so this might be a batman thing and not a brit thing but i hope you can explain it anyway
i have never understood what "going down chippy" means?? is it like a scottish twist on a famous robin line or something??
Not a Batman thing. (Referring to this part of The Midnight Mystery.)
A "chippy" in this sense is a fish and chip shop. So "going down chippy", "going down t' chippy", "popping to the chippy" etc means going to the fish and chip shop.
As simple as that.
And now I'm craving a fish supper (which is the Scottish way of asking for fish and chips. I discovered if you ask for that in Yorkshire, people look at you like you've grown another head!)
How much of a big deal is calling someone a "cunt" in Britain? I remember it got a gasp from the audience in "I Don't Want to Visit Grandma," and there was a game (or maybe a flurry?) where Tom says it, and then afterwards goes "I don't think I've ever said that on stage before" (paraphrasing). In the US, it's about comparable with "pussy" in terms of severity, but the boys have said *that* a fair amount and never gotten those reactions.
First of all, it depends on where you're from.
If you're Scottish, who are incredible at swearing, it's very often a term of endearment and used quite often.
If you're English, it's not used nearly as much, and it's a very strong swear word, to the point of being that hardly anyone says it.
There's an author (who can also be found on TikTok, I highly recommend checking her out) called Dr Kate Lister, who wrote a book called A Curious History of Sex, which basically talks about the etymology of words relating to sex. She wants to reclaim the word "cunt" because it's the only word relating to female genitalia that does not have something to do with male genitalia (for example "vagina" literally means "sheath" and so refers to the female parts as a receptacle for the male parts). It's also a good, strong word to say in the mouth, with a hard consonant at the beginning and the end. But I digress! (Go read her books and follow her on TikTok, she's super interesting.)
With that in mind, I actually really like that the SFTH lads say it so much (it does seem to be a favourite of Sam's), as the more it is used, the less offense it might cause.
However, it is still a "Class A" offensive word, I would say.
I'm not convinced that even in the US, it's comparable to "pussy" to be honest, but then again, the Americans I mix with also wouldn't say "pussy"! A person who is a "pussy" in the UK is a considered a coward, whereas a "cunt" is someone who is really despicable and awful (unless you're Scottish and using it in an affectionate manner, just to confuse matters!).
In advance of The Lollipop Lady's Revenge, I thought it might be worthwhile letting everyone know what a lollipop lady is! (Thank you to @meneatyoghurt who pointed out that people might not have a clue!)
They are crossing guards, or "school crossing patrol officers", which is their official name in the UK, but essentially they stop traffic to assist children crossing the road near to schools. In the UK, they used to work for the police, but now work for the local councils. They have the legal power to stop traffic for pedestrians (and will report vehicles for not stopping). In areas where they have been incidents, they may have body cams to help them report offenders (one lollipop lady reported a motorist who drove at her and had body cam footage to help prosecute them).
Often the lollipop person works a crossing for a long time, and so becomes someone who is well-loved in the community, seeing the children that they get across the road come back with their own children.
The "lollipop" bit comes from the sign that they use that looks like a big lollipop.
In the light of the new longform, I have a question. What is Hull, and why is it worse (or better) than Hell?
So, I've put these three together since they're basically the same question! Also jumping the queue as they're about the recent longform.
Balham, Hull, and Wolverhampton are all indeed real places in England.
Balham is a suburb of south London. (Interesting but useless fact: It was the site of the UK's first diagonal pedestrian X-crossing - that is when pedestrians can cross all roads at once at a four-way junction.) It's an upper middle-class area, having undergone gentrification since the 2000s. It used to be quite a rough area in the 1980s, but is now popular with young professionals. Sam was about right with saying that £450,000 might get you a one-bedroom flat. (Which as someone from the North of England, even in one where houses are a bit more expensive, I find absolutely ludicrous! That would get me a detached 5 bedroom house here!) So yes, it is that bad!
