monty python, morecambe and wise, stan laurel, eddie izzard, jack dee, lee evans, the two ronnies, tommy cooper.
this is a good story about why i seem miserable, and never seem to show much joy. (which isnt the case i have my happiness)
The cheek! Humourless American says we Brits are miserable. You've gotta laugh
01:02am 11th March 2008
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/dailymail.html?in_article_id=530237&in_page_id=1790
Echoing our rage: Victor Meldrew proves that it is better by far to be a sincere pessimist than a phoney optimist
As if the gales were not bad enough, there was another reason to feel battered yesterday. An American author has come up with the theory that we British are the gloomiest so-and-sos in the world.
We are, it is alleged, the all-comer champs when it comes to the grumps, Eeyore-ishness and general doldrums.
"I feel sorry for the Brits," said travel writer Eric Weiner. "They don't merely enjoy misery - they get off on it."
So how about that? Britain, far from being the culture that civilised half the 19th-century globe, is written off as sulksville.
Far from being the equable and generous souls who stood up to Hitler; far from being a small island of big-hearted, bloody-minded individualists, we are a nation of Jeremiahs.
Fair comment? Or foul calumny?
This Weiner, a bald, goatee-bearded creature with designer spectacles, is making a packet out of our alleged dejectedness.
His book, The Geography Of Bliss, sets out to identify the happiest countries in the world.
Iceland is apparently pretty pleased with itself - and given the way they nicked our cod-fishing grounds in the 1970s, who can blame them?
The tiny nation of Bhutan is also singled out for praise ("the king has made Gross National Happiness a national priority").
Moldova fares less well ("not a happy place"), but it is Britain that seems to have really got Mr Weiner's ink flowing.
The Daily Mail's Moldovan readers will excuse me, I hope, if I leave them to fight their own corner and concentrate on what this Weiner has to say about God's Own Country.
"In Britain, the happy are few and suspect," he writes. "For the British, happiness is a transatlantic import.
"And by transatlantic, they mean American. And by American they mean silly, infantile drivel.
"Britain is a great place for grumps, and most Brits, I suspect, derive a perverse pleasure from their grumpiness."
The Americans are eagerly swallowing this analysis of our national psyche.
Mr Weiner's book is reportedly hurtling off bookshop shelves over there. No doubt, many of his eager buyers are paid-up members of America's anti-British squad.
Having lived for almost four years in various parts of the U.S. I can tell you that anti-Britishness is almost as pervasive in cities such as New York, Boston and San Francisco as anti-Americanism is in the sillier parts of London and other European capitals.
So we can object, for starters, that Mr Weiner is probably writing to satisfy the prejudiced cravings of his core readership.
But given that he used to write for the New York Times - one of the most humourless, pompous newspapers in the history of print - his charge does deserve to be weighed and evaluated.
Do we British really look upon happy people with suspicion? Or is it simply a certain type of happiness - the brash, plastic, show-offy sort, in particular - that we regard with scepticism?
I am inclined to suggest the latter is the case.
True happiness, the sort which radiates from every pore of a person's being - be it with a wedding-day bride, a new grandparent or an enchanting child - is a rare quality. Were it more common it would only dilute the experience. (of course one part isnt right but 2 out of 3 aint bad)
Ecstatic happiness is, by definition, a rarity. It is an exception from the plodding norm.
It is therefore something to be cherished and mulled over privately, if only not to make other people envious.
True happiness is quite different from the braggadocio for which it is often mistaken.
Mr Weiner seems sensitive to the idea that American happiness is seen in this country as shallow.
He probably has good cause to be twitchy. Many of us do, indeed, find American chirpiness tiresome and fake.
When certain types of American bound into a room and bawl: "How are you?" they may look, on the surface, like models of sunny delight.
Their eyes may sparkle, they may nod like furry dogs on the parcel shelf of a Ford Galaxy, and they may pass all manner of compliments about your attire.
Be not deceived. Americans belong to a sales culture where a high premium is placed on self-promotion and the aura of success.
Americans believe that unless they radiate self-confidence, they will be written off as losers.
I have never met an American undertaker but I have a nasty suspicion they must find it jolly difficult to bite back a cheery "Hi there!" when grieving spouses walk through the doors of their funeral parlours.
It is simply part of their social training to be upbeat and fizzy.
We Brits, thank goodness, are different. If we fail to ping our smiles quite as much as Americans do, and if we fail to slip a new acquaintance's name into every sentence, it is not necessarily because we are splenetic ogres.
It may be that, according to the codes of our culture, we are simply showing old-fashioned restraint - good manners, as they used to be called.
We know that to gloat in happiness is to tempt the gods to hurl down their thunderbolts.
To rejoice too noisily in one's good fortune is to risk upsetting near neighbours who themselves may not have had quite such a good day.
Far better to chuckle quietly and squeeze one's knees in pleasure. Is that the more Christian and thoughtful response? Do we "get off on misery"? If Mr Weiner means that we laugh at the antics of Victor Meldrew, and recognise in that classic TV comedy an echo of our own raging at the modern world, he may be right.
Another report in yesterday's newspapers told of some research by academics at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, who had looked into national variations in humour.
The idea of Canadians earnestly peering into their microscopes in the quest for "humour" is, in itself, a richly comical idea.
Anyway, these white-coated experts at the University of Western Ontario concluded that the British may have a genetic disposition towards sarcasm and self-depreciation.
I could have told them that for a fraction of the cost of their research!
Maybe it is our weather, maybe it's the fact that we live on such a crowded island (even more crowded now, thanks to New Labour's immigration policies), but yes, we do specialise in taking ourselves down a peg or two and laughing at life's quirks and irritants.
It creates a sense of shared exasperation and helps us rub along with our fellow men. (Which i think we do on this board)
Americans may like to bond by slapping each other's palms in a high five and boasting about their sports team's latest win.
British men prefer to amble down to the pub to swap sardonic comments about how their football team lost at the weekend.
Besides, what is so bad about finding humour in adversity? It seems excellent practice for the many laments we inevitably face in this vale of tears called parenthood.
If that's "getting off on misery" as Mr Weiner claims, then so be it. Better a sincere pessimist over a phoney optimist any day
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I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii
Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.â€
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein
fun but confusing