Wanker is fighting talk.
Tosser not so much.
It could have been Lipton Yellow Label which is a GREAT tea but generally not for sale in the US. I will look in the ethnic markets, thanks for the tip!
Tosser has different BBFC rules than wanker, so yeah.
OTOH, if a mate said to you “you fucking wanker” you’d take it as a friendly jibe. If he said “you fucking tosser,” it would seem more like he was actually insulting you. IME, of course. I can think of cases where this wouldn’t be so (dependant on tone of voice, etc) but there is a slight difference.
When in the Dr.'s surgery, when patients want tea, or one of the receptionists wants to get someone tea, they are talking about the drink. But sometimes when someone is coming home and they talk about having their tea they may be talking about the meal called tea.
I’m not certain they mean the meal in this show, but I’ve watched a lot of other British shows and read books by British authors where it is clear they are talking about the meal eaten when one returns home from work or school.
And you didn’t ask but “Elevenses” is a meal as well that I’ve heard mentioned in the show.
About the dog- there are two. In the beginning there was a big dog always coming into the surgery that I assumed had belonged to or befriended the previous doctor. Later there is a smaller dog named Buddy who I thought belonged to Auntie Joan. I found a blog though that claims they just substituted another dog when the first actor dog died. So maybe it is supposedly the same dog that Joan adopted to get it out of Martin’s hair.
Not Weird Science? 
Oh year that reminds me of two British usages that annoy me –
“Surgery” – to mean a doctor’s clinic, where surgery is unlikely to be performed. This is doubly odd considering the intense mutual rivalry between physicians and surgeons in British medical tradition. (Surgeons even insist on being addressed as “Mister” because they are beyond mere “doctors”)
And even more annoying, this gets extended to any profession that periodically holds open house – politicians talk of holding surgery to attend to constituent complaints.
“Sorted” – you can “get breakfast sorted” or “get yourself sorted” and it has nothing to do with ordering things or separating them into groups. I wouldn’t mind so much if they took the trouble to say “get my situation sorted out” but no it’s just plain “sorted”. Yuk.
Tea is a (mildly) addictive drug. Like all addictive drugs, its use is associated with repetitive/ritualistic behaviour.
Note, the international consensus now seems to be that the word “addictive” is reserved only for something “that has begun to harm the individual or others physically, mentally, or socially”, so my use of it here is a missuse. I’m not aware of another word that has emerged to describe the identical phenomenon when it is not associated with harm.
Nitpick: Minor surgery is carried out routinely in GP clinics.
And I don’t think the physicians and the surgeons have an “intense mutual rivalry”. All doctors qualify in both medicine and surgery as part of their primary degree and it’s only later that they (may) specialise in one direction or the other. Those who earn a fellowship in one of the surgical colleges become “Mr” not to express their superiority over those who practice medicine, but for historical reasons; the surgical colleges did not, at one time, require their members to have a university degree. (The specialism grew out of the barber’s trade, remember.)
For a surgeon, “Mr” is a mark of distinction not over physicians , but over those who practice surgery, but have not yet earned their fellowship.
If you hear “septic” it is code for “piece of shit American”. It comes from rhyming cockney slang where “septic” with the implied work “tank” rhymes with “Yank”, being short for Yankee.
You might be interested in 10 British Insults Americans Won’t Understand
I remember from … somewhere … a British girl talking about how shocked she was hearing the word “wanker” on TV before 10pm, when there would be kids around. I’m sure the severity of it varies over time and from place to place.
And tea is wonderful! If you don’t like it, fine, but if you don’t understand why it might be liked then it may be that you’ve never had the good stuff. Loose tea only, none of those floor-sweepings they put in tea bags. Start with Darjeeling, that’s a light, smooth tea that everybody likes. Work yourself up gradually to my favourite, Lapsang Souchong.
If an American says a machine is “Out of Order” is it repaired by sorting it ? 
Its back to the days of the first mass production units… the weaving loom… if anything broke, say a few teeth of a gear, the machine may still produce some result, but the result is a mess, so the symptom was (the cards for example) were out of order…
No, he’s discussing the use of tea in fiction. It would be one thing if it only showed up in stereotypes from outsiders. They could just be ill informed. But it shows up in a ton of British works, particularly the show this thread is about.
His question is why tea seems so important in these works.
Even though the rhyming slang has a connection with sewage, I don’t think this is correct - AFAIK, it just means ‘American’.
In rhyming slang, there is not usually any semantic link between the meaning of the obscured term and the substitute word used for it.
e.g. ‘Loaf’ = ‘Head’ (because ‘loaf of bread’ rhymes with head’) = it’s just a coded term - it doesn’t imply that heads are bread-like or vice versa.
We (Australians) call Americans “Seppos”, which is indeed from septic tank = yank, however the interpretation that we’re calling Americans “pieces of shit” is being too literal. The rhyme is cheeky and intended to be lighthearted (mostly. Some people wield this word like a weapon. I know Americans who’ve had it yelled at them in anger by people who were indeed likening them to pieces of shit. That’s not the spirit of rhyming slang; that’s just assholes being assholes). If someone friendly who has been nothing but nice to you says in a jovial voice “Seppo”, do not think for a second that they are insulting you. It’s playful.
Yeah, this. There’s nothing fruity about “apples and pears” (stairs). It’s just a rhyming phrase that is in common use or entered the public consciousness for some reason.
You mean like the way Americans say “pissed” when they mean “pissed off”? Because to the rest of the English speaking world, “pissed” means “drunk”.
Nope - you got it the wrong way around (sort of). In beginning of the 18th century, when physicians were distinguished by the possession of an MD, the possession of a medical doctorate entitled physicians and no other medical practitioner to be addressed as “doctor.” Eighteenth century surgeons, who were of course addressed as Mr, seldom had any formal qualification, in fact they were often graduates from the local butchers.
As the status of surgeons rose, with the introduction of proper qualifications and the start of the Royal College of Surgeons, the title ‘mister’ became a sort of reverse snobbery. AFAIK female surgeons are happy to be called ‘doctor’ as they are often mistaken for nurses (Horror!)
I was taught that ‘punter’ meant a prostitute’s client so wasn’t to be used in reference to customers. However, it’s normally used for gambling normally around me in East Scotland.
Also, your normal UK ‘cuppa’ [cup of tea] does have caffeine in it- about half that of coffee, depending on how strong you like your tea according to The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/news/2013/nov/27/caffeine-compared-coke-coffee-aspirin-chocolate-tea
My mother prefers decaf tea now. It tastes the same when you get used to it. But I do find myself drinking more Diet Pepsi to find that caffeine elsewhere. The 12-25 year olds where I live (working class- not impoverished just rough) tend to cling onto those big cans of energy drinks like ‘Relentless’, even before school in the morning…
There’s a certain bonding factor with tea in that it’s still usually made by hand. Someone needs to either fill a tea pot with bags and water or put bags in cups which takes time to brew, discussion on how people take it. Milk? Sugar? Plus the nigh obligatory biscuits to accompany them. Coffee, which is usually ‘instant’ stuff in a UK workplace, is far more pour and go in comparison.
True. Down here in the antipodal isles we look forward to tea time. The evening meal. Posh types refer to dinner but for me, that is a midday meal - lunch. It probably has a Scottish origin given the south of New Zealand is Scotland redux.
And for what its worth, morning break is “morning tea” and afternoon break is “afternoon tea”. Or smoko, but that is a workplace use which is fading.