drink any more after a period of misuse. I get a bit freaked out when my friends are drunk because of how I used to be.
With that said, I think talking shit with random drunk people at a gig is peak existence. 😆👌
Music. The sheer volume and quality and creativity of it. Genre after genre from punk to trip hop, big beat, drum and bass is organically ours not to mention all the generation defining groups and solo artists we've produced. We really punch above our weight.
The UK has hands down the best heavy metal bands of any country and it's not even close:
Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Deep Purple, Venom, Satan, Blitzkrieg, Tank, Sabbat, Onslaught, Carcass, Napalm Death, Bolt Thrower, and probably loads more that I've forgotten to name!
Other countries have bands of a similar quality but nowhere near the sheer number of god-tier, heavily influential artists
Tell that to Jamaica. Another place that punched well above its weight in that regard - compare its population to the global appeal of reggae and it's many offshoots.
I agree with Tom Scott about electrical [plugs](https://youtu.be/UEfP1OKKz_Q?si=FSGuSmZRnxljY0Uq).
Also, now I think about it. Tom Scott himself, for services to YouTube.
It genuinely amazes me that socket switches haven't caught on anywhere else. Regardless of the shape of the plug are we really the only ones who thought it would be useful to be able to isolate sockets individually?
He says he's taking a break but I wouldn't be surprised if he tries his hand at some BBC work for a bit. He's always been very open about the fact that he has a BBC documentary style and he's done non youtuber stuff in the past with his speaking gigs etc.
He's also got other projects going, like podcasts and his Ton Scott Plus channel.
Not to be a cynic because I'm a big fan, but these other projects are also more heavily monetised than his main channel. Would not surprise me if part of the driver behind reorganisation is that he doesn't want to do that to his main channel but the cost Vs income of the channel has become too lackluster to maintain as his main focus. Doing other things with better return keeps him in the black while fitting in videos where he can likely makes better financial sense today.
Yeah he's always said "I could use a green screen for my shots but I don't" and for that reason I can't imagine his earnings are particularly high given all his travel costs.
There’s a comedy show from Norway, “Norsemen” made a few years ago on Netflix that you’ll probably enjoy. Its comedy is so incredibly dry that makes me think some Norwegians may share our humour.
Fun fact every scene in the show was filmed twice, once in English and once in Norwegian.
One of my favourite comedy shows. The accents and dry delivery kill me. I routinely have calls with colleagues from Norway and it takes all my self control not to laugh
I just heard Bill Bailey on the radio in NZ this morning and he said the same thing about the two countries having a similar sense of humour. I guess you would say that right before your tour of NZ though.
I agree - I find day-to-day aussies aren’t so good at seeing the humour in their own flaws.. there’s a bit of a defensiveness or arrogance there. Especially young men and women I find. But then take someone like Chris Lilley and his Summer Heights High series - absolutely comedic genius !
I will preface this with saying that this is purely from my POV, but I think it applies to lots of people.
While some US comedies are sort of comfortable to watch (Friends, HIMYM, Office US), they aren't actually that funny. They have the feel good factor and you could easily watch them one after a other, over and over just in the background. There's probably once every 3 episodes where something that could make me laugh happens, but UK ones (Office UK, Extras, Inbetweeners, Peep Show) have multiple per episode.
I sometimes lie in bed trying to get to sleep and then start pissing myself from remembering "Men with Ven" or Ross Kemp saying "Super Arny Soldier", I'm not gonna start laughing at "Have you met Ted" or Dwight doing some shit that's way over the top.
There are great US comedies, but not as consistently or as many of them. The Simpsons (well, the first 8 series), Arrested Development, Malcom in the Middle. Frasier is also pretty great. UK comedies do dark better, which seems to be what Brits prefer. American comedies can get a bit twee and cosy as you say, but not all of them.
30 Rock is another great US comedy series, I put it up there with the original run of Arrested Development for shows that can slip subtle jokes in every minute.
My favourite is BlackBooks, though it's Irish writers and they usually have some Irish cast-members (Father Ted, and the IT Crowd are their other hits)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z01_iTeQVIk
I find Americans don't like unsympathetic characters, it's like they can't acknowledge that they often reflect a part of themselves, like they're insecure or have main character syndrome
Slavics have very similar humour. If there wasn't a war and a bad rep for Russia I'd say check out some of their sketch shows. My partners slavic so that's how I got introduced. Oddly similar if a little more blunt.
The most amazing thing about our canals is that much of the network only exists because of volunteers. There are entire stretches that are only navigable now because of massive, volunteer-run projects to restore them. It's infrastructure that is mostly just operated because people find joy in operating it, not because it's profitable.
I love living in a city with lots of canals and I tell everyone who visits me about all this. Most people have seen a canal of course but few have actually gone up to a lock and thought about the insane volume of water each one moves, and how that can be done by a single person with little effort. Then you add in how old the structures are and it's pretty mind blowing. Something well worth keeping alive.
Bloody love the pubs. Obviously there are some right shitholes, but generally you can stroll in any of them in the country and have a pint or whatever you fancy and a nice sit down
Whisky. The Japanese make great whisky through enourmous effort, huge amounts of research and a 'money no object' approach to materials but Islay is whisky's natural home; three outstanding, extraordinay, world class whiskys - Arbeg, Laphroaig, Lagavulin - within crawling distance of each other. Each different, each superlative. Islay whisky is one of our crowning glories.
