Brittle Funny Oppression

Mark Fisher's piece on comedy in The New Humanist is just so good.

Nailing it on the boarding school vibe. From an American perspective I'd say that the comedy is only a hotspot region of a much larger space, let's call it all of England south of roughly Nottingham.

Maybe a bit romanticizing of the working class. I can do both channels having been at school with the entity called Osborne and at home with my dad in the musicians' union and his dad having been a steelworker and my brother being a plumber. And that world has its own psychic armor. Just listen to Lennon, "Working Class Hero."

Fisher plus Lennon will give you an accurate guide to a lot of England and the take home message is: if you live south of Nottingham, evacuate immediately.