Wolverhampton is a city (population 263,700) in the Midlands, just north of Birmingham. (So not really any reason for AJ to make Maureen have an Irish accent, although in the 19th century, there quite a lot of Irish immigrants!) It is named after Wulfrun, a Mercian noblewoman who was granted a charter by King Æthelred the Unready, and founded the town in 985. (Interesting but useless fact: it was the site of England's first automatic traffic lights.) It has a stereotype of being a boring, average, nice city, so Tom wasn't wrong in thinking that it's unlikely to have a serial killer (I couldn't find any references online, at least).
Hull, whose official name is Kingston-upon-Hull, is a city (population 270,810) in the ceremonial county of East Yorkshire (or the East Riding of Yorkshire). (Yorkshire is little a miniature UK in terms of how it's split. It is no longer a county itself, more of a region, that is split into North, South, West, and East Yorkshire.) It is a historic maritime city with more than 800 years of maritime history, situated on the east coast of England, at the mouth of the River Hull on the Humber Estuary. (Interesting but useless fact: Kingston-upon-Hull is the only place in the UK to have it's own independent telephone network company, KCOM. Instead of the usual red telephone boxes, theirs are cream.)
Due to it's strategic position on the coast as a large port, it was bombed in WWI, and was very heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe in WWII (The Hull Blitz), the most out of any place in the UK, with 95% of houses damaged, making nearly half the population homeless. A lot of the rebuilding was done at a time when popular architecture wasn't necessarily pretty.
It's actually becoming popular as an outdoor filming location - The Crown was filmed there - and a purpose-built film studio is due to be opened in Hull shortly. It's been voted #2 in a list of the 15 best places to visit in the UK, and Rough Guides listed it in the top 10 of cities to visit around the world! It's apparently one of the UK's "up and coming" places to move to.
It has a stereotype of being a shithole I suspect because it's northern, working class, the inhabitants have a strong, distinctive accent and also it's miles away from anywhere else. You have to be going there, you don't just come upon it. Also, it's not very big, so the good bits and the bad bits are crammed right up against each other, so you're not insulated from them. But honestly, it has a lot going for it, so if you're ever in the area, I recommend a visit. I think it was more a play on words that Tom was using (Hull = Hell when you're 3!) and it just so happens that a not-necessarily deserving stereotype also played into it.
I don’t know if it’s a British thing or something I’m simply not familiar with, but what are "Horrible Histories"?
- Respectfully, the confused Frenchman
Very good question!
The "Horrible Histories" is now a franchise of books, magazines, tv shows, plays etc, but it started as series of children's books, aimed at making history seem interesting to kids by writing about history in a jokey, fun manner.
After the books, there was an animated series, and two sets of live action sketch shows on CBBC (which is the children's channel of the BBC). The tv shows were created by mostly people on the adult comedy circuit, and the tone was inspired by the likes of Monty Python and Blackadder. There was always a song or two in each episode as well. Here's a video clip of a song that'll show you just how good SFTH (well, Sam) is at doing it!
If you can access BBC iPlayer, I recommend a watch!
do the boys have any distinct regional accents (and if yes, which ones)? I know people say Luke has one, but to me they just sound "British" 😭
Thank you so much for this blog, it's really fun reading through it and learning stuff :D
I'll do my best to answer this, but I'm really bad at recognising accents, and I'm from the North of England and Scotland, so I find distinguishing southern English, particularly south-eastern and London ones quite tricky.
First of all, let me say that there isn't such an accent as "British". Here's a quick lesson in British geography.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (shortened to the UK for obvious reasons!) consists of four countries on two islands.
The island of Great Britain is split into: England, Wales, and Scotland, which are all separate countries, and please, please, please for the love of everything you hold dear, do not say that they are one country, because you'll upset basically everyone!
Northern Ireland is on the island of Eire (or Ireland).
All four countries have their own distinct accents, and within them, there are a lot of different accents too (there can be variation between towns!).
What foreigners often think of as the generic "British" accent is usually an English accent without much regionalism to it. Not quite RP (received pronunciation) which is what the aristocracy might speak with or once up a time, the BBC news readers did, but on the way there.
With all this in mind, I would say that the SFTH lads all have a reasonably soft variants of a London/South-east accent. Luke doesn't really have what one would perhaps think of as a traditional Essex accent, except perhaps when he's with his family (as is often the case, people will speak with a stronger accent when they're around people with their own accent - when I'm up in Scotland, my Scottish accent comes back, but I don't speak with much of it when I'm in England).
However, as I said, I'm bad at recognising accents (I'm often just listening to people talking and then someone will say, "Ooh, it's obvious where they're from," and I have to properly think about it to work out what their accent is!
So someone from further south than myself might be able to answer the question better! But I hope it helped!
Okay, let's dive right in! This is not an simple answer, but I'll do my best!
Schooling is slightly different in each of the UK countries, so I'll break it down. (And put it behind a Read More link!) I hope it helps and answers some of your questions!
England:
Primary schools teach children aged 4/5 to 10/11.
The school year runs from September to July, with about 6-7 weeks off during the summer. Children who turn 5 in the school year start school that year. For example, for this coming school year, children whose 5th birthday is between September 2025 and August 2026 will be starting the first year of primary school. This is called Reception. (If the child's birthday is in the summer - July or August - their parents can defer a year, so that they are then the eldest in the year rather than the youngest, but that doesn't happen that often.)
After that, they go through year 1 to year 6 in the primary school. There are exams at the end of year 6.
Then secondary schools. The school years carry on, year 7 is the first year of secondary school, going on up until year 11 (age 16). (Some schools start the numbering again, so Year 1 of secondary school, going up to Year 5.) The first lot of big exams are taken then: the GCSEs (hence GCSE Drama), which are typically studied over two years.
After this, a lot of schools have years 12 and 13 (or Year 6 & 7), where you take the second lot of big exams, AS and A-levels (an AS level is basically half an A-level, which are two year courses) but otherwise there are Sixth Form Colleges which allow more vocational courses to be taken.
Education is compulsory until the age of 18. More context after @ilikeasstrology asked a follow-up question. Education in England is compulsory until 16, but you have to be in education or training until you are 18. You can work, but still need to be doing something the government considers to be "education or training". See https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2024/01/school-leaving-age-can-you-leave-school-at-16-and-what-are-your-options
Secondary schools are much more complicated than primary schools. Most primary schools are state-funded, so receive funding from local government, and are non-denominational, although there are some faith primary schools.
Secondary schools are split into state-funded and independent schools, which are fee-paying, so the parents have to pay. There are grammar schools, which are selective and you have to pass an exam to get in. These can be either funded by the government, or be fee-paying.
State-funded secondary schools are generally either called secondary or comprehensive (so you might hear someone talk about the "local comp" meaning the local comprehensive school, where anyone can go to be educated).
The fee-paying schools can be confusingly called either public or private. These can range from reasonably cheap, to incredibly elite, such as Eton. Further elaboration after more research: All private schools are independent, paid for by the parents. Public schools are confusingly named these days. For me, saying that they're called that because they're paid for by the public doesn't make sense, because state schools are paid for by the public, via the government, by taxes. Public schools are the much more selective private schools, like Eton and Harrow, and are generally considerably more upper-class. They were historically called public schools because they were open to the public (who had money!) in that they didn't discriminate between catchment area, religion, etc (just between poor and rich! Although they were originally founded for charitable purposes for poor children, they have turned into the most elite of schools.).
Also, faith secondary schools would tend to be some form of independent, although might not need parents to pay fees.
(It's a lot more complicated than that, but I've written enough, and you're probably all bored!)
What they study: in primary school, the class has a teacher and a teaching assistant that teach all the subjects, and they're often linked together (so what book they're reading might link to something they're doing in science) to keep the children's interest. There are before and after-school clubs, and the children do PE a couple of times a week, plus often getting to go on a few day trips out to local attractions.
In secondary school. subjects are broken down and taught by separate teachers. You have to study English, Maths, and often at least one Science subject up to GCSE level. If you're going to go to university, then the easiest route is to take A-levels in the subjects that are relevant to your degree course. (You can take different courses at specialist Sixth Form Colleges.)