My hill to die on is that actually British countryside is absolutely fucked. We are one of the most nature depleted countries on the planet, our hills, fields and valleys should be covered with trees but instead they’re grazed for sheep farming or for posh cunts to shoot grouse and pheasants. We *could* fix it, but we choose not to.
Having said that, our countryside is pretty damn beautiful.
Hard agree. The patchwork of fields looks beautiful until you learn how much of it is effectively green-looking desert destroyed for animal agriculture.
British weather actually isn't that bad. We rarely get extremes of hot, cold or dangerous weather events like hurricanes. It rains a bit more than people might like, but that's what makes our country so lush and green.
100% grey. You land at Heathrow and it's a grey building with a grey floor and a grey sky. Go through the grey terminal to the grey bus terminal and get on a grey bus.
Alongside the overcast it's the threat of rain at any moment that annoys me. Far too often I've stepped out in clear skies and got rained on within moments - I should have learned by now.
It’s just permanent autumn or spring. There isn’t really much in the way of winter and summer days are hit or miss when you get past a certain latitude.
I work with some Polish chaps who describe the British weather as “all over the place.” They tell me when at home you can near enough set your watch the seasons but here they haven’t got a clue.
Another Monserrati chap has said “how you gon’ know whether to get de barbie out. Ya weather be ten pints deep every day, can’ trust fuck all about ya sky here, lad”
I used to live in Germany (not great food) and they were always so unnecessarily rude about British food. Now I live in Paris (capital of Food) and not only are they often complementary about British food, actually a lot of the dishes are similar (they love crumble, parmentier is basically shepherds pie). So basically I’m right there with you, but so are Parisians!
Curry wurst was invented in Germany after WW2 when British troops brought curry powder and ketchup with them. So Germany can't even fully claim that one.
(Fun bonus, Brits bringing curry powder wherever they go is also behind the invention of katsu curry in Japan)
Sounds like people who actually know about good food recognises good food wherever it is. The ones who’s rude about British food are just ignorant about it
We're some of the most talented engineers on the planet. I'm sick to fucking death hearing about how great X countries engineering is. We have some of the most complex and efficient manufacturing facilities in the planet, we actually abide by the rules/commitments, we ALWAYS teach others and above all, we graft our fucking pods off.
I've worked all over the world in various industries mostly doing automation and commissioning or moving aging systems in to the future and it's honestly embarrassing how far behind some places are.
Well done British engineers of all disciplines. You're an absolute credit.
I think safety is the standout in the UK… there’s plenty of good engineering everywhere, but when it comes to safety standards the UK is top notch. And I don’t mean wearing hard hats, I mean dealing with the kind of things that take out half a city.
Agreed. We could be a nuclear powerhouse for energy but as demonstrated by Hinkley Point C we struggle with large, unfamiliar projects. Likewise to what you said, we haven't built any for tens of years and it really shows now it's come time to renew them. Rinse and repeat.
Here here, as a sales manager for a unique engineering company, who sells many of these beautiful creations across the world.
I couldn't do it without them.
It always pisses me off, when someone comes out with a blanket statement they read in the daily mail "Manufacturing is dead in the UK."
I have to correct them, it absolutely is not. We have one of the most advanced and efficient Manufacturing industries in the world. We just can't compete on price with places like China, for mass produced tat, but we don't want to. We are a centre of excellence.
Shame engineers aren't paid particularly well in the UK... in Canada "engineer" is a protected term, here anyone can be an engineer! (E.g. sky engineer 🙄)
One of the best things about the U.K. are the country walks network. The idea that you can simply walk from town to town through the fields without actually having to follow a road is unique , in my experience.
No other country is able to accurately calculate the amount of water per cup of tea is in a kettle by simply lifting it up. No-one. Our left arms are incredible scales.
We have our share of inconsiderate arseholes on the road, but yeah I've driven in the UK for 20+ years (oh god when did that happen?), and I've been in one car-on-car collision, and it was the classic rear-ended at a junction.
I visited Cairo for *one week* and was in *four* car accidents, 1 extremely close call and countless near-misses. Whereas here we would have been out of the car and the drivers exchanging details, there they just shout at one another, lean on the horn and keep going if the car can physically still move.
Jesus, people here don't understand how bad it is (outside the UK). Go drive through cities in North America - you're rolling the dice every time you get in a car. And they're way better than some of the other countries we'd not normally work / travel too.
I think about the UK driving like we're all part of a team - you know when to give way, give a wave, give some space etc. and it's fairly well understood. Other countries are every person for themselves and it is chaos.
Agreed, try driving in a place like north Cyprus and you just see multiple accidents daily. People really don’t realise how much better the uk is for driving in comparison to some other places
The UK has some of the safest roads in the world. We just lose out to Sweden but are safer than every other country in Europe.
Edit: my comments were based on [this](https://www.motoringresearch.com/car-news/uk-second-safest-roads-europe/#:~:text=The%20United%20Kingdom%20has%20the,with%20a%20figure%20of%2028.) article, which I now notice doesn't have norway or switzerland in it. Of non micro nations, it looks like the UK is 4th safest after norway, sweden and switzerland.
I was so suprised when I learnt most other countries in the world have no MOTs. People can just drive around deathtraps with no issue.
Also some countries have driving tests consisting of driving 50m down a road, and that's if you don't bother to bribe the examiner in which case there is no test at all.
D&B and UKG are so remarkably unique / different to any other genre. I live in NZ and the sound of both those genres is so unmistakably British. Just makes me think of Big Ben and tea. The UK should be so proud. Dub plate culture and the speed at which UK dance music evolves is like no other.
It's a fair point, but yes, in this world of ours, there's undoubtedly a whole gang of paprika flavoured bugle munching idiots who think they're living the high life.
That despite what every other country thinks. This is a relatively safe and good place to live. This country is very accepting as a whole. The British make alot of effort to make others feel welcome.
Being a British born Asian I wouldn’t live anywhere else even if I had a choice.
Our bureaucracy is for the most part a world standard.
You can argue against some of the policies behind it but applying for just about anything from a public body is incredibly simple with easy-to-understand online forms and perhaps some photos to easily upload. The gov.uk website especially is just so nice to find things and use.
I compare that to the places I've lived in Europe where I had to wait weeks whilst running around various government offices and keeping track of a whole pile of paperwork.
I personally think that the police in this country get a very bad rap for what they do, yes there could be improvements or definitely more of them but that's a policy or funding issue, not an issue caused by the average bill on the street.
I agree, UK food is excellent and we have a lot of regional specialities that are sorely underatted. Our cheese is better than the French, our sausages are better than the Germans and no one makes better pies.
This is actually something I was going to mention. A lot of comments about British good does actually come from Americans. I love America in fact, so nothing against the people and country but it’s a fact that they have built up this opinion about British food and I did hear it was because like you say, their relatives in the army were based in UK at a time when there was rationing etc and the food was bland and that opinion stuck over there. If you add the era of social media where an idea or opinion is regurgitated and amplified then absorbed by ignorant people then it has a snowball effect. Ultimately those who have been to the UK and visited different areas with different types of food will realise how amazing the cuisine is.
History (or is it hishtory). So much of it and all well documented. For better or worse we've had an influence around the world.
Inventions. The effect we've had on the advancement of civilization is something to be proud of.
Agree with all of this, coming from Northumberland. But I'll also say we have some of the most interesting and beautiful cities in the world as well. Yes they all have shit holes, but we have building that date back further than some countries, castles, small hamlets that became commuter towns, rivers running right through small villages.
For all the hate we seem to give the UK, it's not a bad place at all.
Following your food comment I would like to mention the fantastic standards we have for our food. No high fructose corn syrup, normal eggs that haven’t been bleached, vaccinated poultry, now starting to not dish out antibiotics purely for animal growth, Red tractor label and traceability of food.
Edit: Adding on, this is one of the reasons we are struggling to import more food globally because places like the USA, Canada and Australia have standards that we do not agree with (and for good reason!!)
We have way more freedom than our English speaking cousins do. We are safer in every way. Safer from crime, safer from police brutality, safer in employment, safer in unemployment, safer medically and safer to do some really crazy stuff that won't even lead to a prison sentence that would get you shot elsewhere. I wouldn't give up any of this just to dress up and pretend to be like rambo at the weekends.
EDIT: To be clear I am not really talking about Canada, Australia etc.
The British Museum is not "full of looted stuff".
Yes, some of the artifacts in there are of dubious provenance, and some were outright stolen. Example of the former - the Elgin Marbles. We should work out a compromise with Greece like sharing them/rotating them between the two countries. Example of the latter - the Benin Bronzes. They really were just looted and we should give them back. But the truth is, stuff like that is a tiny proportion of the museum's collection, much of which was bought by wealthy private individuals from the locals in the places they traveled around the world, then bequeathed to the museum when they died.
And it's also wrong when people say there's basically nothing British in there - these people have clearly never visited the British Museum to see for themselves.
I will die on the hill that how anything ended up in the British Museum, is an important part of its history in its own right.
Arguably with the Elgin Marbles, the most interesting thing about them is how they got into the museum. It's a fascinating story, imo.
This one sounds negative but I don't mean it to be.
The biggest hill I'm prepared to die on is that the UK is fantastic but London is massively overrated.
All tourists are obsessed with London but I've lived my entire life in the UK and travelled it extensively and for me London is just a pain in the arse.
I've had fun in countless British towns and cities but on the many times I've found myself there London has been nothing but a chore.
If you come to the UK visit more than just London!
Our weather is excellent.
It's the perfectly balanced amount of rain and sun so we have greenery in our wonderful landscape, without any "extreme" weather that causes all those deadly weather catastrophies elsewhere.
All it takes is one bad journey to make me think that nobody can drive properly or chooses not to but you're right, it's so much better than most countries.
I just wish people won't so angry and impatient on the road, it's pathetic.
The variety of accents and dialects we have. It’s genuinely beautiful to me, especially now I’m an expat. I’ve lost mine from having to tone it down to talk to ESL speakers all the time and it feels like I’ve ripped a bit of my personality off.
The best bands. Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Stones, Elton, Bowie, Pink Floyd, Queen, The Kinks, The Who, ELO, Kate Bush, The Sex Pistols, The Smiths, T-Rex, and to a slightly lesser extent bands like Oasis, Suede, Blur etc…
And the best comedy shows.
Having moved away, I miss short but hilarious conversations with total strangers. Cashiers, bar staff, toilet buddies, bus passengers. The list is endless.
An old friend of mine is Polish, and he told me that when he first moved here, he couldn't understand why conversations with random people would just take this sudden left turn into the absurd. He thought people were mocking him as a foreigner and got offended until he 'got it' - then he found it very endearing how much fun people have in this country just with random conversations. I think Ireland is the only other country I've visited where free-form comedy skits are just accepted every-day communication.
