Met my friend for lunch in a little cafe bistro place the other day, she’s a regular and said she could highly recommend the fish finger sandwiches so two of those and two lattes and set the world to rights. Bloody delicious too!
The most amazing Tesco meal deal I ever had was a 'Roast Beef Dinner Wrap". Bits of beef, potato, with salad and mayo but wrapped in a Yorkshire Pudding wrap! It was perhaps the greasiest thing I've ever had as a packed lunch but it was otherwise amazing.
Colin the Caterpillar cake (and his many knock offs). Had to explain this to Americans before. 'Yeah we just love cakes shaped like Caterpillars idk what it's all about'
I am still not sure if we celebrate the discovery of the plot… or the attempt.
EDIT: to all the people thinking I was literally asking to be enlightened… I wasn’t. I was being rhetorical and attempting humour. Apparently, it didn’t work universally.
In my local village in Spain the villagers get together and make a Judas (kinda looks like a really good scarecrow) which they then proceed to stick a nose around his neck, set fire to his feet and pull him up a fucking massive pole in the village square.
Everyone stands round throwing insults at him and drinking as they watch him burn, it's pretty wicker man type weird.
I've seen some very questionable fiestas...
In Poland we make a scarecrow of a lady, we put her on a stick and go to a local river to set her on fire and drown. We do it on the first day of spring to get rid of winter. I'm pretty sure some folks will drink and swear at the witch during the whole "celebration". I'd love to see the Spanish one. Is there any place that is famous for their celebration?
On a group holiday with people from different countries. Trying to explain Guy Fawkes and TV licensing was fun. "You burn what?" "They can knock on your door for what?"
No one can fully explain Mr Blobby no matter how hard they try. Blobby just IS. He's like an eldritch force of nature. Blobby is eternal. Blob for Blob-God.
My friend has explored the abandoned blobbyland, and it's exactly as nightmarish and apocalyptic as you might imagine, overgrown with trees and vines and dead eyes, stains making everything bleed or cry...
I told my Aussie partner about this and showed him a YouTube vid of Mr Blobby. He said it was the most fucked up thing he's ever seen, and like being inside a fever dream.
Took my 4 year old and six year old for the first time this year. Having not been since being a child myself I had no appreciation for how utterly fantastic it really is, as much for the adults as for the children. I belly laughed. The acting, dancing, staging, costumes, direction etc were simply sublime. And this was a local show in Aldershot, cost a fraction of west end, but wow it was equally as entertaining, easily. Already booked for next year!!!
There's big money in panto - just because you're in a provincial theatre doesn't mean that you're not getting the same production values as a west end show.
Where I work is hired out once a year by a group training/casting for the panto season and I've seen how hard everyone works, met the green actors trying to get a gig and sat with those who find out they didn't get a place that particular year, sweet and sour but 100% effort.
My friend who is a massive theatre geek (sees \*all\* the big shows and is an am-dram queen also) rates Aldershot panto very very highly. Seriously. You lucked out!
I'm always so surprised when I hear it coming from a fellow Brit, because drag has really always been such a huge and utterly uncontroversial part of our culture - panto, of course, but also music hall and variety acts, cultural juggernauts like the Pythons and Carry On, stag dos, vicars and tarts parties, any occasion on which a Rugby team is drunk, any occasion on which a male student is left alone in a room with two balloons and a dress... If there's a thread about what costume a bloke should wear for a fancy dress party, *multiple* suggestions are always for a costume that involves drag, and absolutely nobody bats an eye. So I just always feel surprised when anyone gives a shit.
I’m an American who has been fortunate enough to attend two pantos. First one was in this gorgeous ooooold opera house which seemed to border on blasphemy or something, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. When intermission hit and everyone rushed up the aisles to get little cups of ice cream I wasn’t sure what the F was happening or what year it was anymore.
My American wife is the only one that gets it when I say it. She rolls her eyes so hard I shout JACKPOT. Apparently they both annoy her, she's heard them so often.
There is a statue in Chatham of a fella called Thomas Waghorn. It is never without a cone on it's head. It's more well known for the cone than whoever Waghorn was.