Houses: this is not something that was invented for Hogwarts, but something that happens at most schools, both primary and secondary. There are generally four Houses, designated colours: red, yellow, green, and blue. This allows pupils to compete for their Houses in a variety of competitions. The names of the Houses usually has some logic to it. The schools I went to had Houses named after the different towns that our town was twinned with, for instance. And my daughter's school has Houses named after local areas. There might also be Prefects, the eldest students in the school having some specific jobs to do such as helping out in the library.
Most schools have a school uniform, which generally has a lot of options (trousers, shorts, skirts, dresses etc). Primary schools tend to be laxer with school uniform than secondary schools. And fee-paying schools tend to have more ridiculous outfits and be stricter.
There are a lot of primary schools around, they are often reasonably small, and secondary schools are much larger. Often both primary schools and secondary schools have sports competitions with other local schools. There is often a Sports Day at the end of the school year, where the Houses compete against each other in all manner of sports.
The differences between England and Wales is minimal and with Scotland and Northern Ireland is mainly timing of when people go to school.
In Northern Ireland, it is the child's age on July 1st rather than September that determines when they start school.
In Scotland, the age range is from March to the following February. The school year is also slightly different. They start in August and finish in June. So children born between March and August start school in August at between 5 and 5½ years old, and those born between September and February start school in the previous August at between age 4½ and 4 years 11 months years old.
They finish secondary school a year earlier than children in the rest of the UK, which is why undergraduate university degrees in Scotland are typically four years long rather than three like those in the rest of the UK. They take different exams too, rather than GCSE and A-levels, they take exams called Standard Grades, and then Highers.
Further info on education in Scotland provided by the lovely @myarmadaisgrowing (thank you!):
Primary school in Scotland is seven years, and they're named P1 to P7 (sometimes called Primary 1 to Primary 7). Secondary school starts immediately after P7, and is six years, called S1 to S6 (confusingly, no-one calls them Secondary 1 etcetera). You can leave school entirely as soon as you turn 16, usually after you've taken the first level of exams in S4 (age 15/16).
Exams in Scotland are three levels: National 5 awards in S4 (age 15/16), Highers in S5 (age 16/17), and Advanced Highers in S6 (last year of secondary school, age 17/18). You MUST take a National 5 in Maths, English, and a foreign language but beyond that you can choose yourself. The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA - essentially a body of government in charge of schooling) changed the curriculum in 2013 and replaced the old Standard Grades with National 5s.
Advanced Highers are considered difficult enough that you can choose to skip the first year of Uni if you have an Advanced Higher in the subject you want to study. You typically take eight National 5s, five Highers, and three Advanced Highers, though you can sometimes study for additional Highers instead of taking AHs as not all schools offer AHs in every subject!
So, since all 4 members of the SFTH Community 😜 said yes, here I am!
I will do my best to answer any and all questions and am happy to Brit-pick.
I'll use the #britfromthehip and #Brit from the Hip tag, as well as any relevant SFTH tags. 😊
I'm in the Patreon, so am also happy to take questions about Patreon content - I'll tag it appropriately.
And I'm over 18 so if there's something delicate you want to ask, don't worry, I will handle with care (I am British after all 😜).
MASTERLIST - check this for all my posts
The Crystal Maze - explaining Tom's "crystal" comment whilst stuck behind a gate.
How Does School Work - a non-comprehensive explanation of the UK school system.
What's a "Boots"? - explaining the reference to Boots in the longform I Don't Want to Go to Grandma's.
British Politics - giving background and explaining the jokes in the longform The Prime Minister's First Day.
Why are GCSE dramas so awful? - attempting to explain the phenomenon that is GCSE Drama that is often a suggestion for the game of Genre.
How do people in the UK view places such as London, Bristol, Manchester, and Essex - a very brief explanation of some English places.
The "unjust William" joke - giving context to the joke in the Time Warp - Stag Do from the full length show, HUGE.
Who are Theresa May and Liz Truss? - a bit more context on who these two women are (referenced in The Prime Minister's First Day and possibly other places too).