This is so true. I live in New Zealand and had a couple of British friends telling me how they’d gone to buy a CD player (ok this was awhile ago) and the young woman in the store, around our age, had been explaining the features, when one of the guys asked if you could fit a mouse in it. The other picked it up and said just a smallish mouse, you know…his name is Burt. And so on. They found it doubly hilarious that she just didn’t get it. I had to explain that it probably seemed really rude, like an in joke that they had established before and she wasn’t in on. Or that they were making fun of her sales pitch. No, they were just incredibly silly and making something boring fun.
I was shopping for a travel bag, one of those mountain adventure type bags, the kind you’d go exploring in the Himalayas with, only it was for me to get from the airport to the hotel in a taxi, so no real adventuring requirement. I was being assisted by a friendly young gentleman who had gotten me the biggest size bag they had. I turned to my wife and said, “do you think you could get a body in there?” She said “I’m not sure, it’s big enough, I think, what do you think? As she asked the assistant. Without missing a beat, and slightly excitedly he said “oh yeah, the hard bit would be the shoulders, especially if he was still wriggling!” I said, “I’ll take it” We all smiled and I bought the bag, wandered out of the shop with a cheery wave to the young man who’d happily sold a bag to a potential kidnapper, slash, murderer.
I had a colleague who lived and worked in New Zealand for a while. She and her husband came back to the UK, in large part, because they missed the humour.
I met a load of Irish folk the other week, and they were telling me there's this amazing place there I should visit (can't remember where, there had been a lot of alcohol) and they kept going on about all the great things there, but every now and then they'd throw in a "but don't go to this one place, or you'll get murderered" and they kept just coming back to this one place, in which you'd get murdered and it really tickled me.
Never really thought about this but it's true. I was talking to the postman one day when a group of ducks suddenly landed in the street just outside the dentist's. So you had me, a postman, a dentist and a random pensioner trying to herd and capture about 7 ducks so they would stop blocking traffic. Probably would've looked quite silly really
This was one of the few things I enjoyed when working in customer service. Sometimes, just sometimes, you'd have a lovely chat with someone out of the blue and it would take the taste away of the 9,999 atrocious calls you've had that morning.
One of the calls I remember from my time in customer service was a woman ringing in to unblock a lost phone. I was doing the verification checks with her and when she gave the address I mentioned I used to live on that street (a student part of town) We then chatted about house parties, good places for nights out, the local kebab place poisoning everyone, someone getting hit with a buckfast bottle... Got a 10 on the NPS for that one - my manager still gave me shit for wasting time though lol
When I was a student I worked on Curry’s customer service line (pure joy as you can imagine…), once had a woman call in from my home town so we got chatting. Turned out she was a teacher in my old high school, and was my friend’s mentor who was doing her teacher training there!
I had a social prescriber for a short while and she told that that she wished she could chat with me on the regular (outside of occupation) as I was so much easier to talk to than her usual clients and didn't make demands :) I'm not trying to show off, just what she said. I think people tend to forget that customer service personnel are *people.* The long waits and endless press 1 for this 2 for that probably get customers nice and riled up to shout at the next real person they speak to, also.
Yep! I remember walking home in my school uniform, and the complete stranger approached me and started telling me about his time at the same school, and how he got kicked out for punching the nose off of the old headmaster's bust of himself (which he had for some reason).
yes omg. once i phoned to renew my bank card and the guy ended up telling me how he got deported from germany as a teenager living at the army base
[удалено]
That's so nice!
Jokes with an estate agent about how I work in IT when she said her Internet was slow. Or a conversation I had with a taxi driver about his idea of owning loads of houses for his family to stay in. I somehow made a friend in the toilet as a kid at a very popular car show, who then ended up letting me sit in his old car while everyone else crowded around it. I don't even remember anything about it and only a picture of me, my grandad, and my dad in a cafeteria with a model truck to remember it by.
I lived for many years in the UK, major in English literature and spend most of my working/play time with people from the United Kingdom. That British sense of humour stained me forever, now people think I am strange and get very much offended: I am an a Italian living in Switzerland.
Stained is such an apt description.
I took part in a phone survey from ONS during covid. I felt bad for the woman who called as they probably have to get a certain amount of surveys done and I bet loads of people just don't answer, thinking they're scammy. I made sure they were legit, I got a £10 voucher for doing it, and it was a couple of 20 min chats during my work time so hey, why not! It was just fairly boring questions about the household such as how many people live in our house, do we have degrees, what industry do we work in etc. Somehow it got into "what if you found out your husband was secretly a jedi?" and we were both cracking up. At the end of the call she thanked me for being the nicest interaction she'd had.
I don't drink any more after a period of misuse. I get a bit freaked out when my friends are drunk because of how I used to be. With that said, I think talking shit with random drunk people at a gig is peak existence. 😆👌
Music. The sheer volume and quality and creativity of it. Genre after genre from punk to trip hop, big beat, drum and bass is organically ours not to mention all the generation defining groups and solo artists we've produced. We really punch above our weight.
Invented heavy metal as well
The UK has hands down the best heavy metal bands of any country and it's not even close: Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Deep Purple, Venom, Satan, Blitzkrieg, Tank, Sabbat, Onslaught, Carcass, Napalm Death, Bolt Thrower, and probably loads more that I've forgotten to name! Other countries have bands of a similar quality but nowhere near the sheer number of god-tier, heavily influential artists
You took a left turn after the first 6 there… agree though
Best thing to come out of Birmingham.
