Monthly Archives: August 2019

610. British Comedy: James Acaster

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Listen to a lovely bit of stand up comedy that will require quite a lot of breaking down in order for you to understand all the jokes like a native speaker, but there’s lots to learn in the way of language and culture in the process.


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Transcripts and Notes

This is LEP episode 610. and it’s called British Comedy: James Acaster.

In this one we’re going to listen to a lovely bit of stand up comedy that will require quite a lot of breaking down in order for you to understand all the jokes like a native speaker, and there’s lots to learn in the way of language and culture in the process.

James Acaster is a popular stand up comedian from the UK who has won various awards, done Netflix specials, Edinburgh shows and who appears on panel shows and TV comedy programmes all the time. He’s now a very popular and well-known stand up in the UK.

I’ve got a clip of one of his performances from the New Zealand Comedy Gala in 2013 on YouTube.

I’m going to play the video in about two parts.

You have to try to understand it – not just what he’s saying, but why is it funny?

Then I’ll go back through the clip, sum it up, go through it line by line, breaking it down for language.

You can then listen again using the video on the page for the episode.

Who is James Acaster? (Wikipedia)
James Acaster is an English comedian originally from Kettering, Northamptonshire. (accent?)
He has performed for several consecutive years at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and won two Chortle awards in 2015.[3] He has been nominated for Best Show five times at the Edinburgh Fringe.[4] Acaster has appeared on several panel shows, including Mock the Week and Would I Lie to You? He has a 2018 Netflix show entitled Repertoire, consisting of four hour-long stand-up comedy performances.[5] He has also written a book, James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes, consisting of true stories, most of which were originally told on Josh Widdicombe’s show on XFM.[6] He currently hosts panel show Hypothetical alongside Widdicombe and food podcast Off Menu with fellow comedian Ed Gamble.

Accent-wise
He’s originally from Northamptonshire which is in the east midlands. He doesn’t have a strong northern accent or a brummie accent, although I do think he would say “podcast” instead of “podcast” and “bath, grass, laugh” with that short a sound too.

The main thing is that he drops all his “T” sounds and also “TH” sounds.
So, “bring them” sounds like “bring em”
“Sitting in a tree, eating all the apples” sounds like “si’in in a tree, ea’in all the apples”
“Theft” becomes “Feft”
He also says “Raver” instead of “rather”.
All very common features of local English – dropping Ts and TH sounds is common all over the country.

What is his comedy style?
Whimsical (unusual, strange and amusing)
Thoughtful
Thinking of things in a different way, unconventional (quite normal in stand up)
Weird
Acting a bit cool even though he isn’t
Geeky looking, wears sweaters, clothes even a granddad might wear
Ginger-ish hair
Looks a bit like Jarvis Cocker

James bought some ‘ready-to-eat Apricots’ and he went on a lads’ night out

Ready-to-eat apricots

You get these bags of fruit in the UK (and elsewhere I’m sure) of fruit which is ready to eat.

It’s been cut up, washed, prepared. It’s ready to eat.

For example, you might get “ready-to-eat apricots”. That’s what James is talking about here.

Also, the expression ”You are what you eat?”

Play the clip: What’s the joke about apricots?

Stop and explain it

What kind of apricots are these?
They are ready-to-eat apricots.
How do you feel?
I feel ready. Ready to eat apricots.
In fact, you could say I was ready to eat these ready-to-eat apricots.
Maybe you’re not ready to eat apricots.
Maybe you just want some, which is why they’re in a resealable bag.
So, they should be renamed ready-to-eat-some-apricots.

A lads’ night out / You wouldn’t bring an apple to an orchard

James went on a night out with a bunch of lads.

For James, this was not an enjoyable night.

It wouldn’t be for me either. I’ve never been one of those guys who likes to go out on a lads’ night out.

Lets me explain what a lads’ night out is like.

Lads are usually English young men, together, doing male things and generally being aggressive, overly sexual, crude, rude and competitive.

