Being an early generation Xer, as a young man I grew up with the TV series friends. At the time Chandler was just one of the very funny characters that made this show so enjoyable to watch. It was only when the actor who played Chandler, Matthew Perry, passed away at the end of October this year that many interviews of him resurfaced where he openly spoke about his mental health issues and his struggle with alcoholism and drug abuse. Sadly, like many artistically talented folk before him, Matthew clearly had to battle for many years against his inner demons, a battle that finally he would lose although thankfully not at the tender age of 27 which is that strange age that appears to claim so many of rock stars. Below is a collection of funny moments from the first series of Friends.

The works of Monty Python are a bit like marmite. You either hate them or love them. I personally enjoy some of the Python movies and one of my favourites was Monty Python and the Holy Grail. There are so many classic scenes from this movie but one of my favourites is when king Arthur receives a lecture on modern constitutional democracy. Probably a lesson that our current PM contenders Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak would do well to learn.

So I guess this strictly isn't comedy although it certainly contains very funny elements. I must confess I am mentally exhausted living in a world where wicked people always get away with it and seemingly never face the consequences of their many crimes. I think for me the last few years in Britain has been really tough as I have witness an extremist faction of the Tory party (the European Research Group) get control of the party and through their stooge Boris Johnson, completely reek havoc on the UK economy by taking Britain out of the European Union trading bloc while allowing a man like Johnson, who does not have a honest bone in his body, lie his way through his premiership. The harsh consequences for the country has been the highest death toll in Europe from Covid-19, a National Health Service in complete meltdown, sustained double digit inflation, a severe cost of living crisis that the government is not even pretending to deal with, and finally a political campaign to find Johnson's replacement fought by too completely incompetent non-entities who should not have a job cleaning toilets let alone running the UK as the next PM.

Anyway, in this video you will see how Kitboger strings along a professional scammer, who normally preys on poor old ladies and gentlemen, to waste 5 hours of his day and give him the complete run-around as he thinks he has an easy target on which to ply his trade. The sense of schadenfreude in is strong in this video.

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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.

In week 23 I posted some material from the series the IT crowd which was a brilliant series that screened in the naughties. Although all the episodes were very funny, two that were exceptionally good were "Are we not men?" (a nice reference to Devo there) and "The work outing". I have already cited the first bit of the work outing in September last year so now it is time for the next instalment. For the context of where this sketch starts, click here to watch part I.

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.

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.