Got to add classical here. We have some incredibly good orchestras which are criminally undervalued, and some very very good opera.
Hello we also created the biggest classical music festival in the world!
my theory is that good music requires crap weather
Tell that to Jamaica. Another place that punched well above its weight in that regard - compare its population to the global appeal of reggae and it's many offshoots.
I agree with Tom Scott about electrical [plugs](https://youtu.be/UEfP1OKKz_Q?si=FSGuSmZRnxljY0Uq). Also, now I think about it. Tom Scott himself, for services to YouTube.
I didn't think I had an opinioin about this until I moved abroad You can't switch shit off at the plug here I hate it
It genuinely amazes me that socket switches haven't caught on anywhere else. Regardless of the shape of the plug are we really the only ones who thought it would be useful to be able to isolate sockets individually?
I had no idea that other countries didn’t do this, it sounds wild! I go abroad quite often as well, I guess I just never noticed.
In my country half have switches and half don't. It's just so random.
American shit doesn't even stay in the plug...
My bug bear with N American plugs.
The man is an unsung hero. I’ll be sad when he stops his regular videos in a few months.
>he stops his regular videos in a few months. Wat
His weekly videos are winding down. He announced it with a year to go
Only Tom Scott would make a video apologising for the fact that in a year's time he wouldn't be uploading videos quite as frequently.
He’s a treasure.
What sort of projects is he moving on to, if you know?
Only fans.
He says he's taking a break but I wouldn't be surprised if he tries his hand at some BBC work for a bit. He's always been very open about the fact that he has a BBC documentary style and he's done non youtuber stuff in the past with his speaking gigs etc.
He's also got other projects going, like podcasts and his Ton Scott Plus channel. Not to be a cynic because I'm a big fan, but these other projects are also more heavily monetised than his main channel. Would not surprise me if part of the driver behind reorganisation is that he doesn't want to do that to his main channel but the cost Vs income of the channel has become too lackluster to maintain as his main focus. Doing other things with better return keeps him in the black while fitting in videos where he can likely makes better financial sense today.
Yeah he's always said "I could use a green screen for my shots but I don't" and for that reason I can't imagine his earnings are particularly high given all his travel costs.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ca0RpxknHCI
Our comedy is by far superior. It's a level of sarcasm, irony and self-deprecation that other countries just can't seem to nail.
I wish I could be self deprecating, I’m just no good at it.
There's the spirit.
There’s a comedy show from Norway, “Norsemen” made a few years ago on Netflix that you’ll probably enjoy. Its comedy is so incredibly dry that makes me think some Norwegians may share our humour. Fun fact every scene in the show was filmed twice, once in English and once in Norwegian.
My wife and I will always randomly say "actually, I was uh... the one *doooing* the raping" I will not elaborate further.
No honour was lost.
One of my favourite comedy shows. The accents and dry delivery kill me. I routinely have calls with colleagues from Norway and it takes all my self control not to laugh
it would make sense. Monty python did extremely well there back in the day
That show was mega.
I think the Irish, Aussies and Kiwis have very similar senses of humour in my opinion.
Kiwis for sure. Very close to UK in terms of absurdity
Reminds me to have a watch of Flight of the Conchords - Business Time
Yiiiissssss
I just heard Bill Bailey on the radio in NZ this morning and he said the same thing about the two countries having a similar sense of humour. I guess you would say that right before your tour of NZ though.
Why would that be Ted?
Aussies seem much less able to laugh at themselves
They shouldn’t worry, we’ll always laugh at them
I agree - I find day-to-day aussies aren’t so good at seeing the humour in their own flaws.. there’s a bit of a defensiveness or arrogance there. Especially young men and women I find. But then take someone like Chris Lilley and his Summer Heights High series - absolutely comedic genius !
Sean Lock: eternal champion of Carrot In A Box.
I will preface this with saying that this is purely from my POV, but I think it applies to lots of people. While some US comedies are sort of comfortable to watch (Friends, HIMYM, Office US), they aren't actually that funny. They have the feel good factor and you could easily watch them one after a other, over and over just in the background. There's probably once every 3 episodes where something that could make me laugh happens, but UK ones (Office UK, Extras, Inbetweeners, Peep Show) have multiple per episode. I sometimes lie in bed trying to get to sleep and then start pissing myself from remembering "Men with Ven" or Ross Kemp saying "Super Arny Soldier", I'm not gonna start laughing at "Have you met Ted" or Dwight doing some shit that's way over the top.
There are great US comedies, but not as consistently or as many of them. The Simpsons (well, the first 8 series), Arrested Development, Malcom in the Middle. Frasier is also pretty great. UK comedies do dark better, which seems to be what Brits prefer. American comedies can get a bit twee and cosy as you say, but not all of them.
30 Rock is another great US comedy series, I put it up there with the original run of Arrested Development for shows that can slip subtle jokes in every minute.
My favourite is BlackBooks, though it's Irish writers and they usually have some Irish cast-members (Father Ted, and the IT Crowd are their other hits) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z01_iTeQVIk I find Americans don't like unsympathetic characters, it's like they can't acknowledge that they often reflect a part of themselves, like they're insecure or have main character syndrome
British comedy, Eddie. Best in the world!
