Sunday, October 30, 2005

The Horrors of English Humour - A.A. Gill On English Rage

"English comedy is war by other means," writes A.A. Gill in today's Sunday Times. "Most people share a joke, the English aim them."

Gill, a Scot who's spent all his life in England (and has no plans to move away), cannot reconcile himself to his Englishness. He thinks (for example) that the English ability to invent sports (and the codes which govern them), springs - as English humour and snobbery do - from an urge to suppress a very English, brutal rage.

In this suppression of rage we find the greatness of the English , Gill reckons. This may be so, for all we know. The rage in his condemnation seems a little half-hearted (maybe all too Caledonian), all the same.

I hate England - Review - Times Online

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