All counties are optional as far as Royal Mail are concerned - all they want is a house number, street, POSTAL TOWN (in capital letters please) and postcode.
Grim
(South African who spent 7 years in London becoming far, FAR too intimately familiar with the UK postal system)
In the U.S. county boundary changes have been rare since the 19th century. Before that new counties were being created along with settlement.
A quick moment in the Mrs. Richards episode that I probably didn’t notice for a long time was the charades scene between Basil and Polly. Mrs. Fawlty is talking to Polly and asks her the name of the horse (Dragonfly) to be sure it was really her betting and not Basil.
He is standing behind his wife’s back furiously pantomiming to tell Polly the name of the horse, and points to the fly of his trousers. Polly sees this and her guess is, “Small?”
Finally finished the great migration from Surbiton, did you?
The weird thing is that everybody in this thread is actually on the same page without realising it.
The whole point of the joke is that when the major says “I took her to India” everybody - British people, Basil, American people, whoever - would assume he meant India the country. And it’s only when he goes on to say “…at the Oval” that the joke becomes apparent.
In other words, a British audience would only think that “India” relates to the national sports team if the statement was made in context. If the statement is made in isolation then everyone would assume the country.
That’s the whole point of the joke - the fact it changes from an odd statement into a very run of the mill statement with the addition of the “…at the Oval” line. Hate having to explain a joke but therein lies the humour.
So Americans are no different in assuming that India meant the country. That’s what you are supposed to think and what everybody would think.
Likewise Americans don’t think it odd to refer to US against Canada if the statement is made in the context of an ice hockey game. The major says things out of context which is what makes him funny.
the “piece of your brain” is the best line ever!! in all of comedy. timing is everything and the timing there is so very spot on.
it doesn’t matter how many time you see fawlty towers, you need oxygen and feel like you’ve done 2 million sit ups, everytime.
the dvds should come with a health warning.
That’s because the discussion has turned into focusing on the word “India” rather than the weird sentence.
“I took her to India” would, indeed, mean “I took her to the country called India” to most people, including we British people. The odd thing is the sentence structure, not the word “India”.
“I took her to watch England beat India” or “I took her to watch the match against India” is how the phrase would be used. The team would still be referred to as “India”.
For next year’s Euro 2012 championships, we say “England is in the draw with France, [and, uh, whatever the other two teams are”. New Zealand won this year’s Rugby World Cup. The current holders of the FA Cup are Manchester City (the “City” distinguishing them from “Manchester United”). All names by place.
Coventry City last won the FA Cup in what year?
That is a trick question as OH! OH! OH!
Sorry, you lost me.
Wikipedia tells me in 1987, for the one and only time. Is this wrong?
ETA: I assume this means that a Monty Python joke is now made pointless by later history.
As others have mentioned, it’s not odd usage, but the main reason it’s like that is that it’s the setup for the joke. The fact that Basil first misunderstands it as meaning the country, is a joke.
For comparison, a similar setup appeared in The IT Crowd
(Douglas, the CEO of the company is being interviewed by April - a reporter for NewsWeek)
Douglas: April. May I take you to dinner?
April: Oh, I don’t think I could.
Douglas: In Paris?
April: Paris! (she is astonished and appears to have been won over)
Douglas: Paris, yes. It’s the name of a new restaurant in Hull. That’s right. We’re going to Hull.
The exact phrase the Major used was “I took her to see India”. My bolding. cite. That’s a lot more open to interpretation, and is somewhat unusual if he meant “I took her to the country of India.” - that’s what you would express as “I took her to India”. When he said “at the Oval”, I like many/most Americans assumed there was a movie called India and the Oval was a theater. Just as if someone 2 years ago told me “I took her to see Australia” I’d assume he meant the Nicole Kidman movie and not the country. The Major does go on a bit with what I now realize is some cricket jargon (“Sunny had to get 33 in about half an hour” ?) but if you know nothing about cricket that goes right over your head.
I don’t know. I would watch it when it popped up on PBS from time to time. At some point, it wasn’t quite as funny when I realized how many of Basil’s predicaments are of his own making. But then they spin into catastrophes that are really more than he deserves. So he’s not the innocent victim of circumstance, but he’s not the villain getting his comeuppance, either. It’s somewhere in the middle. Maybe that was the point when they were creating the show, but it sorta takes something away to not know if I’m rooting for or against Basil. Is he supposed to have my sympathies?
I’m also of the opinion that he dies at the end of the last episode.
Indeed.
1m50s in.
I would imagine that to Americans quite a lot goes over your head (man, that sounded bad!) in British comedy that you don’t even notice you’re missing. I’m sure the same is true vice versa, also.
I notice it most in things that are rather obvious about making a reference, like Family Guy. A lot of that goes over my head.
At the risk of overexplaining a great joke, there are two nuances I think you’re all still missing.
No. If he had said, ‘I took her to India’, he could have been going to India the country for any purpose and so happened to take her along with him (because he was so keen on her). But to speak of going to see somewhere rather implies that one had visited that place as a tourist. Moreover, by saying ‘I took her to see India’, he seems to be implying that they visited India the country specifically so that he could show her the sights of the sub-continent. Which does seem a wildly romantic gesture. Hence Basil’s incredulity.
But taking her to see India the cricket team is, if anything, even more improbable. For if a trip to see India the country is implausibly romantic, a trip to see India the cricket team isn’t romantic at all. The (somewhat inaccurate) stereotype on which it’s playing is that women are not interested in cricket and that only men would ever go to a match at the Oval. Part of the joke is that the Major is so clueless about women that he took one to a cricket match!
The exchange is very cleverly constructed. The audience doesn’t really have the chance to think about what the Major means by ‘India’ before Basil, who clearly thinks he means the country, has interjected to query him. So in that split second, we have been encouraged to think he means the country, while simultaneously having the doubt introduced, only for the Major immediately to clarify the point with maximum bathos. And, of course, the Major remains oblivious to that fact that there was any ambiguity.
Spot-on explanation APB.
Well, Basil was based on a real hotel owner John Cleese had to deal with. So in that respect, I think Basil was meant to be a villain.
With that said, I too find him sympathetic. It’s generally pretty clear he’s not usually being a dick just to be a dick, but because the customer did something that violated his sense of decency.
It’s the kind of person that were you to meet yourself and have him react as he sometimes does on the show, yes, you would hate him. But as an objective viewer, I don’t hate him at all.