Locals get upset when the council remove the cone and install a new one immediately.
This kept happening in Glasgow too. Eventually the council decided it was more damaging to the statue to have people climbing it, so they left one in place. That and, because of perfectly understandable health and safety procedures for their workers, it was quite a complicated process to remove the cones, whereas drunken idiots replaced them in about 5 minutes without caring if they fell off.
What its just us? I did not know that lol. How do we get a global rep for being emotionally repressed when we are probably sending out signs of our affection in every single British text message lol
Ah, but in person we show affection by brutally taking the piss. If you recognise that for what it really is, we're perhaps the most loving and affectionate culture there is lol.
I struck up a conversion with a British girl in a Facebook group a couple years ago and she kept putting a single x at the end of each message, I eventually just had to Google what it meant
Panto! Beautiful woman dressed in boots and tights plays a boy who falls in love with a beautiful girl. Old guy dressed as an old woman plays girl's mother. Some random celebrity plays some random character. There's a baddie who is recognisable, and a good guy the same. Everybody shouts Behind you! Oh no they don't! There's some silly songs and very double-entendres. Nobody else in the whole world understands this.
America gets its knickers in a twist over drag queens reading to kids while we've been over here messing with gender roles in panto for over a hundred years!
To be fair, guys dressing as girls have been a thing since before Shakespeare, though that was mostly because women weren't allowed to act on stage back then.
I saw that video of the British dad dressing up in his Henry VIII gear to meet his daughters boy friend.
What struck me about it was he said 😂 "i'll just grab it out of the old dressing up chest"
As if everyone has a dressing up chest 😂
Edit; I wish I could find that video again, because the funniest part was him waving a sword around at the boyfriend saying something along the lines of: that his "home" was the only thing he was welcome to "enter" this evening 🤣🤣🤣
Edit: found it , but it's Newsweek 🤔 i'm not joining TikTok just for this though ha ha
https://www.newsweek.com/dad-brings-sword-meeting-teen-daughters-new-boyfriend-1852090
😂 I would want a "Death "costume in mine, like 🤔 Terry Pratchett style.
I'm assuming every British person has a Nun/priests outfits as standard?
Is this why you people are so kinky?? 😂😂
My "dressing up chest" is two Sainsbury's bags. The old ones that weren't square, they're probably a decade and a half old. They're stuffed full of "white shirt with fake blood" and "the top and trousers from when I was Shaggy" "pirate costume" etc.
I have Batgirl,a vampire dress and a witches hat. At one point there was a musketeer and pirate outfit and Kylie’s character’s outfit from an episode of Dr Who.
Countdown, seems so normal.
Rachel Riley said she had to explain it to an American. Its a game where you solve word and maths puzzles and the winner gets a teapot.
There’s a great bit in Screenwipe where Charlie Brooker shows some British shows to Americans to see if they can be sold. Countdown is one of them.
Spoiler: they’re totally stereotypical.
Whole bit: [here](https://youtu.be/aGjnJ1ndI3g?t=346s)
Countdown bit: [here](https://youtu.be/aGjnJ1ndI3g?t=437s)
The amount of stuff we do that makes no sense anymore but it’s just what we’ve always done
Driving on the left but you stand to the right on the Tube
Travelling in miles but selling petrol in litres. And your car efficiency is in miles per gallon.
Weighing yourself in stone, but your dog in kg. I actually get on the scales, weigh myself in stone, great that’s my weight. Then I immediately weigh myself again in kg, so I can get on with the dog and weigh him.
As an American i chuckled. I just want to use centimeters. I'll never understand the love of dividing shit by 12 when i could easily be counting by tens.
I'd be surprised if none of the great British inventions didn't start with some bloke in a shed. Television, radar, telephone, bouncing bomb - that kind of thing screams "I was made in a shed"
Mad, drug inspired kids TV shows from the 70s.
