I’m not normally a big fan of Friends, but am reluctantly willing to watch it if there’s nothing better on the TV. So it was that today afternoon between 2 and 4.30, my better half and I were idly staring at the none too funny antics of Aniston, Cox, Kudrow, LeBlanc, Perry and Schwimmer. The episode involved Ross’s failed attempt to engage in hol(e)y matrimony with Emily.
I’d walked into the hall when Rachel was cooing “helloooo” in a fake British accent to the British Airways lady, and decided that my attention span was going to be of the order of five seconds. Luckily, I was momentarily distracted by the problem of partitioning an integer in such a way that the numbers in the partition do not occur more than once. (I haven’t found a solution yet, I know almost no number theory. Anyway, if I do find the answer, I’ll be sure to post it here!). When I came back to the world in the twenty-one inch screen in front of me, I was thrown off balance. Rachel was in the plane, and the passenger sitting to her left was – gasp! – none other than Hugh Laurie. The TV had all my attention, and I was not disappointed. This was perhaps the only episode of that wretched sitcom which had some genuine humour in it, something that did not involve food, effluvia or sex. Not that I have anything against humour involving those three, but too much of it gets boring. And when the jokes rely solely upon their content (which is usually one of those three things), “boring” is not enough to describe how boring the jokes get.
Hugh Laurie delivered the goods, his sarcasm matchless as always. I really must get hold of some Jeeves and Wooster episodes, not to mention A Little Bit of Fry and Laurie. Those two were a pair, if ever there was one. There was one other – French and Saunders. Hooray for Brit Humour.
Irrelevant Afterquote
A few months ago, I became the proud possessor of Stephen Fry’s Paperweight. It’s not completely funny, but it’s funny in parts, and those parts are present aplenty in the book. One of my favourites is the part where Fry comments on the palindrome Drat Saddam, a mad dastard – “what a pity his name isn’t Sabdam”. I was laughing like a madman for well over half an hour. The other is where he writes “… Übung macht den Meister, as they like to say in Germany. Und Arbeit macht Fry ein Meistersinger.”. I’m not sure if I have the extract verbatim, but the punchline is intact. I read this, felt that something had hit me hard between the eyes, and read it again. I didn’t know whether to be shocked or to burst out laughing, and after a moment’s hesitation, burst out laughing – having read Fry earlier, I knew that he was anything but a bigot.
Glossary to the Irrelevant Afterquote:
Übung macht den Meister loosely translates into Practice makes perfect.
Arbeit macht frei literally means Work makes you free. This phrase has extremely unpleasant connotations, hence my moment of hesitation after reading the pun in Fry’s book.
