Bravo!

The trouble with MP is that they are hopeless amateurs – if you don’t believe me look at the man above trying to be funny and failing. From time to time they did something amusing: perhaps 15 mins out of a 13 half-hour season (7 1/2 hours). The only talented one is John Cleese. The rest are your typical Oxbridge pseuds. You poor darlings just never saw this kind of talentless mummery before and thought that you were lacking because you thought they were idiots but didn’t want to seem uncool in front of the rest of your freshman class at Podunk U. Rest easy: you were not wrong: they are not funny.

Just to make myself clear: Eric Idle is the least funny man in the US. This is not a matter of opinion. I know funny: he is not it.

P.S. Al Franken does not have a funny bone in his body. Are we all clear about that? kthnkbai.

@Benedick: Twit.

Benedick: BLASPHEMY!

(I will grant that Eric was the least funny of the bunch.)

@chicago bureau: Please. They are to your/our/my generation what MJ or SNL is to another: a way to identify ourselves. They give us something to talk about in the nursing home or while waiting for results of the latest test of our mortality. They make us feel part of a community of shared aspiration and once-upon-a-time hope. The shows themselves are painful to watch. For every Dead Parrot sketch there are 15 Climbing the Edgeware (sp? I can’t remember) Road sketches. Take Ionesco, Pirandello, Becket and the Goons; put in blender of too many nights in dingy pubs in Cambridge and voila! unfunny, over-privileged TV. At the time they seemed fresh because they were amateurs – and if there’s one thing the Brits love it’s amateurism – they couldn’t do it any better.

@Benedick: Edgware, I think. I can’t honestly tell you why I know that. Been in London a few times, but I wouldn’t have thought something like that would stick. Maybe there’s a tube station called Edgware.