I think this subject has been touched on this here board *ahem* but I quite enjoyed John Oliver’s packaged presentation for his US audience.
And I think it would be fun to be as British as a ‘monocled badger named Reginald who lives in a shepherd’s pie’
He’s ace!
As entertaining as ever. Thanks Benny. That brightened up a dull day of VABbing.
“The World’s Ringo” – I stopped listening then.
This man is an Uncle Tom.
He moves on to an audience pleaser about how British people are posh and uptight in vocabulary and manner when it comes to sex. Perhaps he said something amusing beyond the 30 second mark but I wasn’t going to give him the chance. Dire.
‘Perhaps he said something amusing beyond the 30 second mark’ – I stuck with it and he did. But then it got massively unfunny again at the end. Sorry welshbenny – but at least your boys played a blinder.
Spot-on.
I didn’t bother clicking the video as I find him excruciating, unwatchable. Always strikes me as someone whose Mum’s friends told him he was funny and clever in his early teens, and he just got stuck there.
Jon Stewart tickled my ribs whilst slipping a witty stiletto between them; this guy rants in my face through a bull-horn. But he’s got right on his side, and at least he’s not Trevor Noah.
And I do recognise that I’m not his target demographic.
Yes, unwatchable. Like an (even more) hyperactive/unfunny Ben Elton. All the crowd-pleasing “this is how America sees Britain” cliché gags were there; the bad teeth reference, the posh accent reference, the uptight sex reference.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it degenerated into an unfunny swearfest at the end, including a child using the f-word a dozen times.
I like him. I think he’s very funny but yes, the song at the end of the OP’s clip was a bit rubbish.
He’s really good at demonstrating the insanity of certain things. His show recently spent $60K to buy a Texas hospital’s debt book of $15m covering 9,000 Americans that haven’t been able to pay their medical bills. He set up a debt recovery company, bought the debt, and forgave it.
That’s really ace, if he did forgive that debt.
Funny regarding the cliches etc. I found it reasonably amusing, then again if it had been an Aussie in cork hat wth everyone called Bruce I’d have been appalled.
I would quite like a badger called Reginald though.
An Englishman abroad. It’s a well tried concept and it only works now and then. Look at Piers Morgan for example. The Americans loved him but his name was poison at home.
Still is in this house!
The idea that Piers Moron was loved over here is a bit of a stretch. His show got canned for a reason.
He’s playing to an American crowd. And plays cleverly to their preconceptions.
He’s explaining a subject they don’t know about or care about, but should.
And I think he’s nailed all the key points about the looney tunes the Brexit mob are playing.
Job done.Well done. Pretty funny.
I think a sweeping statement like that America is a bit of an over generalization.
The WaPo had an editorial about it, calling Brexit economic suicide. It features fairly regularly on NPR news and features. A lot of the folks I know are at least familiar with the issues.
A lot of Americans equally aren’t, and don’t care. It won’t impact the lives of many folks in West Virginia, for example. How many people in Britain are well versed in the current struggles in Venezuela?
A generalisation that happens to be true.
Of course, some Americans will be aware of the Brexit issue, the majority won’t.
Your generalisation about Britons and Venezuela is similarly true.
The implosion of Venezuela is a tragedy. On a human level, it is devastating
On an economic level, however, the impact is likely to be local. Regional at worst.
Brexit would impact the global economy. Including West Virginia.
You’re kinda proving my point.
WV is so far in the shitter that there are plenty local issues to worry about before Brexit can have an impact
I know I’m proving your point. Because we’re making the same point. Differently.
For what it’s worth, I was in the US for work all last week, and virtually every conversation I was involved in saw the locals asking detailed questions about Brexit.
Heartening to hear that, Bingo. Somehow though, I expect Californians to be clued up.
There’s a famous New Yorker cartoon satirising the superior attitude of those who live on the East and West Coasts.
It’s map of the US showing only NY and Washington and LA and Frisco. The rest of the country is perceived as one great misty, amorphous redneck backwater.
Funnily enough so was I. And yes, many of my conversations too were about Brexit. Unsurprising in a work related environment. Or in cosmopolitan New York.
The average midwesterner may not have asked had I found myself there. And yet it will affect him. Or her.
I’m in France this week. They are talking about it too.
“a subject they don’t know about or care about, but should.”
Have an Up for that Fin.
We at the Afterword may all be sophisticated, witty, articulate, well-informed, polyglot, cosmopolitan jet-setters with our finger on the global pulse. But most people don’t look much beyond their garden fence, whichever country they live in.
John Oliver is good and bad. He breaks down complicated topics very well for entertainment, but I find some of his comedy tropes a bit tiresome.
I have found that in the post Jon Stewart era both Samantha Bee and Seth Meyers are where it’s at. Sam Bee has been great on Trump and here’s Meyers on Brexit.
Bill Maher is the best of those comedian/commentators.
Unlike most of the others he’s not afraid to take on Islam