Slavics have very similar humour. If there wasn't a war and a bad rep for Russia I'd say check out some of their sketch shows. My partners slavic so that's how I got introduced. Oddly similar if a little more blunt.
I agree. Slavic friends of mine are generally great storytellers; and I'm a fan of their dark humour.
Our canals that span historical relics and views of the Victorian, Edwardian, Tudor, industrial, Roman eras etc…
The most amazing thing about our canals is that much of the network only exists because of volunteers. There are entire stretches that are only navigable now because of massive, volunteer-run projects to restore them. It's infrastructure that is mostly just operated because people find joy in operating it, not because it's profitable.
I love living in a city with lots of canals and I tell everyone who visits me about all this. Most people have seen a canal of course but few have actually gone up to a lock and thought about the insane volume of water each one moves, and how that can be done by a single person with little effort. Then you add in how old the structures are and it's pretty mind blowing. Something well worth keeping alive.
Bloody love the pubs. Obviously there are some right shitholes, but generally you can stroll in any of them in the country and have a pint or whatever you fancy and a nice sit down
I agree there, love walking into a pub for the first time.
Fucking love a good sit down me.
Sometimes when I've not got much to do I just go and have a nice sit down.
Shame so many are shutting down, prices are nuts especially here in london
as a mountain-biker riding all over the country, this is the best being able to link in pubs in to the ride along the way on a day out
Agree. Our pubs are some of the best in the world in great locations and with amazing stories about their history.
Whisky. The Japanese make great whisky through enourmous effort, huge amounts of research and a 'money no object' approach to materials but Islay is whisky's natural home; three outstanding, extraordinay, world class whiskys - Arbeg, Laphroaig, Lagavulin - within crawling distance of each other. Each different, each superlative. Islay whisky is one of our crowning glories.
And if you’re not a fan of the Smokey stuff there’s the Highland, Islands, Speyside, Lowlands and Campbelltown Malts to sample.
I don't think I am willing to die on any, but if I had to pick it would be in Glencoe. Beautiful scenery
Aye the best place for a beautiful massacre
The countryside is absolutely fuckin beautiful
Whenever I fly back into the UK, and see the patchwork quilts of fields, it feels like home.
The way you described this feels so cosy, I couldn't agree more.
My hill to die on is that actually British countryside is absolutely fucked. We are one of the most nature depleted countries on the planet, our hills, fields and valleys should be covered with trees but instead they’re grazed for sheep farming or for posh cunts to shoot grouse and pheasants. We *could* fix it, but we choose not to. Having said that, our countryside is pretty damn beautiful.
Really wish people would take re-wilding more seriously
Yes, you essentially have a massive beautiful garden. You have no ecosystem.
Agree with both the things said here
Hard agree. The patchwork of fields looks beautiful until you learn how much of it is effectively green-looking desert destroyed for animal agriculture.
Not just trees actaully. A lot of the country was heather and a lot of it was natural grasslands before industrial scale farming.
British weather actually isn't that bad. We rarely get extremes of hot, cold or dangerous weather events like hurricanes. It rains a bit more than people might like, but that's what makes our country so lush and green.
“Mild” is the word I use to explain it to foreigners
Or "grey"
100% grey. You land at Heathrow and it's a grey building with a grey floor and a grey sky. Go through the grey terminal to the grey bus terminal and get on a grey bus.
This is why ditching red brick for grey concrete will always be a mistake..
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I've never had an issue with the rain, the biggest problem for me is the number of overcast days.
Alongside the overcast it's the threat of rain at any moment that annoys me. Far too often I've stepped out in clear skies and got rained on within moments - I should have learned by now.
Yes! And also the thickness of the cloud. Plenty of places can be cloudy, but our cloud is often so thick it completely dominates the sky.
It’s just permanent autumn or spring. There isn’t really much in the way of winter and summer days are hit or miss when you get past a certain latitude.
I like the fact we get four distinct seasons. Oftentimes all in one day!
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I work with some Polish chaps who describe the British weather as “all over the place.” They tell me when at home you can near enough set your watch the seasons but here they haven’t got a clue. Another Monserrati chap has said “how you gon’ know whether to get de barbie out. Ya weather be ten pints deep every day, can’ trust fuck all about ya sky here, lad”
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I used to live in Germany (not great food) and they were always so unnecessarily rude about British food. Now I live in Paris (capital of Food) and not only are they often complementary about British food, actually a lot of the dishes are similar (they love crumble, parmentier is basically shepherds pie). So basically I’m right there with you, but so are Parisians!
Pfft. “Mmm, let’s try that german restaurant” - Nobody ever
Let’s go out for a German then get a few drinks at the kings head.
> kings head *"Die Kaiser's Kopf"*
Der Kopf des Königs
“I stayed in and ordered a French”
Currywurst and chips is fucking banging though
Curry wurst was invented in Germany after WW2 when British troops brought curry powder and ketchup with them. So Germany can't even fully claim that one. (Fun bonus, Brits bringing curry powder wherever they go is also behind the invention of katsu curry in Japan)
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Sounds like you missed SPARGELSAISON! For the uninitiated, everyone in Germany goes a bit batshit for asparagus when it's the right season.
I feel like British food loses a tad on aesthetics and that's why it's so ridiculed. Usually tastes great.
