Another funny sketch from Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse. In this series part of the charm of this humour was simply capturing the odd characteristics of certain iconic characters that exist in every generation in this strange world we all find ourselves in. The ultra posh private Harley Street specialist routine is just so funny as in high powered medicine you do end up getting some characters, especially at the top echelons of the profession.

After living in the UK for just over 30 years, I have come to the conclusion that one of the ways the British cope with their corrupt politicians is by laughing at them. Although this method helps makes coping with the worst excesses of the British class system bearable, I wonder if it might inadvertently stifle true political progress in the UK? Certainly Boris Johnson is one of the most terrible, lying corrupt Prime Ministers Britain has had for well over a century. Yet so much of his appeal to the voting public is he was able to play the fool and make people laugh. Although I enjoy British humour very much, I do hope that one day the Brits come to realise that the amount of corruption in their political system probably rivals some of archetypal African nations to which so many Brits feel superior in relation to their "mother of all Parliaments".

I think one of the funniest comedy series made in the teens of the 21^st was the IT crowd. The concept of the series is based around the IT department of a big multinational (Reynholme industries) that produces a product that is never revealed (part of the comical concept of the whole series). The IT department consists of two geeky guys: a classical geek (Moss) and a more subtle geek (Roy) who boasts to his boss Jen in the final episode of the whole series that his girlfriend thinks he is on the "emotional artistic spectrum". In some episodes (including this one) a goth called Richmond, who lives in the Server room, also puts in an appearance just to add to fun.

The series in general was brilliant but like all series, there were some episodes that were particularly funny. This clip is taken from the first episode of season 2 where Moss and Roy gate crash a date with their boss Jen who taken to the theatre by a bloke she hopes will be her next love interest. Unfortunately for her, he is gay and the musical he takes them to is not what one would describe as "mainstream". Yet given this is Moss's very first time at the theatre, he is very impressed, although, unbeknown to him and Roy, things are going to get interesting as the episode unfolds with Roy having to fake he is disabled and Moss ending up working behind the drinks counter and causing utter mayhem. All crazy stuff that generates a ton of very funny comedy. The clip below is the beginning of this very funny episode.

I live in a house with 3 women (two daughters and one wife) so Strictly come dancing is a weekly fixture. While I have tried to get into the show, I only find it mildly entertaining so tend to watch the show very occasionally. However, whenever I do watch it, I am always struck by lots of very young pretty woman and hunky blokes spending hours together in close physical contact. It therefore has never surprised me that dancing couples not too infrequently end up in some form of short or long term physical (and or romantic) relationship. I guess it was only a matter of time before a comedy group would also pick up this truth and run with it in a funny sketch. Nice also to see Michael Spicer (the room next door) making a guest appearance in this sketch.

So here is my crazy take on the British as an Aussie immigrant, hahem, I mean expat living in England. This is my hypothesis that aims to explain everything British. The population is dominated by four phenotypes:

1. The Innovator
2. The Gossip
3. The Bad Manager
4. The Comedian

The innovators are incredible. The level of British genius at the top never ceases to amaze me and explains how the Brits were able to change the world through science and technology. A few favourites of mine are Sanger, Newton, Turing and Penrose. The gossips are those who either read the Daily Mail and take it seriously or write rags like the Daily Mail. They are important at making sure the manager phenotypes retain power.

The Bad managers are those that do real damage to Britain and sadly they don't just occupy councils, parliament and the lords, but they occupy pretty much every large business and organisation in Britain from the NHS to the Universities to the middle management of many MSEs and multinationals in the UK. I could write volumes on this lot but if you live in the UK, you only have to experience the omnishambles of the current Tory party to know what I mean. Yet I will point out two subtle symptoms of this group that some may have missed. If you were an innovator trying to write a three year research grant, the compulsory inclusion of a detailed 3 year Gantt chart, along with building some artificially large research consortium, are symptoms that the manager phenotypes have got control of your discipline.

The second characteristic is excessive accounting based on them projecting their own dishonesty onto the rest of the population. Yes we must make them spend hours filling in detailed financial reports on their grant expenditure every few months because, if we had that money, of course we would syphon it off for our own personal use. Braverman is an ugly specimen of this trait when she talks about cracking down on those at the bottom cheating the tax payer by claiming universal credit while she puts over £100k through on MP expenses.

And now we come to most interesting phenotype of all: the comedians. Britain produces by far the best comedians in the world and it is in times of deep political crisis that their work goes into overdrive. What the Managers don't realise is they owe as much to the comedian phenotype as they do to the gossip class because British comedy gives the suffering populous a safety valve to dissipate their anger and rage. Without the comedy phenotype, I think the Brits would be more like the French with much more violent protest to the current shitshow of manager phenotypes that have infested the Tory party. If you have read this far then you deserve a lovely taste of the British humour that is being generated at this bleak time in British politics.

So as the continuing insanity of this Tory Party continues, the comedians are hard at work satirising the crazy world we seem to now inhabit in Britain as the government continues to appoint ministers who, at best, are clearly out of depth in terms of the skills required for their role and, at worst, express opinions which just 10 years ago were only heard within the ranks of the British National Party (here's looking at you Suella Braverman).

One of my favourite shows on TV in the 80s was Alas Smith and Jones. Thankfully I also had the pleasure of seeing them in concert when they toured Australia. This sketch goes all the way back to when the Channel Tunnel was under construction and is a classic dig at two particular weaknesses in English culture: 1) poor upper management and 2) terrible workmanship. Sadly if you spend any time living in the UK you will experience both. While there are great trades people in the UK they are sadly not in the majority. Rather a sizeable number are absolute cowboys who do terrible work if they ever complete it in the first place.

Likewise the standard of British management in my experience can also be pretty poor. I have now worked in universities and for both small and large companies and for some mysterious reason the more dysfunctional and incompetent a person is the more likely it seems that they will end up rising to a very senior position. I guess this phenomenon is so common that academics have even tried to give it a name. The Peter Principle was first proposed in 1969 in a semi-satirical book by Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull and was actually based on Peter's research into the operations of hierarchical organizations. Yet I think the modified version of this principle, first proposed by the author of the Dilbert cartoons (Scott Adams) is even closer to the truth. The Peter principle states that individuals in an organisation are promoted to the point where they reach a level of incompetence that prevents them from being promoted further while the Dilbert principle goes one step further stating that individuals are promoted because of their incompetence.