Chavs, comedians, Jewish Humour and the Estuary accent.

chav!!!!

Since being back here I look for new things, things that have come in to vogue since I lived here in 1994 and somehow, at the back of my mind, I knew one thing would still he here; the class system.

That will always be here; in the USA if you have a lot of money you are considered upper class. Here, most of the upper classes are broke. They can't even afford to heat their stately homes and have had to give them or sell them or whatever to the national trust.

Notice I said 'most' – there are still the men in the grey suits who run the place.

But class doesn't stop there; I know of people who live in council houses who's house is on the end who look down on the people who's houses are in the middle of the block. They are all renting houses from the same authority and the ones on the end think they are superior.

If you make a lot of money here you are considered, by the upper classes, as being nouveau riche – or in the USA new money. Now they have invented another word, and this word has been invented by the dreaded middle class and that word is chav. If you look up chav in the dictionary it will give it's meaning as a young working class person with appalling, if expensive, taste.

Chav, by the way is traced back all the way to 2004 and probably comes from a Romany word Chavy, I think; the middle class had to come up with some word to put down people with different taste from theirs.

The middle class taste is awful – they hold their knives like pencils, they have fitted carpets, dark clothes, dainty little cars and they are just like Mrs Bucket in the well known TV sit-com; the title has slipped my mind. They don't swear, they don't show any passion and don't have any idea about politics and these people are allowed to vote!!!!

I jest of course and I'm generalising and – well you know all that but some of it is true.

And the names of their children!!!! A slight miss-spelling of the regular name and I'm sure you've heard them. Billy Connelly noticed they were naming their kids with surnames such as Crawford!!!!

If you go to Los Angeles Tattoos are very popular – if you have a tattoo here you're a chav. In Los Angeles a lot of people wear baseball hats – some pubs here will not allow people in wearing hats. I have also seen 'no white socks' at a pub entrance – no white socks!!!! Whatever could they mean?

But the big thing about being back is the Television; all the garbage that British TV has exported to America – Pop Idol (American Idol), Big Brother, Survivor, The X Factor is still on TV here.

They do have quality drama, mainly on the BBC, but the big thing they don't have and which I miss is Jewish Humour and hardly any Jewish slang. Some people started to use the word Schlep a few years ago but it disappeared in a wave of retentiveness years ago.There are loads of Jewish comedians over here but they are really comedians who are Jewish.

Woody Allen

Larry David.

There is no Woody Allen, no Jerry Seinfeld and no Larry David but they have the same, maybe, 10 comedians who are on TV 3 or 4 times a week. The are on mock quiz shows and laugh – at each other.

A team of 2 comedians sit on one side of the studio opposite another team of 2, separated by the quiz master, who is also a comedian, then they make each other laugh.

The audience, and there is an audience, laugh as if they are canned – it's unbelievable and crass.

Apart from Stephen Fry, who speaks like a toff, they have either the red nosed comedian's northern accent or the estuary accent – yes that one again. The Estuary accent, they think, makes them classless so they can fit in with everybody else and their favourite thing to do on these shows is to show a photo from a newspaper and think of a funny phrase.

Come back Jack Benny; Les Dawson; Tommy Cooper. Let's have some comedians who are comedians and not smart arses laughing at themselves in fact – let's have a Chav Comedian!!!!

I heard on the radio this morning that one of the actors in Little Britain, who is Jewish, is starting a Jewish comedy series here. It's about a middle aged man who gets divorced from his wife and is taken for every penny he has which means he has to move in with his son; also he cannot afford to keep his mother in a home any more so she moves in too. So you have 3 generations of Jews living together which sounds promising.

Tommy Cooper.
25 years after his death people still tell 'Tommy Cooper' jokes.