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well its self xplanatary i would have thought,its like my girlfriend i said i like foreplay and she said its better than wam bam thank u man,isaid the small faces she didnt get the joke.

I'm more confused than ever now.

Just one thing. If it's self explanitory how come it took you years to understand it?

im very slow.

Nature's way of giving us the only 2 piece jigsaw puzzle, well, between 2 people anyway and even then there are transexuals. Then again they can go and fuck themselves

Its people who DO find Friends funny that I worry about.

American humour. Is that an oxymoron Steve?

don't think so; bilko, seinfeld, frasier, mash, the simpsons, cheers, the larry sanders show...

. . . and the list can go on for quite a way. We're basically still living on the glories of Python, Fawlty Towers, Blackadder and the occasional cult comedy.

hmm... i wouldn't be quite so pessimistic.

while it's true to say that we seem incapable of crafting anything fresh or interesting from the standard sit com format ('terry and june' seems positively shakespearean compared to efforts of recent years), when it comes to stuff that doesn't quite fit the mould - the office, spaced, black books, phoenix nights, the league of gentleman, alan partridge, father ted, etc - things begin to look a little brighter.

where the americans do have us beat, is in being able to keep a good thing going. frasier has run for almost 250 episodes now and the standard of writing is astonishingly consistent throughout. by contrast, most of our comedies - even the very best of them - seem to peter out after the second or third series.

was watching some python eps from 72 the other night and im still laughing today ,ihave my faves find it very true to life ,but the office i watched for 5 mins then switched it off.

Yes the Americans can certainly put us to shame on scripting a decent sitcom. I will admit that our scripts and timing are often poor as far as sitcoms go. Obviously Frasier, Cheers et al beat the likes of Ab Fab, Terry & June etc hands down.

The yanks do however tend to stick to the sitcom formula and AFAIK the USA have never ventured into new areas of comedy such as our brilliant The Office, Brass Eye, Alan Partridge etc. In a nutshell we are better inovators and more adventurous. USA comedies are very gentle in comparrison to ours. I remember talking to an American who had seen Spitting Image while visiting our shores and he said that sort of humour would not be acceptable in the US due to its mocking nature. Traditional sitcoms are moribund in Britain judging by current efforts. We have moved on. But the US still do sitcom well (sometimes) hence the imports that C4 buy.

Thats just my opinion. Perhaps there are some cutting edge innovative US comedies out there which I have not seen.

I guess what I am trying to say is that satire is a British thing. Shows like Have I Got News, Brass Eye, Partridge wouldnt be successful in the USA as they prefer the gentle sitcom.