# What Made Certain Cities/Towns Funny to British Monty Python Fans? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 16, 2016, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876 "2016-12-16T18:04:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RobDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f07891/32.png) [@RobDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RobDog)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2016, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/21 "2016-12-16T23:32:12Z")
> [@Evan\_Drake](#): > > No. ‘Bristols’ is just old-fashioned ( maybe 1960s - 70s ? ) slang for breasts, like tits. > Not current slang. Cockney rhyming slang. Bristol Cities = Titties. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2016, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/22 "2016-12-16T23:33:17Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > On a related note about British towns, I’ve watched _Benny Hill_, and a couple of other Brit shows, and there’s some sniggering about Bristol. > > From context, I can’t tell if the name Bristol is slang for big breasted, or if Bristol is perhaps known for sleaze? > > Brits, is this Yank just imagining things, or is the word Bristol bawdy somehow? It’s rhyming slang most likely: Bristol -\>Bristol City (one of the two main Bristol football teams) -\> Titty. I can’t say I’ve ever heard it in the wild, but the Benny Hill Show was feckin decades ago, so who knows. Edit: Beaten several times goddammit ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2016, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/23 "2016-12-16T23:59:20Z")
Mr. Pither’s North Cornwall cycling itinerary: Bovey Tracey Budleigh Salterton the B489 Dawlish Road Ottery St. Mary Tiverton Iddesleigh Bude North Cornwall District Hospital Taunton A397 Ilfracombe Rd. - suddenly the tour veers off into the south of France (after hooking up with Terry Jones as Clodagh Rogers)… Alpes region (I’m guessing that’s Rhone-Alpes) - and now, Russia… Smolensk British Embassy Smolensk Young Men’s Anti-Christian Association (YMACA) Russian prison - after Pither and Clodagh escape the Russian execution squad, they end up back in… Cornish country lane, with his final destination on a nearby sign saying “Tavistock 12 miles”. Wow…what did Cornwall do in a previous life? ETA: Much enjoyed the frequent “fell off in…” qualifier. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/24 "2016-12-17T00:15:47Z")
“It’s like riding a bicycle. You never forget how to fall off.” ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/25 "2016-12-17T08:06:26Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/26 "2016-12-17T10:00:13Z")
Just think of them as the UK equivalent to Boise, Idaho. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/27 "2016-12-17T10:55:06Z")
And Rutland, which is known mainly for being a county with a very small area for no obvious reason (there’s no massive, dense city), like the US state of Rhode Island. Hence, the fake Rutland Television (at a time when there were only three TV networks for the whole country) —\> _The Rutles._ ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/28 "2016-12-17T11:00:07Z")
Oh, and maybe it was never mentioned by Monty Python, but I was always told that the closest UK equivalent to “New Jersey” is **Wigan** , a small rust-belt city between Liverpool and Manchester. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/29 "2016-12-17T11:06:01Z")
> [@JSexton](#): > > When I visited England, Swindon became a running joke amongst my group, because there were always signs pointing us to it, but we never seemed to need to drive through it, no matter where we went. And the signs for it were quite far away in some cases. I had a similar experience with Binghamton growing up in New York State. There were mile signs for it all along the New York highways: if a third city was mentioned on a mileage sign it would be Binghamton, sometimes at 200+ miles away, so I imagined it was some huge/medium destination city like Buffalo. But it’s only around the size of Swindon. I think in Binghamton’s case it was because it was the biggest city on the Southern Tier and the intersection of several big roads. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/30 "2016-12-17T13:31:39Z")
One of the reasons I went to Britain in the '70s was to visit Potterton, outside of Barwick-in-Elmut (about 7 miles east of Leeds, Yorkshire), from which my mother’s family had emigrated in the 17th century. I found B-in-E and started walking down a road with a sign that said “Potterton 1 1/2 miles.” About an hour later, I came across a sign pointing in the opposite direction that said “Potterton 2 1/2 miles.” There may have been a village there once, but 40 years ago there was nothing but a crossroads that I walked through without even noticing!\* \*All was not lost, however: I knocked on the door of a nearby manor house to ask directions and was invited in for supper. I ended up staying with the owners (an elderly woman and her grown son) for the next three days! 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/31 "2016-12-17T15:06:29Z")
> [@Shakester](#): > > Just think of them as the UK equivalent to Boise, Idaho. “Boise, Cotton? Why, that might not be a bad place!” I watched an episode of Michael Palin’s old Ripping Yarns last night: “Golden Gorden”. The place name (and his son’s first name) was “Barnstoneworth”. Some effort seems have been used to suitably mangle the name in a proper British fashion. It appears the name was chosen to mock similarly named, awkward to pronounce towns. (And in the spirit of Toad The Wet Sprocket and such, there is now a Barnstoneworth United Football Club, but in Australia.) ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/32 "2016-12-17T15:30:57Z")
> [@](#): > > One of the reasons I went to Britain in the '70s was to visit Potterton, outside of Barwick-in-Elmut (about 7 miles east of Leeds, Yorkshire), from which my mother’s family had emigrated in the 17th century. > > I found B-in-E and started walking down a road with a sign that said “Potterton 1 1/2 miles.” About an hour later, I came across a sign pointing in the opposite direction that said “Potterton 2 1/2 miles.” > > There may have been a village there once, but 40 years ago there was nothing but a crossroads that I walked through without even noticing!\* I’ve cycled that area many times, Potterton did have a population right up to mid Victorian, but now its just a farmhouse. There are a couple of good off road routes in the area that take you to the Bramham park estate. I must say, I am surprised to encounter anyone on a US message board who might have even heard of the place, its pretty obscure even around here ---
