Реферат по страноведению "British humour"

Министерство образования Московской области

Государственное бюджетное образовательное учреждение среднего профессионального образования московской области
«Орехово-Зуевский социально-гуманитарный колледж»

Реферат по страноведению

На тему:

«Британский юмор»

Подготовила студентка 51 группы:

Булыгина Полина

Специальность: 050303 «Иностранный язык»

2012 г.

Plan

Introduction

1. Literature

2. Television

3. Films

4. Comic Relief and Red Nose Day

Conclusion

Introduction

Humour is universal, it is found in every culture, in every language. In Great Britain it is even one of their most important national prides. But what makes British humour so specific? This form of entertainment mostly consists in the use of puns, nonsense and black comedy. That, for linguistic reasons, since the English language gives particularly great scope for word play, and also for historical reasons as the first traces of humour in British literature showed a need to react against the intolerance of Puritanism. The tradition of absurd and nonsense was rooted in English culture notably by Lewis Carroll, who was followed by loads of humorists until today, such as Monty Python.

This group of comedians is known worldwide and appreciated but scarce are the British humorists whose fame can cross the border. Indeed this kind of humour requires a good British linguistic and cultural grasp. Thus puns are almost untranslatable and visual humour is more easily appreciated by foreigners – Mr Bean is a good example. As a consequence, each person who achieves to apprehend British humour can then boast that he or she has acquired a high level of knowledge about the culture of this nation.

A strong theme of sarcasm and self-deprecation, often with deadpan delivery, runs throughout British humour. Emotion is often buried under humour in a way that seems insensitive to other cultures. Jokes are told about everything and almost no subject is taboo, though often a lack of subtlety when discussing controversial issues is considered crass. Many UK comedy TV shows typical of British humour have been internationally popular, and have been an important channel for the export and representation of British culture to the international audience.

In this report we’ll try to analyse British sense of humour considering different examples.

1. Literature

British literature is rich with a good sense of humour. We look at it in the examples of 19th-century writers, such as Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, P. G. Wodehouse and Douglas Adams.

Lewis Carroll is famous for his “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” often used literary nonsense in his works. In Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter asks Alice "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?" When Alice gives up, the Hatter replies that he does not know either, creating a nonsensical riddle. Literary nonsense is a broad categorization of literature that uses sensical and nonsensical elements to defy language conventions or logical reasoning. Even though the most well-known form of literary nonsense is nonsense verse, the genre is present in many forms of literature.

The effect of nonsense is often caused by an excess of meaning, rather than a lack of it. Nonsense is often humorous in nature, although its humour is derived from its nonsensical nature, as opposed to most humour which is funny because it does make sense.

One of the best examples is a poem “Jabberwocky”. In an early scene in which she first encounters the chess piece characters White King and White Queen, Alice finds a book written in a seemingly unintelligible language. Realising that she is travelling through an inverted world, she recognises that the verse on the pages are written in mirror-writing. She holds a mirror to one of the poems, and reads the reflected verse of «Jabberwocky». She finds the nonsense verse as puzzling as the odd land she has passed into, later revealed as a dreamscape.

«Jabberwocky» is considered one of the greatest nonsense poems written in English. Its playful, whimsical language has given us nonsense words and neologisms such as "galumphing" and "chortle". Many of the words in the poem are playful nonce words of Carroll's own invention, without intended explicit meaning.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

Possible interpretations of words:

*Jabberwocky: When a class in the Girls' Latin School in Boston asked Carroll's permission to name their school magazine The Jabberwock, he replied: "The Anglo-Saxon word 'wocer' or 'wocor' signifies 'offspring' or 'fruit'. Taking 'jabber' in its ordinary acceptation of 'excited and voluble discussion'

*Jubjub bird: 'A desperate bird that lives in perpetual passion', according to the Butcher in Carroll's later poem The Hunting of the Snark. 'Jub' is an ancient word for a jerkin or a dialect word for the trot of a horse (OED). It might make reference to the call of the bird resembling the sound "jub, jub".

*Bandersnatch: A swift moving creature with snapping jaws, capable of extending its neck. A 'bander' was also an archaic word for a 'leader', suggesting that a 'bandersnatch' might be an animal that hunts the leader of a group.

Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. Wilde, who had first set out to irritate Victorian society with his dress and talking points, then outrage it with Dorian Gray, his novel of vice hidden beneath art, finally found a way to critique society on its own terms. Lady Windermere's Fan was first performed on 20 February 1892 at St James Theatre, packed with the cream of society. On the surface a witty comedy, there is subtle subversion underneath: "it concludes with collusive concealment rather than collective disclosure". The audience, like Lady Windermere, are forced to soften harsh social codes in favour of a more nuanced view. The play was enormously popular, touring the country for months, but largely thrashed by conservative critics. It was followed by A Woman of No Importance in 1893, another Victorian comedy: revolving around the spectre of illegitimate births, mistaken identities and late revelations.

Oscar Wilde’s The importance of being Earnest, is a good example both of the characteristics of the comedy of manners and how Wilde uses irony as a subversive arm against the system. In The importance of being Earnest Oscar Wilde is doing social criticism. He fights against the system but it’s a battle where victory is impossible. Wilde knows this, so he uses irony and something like caricatures (a transcoding of caricature from painting to the literature) as his arms for this battle. The play repeatedly mocks Victorian traditions and social customs, marriage and the pursuit of love in particular. In Victorian times earnestness was considered to be the over-riding societal value, originating in religious attempts to reform the lower classes, it spread to the upper ones too throughout the century. The play's very title, with its mocking paradox (serious people are so because they do not see trivial comedies), introduces the theme, it continues in the drawing room discussion, "Yes, but you must be serious about it. I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them"

Wilde managed both to engage with and to mock the genre. The men follow traditional matrimonial rites, but the foibles they excuse are ridiculous, and the farce is built on an absurd confusion of a book and a baby. In turn, both Gwendolen and Cecily have the ideal of marrying a man named Ernest, a popular and respected name at the time, and they indignantly declare that they have been deceived when they find out the men's real names.

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was an English humorist, whose works include novels, short stories, plays and poems. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be widely read. The most famous of his works are numeral of books about Jeeves and Wooster, which became the greatest example of British class system. Bertram "Bertie" Wooster is an English gentleman, one of the "idle rich". He has his Club, he has his friends (all of whom have strange nicknames), he has his female friends with whom he tries to avoid romantic entanglements, and most of all, he has his aunts, who are to be feared. Bertie often gets into tight situations either with his friends, or trying to avoid the females, or avoid the aunts. Unfortunately, while Bertie is blessed with an upper-class life style, he was set off in life with an average sized helping of brain power... This is where Jeeves comes into things; Jeeves is a gentleman's gentleman, the ultimate man-servant. He knows which shoes go with which suit; what to wear to every event; and what to say in every situation. And while Bertie might be lacking in the brains department, Jeeves is overflowing with them. His keen mental powers are called upon time and again by Bertie to help him out of the current scrape, which Jeeves does with understated aplomb.

The story also got a series adaptation with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie’s participation.

All books about these two characters were written with great sense of humour and present a huge part of British national comedy as well as others Wodehouse’s novels.

But not only classic English literature contains national humour. If we look at the modern one, we will find the same worthy examples. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon.

The various versions follow the same basic plot but they are in many places mutually contradictory, as Adams rewrote the story substantially for each new adaptation. Throughout all versions, the series follows the adventures of Arthur Dent, a hapless Englishman. The book begins with contractors arriving at Arthur Dent's house, in order to demolish it to make way for a bypass. His friend, Ford Prefect, arrives while Arthur is lying in front of the bulldozers, to keep them from demolishing it. He tries to explain to Arthur that the Earth is about to be demolished too and will be destroyed in an hour,  by aliens who wanted to make way for a hyperspace bypass. At the very last moment our heroes saved by hitching a lift on one of the aliens’ demolition ships. That is how their adventures begin. During their travel they visit a planet of a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who built a computer named Deep Thought to calculate the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. When the answer was revealed to be 42, Deep Thought explained that the answer was incomprehensible because the beings didn't know what they were asking. It went on to predict that another computer, more powerful than itself would be made and designed by it to calculate the question for the answer. (Later on, referencing this, Adams would create the 42 Puzzle, a puzzle which could be approached in multiple ways, all yielding the answer 42.) 

This absurd humor and incredible comedic writing style struck the hearts of readers around the world and generated a huge number of fans. Here’s an example of the type of humor we can find:

* “Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet. This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.

Ah … ! What’s happening? it thought.

Hello?

Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?

What do I mean by who am I?

Calm down, get a grip now … oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? well I suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let’s call it my stomach.

Good. Ooooh, it’s getting quite strong. And hey, what’s about this whistling roaring sound going past what I’m suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that … wind! Is that a good name? Hey! What’s this thing? This … let’s call it a tail – yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can’t I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Now – have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?

No.

Or is it the wind?

There really is a lot of that now isn’t it?

And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!

I wonder if it will be friends with me?

And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was ‘Oh no, not again’. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.”

Within a couple of years of the original 1978 radio broadcasts in the UK, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy became a large international phenomenon. The original radio episodes have been broadcast in English, worldwide, and have been translated and adapted anew for radio in non-English speaking countries. The TV series, similarly, has also been broadcast worldwide.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was adapted into a science fiction comedy film directed by Garth Jennings and released in 2005. It was rolled out to cinemas worldwide during a half a year.

2. Television

British comedy, in film, radio and television, is known for its consistently quirky characters, plots and settings, and has produced some of the most famous and memorable comic actors and characters in the last fifty years.

Although many popular shows of recent years began life on BBC Radio, there have been many successful and influential series which were designed purely for TV. Almost all British comedies include at least 15 episodes per year, mini-series are generally shorter, including around 6 to 7. Following the success of Hancock's Half Hour, the sitcom became firmly entrenched in the television schedules. Some of the most successful examples include As Time Goes By, Steptoe and Son, Dad's Army and others.

Some themes (with examples) that underpinned late 20th century British humour were:

An innuendo is an insinuation or intimation about a person or thing, especially of a disparaging or a derogatory nature. It can also be a remark or question, typically disparaging (also called insinuation), that works obliquely by allusion. In the latter sense, the intention is often to insult or accuse someone in such a way that one's words, taken literally, are innocent. Innuendo in British humour is evident in the literature as far back as Beowulf and Chaucer, and it is a prevalent theme in many British folk songs.

 In the early 1930s, cartoon-style saucy postcards became widespread, and at their peak 16 million saucy postcards were sold per year. They were often bawdy, with innuendo and double entendres, and featured stereotypical characters such as vicars, large ladies and put-upon husbands, in the same vein as the Carry On films. This style of comedy was common in music halls and in the comedy music of George Formby. Many comedians from music hall and wartime gang shows worked in radio after World War 2, and characters such as Julian and Sandy on Round the Horne used innuendo extensively.

The Carry On films are a sequence of 31 low-budget British comedy motion pictures. Twenty-nine original films and one compilation were made between 1958 and 1978, with an additional movie made in 1992. The films' humour was in the British comic tradition of the music hall and seaside postcards.

The stock-in-trade of Carry On film's humour was innuendo and the gentle mockery of British institutions and customs, such as the National Health Service, the monarchy, the Empire, the military and the trade unions. Others were a parody of other films including Cleopatra, Hammer horror films and James Bond. Although the films were very often panned by critics, they proved very popular with audiences.

The films' humour was in the British comic tradition of the music hall and seaside postcards. Many of them parodied more serious films — in the case of Carry On Cleo (1964)

Round the Horne was a BBC Radio comedy programme, transmitted in four series of weekly episodes from 1965 until 1968. Round the Horne featured a parody a week, several catchphrases, and many memorable characters. The show often opened with a deadpan delivery by Horne of "the answers to last week's questions" - questions which had never been asked, and which were laced with incredible double entendres. Typical dialogue included:

Charles: "I know."

Fiona: "I know you know."

Charles: "I know you know I know."

Fiona: "Yes, I know."

These sketches would also feature long lists of synonyms but finishing with the opposite, such as:

Charles: "I was certain, positive, convinced and doctrinaire, and yet... unsure."

Round the Horne fed off and contributed to the nation's vernacular. Obscure but innocent words like posset (a medieval drink made with curdled milk) became cues for instant giggling, especially among adolescents in school. Thus Rambling Syd Rumpo may say "Green grows the grunge on my Lady's posset", making it difficult to approach the murder scene in Macbeth (Lady Macbeth: "I have drugged their possets") with the seriousness it deserved.

Another comic genre is absurd and if we talk about it we can’t pass Monty Python

Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group that created Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC in 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series. The Python phenomenon developed from the television series into something larger in scope and impact, spawning touring stage shows, films, numerous albums, several books and a stage musical as well as launching the members to individual stardom. The group's influence on comedy has been compared to The Beatles' influence on music.

The television series, broadcast by the BBC from 1969 to 1974, was conceived, written and performed by members Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Loosely structured as a sketch show, but with an innovative stream-of-consciousness approach (aided by Gilliam's animation), it pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in style and content. A self-contained comedy team responsible for both writing and performing their work, the Pythons' creative control allowed them to experiment with form and content, discarding rules of television comedy. Their influence on British comedy has been apparent for years, while in North America it has coloured the work of cult performers from the early editions of Saturday Night Live through to more recent absurdist trends in television comedy. "Pythonesque" has entered the English lexicon as a result.

Flying Circus popularised innovative formal techniques, such as the cold open, in which an episode began without the traditional opening titles or announcements. An example of this is the "It's" man: Palin, outfitted in Robinson Crusoe garb, making a tortuous journey across various terrains, before finally approaching the camera to state, "It's...", only to be then cut off by the title sequence and theme music. On several occasions the cold open lasted until mid show, after which the regular opening titles ran. Occasionally the Pythons tricked viewers by rolling the closing credits halfway through the show, usually continuing the joke by fading to the familiar globe logo used for BBC continuity, over which Cleese would parody the clipped tones of a BBC announcer. On one occasion the credits ran directly after the opening titles. Because of their dislike of finishing with punchlines, they experimented with ending the sketches by cutting abruptly to another scene or animation, walking offstage, addressing the camera (breaking the fourth wall), or introducing a totally unrelated event or character. A classic example of this approach was the use of Chapman's "Colonel" character, who walked into several sketches and ordered them to be stopped because things were becoming "far too silly."

The use of Gilliam's surreal, collage stop motion animations was another innovative intertextual element of the Python style. Many of the images Gilliam used were lifted from famous works of art, and from Victorian illustrations and engravings. The giant foot which crushes the show's title at the end of the opening credits is in fact the foot of Cupid, cut from a reproduction of the Renaissance masterpiece Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time by Bronzino. This foot, and Gilliam's style in general, are visual trademarks of the series.

The Pythons used the British tradition of cross-dressing comedy by donning frocks and makeup and playing female roles themselves while speaking in falsetto. Generally speaking, female roles were played by a woman only when the scene specifically required that the character be sexually attractive (although sometimes they used Idle for this): for the actual female roles. the troupe turned to Carol Cleveland, who co starred in numerous episodes after 1970. In some episodes and later in Monty Python's Life of Brian they took the idea one step further by playing women who impersonated men (in the stoning scene).

Many sketches are well-known and widely quoted. "Dead Parrot", "The Lumberjack Song", "Spam", "Nudge Nudge", "The Spanish Inquisition", "Upper Class Twit of the Year", "Cheese Shop" and "The Ministry of Silly Walks" are just a few examples.

Amongst the more visible cultural influences of Monty Python is the inclusion of terms either directly from, or derived from, Monty Python, into the lexicon of the English language. The most obvious of these is the term 'pythonesque', which has become a byword in surreal humour, and is included in standard dictionaries. Terry Jones commented on his disappointment at the existence of such a term, claiming the initial aim of Monty Python was to create something new and impossible to categorize and that "the fact that Pythonesque is now a word in the Oxford English Dictionary shows the extent to which we failed".

Later in 80s influenced by Monty Python's Flying Circus two Cambridge Footlights members (amateur theatrical club in Cambridge) Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie produced their own show A Bit of Fry & Laurie.

As in The Two Ronnies, elaborate satire and innuendo were staples of its material. It frequently broke the fourth wall; characters would revert into their real-life actors mid-sketch, or the camera would often pan off set into the studio. In addition, the show was punctuated with non-sequitur vox pops in a similar style to those of Monty Python's Flying Circus, often making irrelevant statements, heavily based on wordplay. Laurie was also seen playing piano and a wide variety of other instruments and singing comical numbers.

The show did not shy away from commenting on issues of the day. A sketch in the second series, in which a Conservative government minister is strangled while Stephen Fry screams at him "What are you doing to the television system? What are you doing to the country?", is an attack on the Broadcasting Act of 1990 and the perceived motivations of those who supported it. The pair would later attack what they saw as the Act's malign aftereffects in the sketch "It's a Soaraway Life", a parody of It's a Wonderful Life evoking a world in which Rupert Murdoch had not existed.