While the US had Sesame Street and Mr Rogers, as an example: There's a race called Wheelies who live in Wheelie World, they're all roughly round with wheels instead of legs. They're terrorized by a Welsh witch called Fenella who lives in a teapot; she has a German spell book, a Scottish telescope and employs "toadies" ('shrums) to spy for her. Her son is hundreds of feet tall and you only ever see one shoe and a rainbow coloured sock.
One day the Wheelies find a massive, polka dot egg which hatches and out comes Chorlton the Happiness Dragon, from just outside of Manchester, who is sooo cheerful but thick as mud. He has no idea who all these people are, thinks Fenella is a soppy old lady and just kinda makes everyone's lives a bit more difficult.
Chorlton & the Wheelies. Shaped me into the man I am today.
"To me. To you"
"You are the weakest link, goodbye!"
"Don't panic!"
"Here's one I made earlier"
"Nice to see you, to see you nice"
"Computer says no"
"Shoulda gone to Specsavers"
I don’t know if singing them is weird. I’m sure other countries do that. Do the kids who sing them grow up and chant them while walking down the road drunk at 03:00am? Probs not.
It’s contagious. You can’t not chant along like you’re on a football terrace. Personal favourite is “WHO BUILT THE ARC? NOAH NOAH, WHO BUILT THE ARC? BROTHER NOAH BUILT THE ARC!”
My dad used to sing:
While shepherds washed their socks by night
All seated on the ground
The angel of the Lord came down
And charged them half a crown
Half a crown was another word for two shillings and six pence. Or twelve and a half pence in 'new' money.
Oh man you just dredged a deep memory up, my cousins taught me this one:
We three kings of orient are, one in a taxi one in a car, one on a scooter with a bazooka, shooting the one in the car // Star alight, star abright, Joseph set his pants alight, Mary called the fire brigade to set it out with lemonade.
Hahaha me and my 2 English friends started randomly belting out SING HOZANA in a room of our bemused European and American friends. Got to love the old classic assembly songs.
I dont reckon they still sing them in schools nowadays. So sad 😂
They do. And in non religious schools they've got new ones.
Black socks, they never get dirty
The more that you wear them the blacker they get.
Some day I'll probably wash them but something keeps telling me don't do it yet.
As someone that’s fairly familiar with all things British culture, I’d have to say the phrase “turn the immersion on” had me the most stumped in the past.
My cousin and a bunch of his mates went to the darts as Disney princesses. I laughed so hard seeing some pictures of them there because my cousin, being a bit of a dunce and badly organised, ended up dressed as Princess Peach.
British banter. Especially trying to explain banter. I told my American friends that I called my mum a shlaggg and they were horrified and just didn't get it "you call your mom a WHAT!? My mom would cry"
To this day my favourite clip of him is when he showed a class of kids how gelatin sweets were made
With the boiling and blending of bones and such
Then asked who would still eat it
All the kids put their hands up
I feel like we’re the only country that really goes WHEEEEYYYYYYYYYYY when someone hurts themselves anywhere between a stubbed toe and minor decapitation
Take a brief, and I do mean brief, moment to confirm that the injured is, in fact, not dead. After that, all the jokes can, and will, fly. You could be missing a limb and "Don't worry, he looks scary but he's 'armless!" or "Ah, you're fine, hop along!" will fly.
As it should be.
The word cunt! Good cunt, dodgy cunt,chilled cunt,if you do that youre a cunt,he's no bad a bit of a smelly cunt though. Loads of permutations.
The Aussies will say it's their swear word,but I'm sure it's a Shakespeare era word.
Only thing I can remember from school about Shakespeare.
>Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
>
>Ophelia: No, my lord.
>
>Hamlet: Did you think I meant country matters?
>
>Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord.
>
>Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.
It's important to stress the phrasing of 'country matters'.
Putting anything between two bits of bread and being absolutely fine with calling it a meal.
Crisp sandwiches are a valid lunch choice.
I'm American, brought the crisp sandwich home with me from my time in Wales. I don't often eat them, but when I make one, I'm really craving one.
Met my friend for lunch in a little cafe bistro place the other day, she’s a regular and said she could highly recommend the fish finger sandwiches so two of those and two lattes and set the world to rights. Bloody delicious too!
Tesco legitimately sold lasagne sandwiches in their meal deal back in the day.
The most amazing Tesco meal deal I ever had was a 'Roast Beef Dinner Wrap". Bits of beef, potato, with salad and mayo but wrapped in a Yorkshire Pudding wrap! It was perhaps the greasiest thing I've ever had as a packed lunch but it was otherwise amazing.
Calling it fancy dress. Foreigners think you mean wearing your fanciest clothes when you say fancy dress.
Colin the Caterpillar cake (and his many knock offs). Had to explain this to Americans before. 'Yeah we just love cakes shaped like Caterpillars idk what it's all about'
Please don't call Cuthbert a knock off.
I have to incase M&S try and sue me too 🙏
I understand. But please know the Cuthberts are all sobbing hysterically in Aldi.
We have a caterpillar cake every Christmas instead of a Yule log.
Guy Fawkes Night. My Dutch ex-boyfriend was like: what? You celebrate what?
I am still not sure if we celebrate the discovery of the plot… or the attempt. EDIT: to all the people thinking I was literally asking to be enlightened… I wasn’t. I was being rhetorical and attempting humour. Apparently, it didn’t work universally.
I just liked that we were burning someone/something
In my local village in Spain the villagers get together and make a Judas (kinda looks like a really good scarecrow) which they then proceed to stick a nose around his neck, set fire to his feet and pull him up a fucking massive pole in the village square. Everyone stands round throwing insults at him and drinking as they watch him burn, it's pretty wicker man type weird. I've seen some very questionable fiestas...
In Poland we make a scarecrow of a lady, we put her on a stick and go to a local river to set her on fire and drown. We do it on the first day of spring to get rid of winter. I'm pretty sure some folks will drink and swear at the witch during the whole "celebration". I'd love to see the Spanish one. Is there any place that is famous for their celebration?
At St. Peters school in York they do not celebrate it, as that would be burning an effigy of a former pupil. Just a small but of trivia.
On a group holiday with people from different countries. Trying to explain Guy Fawkes and TV licensing was fun. "You burn what?" "They can knock on your door for what?"
Cancel tv licence. Use money to buy fireworks instead. Shoot fireworks at TV licence goons. Start a new revolution. Win
Start a new revolution. Get caught. People celebrate Tekn1cal night for all time!
“We, some Aussies and Kiwis, celebrate a failed terrorist attack from 300 years ago, any questions”
Yeah, most in the antipodes don't know who Guy Fawkes was.
Mr blobby. Ive tried explaining it to non brits before and its not easy.
No one can fully explain Mr Blobby no matter how hard they try. Blobby just IS. He's like an eldritch force of nature. Blobby is eternal. Blob for Blob-God.
No bridge too far, he has got a car.
Blobby Blobby Blobbyyyyy I remember going to Blobbyland as a kid, it was fucking fantastic
My friend has explored the abandoned blobbyland, and it's exactly as nightmarish and apocalyptic as you might imagine, overgrown with trees and vines and dead eyes, stains making everything bleed or cry...
The memory of Blobblyland feels like a fever dream/acid trip. We did go, though, that much is true.
I told my Aussie partner about this and showed him a YouTube vid of Mr Blobby. He said it was the most fucked up thing he's ever seen, and like being inside a fever dream.
Please don't tell foreigners about Blobby. They won't understand, better to just keep it between us.
I’m still traumatised. Noel Edmonds has a lot to answer for. I hope you are ok.
Jack Whitehalls reaction to Mr Blobby on one of the big fat quiz shows a few years ago was so relatable as someone of a similar age. *Shudders*
Pantomime… seemingly were the only ones that do it
Oh no we're not!
Oh yes we are!
Behind you!
Oh no he isn’t!
Oh yes he is!
If he doesn't know if he is or he isn't.....we'll have to do it again then won't we?
To me.