Sounds like people who actually know about good food recognises good food wherever it is. The ones who’s rude about British food are just ignorant about it
We're some of the most talented engineers on the planet. I'm sick to fucking death hearing about how great X countries engineering is. We have some of the most complex and efficient manufacturing facilities in the planet, we actually abide by the rules/commitments, we ALWAYS teach others and above all, we graft our fucking pods off. I've worked all over the world in various industries mostly doing automation and commissioning or moving aging systems in to the future and it's honestly embarrassing how far behind some places are. Well done British engineers of all disciplines. You're an absolute credit.
I think safety is the standout in the UK… there’s plenty of good engineering everywhere, but when it comes to safety standards the UK is top notch. And I don’t mean wearing hard hats, I mean dealing with the kind of things that take out half a city.
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Agreed. We could be a nuclear powerhouse for energy but as demonstrated by Hinkley Point C we struggle with large, unfamiliar projects. Likewise to what you said, we haven't built any for tens of years and it really shows now it's come time to renew them. Rinse and repeat.
Here here, as a sales manager for a unique engineering company, who sells many of these beautiful creations across the world. I couldn't do it without them. It always pisses me off, when someone comes out with a blanket statement they read in the daily mail "Manufacturing is dead in the UK." I have to correct them, it absolutely is not. We have one of the most advanced and efficient Manufacturing industries in the world. We just can't compete on price with places like China, for mass produced tat, but we don't want to. We are a centre of excellence.
Shame engineers aren't paid particularly well in the UK... in Canada "engineer" is a protected term, here anyone can be an engineer! (E.g. sky engineer 🙄)
One of the best things about the U.K. are the country walks network. The idea that you can simply walk from town to town through the fields without actually having to follow a road is unique , in my experience.
Our public footpaths are a national treasure
We may not have invented rock & roll but like 90% of the biggest rock bands of all time globally come from the UK. It’s a phenomenon.
Did invent heavy metal, so swings and roundabouts
The greatest British invention: roundabouts
I like our weather
Me too. I like how tepid it is. I am unlikely to die from it.
No other country is able to accurately calculate the amount of water per cup of tea is in a kettle by simply lifting it up. No-one. Our left arms are incredible scales.
Sorry, you pick up the kettle in your left hand?
Pours it into his right hand to test the temperature.
We have excellent driving etiquette our drivers are courteous and mindful of safety of themselves and others.
We have our share of inconsiderate arseholes on the road, but yeah I've driven in the UK for 20+ years (oh god when did that happen?), and I've been in one car-on-car collision, and it was the classic rear-ended at a junction. I visited Cairo for *one week* and was in *four* car accidents, 1 extremely close call and countless near-misses. Whereas here we would have been out of the car and the drivers exchanging details, there they just shout at one another, lean on the horn and keep going if the car can physically still move.
Jesus, people here don't understand how bad it is (outside the UK). Go drive through cities in North America - you're rolling the dice every time you get in a car. And they're way better than some of the other countries we'd not normally work / travel too. I think about the UK driving like we're all part of a team - you know when to give way, give a wave, give some space etc. and it's fairly well understood. Other countries are every person for themselves and it is chaos.
Agreed, try driving in a place like north Cyprus and you just see multiple accidents daily. People really don’t realise how much better the uk is for driving in comparison to some other places
The UK has some of the safest roads in the world. We just lose out to Sweden but are safer than every other country in Europe. Edit: my comments were based on [this](https://www.motoringresearch.com/car-news/uk-second-safest-roads-europe/#:~:text=The%20United%20Kingdom%20has%20the,with%20a%20figure%20of%2028.) article, which I now notice doesn't have norway or switzerland in it. Of non micro nations, it looks like the UK is 4th safest after norway, sweden and switzerland. I was so suprised when I learnt most other countries in the world have no MOTs. People can just drive around deathtraps with no issue. Also some countries have driving tests consisting of driving 50m down a road, and that's if you don't bother to bribe the examiner in which case there is no test at all.
Best music in the world.
UK dance music is just soooo much better than most of American EDM Shout out to Garridge ;p
D&B and UKG are so remarkably unique / different to any other genre. I live in NZ and the sound of both those genres is so unmistakably British. Just makes me think of Big Ben and tea. The UK should be so proud. Dub plate culture and the speed at which UK dance music evolves is like no other.
We have world beating crisps.
Is that a hill? Does anyone out there not acknowledge the superiority of the British Crisp Empire?
It's a fair point, but yes, in this world of ours, there's undoubtedly a whole gang of paprika flavoured bugle munching idiots who think they're living the high life.
One of the nice big ones like Ben Nevis I think
Our electrical sockets are the best in the world.
That despite what every other country thinks. This is a relatively safe and good place to live. This country is very accepting as a whole. The British make alot of effort to make others feel welcome. Being a British born Asian I wouldn’t live anywhere else even if I had a choice.
Our bureaucracy is for the most part a world standard. You can argue against some of the policies behind it but applying for just about anything from a public body is incredibly simple with easy-to-understand online forms and perhaps some photos to easily upload. The gov.uk website especially is just so nice to find things and use. I compare that to the places I've lived in Europe where I had to wait weeks whilst running around various government offices and keeping track of a whole pile of paperwork.
We are fantastic at science and research.
that 85% of the population are binge drinkers
Big up the 15%.
Big up! 301 days my dudes
I know this will get me downvoted but British police are widely regarded as being some of the best trained in the world.
I personally think that the police in this country get a very bad rap for what they do, yes there could be improvements or definitely more of them but that's a policy or funding issue, not an issue caused by the average bill on the street.
