There is an interesting back story to this character which I discovered when I saw an interview with the great Ian Hislop of Private Eye and Have I got News for you fame. The wikipedia entry for Harry Enfield and Chums states the following under the subheading Tim Nice-but-Dim Esq.

The character was initially created by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman, who are both Old Ardinians. They wrote the character as an antidote to contemporary portrayals of ex-public schoolboys as sharp-minded, high-achieving young men, and instead chose to base the character on former school contemporaries who had plenty of money and good manners but were light of intellect. Tim's catchphrase is "What an absolutely, thoroughly, bloody nice bloke!" A notable scene was him going to the school reunion of another school.

Another sketch from two of the most naturally funny comedians who dominated the TV networks when I was a child. While some of their comedy has now aged, this sketch still makes me laugh out loud. Eric Morecambe was incredibly naturally funny, I would have loved to have met him.

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.

Time to move onto some stand up comedy. I begin with Peter Kay who has produced some masterful material over his career capturing the many foibles of human existence. In this particularly funny segment, Kay picks up on the common problem we all have (especially as we get older) of completely mishearing lyrics.

I find this sketch particularly interesting as a physiologist because it also demonstrates how our brains can be so easily tricked if we are presented contrary information about the content of what we are hearing. Kay tells the audience what he wants them to hear and then mouths the incorrect lyric over the song and incredibly this is exactly then what you here. The most dramatic demonstration of this is in the song "We are family where he suggests they are singing "just let me staple the vicar". The correct lyrics are "just let me state for the record". If you play this part of the sketch and focus on the correct lyric of "just let me state for the record" you will actually correctly hear the correct words. Quite incredible really.

Time for some more Blackadder. The last time I cited Blackadder on this website was all the way back in June when the days were warm and long. That particular set of sketches was taken from the final series of Blackadder which was set in World War I. This Blackadder is set around the time of George the 3^rd and this historical context created lots of opportunities for the very clever comedy writers of Blackadder to create a series of master sketches. These wonderful sketches have brought many people much joy over many years and have raised the spirits of those who are feeling the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune".

On the day I wrote this post, the UK was in utter political chaos. It is heart breaking the damage the current Conservative government has done to Britain through their corruption, incompetence and greed. Brexit has been the disaster that was predicted yet as with all major mistakes made by those in power, the most affected by their errors are the poor.

Sadly, however this has always been the reality of situation, and the 2007 banking crisis was another great demonstration of how those who cause the most damage to our society, face zero negative consequences while nonetheless being highly rewarded for their mistakes. In many ways, I think this is one of the biggest problems with modern Capitalism. It prides itself on the idea that the free market will be a good arbiter of judging success and failure yet in reality, we often find that those who do offer the most benefit to society are not rewarded even with a liveable wage while those who cause the most damage (and this includes CEOs who destroy individual companies) are almost never held to account. Sadly, those who try to raise this objection are often dismissed as simply being too left-wing when in fact this critique has no bearing on one's view of how socialistic a society should be.

Returning to the comedy at hand, Bird and Fortune were too rather elderly Gentleman who produced a cracking series in the naughties critiquing the obvious political shenanigans that plagued the globe around the time of the financial crisis of 2007/8 and the war on terrorism that preceded it. Sadly John Fortune passed away on New Year's eve of 2013 aged 74 while John Bird passed away only recently on Christmas Eve of 2022 aged 86. RIP John F & John B.

So just under a year ago I opened my comedy section with a series of sketches from the late great Dave Allen. Therefore it seems appropriate to bring this little series to a close with the late great Allen capturing his thoughts on air travel a theme which of course has been the butt of much comedy over many years.

Bonus Clip

When I was a young child my late father used to have a single record from the American Comedian Shelly Berman. One of the sketches on this record was the one posted below. As children my brother and I used to listen to this record again and again. After leaving Australia in 1997, I did not hear the sketch again until a few years ago when I looked it up on Youtube. Hearing it again brought back lots of pleasant memories and made me feel very nostalgic for a past age that is now long gone. A time even before modern jet engines as this sketch was old even when I was a boy. Sadly in the Youtube version below, the sketch is cut off before it finishes.