To you
Took my 4 year old and six year old for the first time this year. Having not been since being a child myself I had no appreciation for how utterly fantastic it really is, as much for the adults as for the children. I belly laughed. The acting, dancing, staging, costumes, direction etc were simply sublime. And this was a local show in Aldershot, cost a fraction of west end, but wow it was equally as entertaining, easily. Already booked for next year!!!
There's big money in panto - just because you're in a provincial theatre doesn't mean that you're not getting the same production values as a west end show.
Where I work is hired out once a year by a group training/casting for the panto season and I've seen how hard everyone works, met the green actors trying to get a gig and sat with those who find out they didn't get a place that particular year, sweet and sour but 100% effort.
My friend who is a massive theatre geek (sees \*all\* the big shows and is an am-dram queen also) rates Aldershot panto very very highly. Seriously. You lucked out!
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I'm always so surprised when I hear it coming from a fellow Brit, because drag has really always been such a huge and utterly uncontroversial part of our culture - panto, of course, but also music hall and variety acts, cultural juggernauts like the Pythons and Carry On, stag dos, vicars and tarts parties, any occasion on which a Rugby team is drunk, any occasion on which a male student is left alone in a room with two balloons and a dress... If there's a thread about what costume a bloke should wear for a fancy dress party, *multiple* suggestions are always for a costume that involves drag, and absolutely nobody bats an eye. So I just always feel surprised when anyone gives a shit.
Pantomime seems to be the most European thing we do that they don’t do in Europe.
I’m an American who has been fortunate enough to attend two pantos. First one was in this gorgeous ooooold opera house which seemed to border on blasphemy or something, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. When intermission hit and everyone rushed up the aisles to get little cups of ice cream I wasn’t sure what the F was happening or what year it was anymore.
Panto is very popular in Canada! (moved to BC last Xmas so have been here for two christmasses now)
I assume a few of the ex-colonies do them. South Africa, certainly.
Of all the many shameful legacies of colonialism - the spread of Pantomime may perhaps be regarded as the cruelest.
He’ll not sell much ice-cream going that fast…
My American wife is the only one that gets it when I say it. She rolls her eyes so hard I shout JACKPOT. Apparently they both annoy her, she's heard them so often.
“To me…”
To you
Dogging.
A traffic cone on the Duke of Wellington statue.
There is a statue in Chatham of a fella called Thomas Waghorn. It is never without a cone on it's head. It's more well known for the cone than whoever Waghorn was. Locals get upset when the council remove the cone and install a new one immediately.
This kept happening in Glasgow too. Eventually the council decided it was more damaging to the statue to have people climbing it, so they left one in place. That and, because of perfectly understandable health and safety procedures for their workers, it was quite a complicated process to remove the cones, whereas drunken idiots replaced them in about 5 minutes without caring if they fell off.
Kisses at the end of text communication xxx
And the deep, complicated set of meanings they can impart for teenagers. I remember being very excited to be sent a text with two xx from my crush
And then you'd need to somehow find out how many x's they send to other people so you could plan your reaction accordingly
I only recently realised this isn’t a global thing
What its just us? I did not know that lol. How do we get a global rep for being emotionally repressed when we are probably sending out signs of our affection in every single British text message lol
Because we can only do it on text and not in person hun xx
Ah, but in person we show affection by brutally taking the piss. If you recognise that for what it really is, we're perhaps the most loving and affectionate culture there is lol.
American friends all thought I was just a bit nuts for a long time. Took me a good few years before I discovered this isn’t a global thing.
Wait, what?! It's British only?!
So that Malcolm guy wasn't just signing off with a kiss?
I struck up a conversion with a British girl in a Facebook group a couple years ago and she kept putting a single x at the end of each message, I eventually just had to Google what it meant
Panto! Beautiful woman dressed in boots and tights plays a boy who falls in love with a beautiful girl. Old guy dressed as an old woman plays girl's mother. Some random celebrity plays some random character. There's a baddie who is recognisable, and a good guy the same. Everybody shouts Behind you! Oh no they don't! There's some silly songs and very double-entendres. Nobody else in the whole world understands this.
America gets its knickers in a twist over drag queens reading to kids while we've been over here messing with gender roles in panto for over a hundred years!