  • Lots of alpha male behaviour
  • Heavy drinking
  • Taking the piss and general one-upmanship and aggressive, laddish, competitive behaviour
  • Spending time in bars and clubs that you hate but they think are brilliant (terrible, terrible music, awful people, loud, smelly, horrible)
  • Trying to pick up girls and the general lack of a moral code – cheating, lying, using alcohol – all in an attempt to get lucky with a girl. This includes cheating on your girlfriend if you have one.
  • Medieval-level sexual politics – being openly judgemental about women’s appearances, giving women marks out of ten, saying whether or not you would shag any of the women around, looking at their bodies and comparing notes etc.
  • You get sucked into it through peer pressure and become part of it even though you hate it.

One of the lads, who has a girlfriend and yet plans to pick up a girl at the club, when asked why he didn’t bring his girlfriend, says “You wouldn’t bring an apple to an orchard”

An orchard is a place where apples are grown. It’s full of trees and there are apples everywhere. You might pay to access the orchard and pick the apples.

You wouldn’t bring an apple to an orchard. Presumably because you wouldn’t need to bring one because there are loads there anyway.

How about bringing your girlfriend to a night club. Is it the same?

This leads James to kind of question the logic of that statement and go off an a monologue about bringing an apple to an orchard and how that compares to bringing your girlfriend to a nightclub.

Vocab
To be an accessory to something (like a crime)
An apple a day keeps the doctor away

Play the clip: Do you understand all the comedy about the nightclub and bringing an apple to an orchard?

Stop and explain it

Going to a nightclub with a bunch of lads
One of them cheats on his girlfriend and you become an accessory to it, like it’s a crime and now you’ve become pulled into it. You’re involved in it, without intending to be, and you could go down, like you’re an accessory to a crime.

In this sense, you just have to keep a secret, you’re being expected to lie on behalf of someone else. The guy is a twat basically.

This lad says “You wouldn’t bring an apple to an orchard”.
But then James deconstructs this analogy in a brilliant way.

This is nuanced comedy which is subtly making fun of stupid lad culture in a clever and funny way, with some weirdness and surrealism.

Go through it line by line

One of the reasons I like it is that a lot of people might just say James is being weird and that he’s some sort of loser, but he’s absolutely right in my opinion and he’s just clever and not afraid to be himself and he embraces the slightly weird things in life, because let’s face it, life is weird.

Types of humour / how nuanced & subtle humour can be all about changing the context of the situation in order to reveal new perspectives.

This acknowledges the fact that there are many different perspectives or layers to any situation and a good comedian can make you realise a whole different underlying meaning by just changing one bit of perspective.

Despite the fact that I like this a lot and so do many other people, I’m sure plenty of others don’t find it funny because it’s not fast enough, there aren’t enough dynamic changes (he doesn’t change his voice a lot, a lot of the jokes are left to the audience’s imagination), it’s pretty low energy, maybe little things like (I can’t get into it – I just don’t like his hair cut or his shoes or something) and also some people just don’t really want to look at the world from a different point of view. Some people prefer more direct humour, perhaps with a more obvious target or more relatable things, like observational comedy or something.

As usual, I’m worrying that nobody will get it, but what’s the point of that? Some people just won’t get it because “you can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”.

And it doesn’t matter. If you didn’t find it funny, that’s totally fine. At least you’ve learned some English in the process. :)

Vocab list

  • Ready-to-eat apricots
  • They say “you are what you eat”
  • A resealable bag
  • A lads’ night out
  • Check out the arse on that
  • Big time
  • Normal people perv solo
  • To outnumber someone
  • Sinister
  • A dented suitcase
  • To cheat on someone
  • An accessory to a crime
  • Despicable
  • An orchard
  • Fit birds
  • Eloquent use of language
  • A little bit miffed
  • This godforsaken pisshole of an orchard
  • Who in their right mind compares women to apples?
  • Another saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”

Here’s another short clip of James Acaster, this time talking about Brexit and comparing it to a tea bag in a cup.

Should you take the bag out or leave it in?

James Acaster Brexit Tea Bag

Now explain that Luke!

Tea / Brexit

Should you leave the bag in or not?
If the bag stays in, the cup as a whole gets stronger. It might look like the bag is getting weaker in some way but it’s actually part of a good strong cup of tea.
If you take the bag out, the tea is actually quite weak, and the bag goes straight in the bin.

