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5 Terms in English Slang Everyone Should Know

David — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:19:57 +0000

Here’s a thing I did with Canadian internet genius TremendousNews (not his real name). You can follow him on Twitter here.

Tremendousnews, over to you…

Of all the fallen empires, I like England the most.

Athens, Rome? Kind of hot.

Mongolia?

Please.

It’s England. I holidayed there a few years ago. Alone, of course.

I wandered the streets of London, from pub to pub. Eating jacket potatoes and taking in the culture.

Trying to totally do English chicks.

But when I struck out with them, I noticed something.

They were speaking some jacked-up language.

Slang terms, everything was slang.

Look, I like English people, I just wish they spoke more English.

Recently, I made a new friend. His name is David Schneider. He is a British comedian and actor.

He’s joined me today to explain some bits of English slang.

You can follow David Schneider on Twitter here.

: Schneider wearing his top hat to the mall. Typical English.

Here’s David Schneider explaining five terms in English slang everyone needs to know.

1. Arse-over-tits

David: This is used to refer to someone who falls over: “That 90 year old woman fell arse-over-tits, shattering her hip in 16 places and lacerating her face, arms and legs. It was funny”.

You cannot deliberately go arse-over-tits, as in “The Russian gymnast did a double-piked somersault followed by a triple arse-over-tits”, though it can be used of men as well, especially fat lads with moobs.

Me: I’ve had many arse-over-tits experiences. Like the time I went to the club and the song “Barbie Girl” by Aqua came on. I went to dance next to this super hot chick and then slipped on glass. My arse was like so totally over my tits right there? It was crazy. Despite that, I ended up doing her.

Do you believe that, Schneider?

Lie to me and tell me you believe that.

2. Bob’s Your Uncle.

David: A sort of magical revelation, the equivalent of the French “Voila!”. As in: “Just stay in your armchair, eat lots of burgers and take lots of drugs and – Bob’s Your Uncle! – you’re a fat Elvis!”

It’s not so successful in sentences like “Your father just explained that that man Robert was his brother and – Bob’s Your Uncle! – Bob’s your uncle”.

Me: We should use this more in North America. But due to political correctness we’d have to say “Bob’s your Uncle and/or Aunt”. Because Bob could be both due to the advent of new surgical procedures.

God! Bob’s such a douche.

3. Slapper.

David: A slapper is a promiscuous woman. As in “Truth be told, Mother Theresa was a right slapper” – “right” in this case meaning “really significant” rather than she would only sleep (around) on the right side of the bed.

You can also call someone a “slag”, “sket” or “Lindsay Lohan”.

The male equivalent of a slapper is something like “stud” as in “Well done, you’ve slept around, I admire you, you stud”.

Me: I like “slapper” better than “slut” or “whore”. But I think I speak for all guys when I say, where can we find said individuals?

4. Up the Duff.

David: The medical term for “pregnant”, as in “Congratulations, Your Majesty, you’re up the duff”. Of course the Queen is well into the menopause now so she can’t get “banged up” or “have a bun in the oven”.

Nor will you hear anyone saying “Her Majesty is on the blob at the moment”, referring to Her Royal Period.

Though she was so loved in her younger days that, when she menstruated, every woman in the country shared her cycle.

Me: On the blob!

Ha.

That’s so hilariously gross and disgusting that I can feel dozens of my female readers quivering with nausea.

Just know that this term is in Schneider’s lexicon and I would never use a term like that.

And if you don’t believe, you’re probably on the blob.

5. Bollocks!

David: The male testicles (as in “The pope kicked me in the bollocks”), but also an expression of dismissive contempt. (“N’sync made the best music of the 20thcentury” – “Bollocks!”).

However “the dog’s bollocks!” actually means “brilliant” (as does “the bee’s knees!”, which, scientists have discovered, are actually made of dogs bollocks).

For instance: “The cat’s testicles I ate in China were the dog’s bollocks!”

Me: Check this out, Schneider. I can make everyone reading this say “bollocks” in their mind. Watch.

Tremendous News is the most important blog on the Internet.

…

See?

They said it.

–

There you have it. I want to thank David Schneider for helping explain British slang.

Stay tuned, and we’ll have 5 more terms for you soon.

You’ll go arse-over-tits reading it.

You can follow TremendousNews on Twitter here.

(With thanks for help to @MandyPandy32)

5 Terms in English Slang Everyone Should Know is a post from: David Schneider's website

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X(mas)-Factor

David — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 16:27:31 +0000

Jordward. At one point everyone was trying to get in with the twins.