Luke's clues for Brian Blessed - providing some context for Luke's mimes in the Late for Work game at the end of HUGE.
What are long johns? - explaining just what exactly they are on about in the longform, Long Johns - STRIKE!
Why are stag/hen do's called that? - most famously referenced in the longform Sorry About My Nan, explaining why a stag do isn't called a bachelor party.
Why are red trousers associated with Tories (Conservatives)? - in the longform All Eyes on Nigel, Luke takes issue with his red trousers. This explains why. (Luke is probably the only person I would accept wearing red trousers!)
What is the British context of using "boys" to describe SFTH? - trying to explain the usage of "boys" to non-British people.
The SFTH lads' accents - explaining British accents, with extra info from @meneatyoghurt.
Are Truss and the Chancellor people? - explaining a reaction to one of Tom's jokes from the intro to this Genre (thanks you @randomfangirl32 )
What is a Greggs? - what are they talking about when they mention a Greggs (in at least two longforms that I can think of off the top of my head)
What are Horrible Histories? - giving context to what the lads are doing when they do "Horrible Histories" in Genre.
What is a "Magic Mike"? - giving context to Magic Mike references
What is a HobNob? - explaining what on earth they're going on about in The Hobnob Affair.
Pronunciation of "dachshund" - in reference to how Sam says "dachshund" in We Buried the Wrong Guy
What is "The Only Way is Essex"? - explaining what on earth they are referencing when they do TOWIE (as it is also known) in games of Genre.
How much of a big deal is the word "cunt"? - this is said so much, most often by Sam, I think.
What is a GCSE Drama? - slightly more info on top of my previous posts.
How is the UK a country when England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are countries? - I try to summarise the complex history and geographical eccentricities of the UK.
Why isn't Wales represented on the Union flag? - another delve into British history to explain why the Union flag looks like it does.
What's up with Fife? - explaining where Fife is and why Luke might have used it as John Jacob MacAllister's home in The Off Season.
What is the Watford Gap and what does it have to do with the North of England? - why the Watford Gap used as a division between the north and the south of England.
What is a Lollipop Lady? - spoiler: it's not someone who hands out sweets!
What is OFSTED? - why were they getting worked up about a visit from OFSTED in The Lollipop Lady's Revenge
What genre is "Wes Anderson"? - trying to give some context to what the SFTH lads are doing when they do Wes Anderson in Genre.
"Girls Girls Girls" - what is the significance of the sign that Thomas Snr sees in The Enigma of the High Visionary
Is Somerset a real place? - just where were they setting fire to in Beetroots and Murder
Peter Steven running around with cheese on his back? - What was Peter on about in The Milkman?
Do milk deliveries actually happen in the UK? - Digging into the history of the milk float
What's a Tesco? - not much more to it than that!
What's "HS2"? - explaining for the non-Brits (and AJ!) what HS2 is, as mentioned in the Late for Work game from West End Big Boys
Balham, Hull, and Wolverhampton - do they exist? - a quick geography and history lesson to give context to half the jokes in The Screams of the Damned
WTF is the Boer War? - a very brief dive into the background of the Boer War, as mentioned in The Leftenmost Window and The Off Season
What's an "MP"? - just what on earth was Sam talking about at the end of The Screams of the Damned when he said he was going to be a Conservative MP (plus other references to "MP" throughout their videos).
What's a Waitrose? - another indicator of the social class of an area, but what exactly is it?
Soggy Biscuit? - what is Luke referring to at the end of the first episode of Roll from the Hip?
Silent Disco? - Sam referred to destroying a Silent Disco during his Tartan Tabletop session at the Edinburgh Fringe. What is he going on about?
Left become right/Right become left? - explaining Sam's reference to Keir Starmer in The Unrelenting Aubergine
Jelly? - clarifying a couple of references to "jelly" in some longforms.
We love each other - elaborating on the reaction to the end of the Heartstopper book game.
Explain London! - a (brief) explanation of the boroughs and districts of London
"Going down to t'chippy!" - going where?! Wtf is a "chippy"?
