A woman gets on a bus with her baby. The bus driver says: “that’s the ugliest baby that I’ve ever seen. Ugh!” The woman goes to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her: “The driver just insulted me!” The man says: “You go right up there and tell him off –go ahead, I’ll hold your monkey.”
It is hard to generalise about humour in the British Isles. Each area has it's own distinctive style, but one thing is almost always true: humour is hard to avoid. The American journalist Bill Bryson wrote: "Even after twenty years here, I remain constantly amazed by the quality of the humour you find in the most unlikely places." He goes on to say that one of it's distinctive components is "taking the piss". This term has no equivalent in American English. It refers to dry, ironic humour that ridicules a situation or person.