You have to hand it to Simon Cowell. In a bid to outwit the campaign against an X-Factor Christmas No.1, he’s announced that this year’s winner’s song will be a version of “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine. Thus he wins.

Of course that’s not true. Though fans of Rage Against the Machine will tell you that the new line-up of Leona Lewis, Jedward and that old man who did some breakdancing on “Britain’s Got Talent” has been a disappointment. I totally understand the rage against the X-Factor machine. It’s agony to know that a constituency of knee-jerking automaton fans will buy a record, however crap, and get it to number 1 at Christmas. Still, it worked for Cliff Richard.

And that’s slightly my point. This is nothing new. It’s just that now, like that monkey that Jeff Goldblum turned inside out in “The Fly”, we can see the innards, the mechanics of the music biz, or at least the ones we’re allowed to see: the process of selecting a plastic star, the A&R man (Simon Cowell), the ruthlessness.

But it’s one of the great things about X-Factor that the monkey guts are out there. It’s like democracy in miniature, complete with all the manipulations and flaws and spin and sham. At the next general election, Johnathan and David Dimbleby will no doubt be known as Javid, and if no party gets an overall majority it will go to Deadlock, with the Queen probably bottling it and putting it to the public vote. The Jedward phenomenon is like an experiment in what would happen if the Science Fiction Loony Party got enough votes to really threaten the system.

Personally, I didn’t like the twins. They shouldn’t have been there. We have to remember that women threw themselves under horses for the right to vote on the X-Factor. But as a true free-speech liberal, I may not approve of how they sing but I will fight tooth and nail for their right to sing like that. Except with the Wham one. That was awful.

You could have a field day analysing what we can learn about democracy and voter intentions from protest votes in reality shows. We should ask a political correspondent – John Sergeant, perhaps. Ultimately, though, the people saw Jedward off. That’s the great thing about reality TV. It reassures me that, in the end, the great British public are honest, unprejudiced rewarders of talent, decency and good teeth. Democracy works.

Even in the 50s, Xfactor brought families together

I’m an X-factor fan (there, I’ve said it!). I know it’s massively flawed, especially the new format where the first half of the results show has nothing to do with the competition (though I did enjoy that woman last week who was one of the best Michael Jackson impersonators I’ve ever seen. Janet Something). But at a time where viewing habits are so split, it’s good to have something that unites us whether we hate it or love it or just want to slag off the strange black meringues Dannii calls her hairdo for that week.

Don’t get me wrong, I want Rage Against the Machine to get to number 1. It would make a vital statement about democracy, the power of subversion, and the resistance to a cultural hegemony imposed upon us by the Big Business. Then again, that Joe Mcelderry has got such a cute smile.

Thanks to @stanandollie for the pics.

X(mas)-Factor is a post from: David Schneider's website

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Stop! (Joke) Thief!

David — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:19:31 +0000

Marcus Brigstocke. He's mentioned in this article

Here’s a thing I just wrote for the Sunday Times. For a list of nicked jokes (allegedly) and some interesting youtubery, click here:

Stand-up comedians abhor the same crimes as everyone else: murder, assault, the fact that John and Edward are still in the X-Factor. But if there’s one crime that riles them above all others, it’s joke theft. The latest victim of comedic light-fingers is stand-up comic Gary Delaney. He’d noticed that several of his previously sure-fire gags were floundering as badly as Gordon Brown in the polls. A quick check on Google revealed that 34 of his jokes had been posted uncredited on the website Sickipedia.org, a sort of virtual multi-storey car-park for un-PC one-liners and dodgy gags.

Now this may not seem like a big deal, but for a comedian – and I am one – jokes are our babies (though we are allowed to have real ones too). It was as if some internet Madonna had come to Gary Delaney’s village and taken 34 of his children away for adoption.

I know how he feels. I once had a routine ripped off on an amateur talent show on TV. I was furious at first, though soon my ego kicked in and I wondered if it got any laughs. I was strangely pleased it did. That’s not everyone’s reaction. More typical is the fight I witnessed several years ago between two comedians about who came up with a gag about panto star Frank Bruno’s latest boxing match where the spectators all shouted “he’s behind you!”. Somehow it felt right having fisticuffs over Frank.

Plagiarism was never an issue on the mainstream circuit of old. Never Mind the Buzzcocks star Phill Jupitus remembers doing a gig with Little and Large: “Bernard Manning came into the room and said to Eddie Large: ‘That Princess Diana joke of yours is going really well. I’m using it every f**king night’. Eddie just shrugged and said ‘Alright, Bernard’”. That’s not an attitude you’d find on what used to be known as the alternative circuit. There, the joke thief is a pariah, though often a pariah who does really well. American comic Denis Leary is hated by many in the comedy community for allegedly stealing from Bill Hicks, whilst Robbie Williams was recently turned on for (again, allegedly) using comedian Jack Whitehall’s gag about him feeling that somewhere his Dad’s looking down on him – he’s not dead, just very condescending.

But nowadays it’s not just fellow comics we have to beware of. It’s everyone – thanks to the internet. Earlier this year, in a fit of stage-rage, Lee Hurst, the cheery cockney comic from They Think It’s All Over, cheerily smashed the mobile phone of a punter he thought was filming him for youtube, concerned it would allow people to rip off his material. But Hurst would be the first to admit that the only website he’s likely to look at is Luddite.com. Fellow comedian Marcus Brigstocke is more typical. He has no problems if his TV or radio work ends up on the internet: “I’m always flattered. It’s very clear that it’s me who wrote it, it’s me who’s doing it and it makes people want to see my shows”.

The problem occurs when it’s not made clear who wrote it. A few years ago one-liner virtuoso Tim Vine had 20 of his jokes pasted in an email and spread across the net claiming to be jokes used by Tommy Cooper. Some people refused to believe the material was Vine’s, even though the fraudulent emailer helpfully left the punchline to one gag as “Mr Vine, get out of the filing cabinet”. I suspect he or she does not work in espionage.

Gary Delaney posted one of his jokes – “Old Macdonald had Tourettes: E, I, E, I, C**t” – on Twitter only to see it re-posted by Lily Allen without

Lily Allen. Whose side are you on?

crediting him. Before posting it, Delaney did a Google search to make sure the joke hadn’t been done. It now yields 167,000 (uncredited) search results on Google. It must hurt to see your baby being so damn promiscuous.

Marcus Brigstocke had a similar experience with a joke about the computer game Pac-Man: “If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music”. The joke went viral, appeared on tee-shirts and was even credited to Bill Gates. Brigstocke is philosophical about his joke’s crazy bid for freedom: “I kind of let it go. In any case, my guess is my legal team will be fractionally smaller than Bill Gates’”.

But why is it so important to us to be credited? We’re comedians so why the sense of humour failure? Shouldn’t we be flattered by the success of our gags? Tim Vine, though keen not to whinge, doesn’t hold with this: “You wouldn’t say: Ooh! That burglar must have really loved your DVD player to have nicked it!”. The real problem is – and this is where I suspect I may lose some sympathy – it takes a lot of work to make a good joke. I know it’s not work as in 7-year-old-child-down-an-Angolan-tin-mine work and I also know some jokes just pop out spontaneously. You can see this on Twitter whenever a celebrity death takes place (I remember being so impressed when TV Burp writer Daniel Maier posted “Dead Man Moonwalking” within seconds of Michael Jackson’s death).

But more often than not the birth of a joke is a long, painful process, without gas-and-air or epidural. I once posted this on Twitter: “UK for Dummies: There are 2 Browns. Derren and Gordon. One gets everything right, the other gets everything wrong”. I agonised over the punctuation for at least half an hour before posting: colon? Full stop? I just couldn’t decide. But that’s our job. We sit in a damp room with one halogen light bulb that needs replacing (just me?) and try to think up funnies. We try them out in front of an audience, we hone and polish them. We love our jokes. We’ve watched them grow. We would willingly give a false address to get them into a better school. Which is why we hate it when they go and call someone else Daddy.

The problem is sometimes it’s hard to prove paternity. Last month the comedian Josie Long ran into trouble when she performed her joke about the cost of taking part in sport at Hogwarts being a quid each: “I did the joke and people shouted ‘Adam and Joe!’”. It turned out a member of the public from Australia had passed off the joke as their own on Adam and Joe’s Radio 6 show. The alleged joke thief, one James Hewitt (not, I think, the one who dated Princess Diana) was adamant he’d made it up himself. He’d never even heard of Josie Long.

It’s almost impossible to know for sure that a joke you’ve come up with is one no-one else has ever thought of. This is especially true of topical gags. They’re jokes that you grab and forge quickly and the chances are others are having similar ideas. I once wrote on Twitter: “one thing you can say for gender-vague athlete Castor Semenya – at least she had the balls to compete”. I got an irate reply from two Twitter users who’d posted pretty much the same gags a few minutes earlier. I hadn’t seen them – honest – but the fear of accidentally stealing a joke is so intense I spent about 2 months apologising.