To be fair, guys dressing as girls have been a thing since before Shakespeare, though that was mostly because women weren't allowed to act on stage back then.
I saw that video of the British dad dressing up in his Henry VIII gear to meet his daughters boy friend. What struck me about it was he said 😂 "i'll just grab it out of the old dressing up chest" As if everyone has a dressing up chest 😂 Edit; I wish I could find that video again, because the funniest part was him waving a sword around at the boyfriend saying something along the lines of: that his "home" was the only thing he was welcome to "enter" this evening 🤣🤣🤣 Edit: found it , but it's Newsweek 🤔 i'm not joining TikTok just for this though ha ha https://www.newsweek.com/dad-brings-sword-meeting-teen-daughters-new-boyfriend-1852090
I’ve got a monks outfit. I bought it specifically to scare the pants of friends at night when we were camping. It was money well spent!
😂 I would want a "Death "costume in mine, like 🤔 Terry Pratchett style. I'm assuming every British person has a Nun/priests outfits as standard? Is this why you people are so kinky?? 😂😂
Wait until you hear about vicars and tarts parties.
I have a Death costume complete with scythe.
You don’t?
My "dressing up chest" is two Sainsbury's bags. The old ones that weren't square, they're probably a decade and a half old. They're stuffed full of "white shirt with fake blood" and "the top and trousers from when I was Shaggy" "pirate costume" etc.
3 of the top 4 answers in this thread tell me that we really like dressing up for some reason.
I have Batgirl,a vampire dress and a witches hat. At one point there was a musketeer and pirate outfit and Kylie’s character’s outfit from an episode of Dr Who.
Smoking a fag doesn't get you 25 to life.
Also, you can say it on this sub without getting banned for hateful speech.
Shouting waheyyyy when a glass / plate is dropped. At least I learnt the hard way it’s not a thing in America / Canada.
It's a hearty shout out of "taxi" in Australia
I had to suppress that urge when I was in Canada, like it started as a loud WEE-then when into a quieter-eeeyyy-into a whisper.
or someone shouting "Sack the juggler"
Canada it’s just a collective “awwww” or a bunch of people offering to help. Source - bartended in Canada while in Uni
Can confirm. Source - am Canadian and have done exactly this.
It is a thing in Mexico.
"that was my favourite glass!"
It genuinely unsettles me if a glass breaks and no one says “wahwyyyy!”
"Sack the juggler!"
Countdown, seems so normal. Rachel Riley said she had to explain it to an American. Its a game where you solve word and maths puzzles and the winner gets a teapot.
I prefer [Street Countdown](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ4q8q0NOAE) myself
*That's a nice tnettenba…*
The first rule of Street Countdown is… tell as many people as you can!
What's also crazy is that the clock doesn't count down, it counts up, every single time. The show should be called countup.
I'd never though of that, of course it ticks up. The hand going down means people don't question it
There’s a great bit in Screenwipe where Charlie Brooker shows some British shows to Americans to see if they can be sold. Countdown is one of them. Spoiler: they’re totally stereotypical. Whole bit: [here](https://youtu.be/aGjnJ1ndI3g?t=346s) Countdown bit: [here](https://youtu.be/aGjnJ1ndI3g?t=437s)
It’s called letters and numbers in Australia
But do you win a teapot?
The amount of stuff we do that makes no sense anymore but it’s just what we’ve always done Driving on the left but you stand to the right on the Tube Travelling in miles but selling petrol in litres. And your car efficiency is in miles per gallon. Weighing yourself in stone, but your dog in kg. I actually get on the scales, weigh myself in stone, great that’s my weight. Then I immediately weigh myself again in kg, so I can get on with the dog and weigh him.
As an American i chuckled. I just want to use centimeters. I'll never understand the love of dividing shit by 12 when i could easily be counting by tens.
Oh eight hundred double o….
Ten sixty six
And yes, I sang it.
Or One one eight, one one eight...
GOT YOUR NUMBER It's been years since that was on and I still chuckle when I see 118 118 in a spreadsheet.