Do I even need to explain how that analogy works with Brexit?

Should the UK stay in or go out?

If the UK remains, the EU as a whole gets stronger. It might look like the UK is getting weaker in some way, but it’s actually part of a good strong union of nations.
If the UK leaves, the EU gets weaker and the UK goes straight in the bin.

Quite clever really.

You can watch James Acaster clips on YouTube.
You can see his Netflix specials “Repertoire” on Netflix
You can read his book “Classic Scrapes” from any half-decent book shop.

That’s it for this episode!

609. The LEP MeetUp in London / Brexit / Talking to my Daughter

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Here’s an end-of-summer ramble, including details of what happened at the LEP meetup in London in July and some recordings of LEPsters who attended the event. There’s also talk of Brexit and some interviews with my daughter who is beginning to speak.


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Episode Notes and Transcriptions

The world appears to be burning

No-deal Brexit

Timur 

Hello, Luke. I’ve got a question related to the latest podcast. What is the word combination that appears from time to time and sounds like NO DEAL? What does leaving the EU ‘without a deal’ mean?

Luke Thompson JEDI-PODMASTER  Timur  16 days ago

To explain the whole ‘no deal Brexit’ thing:
The EU is our largest trading zone. Most of our stuff is bought and sold there. It’s an extremely beneficial position to be able to trade freely, help create laws, be part of close collaboration, be a gateway to investment and so on. Leaving that union would mean cutting ties and access to the market without any defined terms in an agreement. The UK would end up paying extremely high export tariffs while low import tariffs would allow our market to become flooded. That’s the way it would be set out in WTO terms.
The UK would face losing access to its biggest marketplace while having to create new agreements with other markets from scratch. International trading agreements take years to put together and within the EU we are in a much more advantageous position for creating trade deals with other countries while working as a bloc.
But with no deal in place for things like trade, customs, tariffs, security and so on, the UK would be in a weaker position I think.
Leaving with no deal would also bring up the Northern Ireland problem because it would create a hard border on the island of Ireland. We are very aware from recent history how things can flare up badly in that region when there are border posts.
Leaving the EU with a deal is something that has been made possible due to several years of negotiating with the EU for a withdrawal agreement, which would mean a total withdrawal from the union – no MEPs or other officials taking part in lawmaking, not being subject to standard EU laws, but would also include details for things like access to the single market or the customs union. There is the shaky Northern Ireland backstop which would put northern Ireland somehow in the customs union, with a border in the sea between Britain and Ireland.
So, basically, leaving with a deal means leaving the legal framework of the EU, but making an agreement setting out terms for membership of the single market or customs union like the Norway model.
But leaving with no deal would mean having no agreements in place with our nearest and largest marketplace for both goods and services.

Weekend in London

Music

LEP Meetup

Questions from the Meetup

Pick a question, answer it, then say anything else you want for 2 to 3 minutes.

Which of these would you choose?

  • To be able to grow plants faster and better than anyone else
  • or to be able to fly

Which of these would you choose?

  • To be one of the best stage musicians
  • To be the world’s videogame champion

Which of these would you choose?

  • To be the strongest person in the world
  • To write the funniest play ever

What would you miss more if it ceased to exist?

  • Live concerts
  • Role playing games

Whom do you consider worse?

  • Those who get drunk to avoid dealing with their problems

Which of these would you choose?

  • To never need to use the toilet
  • To be the best football player in the world

Which of these would you choose?

  • To invent faster-than-light travel
  • To conclusively prove the existence or non-existence of god

What do you consider worse?

  • Destroying posters put up by rival political parties
  • Trolling a forum where people want to discuss their hobby

What would you miss more if it ceased to exist?

  • Bicycles
  • Television series

Which of these would you choose?

  • To be the richest person in the world
  • To write the best-selling novel of all time

Which of these would you choose?

  • To be able to read wifi signals with your mind
  • to discover something that extends life expectancy by one year

Which of these would you choose?

  • To age half as fast from now on
  • To need no food or drink

Whom do you consider worse?

