The Born Loser by Art and Chip Sansom for October 12, 2023

And all the dialogues are in pure Cockney accent.

They call those shows “crimeys” over there.

Best Brit series “IDEAL” 2005.

I LOVE British comedy. One foot in the Grave, Keeping up Appearances, Last of the Summer Wine was my favorite. I love their humor

I second Left, never right. I am presently watching Waiting For God, but I also like As Time Goes By, Are You Being Served, Red Dwarf, Allo, Allo and Yes, Minister, among others. Then there’s The Avengers with Patrick MacNee from the 1960’s.

He’s gobsmacked.

My brother married and now lives in England with his bride. They were visiting and he ordered a meal of lime chicken. He didn’t care for it, commenting that it was a bit off. “What’s wrong, Is it too limey for you?” He replied, “If you’re not, it’s not.” She has a good sense of humor, and we all thought it was pretty funny.

By the way, another one of my favorite British series…, Fawlty Towers.

“Shetland” and “Broadchurch” 2 outstanding Scottish shows on BritBox. I have to have closed caption turned on to understand the dialogue. Their English is quite different than my own, but it’s well worth it. Another is “Happy Valley”.

She just wants to enjoy The Good Life.

I’d say yes!

Please don’t mention Dîck Van Dÿke… No body but nobody talks like that… And my mum was born in Burdett Road…

Cockney, originated around Whitechapel, intended as code, to be used by the criminal classes, to confuse the police. Anyone born within the sound of Bow church bell, could be considered a true Cockney. My mother was born in Burdett Road, and was as Cockney as they come, except when she was on the phone, and used her telephone-voice…

Associative Cockney (East-end of London) Rhyming Slang (ACRS) adopts a code requiring either two associated words, names or syllables, but unrelated to the object…

Apples and pears are both fruits, and pears rhymes with stairs. The internet has dozens of Cockney dictionaries.

Dîck Van Dÿke has two unacceptable words in his name…

Monty Python never gets old.

Old Britbox shows are usually much more entertaining that contemporary “reality” shows.

Vicious with Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi is amazing!

The writing and acting is SO much better

Translation: You are on your own for dinner tonight.

Mystery , A Touch of Frost and New Tricks worth watching and Midsomers Murders along with Brokenwoods mysteries and Foyle’s War.

Ever notice that on “Coronation Street”, ALL the characters yell constantly? Is everyone deaf?

well that might be a problem… when the whole family starts saying it like that anyways. :}

You called that right Brutus .

Has anyone noticed that Gladys seems to have lost weight lately?

Take away fish ‘n’ chips for dinner.

With that blue collar accent, she can’t be watching Endeavour.

Off topic, Brutus negotiated a product placement in today’s “Real Life Adventures” comic.

I remember kids in my junior high school trying to talk with a British accent during the Beatlemania/British Invasion years.

You got your answer old man. Better renew your subscription for the British Channel. Makes a good gift, especially for her it would seem. Have her cook some bangers and mash to join in the festivities….

that’s a yes

BritBox is a UK treasure and an American guilty pleasure.

Sassy lass, there. Must be from out Lester way.

When she goes to the loo switch to an American football game Brutus.

Murdoch’s Mysteries was excellent. Also like Bletchley Circle (?) about WWII code breaker women.

Note lack of car chases and gunfights.

She doesn’t even have to turn on closed caption anymore.

I really like “Vera” and “Silent Witness”.

The brits sense of humour is a defensive move. Lest we cry.

“Wilberforce asked me” Gladys goes on,

“What does the phrase codswallop mean?

I said codswallop means: nonsense" and Gladys says I looked it up, it said:

“ Codswallop: British, informal. : words or ideas that are foolish or untrue : nonsense. The notion that Scott was waylaid by bad luck is “a lot of codswallop,” said Roland Huntford, a British historian."

“Wilberforce said WOW, thanks mom, I can use that word at school”…

I do that; the family always knows when I’ve been OD-ing on Britbox — LOLOL

My Dad and my uncle made the long ocean voyage across the Atlantic just post World War 2 to start a new life in The Great White North, and as a result I grew up learning vocabulary and vernacular that most of the people around me, including my Mother – who was a third generation Canuck Hillbilly – couldn’t begin to fathom, so most of the real cool stuff that my Dad said, and I repeated, was wasted…

Alas, to my misfortune, Mr. Webster, our primary school principal, was Scottish. Thusly, when I rather emphatically refered to one of my less erstwhile classmates as a ‘bell-end’ – after hearing my Dad and Uncle use the term repeatedly in a conservation the previous evening – I found myself early exposed to the BC schools judiciary process.

Now, some six decades hence, I can perhaps understand Mr. Webster’s consternation at the thought of a six year old using such terminology…but it was a great story to tell at my Dad’s 90th birthday party….

And for me…it was ‘Are You Being Served?’, cuz I was old enough to have a crush on Miss Brahms; it was ‘The Avengers’, ditto for Mrs. Peel (Diana Rigg); it was Fawlty Towers just because it was bawdy, and it was Red Dwarf because funny and it was Sci-Fi.

And the coolest thing about British TV was that it did and said things that the painfully prudish CBC never would…all the British shows were such a breathe of fresh air.

It’s difficult for me to understand the British accent.