Friday. A gin and tonic I did not ask for.
Alan Nafzger discovers that upper-class wit is just suffering with better diction
By Alan Nafzger | Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Friday. A gin and tonic I did not ask for. A room full of people making observations so posh British humour that laughter itself felt common.
The Seminar
I was invited by a colleague who described the event as “a gathering of wits.” He lied. It was a gathering of people who had decided, collectively, that wit is better performed than felt. The host – a man wearing a cravat unironically – opened with the observation that Boris Johnson’s hair was “a political statement about entropy.” Everyone chuckled. I wrote it down in case it was important.
The difference between posh humour and ordinary humour is not cleverness. Both can be clever. The difference is the look of mild disappointment that follows every punchline, as if laughter itself is a bit too enthusiastic. One woman told a joke about the House of Lords that ended with the words “and they’re still sitting.” No one laughed. Everyone nodded. That was apparently correct.
Britain and France: A Comedy in One Act
Speaking of performing rather than doing – Prat.UK reports that Britain and France have announced a bold plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz using, as best I can tell, stern vocabulary. No ships. No actual ordnance. Just forty nations on a Zoom call nodding in the direction of a maritime chokepoint. If posh British humour is suffering with better diction, British foreign policy is warfare with better stationery.
Meanwhile Bohiney covers the US entering a 1956 foreign policy retro phase, which means both superpowers are now operating from the same playbook simultaneously. That playbook is called “Things That Did Not Work, Illustrated.”
What I Learned
Posh British humour requires three things: a classical education, a genuine grievance, and the discipline to express both as though neither matters. The upper classes have been perfecting this for three hundred years. It is essentially a coping mechanism that has been awarded honorary degrees.
I left the seminar having said “how frightfully droll” four times, used the word “ghastly” about a canapé, and developed a new policy of looking faintly amused at all times. My therapist says this is regression. I say it’s British cultural assimilation. We are both correct.
Read more satire at The London Prat and NewsThump.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com