And it’s not just topical jokes. Phill Jupitus once saw one of the most succesful comedians in the world perform a major routine he’d done about lions and antelopes: “when I saw it I almost burst into tears. It meant I wouldn’t be able to tour or do a live video that autumn”. His fury only abated some years later when a friend showed him a Richard Pryor video from way back in 1972 with the same lions and antelopes routine. Some might say that’s proof there are no new jokes. Though I suspect Richard Pryor never did a routine about Swine flu or whether anatomist Gunther von Hagens allows you to keep your skin on during sex.

Richard Pryor: Joke thief with a time machine?

One-line merchants like Jimmy Carr, Tim Vine and Gary Delaney will always suffer more from plagiarism than other comics because their jokes are so portable. Comics who tell stories or have a distinctive stage persona like Eddie Izzard or Lee Evans are far less vulnerable. The secret, according to Phill Jupitus, is to be unique so they can’t steal from you: “That’s what comics should think about: it’s not the jokes, it’s about themselves. It’s about your personality. They can’t appropriate ‘you’”.

So maybe we should all just chill about this joke ownership thing. So what if it’s our living? We can always just go write another joke. As Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take things to”. But then what did he know about comedy? – Oh, and that quote was told me by comedian Peter Serafinowicz. It’s important to make that clear.

This article first appeared in the Sunday Times.

For more about this see Jay Richardson’s article on the Chortle website (he’s @jayirichardson on Twitter). I think I should also say that Sickipedia have now made sure that comedians can be credited for their jokes.

Stop! (Joke) Thief! is a post from: David Schneider's website

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Nicked Jokes. Allegedly.

David — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:37:26 +0000

This is a picture of Denis Leary. That's all I'm saying.

Here’s a list of some specific joke spats to go with my Sunday Times article on joke thievery – with the odd youtube link that’s definitely worth watching. I have to thank Twitter for helping me locate a lot of these… Also, there’s one juicy possible joke-theft I haven’t included here. But will blog about that imminently…

Jokes which went round the net as TOMMY COOPER’s, actually by TIM VINE.
“So I rang up my local swimming baths. I said ‘Is that the local swimming baths?’ He said ‘It depends where you’re calling from.’”

“So I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me “Can you give me a lift?” I said “Sure, you look great, the world’s your oyster, go for it.’”

Joke first told by JIMMY CARR at the Royal Variety Performance, 2002. Similar joke later used by JIM DAVIDSON on his BBC1 show “On the Road”
Someone came up to me last week and complained about a joke, quite a big-boned girl. She said: ‘I think you’re fattist’. I said: ‘No, I think you’re fattest’.”

American comic DENIS LEARY was constantly accused of ripping off fellow stand-up BILL HICKS. This joke forms part of the evidence.
Bill Hicks: The fact is we live in a world where John Lennon was murdered yet Barry Manilow continues to put out albums.
Denis Leary: We live in a country where John Lennon gets 6 bullets in the chest. Yoko Ono’s standing next to him – not one f**king bullet!
For more on this CLICK HERE.

Joke performed by MARCUS BRIGSTOCKE placed seventh in the TV Channel Dave’s funniest jokes on Edinburgh Fringe (August 09), and joke posted on Twitter in November 09 by popular Tweeter @SHITMYDADSAYS, soon to get his own sitcom.
Brigstocke:”To the people who’ve got iPhones: you just bought one, you didn’t invent it!”
@Shitmydadsays: Son, noone gives a shit about all the things ur cellphone does. You didn’t invent it, you just bought it. Anyone can do that.

Joke by JACK WHITEHALL, placed fifth in the funniest jokes on the Fringe, and joke made by ROBBIE WILLIAMS as part of Radio 1’s Electric Proms in October.
Jack Whitehall: “I’m sure wherever my dad is, he’s looking down on us. He’s not dead, just very condescending.”’
Robbie allegedly said: “I’m sure my aunt’s looking down on me now. She’s not dead, she’s just really condescending.”

Joke written by MARCUS BRIGSTOCKE but attributed on the internet to various computer people including BILL GATES
“If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music”

Joke posted by stand-up GARY DELANEY on Twitter (15^th July) then posted on by LILY ALLEN without crediting him (18^th July).
“Old MacDonald had Tourettes – E, I, E, I, CUNT”

Joke by comedian JOSIE LONG, submitted as his own to the Adam and Joe Show by a member of the public, JAMES HEWITT
“How much do you have to pay to play sport at Hogwarts? A quid each.”