The series made numerous jokes at the expense of the Tory prime ministers of the time, Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and one sketch depicting a televised "Young Tory of the Year" competition, in which a young Conservative (Laurie) recites a deliberately incoherent speech consisting only of nonsense political buzzwords, such as "family values" and "individual enterprise".

Noel Edmonds was also a frequent target. During a sketch where Fry had supposedly removed Laurie's brain, Laurie came out and said that he had just finished watching Noel Edmonds and that he is fantastic.

Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie presented a great comedy duo acted together in different films included Jeeves and Wooster series. In fact Stephen Fry now is one of the most influential Britain famous as an actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director and British national treasure. Hugh Laurie became the most paid series actor for his role as Dr House.

Full of absurd humour one of the craziest British TV shows appeared in the end of the last century. The Mighty Boosh is a British comic fantasy troupe featuring comedians Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. Developed from 3 stage shows and a 6-episode radio series, it has since spawned a total of 20 television episodes for BBC Three and 2 live tours of the UK, as well as 2 live shows in the United States.

Fielding first met Barratt after seeing him perform his solo stand-up routine at the Hellfire Comedy Club in the Wycombe Swan Theatre, in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. The pair soon found that they shared comic interests, formed a double act, and "decided to be the new Goodies". After their first performance together at a bar ,De Hems, in London in April 1998, Barratt and Fielding developed their zookeeper characters—Howard Moon and Vince Noir, respectively—in a series of sketches for Paramount Comedy’s Unnatural Acts. Here they also met American Rich Fulcher, who became Bob Fossil. Fielding’s friend Dave Brown and Fielding's brother Michael also became regular collaborators. Noel Fielding and Michael Fielding have each separately stated that the name "Mighty Boosh" was originally a phrase used by a friend of Michael's to describe the curly hair that Michael had as a child.

In May 2004, after the success of a Boosh pilot, Steve Coogan's company, Baby Cow Productions, produced the first television series of The Mighty Boosh for BBC Three, before it moved to BBC Two in November that same year. Though each episode invariably starts and ends in Dixon Bainbridge’s dilapidated zoo, the "Zooniverse", the characters of Vince and Howard often depart for other locations, such as the Arctic tundra and limbo.

A second series, shown in July 2005, saw Howard and Vince sharing Naboo's flat in Dalston with previously minor characters Naboo and his familiar, Bollo, a gorilla living at the "Zooniverse". This series had an even looser setting as the 4 characters leave the confines of the flat in every episode, travelling in their van to a variety of surrealistic environments, including Naboo's home planet "Xooberon".

Series three started in November 2007, still set in Dalston, but this time the foursome are selling 'Bits & Bobs' in their shop, the Nabootique. Their adventures and outings in this series focused more on the involvement of new characters (e.g. Sammy the Crab, or Lester Corncrake etc.) rather than just the two of them.

Another theme in British comedy is humour inherent in everyday life is presented by the British sitcom The IT Crowd. Set in the London offices of the fictional Reynholm Industries, the show revolves around the three staff members of its IT department: a geeky genius named Maurice Moss (Ayoade), the workshy Roy Trenneman (O'Dowd), and Jen Barber (Parkinson), the department head/Relationship Manager, who knows nothing about IT. The show also focuses on the bosses of Reynholm Industries: Denholm Reynholm (Chris Morris) and his son Douglas (Berry).

The series focuse on the shenanigans of the three-strong IT support team located in a dingy, untidy, and unkempt basement – a great contrast to the shining modern architecture and stunning London views enjoyed by the rest of the organisation. The obscurity surrounding what the company does serves as a running gag throughout the series – all that is known is that the company bought and sold ITV (a fact which Denholm Reynholm forgot completely), and once made part-year profits of "eighteen hundred billion billion". Douglas Reynholm claims his father Denholm Reynholm described the IT department as being run by "a dynamic go-getter, a genius and a man from Ireland".

Moss and Roy, the two technicians, are portrayed as socially inept geeks or, in Denholm Reynholm's words, "standard nerds". Despite the company's dependence on their services, they are despised, ignored, and considered losers by the rest of the staff. Roy's exasperation is reflected in his support techniques of ignoring the phone in the hope it will stop ringing, and using reel-to-reel tape recordings of stock IT suggestions ("Have you tried turning it off and on again?" and "Is it definitely plugged in?"). He expresses his personality by wearing a different geek T-shirt in each episode. Moss' wide and intricate knowledge of all things technical is reflected in his extremely accurate yet utterly indecipherable suggestions, while he demonstrates a complete inability to deal with practical problems like extinguishing fires and removing spiders.

