I listened to about three minutes of it.
I mean, I just want credit for trying.
Trying to listen for more than three minutes?
I started listening to that a few days ago, so far I prefer Saturday Night Fry. But I'll keep going, is there extra credit?
In the spirit of not playing along with Ben's self decprecation, anyone who enjoys the On The Hour clip should also watch The Day Today and Brass Eye, the former being the TV version of On The Hour and the latter being a more single-issue and celebrity/politician-gotcha variant of it. Brass Eye may require a little more British cultural knowledge to get the most out of it, but it does also include the greatest chart ever, showing the shocking increase in crimes we know absolutely nothing about.
"On the Hour" is great. As the bitter years roll on, I find Stephen Fry increasingly tedious.
As the years rolled on, he did indeed grow tedious. I enjoyed the early stuff, though, and I'm not going to let what he's become ruin that for me.
I was amazed at how lightweight "Stephen Fry in America" was - couldn't get through more than five minutes. I do still like him on QI, and want to see "The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive".
I hate few things more than "comedy" and its ascent. One of them is British comedy.
Exception: Wodehouse.
10: Mitchell and Webb redeem all of their sins.
I love Mitchell and Webb. Their Nazi ("Hans: are we the baddies?") sketch makes me laugh every damn time.
The best British humour is witty, irreverent, and slyly subversive about/with language.
But most British comedy is, by definition, not of "the best." Some of it is just plain tacky and embarrassing.
The best Canadian humour is also quite witty and funny, but much of it (most of it?) is just kind of sad and tacky and embarrassing, and not really funny at all.
CODCO's "Pleasant Priests in Conversation" was informally banned from the airwaves in Canada for about 15-20 years (actually, not just informally: the CBC refused to air it in 1991, in the wake of the Mount Cashel Orphanage scandal). The actors playing the priests sound sort of Irish, but they are Canadian: Canadians from Newfoundland. This sketch is not actually funny (it is overly broad, and tacky, and embarrassing), but it's of interest sociologically: this was written and filmed before the priestly abuse cases came to light.
On the subject of humor, I found this essay by internet sensation* Patton Oswalt somewhat interesting, if not actually for being especially interesting than at least for being a reasonably interesting effort at being interesting by a person whom many people seem to find very interesting.
* The internet can make YOU a star. Take my seminar MOOC and find out how.
Probably I should have sent the link in 15 to heebie, so she could make it into a post. But I didn't do that, so here we are. Interesting.