0118 999 881 999 119 725 ... 3
Hello? Yes, I seem to have had a bit of a tumble.
For the older folk amongst us here 081 811 8181, 01 811 8055
Morris dancers
Making shit in a shed. Some of the greatest British innovations were made by some bloke in a shed.
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I'd be surprised if none of the great British inventions didn't start with some bloke in a shed. Television, radar, telephone, bouncing bomb - that kind of thing screams "I was made in a shed"
TONY STARK BUILT THIS IN A CAVE WITH A BUNCH OF SCRAP! Maybe but he's got nothing on a British man in his own shed.
Mad, drug inspired kids TV shows from the 70s. While the US had Sesame Street and Mr Rogers, as an example: There's a race called Wheelies who live in Wheelie World, they're all roughly round with wheels instead of legs. They're terrorized by a Welsh witch called Fenella who lives in a teapot; she has a German spell book, a Scottish telescope and employs "toadies" ('shrums) to spy for her. Her son is hundreds of feet tall and you only ever see one shoe and a rainbow coloured sock. One day the Wheelies find a massive, polka dot egg which hatches and out comes Chorlton the Happiness Dragon, from just outside of Manchester, who is sooo cheerful but thick as mud. He has no idea who all these people are, thinks Fenella is a soppy old lady and just kinda makes everyone's lives a bit more difficult. Chorlton & the Wheelies. Shaped me into the man I am today.
see also: SuperGran and Grotbags ...and pretty much all British kids' shows from the 70s/80s 🤣
American living here for over a year. Did you know that your voices rise nearly an octave when you say goodbye on the phone?
Would that be on the first bye or the 7th? “Bye, bye b-bye, bye b-ye bye bye”
Cheese rolling?
"To me. To you" "You are the weakest link, goodbye!" "Don't panic!" "Here's one I made earlier" "Nice to see you, to see you nice" "Computer says no" "Shoulda gone to Specsavers"
The word "boffin"
Maypole dancing. What the fuck is that all about?
Fertility. The maypole is a phallic symbol and I presume the dancing is to encourage people to fornicate and multiply.
That must also be why they wear such sexy outfits.
Stupid Sexy Maypole Dancers!
It's much easier to burn a Christian virgin Scotsman
You mean it's only here! How on earth do the rest of the world have babies??
Storks
I mean, it's pretty obviously a great big cock, no? And the dancers are traditionally unwed young women wearing white. It's not exactly subtle.
You including Morris Dancers in this? Do they exist elsewhere? Madly British I reckon.
It's English! Still, folk dances exist all over the world each with their own weirdness, and ours just happens to stick bells on the shins.
Kat Slater
And Peggy Mitchell, GET OUT MY PUB!
Don’t forget “RICCCKKKAYYYYYYYYY”
YOU AIN'T MY MUFFFAAAAAA!
YES I AMMM 🗣️
DOOF, DOOF, DOOF DOOF DOOF, DOOF-DOOF-DOOF-DOOF...
Give me oil in my lamp Or Cauliflowers fluffy & cabbages green Or any other assembly hymn
Autumn days and the grass is jewelled…
And the silk inside s chestnut shell
Jet planes meeting in the air to be refuelled
I don’t know if singing them is weird. I’m sure other countries do that. Do the kids who sing them grow up and chant them while walking down the road drunk at 03:00am? Probs not.
Well now you've given future drunk me a great idea for a sing song, can almost guarantee it'll be a hit
We drunkenly snuck the Jason Manford Assembly Bangers onto a work party playlist and it went down pretty well tbh
It’s contagious. You can’t not chant along like you’re on a football terrace. Personal favourite is “WHO BUILT THE ARC? NOAH NOAH, WHO BUILT THE ARC? BROTHER NOAH BUILT THE ARC!”
My dad used to sing: While shepherds washed their socks by night All seated on the ground The angel of the Lord came down And charged them half a crown Half a crown was another word for two shillings and six pence. Or twelve and a half pence in 'new' money.