  • Someone who offers a cigarette to a friend who has just quit smoking
  • Someone who knows a friend’s spouse is cheating on him but doesn’t say

Whom do you consider worse?

  • Someone who claims anything they don’t understand is stupid nonsense
  • Someone who steals a handful of coins from a blind pan-handler

Which of these would you choose?

  • To write the most beautiful song ever sung
  • To be the fastest runner in the world

Which of these would you choose?

  • To be able to read minds
  • To be able to comfort anyone sad

What would you miss more if it ceased to exist?

  • Hot showers and baths
  • Comic books

Which of these would you choose?

  • To be the best martial artist in the world
  • To have a pet unicorn

Which of these would you choose?

  • To be able to instantly sober up when you want
  • To be able to see any map you want in your mind’s eye

Which of these would you choose?

  • To be able to see through the eyes of any nearby animal
  • To be able to play any musical instrument perfectly

Meetups

What you can do, how you can organise them (set up an event, let me know about it and I’ll give you some publicity. Choose a place with space where you can perhaps get a drink, bring some board games or question points, speak and relax!) The LEP Meetup page on the website. Exchange ideas and contact details. Check in every now and then.

My daughter’s English

Photos and Videos from the LEP MeetUp

There’s a video as the bonus file in the app for this episode

608. The Mass Observation (with Mum)

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Listen to my mum talk about a social history project focusing on the lives of everyday people in the UK. Includes discussion of things like protests, plastic, identity, sex education, loneliness, and milk!


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Introduction Transcript

Hello everyone, this is LEP episode 608 and it’s called The Mass Observation (with Mum).

What’s that all about? You might be thinking. This sounds like some kind of Big Brother thing – like maybe the government observing everyone in some kind of dystopian future, and somehow my mum is involved in it.

Well, I’m afraid it’s far less dramatic than that.

In fact, the mass observation in the title is a social history project that has been going on in the UK, probably for 70 years or more. It’s a project that my mum has fairly recently got involved in.

Basically, the mass observation (now administered by the University of Sussex) aims to record everyday life in Britain through a panel of volunteer observers who either keep diaries or reply to open-ended questionnaires (known as directives). My mum is one of those volunteers and since this project is all about collecting information on everyday life in the UK we thought it might be an interesting episode of Luke’s English Podcast.

So that’s what you’re going to get here. A conversation with my mum on a variety of topics which have come up in the quarterly questionnaires from the Mass Observation.

So, you can expect some rambling conversation between the two of us on things like this:

  • protests
  • plastic
  • identity and gender identity
  • sex education in school
  • loneliness and belonging
  • and milk

There’s also some chat at the start about Prince Harry & Meghan Markle, following on from the last time my mum was on the podcast when we talked about the royal wedding.

So now you can enjoy about an hour’s worth of my mum’s nice voice and accent talking about a variety of issues relating to everyday life in the UK.

I hope you enjoy it. I’ll be back to talk a bit more on the other side of the conversation.

In terms of language learning, your task as ever is to just keep on listening. At the very least, that’s all you have to do here. Just listen, follow the conversation, see what you can learn from it and try to notice any features of English or vocabulary along the way. But the main thing, just enjoy this chat between my mum and me.

Ending

I hope you enjoyed that. I’d like to say a big thank you again to my mum for being on the podcast again, and to all members of my family who make a huge contribution every time they’re on.

So what’s up? Nearly the end of the summer holidays. We’re approaching the end of August.

I hope you’ve had a good summer.

Remember in July I mentioned a couple of times the LEP meetup that was happening in London? Well, I went to it and met about 25-30 LEPsters, had some drinks and conversation with them for a few hours, and what a pleasant experience that was!

In fact we recorded some samples of audio during the meetup, with everyone talking for a minute or two. I think I’ll be putting an episode together with that.

Speak to you again on the podcast soon! Bye!

 

607. The Rick Thompson Report: Boris Johnson PM / No Deal Brexit?

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Talking to my dad again about Brexit, this time including our thoughts on Boris Johnson as the new Prime Minister and the possibility of the UK leaving the EU without a deal on 31 October.


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Introduction Transcript

Hello folks, here is another new episode of the podcast. This is a free episode for everyone.

