People from Yorkshire don’t laugh at jokes about sex. Nor about education nor death. The Scots, who probably wouldn’t have even been included in this survey by Ticketmaster if they’d voted ‘yes’ as they should have, don’t laugh at anything. Whereas the Welsh laugh at absolutely everything. Alcohol will do that to a person. Or to a sheep. And Londoners were the most tolerant of all. Even to jokes about race. The average London score for race jokes (voted from -100 to +100) was -21, whereas in the northeast it was -48. Bloody miserable regionals. I wonder how regional jokes scored?

None of this is surprising. It all hooks up nicely with our stereotypes of our brother (and sista) Brits, on the Andy scale of: the stronger the accent the more dim, daft, moronic and witless people generally are. William Hague as a good example. Big accent, total dickhead. Stevie Gerrard, unintelligibly Liverpudlian, not very funny. Except when Liverpool lose, then he’s very funny but just doesn’t realise it. Londoners don’ got no faaarkin’ accints, do dey? an’ they’re all faaarkin’ ‘ilarious. Though do tend to swear excessively. Especially the women.

As I’ve said before, I view surveys with a liberal sprinkling of salt. Like an ocean’s worth. For scientific reasons. Firstly; they’re all bollocks. Secondly, they all depend on who is doing the survey, who is paying for the survey and what they set out to show. No survey just kind of spontaneously happens. And when people are surveyed, unless you water board them during the process, you don’t get true responses. People will not say what they truly believe, they will feel pressurised into giving a ‘correct’ answer. Hence Londoners averaging -28 for racial jokes when in fact they’re all funny and made more so by their chronically inappropriate lack of political correctness. But we’re programmed and conditioned that once we’ve stopped laughing we must act according to social niceties and condemn anything vaguely in the category ‘taking the piss’. And doing so for foreigners, gays, women, Conservatives, Arsenal fans; all underprivileged, should always be heartily encouraged. “I agree!!!” I hear you say. Unless you’re taking part in a survey in which case you say “STRONGLY DISAGREE!!!!”

People from the blue half of Manchester were very funny last night, downright hilarity as they took an early lead through an undeserved (they all are) penalty at home to Roma in the Champions League. And we waited for the inevitable bombardment and corresponding basketball score that the Mancs so often produce. Ahhh, but they only produce it in league matches. So they didn’t find it quite so amusing when the oldest man in the world, the great Francesco Totti, scored an equaliser for the ‘talians. He limped onto a superb through ball, hobbled round a defender, discarded his zimmer frame just in time to lob Joe Hart for a wonderful strike. Now THAT was funny. Call me an old bastard but I do enjoy the richest club on the planet suffering in any way. And by a man so ancient he’s almost as old as Ryan Giggs. Good thing for Roma that class is ageless.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx