Tee hee
British self-regard on the subject of humour is hilarious
THAT Britain lags behind America in trivia such as productivity, innovation, entrepreneurship and higher education worries few people. That the national sense of humour is supposedly hugely more sophisticated, by contrast, is a source of great pride. This week the Daily Mirror, the country's second-biggest tabloid, published an extraordinary apology to Steve Bing, a Hollywood film producer, who had tangled with a popular British actress last year. The paper had treated Mr Bing fairly robustly, even by the standards of the British gutter press. He sued for $40m.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Tee hee”
From the October 26th 2002 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
British MPs vote in favour of assisted dying
A monumental social reform is closer to being realised
The slow death of a Labour buzzword
And what that says about Britain’s place in the world
Britain’s Supreme Court considers what a woman is
At last. Britons had been wondering what those 34m people who are not men might be
Can potholes fuel populism?
A new paper looks at one explanation for the rise of Reform UK
Are British voters as clueless as Labour’s intelligentsia thinks?
How the idea of false consciousness conquered the governing party