British Humour Explained (with examples)

Hello, lovely students, and welcome back to English with Lucy.

Today, we're talking about British humour.

It's one of my favourite topics, and it

also happens to be a huge part of our culture, but it can sometimes be really

tricky to understand.

Today, I'm going to explain the main types

of British humour. I'm going to give you lots of "funny" examples (funny in my

opinion), and I'll teach you some of the phrases that you can use.

I have also created a free PDF that goes along with this lesson to take your

British humour skills even further.

I've included lots more jokes and puns,

and I've even included an interactive quiz so you can test your understanding

of our puns to see if you would understand British humour in real life.

It's free to download.

Just click on the link in the description

box or scan that little QR code there.

Enter your name and your email address,

and the PDF will arrive directly in your inbox.

After that, you've joined my PDF club.

You will automatically receive my free weekly lesson PDFs alongside all of my

news, course updates, and offers.

It's a free service, and you can

unsubscribe at any time.

Okay, let's get to the jokes.

First up, we have irony.

So, irony is when something happens that's

the exact opposite of what you'd expect.

For example, if an astronomer were afraid

of the dark, that would be irony.

Or if an absolutely huge dog were called

Tiny, that would be irony.

There are actually a few different types

of irony.

First, we have verbal irony and this

occurs when someone says the opposite of what they actually mean.

Like saying to a friend who just tripped and fell—'Well, that was graceful!'

Or asking the person who fell—'Did you have a nice trip?'

'Trip' here has two meanings.

'A trip' can be a journey to a place and

back again, or it can be when you fall over.

Next, we have situational irony and this

arises when the outcome of a situation is entirely different from what was expected.

For instance, a fire station catching fire would be a classic case of

situational irony.

And we also have dramatic irony, and this

is often used in literature and film.

It happens when the audience knows

something that the characters do not.

Think of Romeo and Juliet.

The audience knows that Juliet is sleeping while Romeo, on the other hand,

does not!

Here's a quick example so you can get a

taste of irony in action.

'And here we are, reporting live from sunny

Brighton, where it is just perfect barbecue weather…'

Next, we have sarcasm, and sarcasm is when you say the opposite of what you mean to

mock or make fun of something or someone.

We Brits are famous for our dry sarcasm.

And it's often difficult to tell if someone is being genuine or sarcastic.

I have made that mistake so many times.

Sarcasm can be tricky to master,

especially for English learners, because it relies heavily on tone of voice,

facial expressions, and context.

And sometimes in Britain, we are so dry,

we don't really move our faces that much.

For instance, if you were to say—'Oh,

fantastic! I've just spilled coffee all over my new shirt,'

that would be a clear example of sarcasm.

Here's another example.

Listen to this audio clip.

- 'And this is my associate, Mr Green.'

- 'Ah, it's a pleasure to meet you, Mr Green.

I've definitely heard your name come up

from time to time.'

- 'Probably,

it's quite a common colour.'

Now, if you come across a bit too serious

and someone doesn't get your sarcasm, you can say something like—'I'm being sarcastic.'

You can usually spot sarcasm by listening for a mismatch between someone's voice

and their words, their tone of voice and their words.

If someone says something positive but their tone is negative or flat, they're

probably being sarcastic.

Now, using sarcasm and other types of

British English humour is quite hard to do.

It's hard to find a good place.

One safe educational space is LanguaTalk.

This is an online tutor platform that

connects language learners with professional tutors for live one-on-one

lessons via video chat.

It's a platform I loved so much I

decided to become a part of it.

So I guess you could say I'm sponsoring

myself here.

I'm learning Italian this way, and my

husband Will is learning Spanish, and we love that we can take risks and try to be

funny in a safe space. And our tutors are pretty honest with us and tell us if we

are nailing it or not.

I think it'd help you in English and I

have a really nice offer for you.

You can take a free trial class and get

$10 in lesson credit for free.

The link and information are in the

description box.

Just message the support team with the

code HUMOUR10 after making your first lesson purchase.

Okay, let's move on to self-deprecation.

Self-deprecation is when you make jokes

about yourself and your own faults, and British people seem to do this a lot.

We don't like to boast or show off.

Instead, we might say things like—'I'm so

bad at cooking I could burn water,' or 'I look like I got dressed in the dark.'

I even used self-deprecation at a wedding last weekend.

I wore a bright pink dress. I looked like a Barbie and someone said to me—'Oh, I

could never wear that colour.'

And immediately I couldn't help it.

I just responded with—'Neither can I.'

In Britain, we tend to think that making

fun of yourself shows you have a good sense of humour and you don't take

yourself too seriously, but I would admit sometimes we go too far with it.

It's like we can't take a compliment.

However, I didn't consider 'I could never

wear that colour' to be a compliment, so I joined in.

Here is a great example to listen to:

'I thought being a comedian would help my

dating chances.

Nope, wrong!

At this point, I'm thinking about creating a second Instagram account and

sliding into my own DMs.

Sad, really.'

Okay, let's talk about wit.

And this is the art of being quick,

clever and funny all at the same time.

British people love witty humour, and it

is the ultimate compliment if someone says you're witty.

Here are a few examples of witty phrases I've heard recently.

'I'm not arguing; I'm just explaining why I'm right.'

'I didn't drop my phone.

I was just making sure gravity still

works and it seems like it does!'

To work on your wittiness, try practising

wordplay like puns (which we'll talk about shortly), and rhymes, and pay

special attention to humour in everyday situations, especially in British TV

shows and films.

Wit is everywhere.

Timing and delivery are everything!

I would love if you could comment down

below with some of the wittiest things you've ever heard, the wittiest lines.

A couple of classic examples.

'Dave isn't short; he's  just vertically challenged.'

Or—'I'm not sleeping; I'm just resting my eyes.'

Okay, now it's time to move on to wordplay,

and our first section is innuendo.

This is essentially playing with the

multiple meanings of words in a clever way to make people laugh or think.

Innuendo is a type of wordplay that has a hidden meaning that's often rude or

sexual, and you'll find innuendos everywhere in British humour: on TV, in

newspapers, and even names of restaurants.

Even when I was a kid, I remember hearing

my neighbour walk past my dad's beautiful vegetable garden and say—'I'd rather see

his meat and two veg.'

She then saw me and was very embarrassed,

but 'meat and two veg' is an innuendo for a man's private parts.

Innuendos are a huge part of British comedy.

Mrs. Hartfield, if you are watching this,

I still remember you talking about my father's 'meat and two veg.'

To identify innuendos, look out for phrases that seem innocent on the surface

but could have a naughty double meaning.

All right, let's move on to our last section:

the pun—the king of wordplay!

Puns are jokes that use the different

possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words that sound alike but

have different meanings.

They are often groan-worthy.

This means very bad, boring, or embarrassing.

They make you groan like, 'Oh, that was so bad.'

They are groan-worthy, but we Brits love them nonetheless, even the really bad ones.

You'll see a lot of puns in the names of British shops and businesses.

We have a local chip shop called 'The Codfather,' and a bakery called 'Bread Pit,'

and a greengrocer called 'Planet of the Grapes,' which is just chef's kiss.

Puns are everywhere!

Listen for words or phrases that sound

similar but have been used in clever or silly ways.

To make puns yourself, try to think of words that sound alike but have different

meanings and work them into a joke.

Here's a really terrible one for you—

'What do you call a dinosaur with an extensive vocabulary?

A thesaurus.'

Well, there you have it—

a nice short crash course in British humour.

I hope these examples helped you understand our refined style of comedy a

bit better, and if you have any brilliant puns or jokes of your own, share them in

the comments. I always love a good laugh.

Also, remember that offer on LanguaTalk.

The link and code are in the description.

And don't forget to download the PDF that

goes with this lesson.

The link's in the description or the QR

code is here.

One last thing, if you enjoyed this

lesson, if you're really interested in British culture, improving your

pronunciation, and learning English to an advanced level, I really think you might

like my C1 Programme.

We actually have an entire module in

there on British humour.

To find out more, visit englishwithlucy.com,  and if you use the code YOUTUBE15, 

you get 15% off.

Don't tell anyone I told you.

I will see you soon for another lesson.

Bye!