Jen, the newest member of the team, is hopelessly non-technical, despite claiming on her CV that she has "a lot of experience with computers". As Denholm, the company boss, is equally tech-illiterate, he is convinced by Jen's interview bluffing and appoints her head of the IT department. Her official title is "relationship manager", yet her attempts at bridging the gulf between the technicians and the business generally have the opposite effect, landing Jen in situations just as ludicrous as those of her team-mates.

The show tries to add a large number of references to geek culture and professionalism, mostly in set dressing and props. Dialogue (both technical and cultural) is usually authentic and any technobabble used often contains in-jokes for viewers knowledgeable in such subjects. Roy regularly wears shirts that feature acronyms, such as OMFG and RTFM. Series 3 Episode 1 has Roy wearing the Music Elitism Venn Diagram tee and I Screw Robots sticker from the webcomic Diesel Sweeties. On occasion, there will be movie-style scenes that parody fight scenes and melodrama.

3. Films

British comedy films are legion, but among the most notable are the Ealing comedies, the 1950s work of the Boulting Brothers, and innumerable popular comedy series including the St Trinian's films, the "Doctor" series, and the long-running Carry On films. Some of the best known British film comedy stars include Will Hay, George Formby, Sir Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers. Other actors associated with British comedy films include Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas and Leslie Phillips.

Recent successful films include the working class comedies Brassed Off (1996) and The Full Monty (1997), the more middle class Richard Curtis-scripted films Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and Notting Hill (1999) the pop-culture referencing Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy (so far Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz), and a movie based on a real life event The Boat That Rocked (2009).

Ealing Studios is a television and film production company and facilities provider at Ealing Green in West London. Will Barker bought the White Lodge on Ealing Green in 1902 as a base for film making, and films have been made on the site ever since. It is the oldest continuously working studio facility for film production in the world, and the current stages were opened for the use of sound in 1931. It is best known for a series of classic films, including Kind Hearts and Coronets, Passport to Pimlico, The Lavender Hill Mob,  and The Ladykillers. 

The Ladykillers is a 1955 British black comedy film. It is a story of  Mrs. Wilberforce a sweet and eccentric old widow who lives alone with her raucous parrots in a gradually subsiding "lopsided" house, built over the entrance to a railway tunnel, in King's Cross, London. She is approached by an archly sinister character, 'Professor' Marcus, who wants to rent rooms in her house. Unbeknown to her, he has assembled a gang of hardened criminals for a sophisticated security van robbery at King's Cross Station. As a cover, the Professor convinces the naive Mrs. Wilberforce that the group are an amateur string quintet using the room for rehearsal space.

After the heist, "Mrs. W" is deceived into retrieving the disguised "lolly" from the railway station herself. This she successfully manages to do, but not without serious complications owing to her tendency to righteous meddling. Now the real difficulties begin. As the gang departs her house with the loot, 'One-Round' accidentally gets his cello case full of banknotes trapped in the front door. As he pulls the case free, banknotes spill forth while Mrs. Wilberforce looks on. Finally, smelling a rat, she informs Marcus that she is going to the police.

Stalling, the gangsters half convince Mrs. W that she will surely be considered an accomplice. In any case, it is a victimless crime as insurance will cover all the losses and the police will probably not even accept the money back. She wavers, but rallies, and the criminals finally decide they must kill her. No one wants to do it, so they draw lots using matchsticks…

Withnail and I is a 1987 black comedy film produced by HandMade Films. It was written and directed by Bruce Robinson and is based on his life in London in the late 1960s. The main plot follows two unemployed young actors, Withnail and “I” (portrayed by Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann) who live in a squalid flat in Camden Town in 1969 while waiting for their careers to take off. Needing a holiday, they obtain the key to the country cottage in the Lake District belonging to Withnail’s uncle Monty and drive there. The holiday is less ‘recuperative’ than they expected. The film has tragic and comic elements (particularly farce) and is notable for its period music and many quotable lines. It has been described as "one of Britain's biggest cult films". The really strange thing is how this unusual in it’s format film got so deep into the hearts of the British, becoming immortal classics. Very often, when the Englishman over 30 is asked what his favorite film, he names Withnail. Comedy adventures of main characters consist of smoking, taking drugs and drinking alcohol.