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/33 "2016-12-17T15:35:01Z")
That reminds me of a Flanders and Swann joke I only just got recently: “Of course, it doesn’t matter where you live south of the river now, because under the New London Plan they’re lumping all those [neighborhoods] together… they’re gonna call them ‘Brighton’”. Where Brighton is actually a resort town on the south coast of England, quite different from any part of London… 😉 ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/34 "2016-12-17T16:42:54Z")
> [@Baron\_Greenback](#): > > It’s rhyming slang most likely: Bristol -\>Bristol City (one of the two main Bristol football teams) -\> Titty. I can’t say I’ve ever heard it in the wild, but the Benny Hill Show was feckin decades ago, so who knows. One of my college roommates had a bunch of issues of “Viz” magazine, and I remember one [Roger Mellie](http://viz.wikia.com/wiki/Roger_Mellie) cartoon where he was proposing a new TV show called “The Bristol Maze” where a blindfolded contestant would have to feel his way through a maze of topless women. It was years later before I realised that (a) Bristol = tits and (b) there was a British game show called [The Crystal Maze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystal_Maze). ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/35 "2016-12-17T17:16:57Z")
> [@Miss\_Mapp](#): > > After someone tried to explain Tunbridge Wells to me, I explained New Jersey in that the part of it most people see driving through is that dismal stretch at the northern end as you head toward New York City–“the Industrial district of Mordor.” I call north NJ all too much. Stealing it. > [@Eddie The Horrible](#): > > Mr. Pither’s North Cornwall cycling itinerary: Contender for greatest TV episode ever. > [@](#): > > Wow…what did Cornwall do in a previous life? Besides produce my wife’s relatives who didn’t always speak English? ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/36 "2016-12-17T18:06:01Z")
> [@Eddie The Horrible](#): > > Wow…what did Cornwall do in a previous life? > [@dropzone](#): > > Besides produce my wife’s relatives who didn’t always speak English? From somewhat Asian-y head of British Consulate (Chapman): “Coronwor-wor-oh…Ah yes know Coronworl very well. Went to school there, Mother and Father live there, ah yes, have lots of friends there. Go for weekend parties and polo playing cards and bridge in evening. Oh yes belong to many clubs in Coro-or-onworld.” In Python’s “Blackmail” sketch, Bromsgrove and Thames Ditton feel the love. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/37 "2016-12-17T18:31:15Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > “One does not simply walk into Joisey.” Well ya can’t drive there either because the highways are jammed with broken heroes. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/38 "2016-12-17T18:44:54Z")
It’s not just Monty Python : \*You, Me, and the Apocalypse \*was set partly in Slough, which I gather is a suburb of London. ---
**Author:** ![That\_Don\_Guy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/that_don_guy/32/538_2.png) [@That\_Don\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/That_Don_Guy)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/39 "2016-12-17T18:55:57Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > It’s not just Monty Python : \*You, Me, and the Apocalypse \*was set partly in Slough, which I gather is a suburb of London. Slough is also where the British version of _The Office_ takes place. And how can we forget Coventry - to be more specific, Coventry City FC? (BTW, Coventry City finally won a Cup final, in 1987 - IIRC, the first, and presumably only so far, FA Cup final where the winning goal was an own goal - but it wasn’t all good news as the automatic entry into a UEFA tournament that normally goes with it was withdrawn because all England teams were in the middle of a ban from European tournaments after the incident between Liverpool and Juventus fans at the 1985 European Cup (predecessor to the Champions League) final.) ---
**Author:** ![Asympotically\_fat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47c2d/32.png) [@Asympotically\_fat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asympotically_fat)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2016, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876/40 "2016-12-17T19:55:26Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > It’s not just Monty Python : \*You, Me, and the Apocalypse \*was set partly in Slough, which I gather is a suburb of London. Slough isn’t really a suburb of London (at least very few people in London or Slough would describe it as such), rather a mid-sized town in Berkshire very close to London. That said there is literally only a few hundred metres of countryside these days between Slough’s most eastern suburb and the suburban/urban sprawl of Greater London that starts at Heathrow. Slough has a reputation of being dull industrial and later commerical satellite of London, not as rich as its neighbours, both economically and culturally. In 1937 Sir John Betjeman wrote what the famous poem _Slough_, which opened with: > [@](#): > > Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough! > It isn’t fit for humans now, > There isn’t grass to graze a cow. > Swarm over, Death! I live in Berkshire myself and a lot of people in the county jokingly pronounce “Slough” to rhyme with “cough” as in “the Slough of Despond”. Slough itself isn’t that bad, but it’s the kind of place you wouldn’t go to unless you have a specific reason to, especially as there are plenty of other nicer places nearby. Slough’s most famous landmark is the “Magic Roundabout”, a roundabout surrounded by several mini-roundabouts. Ricky Gervais (who is from Berkshire) choose it as the setting for his sitcom _The Office_ (the original UK series), because of its reputation for being boring and nondescript. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-certain-cities-towns-funny-to-british-monty-python-fans/774876.md?page=3)