Knock Knock

Who's there?

The most unfunny people in the world are.

The most unfunny people in the world are who?

The British!

Ha ha!

You know, for all that the Americans don't get about satire (though some of the best satires I've seen are American), the British have this rotten tendency of lionising shit as being more meaningful than it really is. And without fail they always start with that Herculean humour of theirs that fails to impress most peoples of the world, including those they didn't conquer and suppress for five centuries.

Everywhere I go I hear nerds praising the great British sense of humour (please; and the Nazis were great dancers) and arguing that Spike Milligan and The Young Ones are examples of comedic genius that changed the British psyche and British television. Maybe it changed television, but that doesn't mean that it's genius. That doesn't even mean it's good. Personally, Snotty finds Spike Milligan's jokes obvious, puerile and tired from centuries of being kept awake by dim-witted drunks repeating them loudly at ends of bars.

'Ha, I said a word that sounds like boobs, but I wasn't really talking about boobs. Anyway, here, look at these boobs!'

Cue some naked chick to walk past. It really gets on my tits that this gets passed off as ingenuity, let alone humour.

And The Young Ones? Darling babies of so-called 'edgy' British television?

Honeychile, c'mere. Sit down and tell mama why that's funny. Tell me all about it. I promise mama won't get mad. But that Young Ones be so damn unfunny it liable to shove mama's uterus out 30 year too soon due to mama's dry heaves.

Now ol' Snotty here pays no attention to flags, and Snotty wouldn't be so upset if the British were just a little bit more humble about the depth of their sense of humour. Hell, Snotty wouldn't care so much for British bombast and pomposity if they left it at that. But far too often, Britons like Channel 4 have told Snotty McShot that British comedy is so much more sophisticated than that of the simple Yanks. Oh, those poor, misguided souls. Those simpletons rally behind a moron like George Bush, they invade countries for no reason and they have no sense of humour.

Apart from The Office, Peep Show and anything roughly associated with Chris Morris, what bile can British television cough up that stacks convincingly next to American offerings like Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Cheers, All In The Family, Family Guy, MASH, early Married With Children, early Saturday Night Live, even I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners and, at times, The Andy Griffith Show?

Red Dwarf? Dad's Army? The Vicar of Dibley? Steptoe and Son? The I-don't-be-leeeeeeve-it guy? That scene where Del Boy falls through the hole in the bar? John Cleese returning a dead parrot or beating his car with a stick? Anything John Cleese has said? I wouldn't even give Father Ted to the isle. Even the Bafta-winning Little Britain is about as humour-inducing as watching Ariel Sharon's pulsing sphincter try to drop a turd onto a glass table.

And it's not just television where the Americans prevail. The celluloid silver screen is Britain's other Yorktown. British cinema's idea of comedy is Hugh Grant- well, Hugh Grant. Or occasionally in film a man will - gasp! - dress like a woman. And they don't even call her Prime Minister. Or Judi Dench.

In fact, yes. I've seen funnier films from Iraqi insurgents than I've seen come out of Great Britain in the last few years. Of course, those films have been largely driven by American creativity in the region.

Still, the point is: Americans are assholes, for sure, and they'll shit all over the world and shit all over you. But when it comes to your TV screens, they rarely shit on the glass.