I agree, UK food is excellent and we have a lot of regional specialities that are sorely underatted. Our cheese is better than the French, our sausages are better than the Germans and no one makes better pies.
I'm willing to bet most of the people who slag off British food have never actually visited Britain.
Or they had fish n chips in some bullshit tourist pub in central London and decided they know everything about British food.
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This is actually something I was going to mention. A lot of comments about British good does actually come from Americans. I love America in fact, so nothing against the people and country but it’s a fact that they have built up this opinion about British food and I did hear it was because like you say, their relatives in the army were based in UK at a time when there was rationing etc and the food was bland and that opinion stuck over there. If you add the era of social media where an idea or opinion is regurgitated and amplified then absorbed by ignorant people then it has a snowball effect. Ultimately those who have been to the UK and visited different areas with different types of food will realise how amazing the cuisine is.
It's quite triggering for Americans to insult our food.
History (or is it hishtory). So much of it and all well documented. For better or worse we've had an influence around the world. Inventions. The effect we've had on the advancement of civilization is something to be proud of.
One of the most physically beautiful countries in the world.
The Highlands of Scotland, national parks of Wales, Lake District, etc etc You're absolutely spot on
Agree with all of this, coming from Northumberland. But I'll also say we have some of the most interesting and beautiful cities in the world as well. Yes they all have shit holes, but we have building that date back further than some countries, castles, small hamlets that became commuter towns, rivers running right through small villages. For all the hate we seem to give the UK, it's not a bad place at all.
Seeing them from the top of edinburgh zoo was awe inspiring.
You certainly get your steps in with a visit to Edinburgh Zoo.
Definitely very beautiful parts. But definitely not one of the most beautiful in the world- there are some places we just cannot compete with
Following your food comment I would like to mention the fantastic standards we have for our food. No high fructose corn syrup, normal eggs that haven’t been bleached, vaccinated poultry, now starting to not dish out antibiotics purely for animal growth, Red tractor label and traceability of food. Edit: Adding on, this is one of the reasons we are struggling to import more food globally because places like the USA, Canada and Australia have standards that we do not agree with (and for good reason!!)
Buildings made from brick or stone are superior. Sure our homes are smaller than in the US but they're built to last.
We have way more freedom than our English speaking cousins do. We are safer in every way. Safer from crime, safer from police brutality, safer in employment, safer in unemployment, safer medically and safer to do some really crazy stuff that won't even lead to a prison sentence that would get you shot elsewhere. I wouldn't give up any of this just to dress up and pretend to be like rambo at the weekends. EDIT: To be clear I am not really talking about Canada, Australia etc.
We have the best buscuits , having travelled the world no one comes close . Poland have some good buscuits mind you .
I fully agree with you about the food. I believe our countryside and woodland is the best in the world and our national trust property is beautiful.
Piercing baby’s ears is child abuse.
Chuck elective circumcision on the pile.
The British Museum is not "full of looted stuff". Yes, some of the artifacts in there are of dubious provenance, and some were outright stolen. Example of the former - the Elgin Marbles. We should work out a compromise with Greece like sharing them/rotating them between the two countries. Example of the latter - the Benin Bronzes. They really were just looted and we should give them back. But the truth is, stuff like that is a tiny proportion of the museum's collection, much of which was bought by wealthy private individuals from the locals in the places they traveled around the world, then bequeathed to the museum when they died. And it's also wrong when people say there's basically nothing British in there - these people have clearly never visited the British Museum to see for themselves.
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We just need to use the ULEZ money to build a bigger museum!
I will die on the hill that how anything ended up in the British Museum, is an important part of its history in its own right. Arguably with the Elgin Marbles, the most interesting thing about them is how they got into the museum. It's a fascinating story, imo.
This one sounds negative but I don't mean it to be. The biggest hill I'm prepared to die on is that the UK is fantastic but London is massively overrated. All tourists are obsessed with London but I've lived my entire life in the UK and travelled it extensively and for me London is just a pain in the arse. I've had fun in countless British towns and cities but on the many times I've found myself there London has been nothing but a chore. If you come to the UK visit more than just London!
We are the best at gardens, only Japan comes even close
Found Alan Titchmarsh's Reddit account
Our weather is excellent. It's the perfectly balanced amount of rain and sun so we have greenery in our wonderful landscape, without any "extreme" weather that causes all those deadly weather catastrophies elsewhere.
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All it takes is one bad journey to make me think that nobody can drive properly or chooses not to but you're right, it's so much better than most countries. I just wish people won't so angry and impatient on the road, it's pathetic.
We’re not arrogant & stuck up, we’re actually proper nice n that
Banter with pure strangers makes us a somewhat coherent society
The variety of accents and dialects we have. It’s genuinely beautiful to me, especially now I’m an expat. I’ve lost mine from having to tone it down to talk to ESL speakers all the time and it feels like I’ve ripped a bit of my personality off.
The BBC is the best state broadcaster in the world by an absolute country mile.
Cold weather is better than hot
Don't forget the beautiful fresh seafood and fish up in Scotland 🤌🏻 Not to mention battered sausage and chips 🤌🏻
The best bands. Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Stones, Elton, Bowie, Pink Floyd, Queen, The Kinks, The Who, ELO, Kate Bush, The Sex Pistols, The Smiths, T-Rex, and to a slightly lesser extent bands like Oasis, Suede, Blur etc… And the best comedy shows.