Premium subscribers may be waiting for the latest series of premium episodes and so let me say that premium episodes are coming very soon. I am on holiday but I have been working on a premium series in spare moments and it’s nearly ready to be recorded and published and that will happen soon, so rest assured that your premium content is coming… www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium

But now, here is a new episode of the free podcast for you and I’m keeping it in the family again this time as we have another Rick Thompson Report, recorded just yesterday evening.

Most of you will know that The Rick Thompson Report is a series in which I talk to my Dad about politics, usually Brexit.

Every time another milestone in the Brexit story happens in British politics, like when we get another new prime minister or something like that, listeners get in touch with me requesting a new episode with my dad to somehow explain it all! Well, recently Boris Johnson became the UK’s new Prime Minister (you know him – crazy hair, crazy ideas) and he immediately assembled a new cabinet of ministers in line with his position on Brexit, which is basically – let’s try again to get some kind of deal with the EU but if that’s not possible let’s just go without a deal and everything will be great because… I don’t know… sausages or something! British sausages and Winston Churchill!

So naturally I’ve had requests for an episode with my dad to talk about this and about what might happen between now and October 31st when the UK officially leaves the EU (unless that date gets pushed back again for some reason, or the whole thing just gets called off and we can all just carry on like normal and pretend it never happened – have a cup of tea and wait for it all to just blow over – fat chance of that!)

Yesterday evening I sat down with my dad in order to attempt to discuss what’s been going on, and that’s what you’re going to listen to now.

I don’t need to say much more really, except that this conversation will probably be quite complicated and possibly difficult to follow – but don’t blame us, blame David Cameron.

I hope you can keep up with it, and that you manage to spot the various bits of meaty, chunky vocabulary that come up in the conversation.

The main thing that you, as a learner of English I expect, should do while listening to this, in my opinion, is simply try to follow what we’re saying and let your brain’s natural language learning potential take care of the rest. That’s right. Your study aim for this is simply to listen to it. That is it. This is your regular dose of English input through listening.

So, what do we think of Boris Johnson? What about his new cabinet? What might happen next in this crazy Brexit saga? Could The Queen even get involved somehow?

Listen on to hear us talk about these things, and more.

I’ll speak to you again at the end, but now, let’s begin.

Ian Hislop vs Priti Patel on capital punishment (Question Time)

David Cameron resigns, and then sings a happy little tune to himself

Danny Dyer vs David Cameron (again) “He should be held account(able) for it!”

Ending Transcript

So that was my dad and another conversation about Brexit. Apologies if we went over the same ground as in previous episodes on the subject, but there it is – that’s the situation!

Let us know what you think, even if you totally disagree with us of course.

I’m sure many of you will be interested to know more about Boris Johnson and our opinions of him. I would very much like to do a more in-depth episode or two about him, and in fact I’ve been planning that, so watch out for something in the future. I wonder how long he will be our PM.

Expect some more episodes soon, including premium ones which I have been working on in spare moments during my holidays, while my daughter has been napping or at the end of the evening when everyone else has gone to bed. I am working on it and they will arrive soon I promise! The series I’m working on is currently titled “Bad Science” and it covers things like medical science, the misuse of data and also whether vitamin pills are actually good for you. The main thing is that there are tons of very useful, quite high-level vocabulary items that I’m teaching you and it’s the sort of language that you need in order to sound intelligent and articulate in English. I’ll let you discover it when it arrives – which will happen as soon as it’s all been written and recorded!

Now I have to go to bed in order to catch up on some much-needed sleep and to get my energy back in order to survive another day chasing my daughter around a park, or around a farm or something! My daughter is quite obsessed with farmyard animals, which she points at very enthusiastically while saying hello to them in a mix of French and English. It’s adorable, but I need all the energy I can get!

So, I’m going to bed now. Hopefully I will actually be able to sleep. The last couple of nights I’ve had our daughter next to me in bed after she’s woken up in the middle of the night. She has a habit of kind of turning sideways in her sleep and sort of resting her legs on my face. It’s actually wonderful, funny and adorable, but also knackering. But enough about all that now, I will speak to you again on the podcast soon. But for now… Bye!!