Joke first performed by comic MICHAEL REDMOND then subsequently by JOE PASQUALE, according to fellow stand-up Stewart Lee (an absolute genius routine: CLICK HERE)
“People are always saying to me…. Get out of my garden!”

Joke posted on Twitter by Ross “Teddy” Craig in September 09, then posted by someone else on Sickipedia.org, October 09.
I’ve just had an all-day breakfast. My gran’s got alzheimers and loves to cook.

Comedy duo The Mighty Boosh accused a Sugar Puffs advert of ripping off their “crimping”, a form of rap. They took revenge by killing a Honey Monster in their live show.

Joke by ARI SCHAFFER, one of the comics American stand-up CARLOS MENCIA has been accused of stealing from. He’s been heckled and even hit by fellow comedians JOE ROGAN. (Great onstage row at L.A. Comedy Store – CLICK HERE)
Ari Schaffer: “Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to build a huge 12 foot wall along the Mexican/ Californian border to keep the Mexicans out. But Arnold, who do you think is going to build that wall?”
Carlos Mencia: “I propose we kick all the illegal aliens out of this country, then we build a superfence so they can’t get back in” – “Erm… Who’s going to build it?”

See also my Bill Hicks vs David Hare post.

Nicked Jokes. Allegedly. is a post from: David Schneider's website

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Stephen Fry and Twitter wobbles

David — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:47:14 +0000

Here’s a slightly longer version of a Guardian article I wrote about being a needy, needy performer. It has a couple of bonus jokes in it.

It’s been a lively week in the land of Twitter where anyone who’s monitored my computer use over the last few months will know I’ve been pretty much living (I’m sure I now qualify for dual nationality). First the Twitter King, Stephen Fry, threatens to walk away from the social network because of “aggression and unkindness” which would be our Roland Emmerich disaster movie, our “2012”. Then Katie Price breaks down in no-more-than-140-character sections and tells her “haters” to just attack her and get it off their, er, chest (her words not mine).

The Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Jordan’s meltdown, though sad to witness, was perhaps more predictable than the Ur-tweeter Stephen Fry’s. His reason for wanting to bail out was that one of his 938,485 followers casually mentioned that he found Stephen’s tweets “boring”. It may seem strange that the Great Man would worry about the opinion of one person but as a performer myself, I understood. Compliments are like water through fingers to a performer. Silky water, but water nevertheless. Few of us can quote the best review we’ve ever had but ask us about our worst and we’ll reel off a verbatim list that even Wagner aficionados would find a bit long and tedious. Who cares about a thousand compliments, a single insult confirms what we all deep down feel is true: that we’re rubbish, talentless, or, in my own case, “possessing a face that belongs on the X-Files”.

Time was all you had to do was avoid the reviews and the odd tactless yawn in the audience but now everyone’s a critic. Every youtube clip you’re in, every blog or article that’s posted online leaves space for comments. And Web 2.0 is not shy about telling you what it thinks. Unfortunately, for some of us, the Ego 2.0 upgrades haven’t quite come in yet.

So why not just avoid the comments? I wish it were that simple but we’re insecure performers. We need praise. If I ever have to check into the Priory it won’t be for drink or drugs or sex. It’ll be to try and stop me putting my name into Google. One friend of mine even occasionally checks his feedback on ebay for a little boost. The internet can toss us performers the treats we need but it’s a high risk strategy and Twitter is the highest risk of all.

Like nuclear power, Twitter can be a force for good or evil. It’s great that it allows fans access to their heroes (cheap, affordable fuel), but it also blurs the lines between the public and private (North Korea). Stephen Fry’s momentary wobble, which would have remained tactfully unseen a couple of years ago was suddenly 938,485 times more public (Katie only 425,216 times). And there are other dangers. If you’re not careful it can become like having a microphone available 24 hours a day to go and say something funny into and have people clap approval. The problem can be what happens if they don’t, if even just one of them calls you boring or a slag or the worst thing that ever happened to Peter. I’m sure the Man Who Called Stephen Fry Boring never dreamt Stephen would read what he said, let alone be hurt by it. Just as the woman who filled in a Shag or Not Shag questionnaire on Facebook two years ago about me would never dream that I still remember everything by heart (Not even to save your family? Really?!)

So if you’ve enjoyed this article, feel free to comment. But if you haven’t, then please don’t say anything. Because as sure as Windows 7 follows Window Vista, in a weak moment some time soon, I’ll be going online to have a look.

This article first appeared in The Guardian, November 3rd 2009

Stephen Fry and Twitter wobbles is a post from: David Schneider's website

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