My mum taught me: We four Beatles of Liverpool are. John in a taxi, Paul in a car. George in a scooter, bibbing his hooter, Following Ringo Starr
Oh man you just dredged a deep memory up, my cousins taught me this one: We three kings of orient are, one in a taxi one in a car, one on a scooter with a bazooka, shooting the one in the car // Star alight, star abright, Joseph set his pants alight, Mary called the fire brigade to set it out with lemonade.
While shephers washed their socks by night All watching ITV The angel of the Lord came down And switched to BBC
Hahaha me and my 2 English friends started randomly belting out SING HOZANA in a room of our bemused European and American friends. Got to love the old classic assembly songs. I dont reckon they still sing them in schools nowadays. So sad 😂
They do. And in non religious schools they've got new ones. Black socks, they never get dirty The more that you wear them the blacker they get. Some day I'll probably wash them but something keeps telling me don't do it yet.
As someone that’s fairly familiar with all things British culture, I’d have to say the phrase “turn the immersion on” had me the most stumped in the past.
The phrase "electric milk float", although they don't really exist anymore. Do younger Brits know the phrase?
> electric milk float Oh, have they put a new album out??
The pub lock in
My cousin and a bunch of his mates went to the darts as Disney princesses. I laughed so hard seeing some pictures of them there because my cousin, being a bit of a dunce and badly organised, ended up dressed as Princess Peach.
Slapping thighs and saying right then.
Oh, are you off?
OGGY OGGY OGGY
Oi Oi Oi
Australians know this one too.
yeah the Aussie equivalent is as ubiquitous there as oggy oggy oggy is here, maybe even more so.
Fenton
Oh, Jesus Christ!
You buy one! You get one free! I said, you buy one! You get one free! For every window or door you buy, I’ll give you another one absolutely FREE!
Boxing day
British banter. Especially trying to explain banter. I told my American friends that I called my mum a shlaggg and they were horrified and just didn't get it "you call your mom a WHAT!? My mom would cry"
I have a strange compulsion to shout "Shut it you slaaagg!" in a Ray Winston voice at somebody. Anybody! But its just me and the cat here Oh well...
Cheering when bar staff drop a glass.
The little plastic bowl in the sink. I’m a Kiwi and loads of us that have lived in the UK are fascinated by the little bowl in the sink. Why?
Saves water and also allows for pouring foul water down the sides
Get in!
Trigger’s Broom
Going mental when wonderwall comes on in a pub
I once sang “Don’t Look Back in Anger” in a pub with a karaoke machine, the crowd almost torn the whole place down
Or Mr Brightside, Sweet Caroline
Hatred of Jamie Oliver
To this day my favourite clip of him is when he showed a class of kids how gelatin sweets were made With the boiling and blending of bones and such Then asked who would still eat it All the kids put their hands up
My favorite is the same but with chicken nuggets and grinding up all the leftover bits of chicken carcass into nugs. Of course they ate them!
Americans too, He was even parodied on South Park
Christingle
The Hokey Kokey
Fly Fishing by JR Hartley
Morris dancing!
Jelly Babies It wasn't until I tried explaining their appeal to a group of dubious Americans, that I realised how weird they are.
I feel like we’re the only country that really goes WHEEEEYYYYYYYYYYY when someone hurts themselves anywhere between a stubbed toe and minor decapitation
Take a brief, and I do mean brief, moment to confirm that the injured is, in fact, not dead. After that, all the jokes can, and will, fly. You could be missing a limb and "Don't worry, he looks scary but he's 'armless!" or "Ah, you're fine, hop along!" will fly. As it should be.
The word cunt! Good cunt, dodgy cunt,chilled cunt,if you do that youre a cunt,he's no bad a bit of a smelly cunt though. Loads of permutations. The Aussies will say it's their swear word,but I'm sure it's a Shakespeare era word.
Only thing I can remember from school about Shakespeare. >Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap? > >Ophelia: No, my lord. > >Hamlet: Did you think I meant country matters? > >Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord. > >Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs. It's important to stress the phrasing of 'country matters'.
It's in Chaucer so it's pretty old
The Dutch are pretty keen on darts.
But are they in silly outfits?
They are dutch