There is a drinking game associated with Withnail and I. The game consists of keeping up, drink for drink, with each alcoholic substance consumed by Withnail over the course of the film. All told, Withnail is shown drinking roughly nine and a half glasses of red wine, half a pint of cider, one shot of lighter fluid (vinegar or overproof rum are common substitutes), two and a half shots of gin, six glasses of sherry, thirteen glasses of whisky and half a pint of ale.

Macabre or black humour, in which topics and events that are usually treated seriously are treated in a humorous or satirical manner, also typified by Death at a Funeral.

Set in England and taking place mainly at a family home, Daniel and his wife Jane live with his parents; when the story opens, it is the day of Daniel's father's funeral and, while in the process of organizing this event, Daniel and Jane plan to purchase a flat and move away from the parental home. Daniel's brother Robert, a renowned novelist living in New York City, would rather spend his money on a first class airline ticket to England than help finance the funeral, leaving Daniel to cover the burial expenses. As guests begin to arrive at the family home, where the funeral service is to be held, he struggles to complete a eulogy, although everyone expects Robert the writer will be the one to deliver some appropriate remarks.

Daniel's cousin Martha and her fiancé Simon are desperate to make a good impression on Martha's uptight father Victor. Their hopes for doing so are dashed when Martha, hoping to calm Simon's nerves, gives him what she believes is Valium but actually is a designer hallucinogenic drug manufactured by her brother Troy, a pharmacy student. While on the way to the funeral, Simon begins to feel its effect. The funeral became a farce.

The Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy (also known as the Blood and Ice Cream trilogy) is a series of films directed by Edgar Wright, written by Simon Pegg and Wright, and starring Pegg and Nick Frost. Each film in the trilogy is connected to a Cornetto ice cream flavour – both of the films released to date feature scenes in which one of the main characters purchases a Cornetto of the appropriate flavour. Shaun of the Dead features a red strawberry flavoured Cornetto, which signifies the film's bloody and gory elements, Hot Fuzz includes the blue original Cornetto, to signify the police element to the film, and The World's End will feature the green mint choc-chip flavour. The use of the three flavours/colours of Cornetto is a reference to Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colours film trilogy.

The first two films in the series are Shaun of the Dead (2004), "a romantic comedy with zombies". Shaun is a salesman whose life has no direction. His younger colleagues show him no respect, he has a rocky relationship with his stepfather, a tense relationship with his housemate, because of Ed Shaun's best friend who lives on their couch and deals marijuana, and his girlfriend, is dissatisfied with their social life, as it consists primarily of spending every evening at the Winchester, Shaun and Ed's favourite pub. They never do anything alone together – Shaun always brings Ed, and Liz brings her flatmates.

After a miserable day at work, Shaun meets an old friend, Yvonne (Stevenson), who asks him what he and Liz are doing for their anniversary, which makes him realise he forgot to book a table at a restaurant, as he had promised to do. Faced with this, Liz breaks up with him. Shaun drowns his sorrows with Ed at the Winchester. The two return home late and spin electro records, only to have Pete confront them, who is suffering a headache after being mugged and bitten by "some crackheads". Pete berates Shaun and tells him to sort his life out. Shaun resolves to do so.

The next morning, an uprising of zombies has overwhelmed the town, but Shaun is too busy dealing with his problems and too hungover to notice. He and Ed become aware of what is happening after watching reports on TV, as zombies attack their house. After fighting back with weapons from the shed, they decide they need to go somewhere safe. Shaun and Ed decide that the safest place they know is the Winchester.

Hot Fuzz is a buddy cop action/comedy film. Nicholas Angel, an extremely dedicated police officer in a London Police service, performs his duties so well that he is accused of making his colleagues look bad. As a result, his superiors transfer him to "crime-free" Sandford, a town in rural Gloucestershire. Once in Sandford, he immediately arrests a large group of under-age drinkers, and a drunk driver who turns out to be his partner, PC Danny Butterman. Danny, well-meaning but naive, is in awe of his new partner. Angel struggles to adjust to the slow, uneventful pace of the village. Despite clearing up several otherwise unnoticed crimes, including confiscating a naval mine and a number of unlicensed firearms, Angel soon finds his most pressing concern is an escaped swan. His attention to the letter of the law makes him the target of dislike and mockery by his co-workers. Suddenly a series of gruesome deaths shock the town; only Angel and his partner can stop it.

A third film, The World's End, began shooting in September 2012 for a 2013 release.

4. Comic Relief and Red Nose Day

Comic Relief is an operating British charity, founded in 1985 by the comedy scriptwriter Richard Curtis and comedian Lenny Henry in response to famine in Ethiopia. The highlight of Comic Relief's appeal is Red Nose Day, a biennial telethon held in March, alternating with sister project Sport Relief. Comic Relief is one of the two high profile telethon events held in the United Kingdom, the other being Children in Need, held annually in November.

Comic Relief was launched live on Noel Edmonds' Late, Late Breakfast Show on BBC1, on Christmas Day 1985 from a refugee camp in Sudan. The idea for Comic Relief came from the noted charity worker Jane Tewson, who established it as the operating name of Charity Projects, a registered charity in England and Scotland.

The charity states that its aim is to "bring about positive and lasting change in the lives of poor and disadvantaged people, which we believe requires investing in work that addresses people's immediate needs as well as tackling the root causes of poverty and injustice."

One of the fundamental principles behind working at Comic Relief is the "Golden Pound Principle" where every single donated pound is spent on charitable projects. All operating costs, such as staff salaries, are covered by corporate sponsors, or interest earned on money waiting to be distributed.

Currently, its main supporters are the BBC, BT and Sainsbury's supermarket chain. The BBC is responsible for the live television extravaganza on Red Nose Day; BT provides the telephony, and Sainsbury's sells merchandise on behalf of the charity. Since the charity was launched in 1985, Comic Relief has raised over £750 million.

Red Nose Day is the main way in which Comic Relief raises money. The first Red Nose Day (RND) was held on 5 February 1988 and since then they have been on the second or third Friday in March. RND 2011 was on 18 March. Red Nose Day is often treated as a semi-holiday; for example, many schools have non-uniform days. The day culminates in a live telethon event on BBC One, starting in the evening and going through into the early hours of the morning, but other money-raising events take place. As the name suggests, the day involves the wearing of plastic/foam red noses which are available, in exchange for a donation, from Sainsbury's and Oxfam shops.

The television programming begins in the afternoon, with CBBC having various related reports, money-raising events and celebrity gunging. This is all in-between the regular programmes, but after the six o'clock news, the normal BBC One schedule is suspended at 7 pm in favour of a live show, with a break at 10 pm for the regular news programme. Whilst the BBC News at Ten is aired on BBC One, Comic Relief continues on BBC Two, and then resumes on BBC One at 10:35 pm, with each hour overseen by a different celebrity team. These celebrities do the work for free, as do the crew, with studio space and production facilities donated by the BBC.

Regular themes throughout the shows include parodies of recent popular shows, films and events, and specially filmed versions of comedy shows. Smith and Jones, and a parody sketch starring Rowan Atkinson are both regularly featured – the first being Blackadder: The Cavalier Years (1988).

Conclusion

So what does really “British humour” mean? The fact is that the humour always was a great part of social life. Nowadays, it is just a good way to relieve the stress. But in tough times for people, such as war, it was an escape from depression and faith in the future. Humor can show people the true nature of politicians and government. Humor has always been a defense of the middle class, giving people confidence that they are right by making fun of their abusers. Especially fearless British humor at all times remaining unique and authentic. But in peaceful time humour is also useful and Comic Relief is a very good example. Having looked at many types of British humour, we can make sure that it has not changed much for the last 100 years. The themes and subjects are different, but the essence remains the same.

In popular culture, British humour is a somewhat general term applied to certain comedic motifs that are often prevalent in comedy acts originating in the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth.

Many UK comedy and TV shows typical of British humour have become popular all round the world, and, for good or bad, have been a strong avenue for the export and representation of British culture to an international audience. Of course the most cases when we use this term we mean a stereotype  and as we know, stereotypes do not really exist. But if we’re talking about a great world influence and about the contribution to British national culture we can’t just avoid the phenomena of “British humour”.

A strong theme of sarcasm and self-deprecation, often with deadpan delivery, runs throughout British humour. Emotion is often buried under humour in a way that seems insensitive to other cultures. Jokes are told about everything and almost no subject is taboo, though often a lack of subtlety when discussing controversial issues is considered crass. Many UK comedy TV shows typical of British humour have been internationally popular, and have been an important channel for the export and representation of British culture to the international audience.