Hits too close to home . People couldnt confront it

Actually,The real story is ,bith France and Belgium offered him their Citizenship ,but thus man said that he would only go to the UK but he didn't had papers so ge remained there . But ,after his helath got damanged he was sent to a refugee camp in a france where he lived and came back to his home (terminal) just before 2 months after ge died..

This is so comedically brilliant, because an absurdity is made realistic, to the point of being philosophical - I mean it’s an interesting point - a desire to walk in someone else’s shoes in order to understand. Of course the futility is that it can’t work - also reminds me of the Pulp song Common People and the lyrics “you’ll never understand…” “because if you called your dad he could stop it”. The 1990s were full of these epistemological insights in pop culture. I’m not sure what the equivalent is today.

Let's be honest, he was loving it there.

This will live rent free in my head forever.

wtf is with that start??! That’s not f ing normal

What a guy👍

I'd heard before about the reaction of the first agent saying the book was "Evil". I thought it was a deeply compassionate & understanding book. Eva's compassion & understanding for the predicament of the accused lady teacher was just one notable example. It's June 2024 now and 12 years later Shriver has become one of the most heroic champions for Free Speech, Artistic Freedom, & Sanity .

She's deeply intellectually refined, intelligent and deep. The interviewer tried her best, but I feel she struggled to grasp, understand or stimulate her properly. I'm fascinated by her and adore her work.

Any parent who isn't aware that having a baby is going to alter their lives is being willfully stupid.

What pub is this? I think that's my grandad ay the end of the bar 😂

It does suggest that she was evil. It's a pretty effed-up story. I like to think she just had this idea, and went with it, because she's a writer and she's gotta do something and this was some powerful stuff. Which always makes for the best kind of art. And the twisted regret and rage she must have felt at the time of her inspiration for this story was just pouring out of her tortured woman's soul. And if anything, if there's any sort of deliberate social criticism, it's that we live in an effed-up society, and stuff like this happens, and really it's the institution of the nuclear family that is at fault. And there's no protection for both mother and child from such a lamentable outcome. And they're just left to their own devices, and this is what happens sometimes. Especially with a mother like that. Good effin' god.... But it was probably just a cause c'elebre novel. A hoped-for success de scandale that was completely contrived from the beginning. Even deeply man-resenting, hate-filled women like this gotta eat too. Lionel.... In any event it's probably a good thing she decided not to have kids. And where the inspiration most certainly came from, given her reported epiphany AT AGE EIGHT that she would live a motherless existence, and at least she got this book out of it which made her famous, and never had to hassle with loving or nurturing a little boy, which presumably she would have never been up to. And this is how she made her peace with that fateful choice....

🤣 these examples weren't necessarily representative of the uk

I blame corporate punishment, or lack thereof.

English is a foreign language to a lot of its people now 🎉

I just feel so bad for her

This is an old report but full of rubbish by the BBC, the Brits drink as much as any Nation and a lot of it is @ home yet they like to Depict the Irish as the soul of the problem.

Believe it or not there is actually such a thing as Simplified Technical English which forces native English speakers to say what they mean in technical documentation

I don't remember how old I was when I first learned about this kind of course, but I remember thinking it would probably be pretty easy to pass.

i said this to a French Guy once... I was going to take a course in English at university level? as a foreign language. that way you can say you passed a University course. You have a degree. But nobody understood? Why work hard?

I think she is referring to what language they speak south of the mason dixon line .

English as foreign language for an English can be American English or Australian English

When speaking English people expect us (who’s first language isn’t English) to understand slang 🤦🏻‍♀️

I was wondering who that was - that face looked so familiar from Taskmaster, where she was hilarious! Then I seached online and found out it’s Sally Phillips. I remembered her from Bridget Jones. Great actress!

I mean, it is way easier to communicate in English with a non-native speaker, so she kinda has a point. :) A heavily accented native brit, using round-about flowery language full of vague idioms or prudish avoiding what they actually mean can be hard to understand. And that is if they don't have the type of accent that makes them swallow half of the sounds a word normally contains!

Wow. Maybe she’d want to start with French. I remember this show and I didn’t always find it that funny, but I didn’t see this sketch.

Smack the pony was probably the worst comedy of all time

it's good she recognized she wasn't mother material and decided to not have children. had she had them, she might have made them miserable.

There are some parts of the UK where they could use some lessons on how to speak English! 😁

Rarely are women funny, this sketch demonstrates that

What a wonderful reverse psychological joke

Reminds me of a sketch where someone would ask a guy if he spoke any English and he'd say "Sadly no, I've tried, but I cannot speak a word of English, not even a smidgen. I'm sorry I'm not able to help you at all."

The " thats not a problem " line just shuts the whole argument down

1:04 the indignance on Jackie's face when she realizes she's being told what she _really_ wants. These little character moments, so detailed, are what made Smack The Pony skits such masterpieces despite the ridiculous premises.

Sally has the most impish expressions when she's just done something mischievous, surreal and silly, like the joke she just did to "Robyn" on the other desk. 1:56 - 2:05. Like the Toilet Duck skit in the supermarket.

Just brilliant although everyone knows that English as a Foreign Language is just talking more LOUDLY and s-l-o-w-l-y

This is a great sketch but I have actually taken a short course on how to speak English to non native English speakers and it's fascinating and helpful. Understanding and removing idiomatic expressions and phrasal verbs wherever possible is a very simple and effective strategy to help you be understood. Don't come at me with your "just learn other languages" - obviously yes if you want to integrate with other cultures but if you are passing through say 5 European countries in a week - speaking English clearly and simply is a useful skill to have.

I'm afraid I ONLY speak English as a Foreign language, so I just couldn't understand a word that woman was saying!!

Sounds just like me back in 1988. GCSE English Language-C French-A. Says it all for our exam system. Yes, I'm British born & bred

Yep. Middle class, independent schooled and pushy gives all the outward appearance of competence and intelligence. Scratch the surface however….

Back when funny was funny 👏

"Language" not "Langauge" - error in title of this video. Ironic!

Utter genius!

This looks like it was filmed at Thames Valley University! I assume at the St Mary's Road building but I don't recognise that specific area. It's now the University of West London

Sally Phillips has a gorgeous smile 🔥

"Shall I draw a Venn diagram?" is comedy gold.

English as a foreign language is just normal English but louder.

This inadvertently points to a little known fact about native English speakers: their need to be precise often steamrollers a common need to interpret words more flexibly. They overthink it and often produce ambiguities like the one lampooned in the video. Here is what I mean. The people who created the phrase “English as a Foreign Language” thought they would not be precise enough if they called it “English for Foreigners”, since this would mean that foreigners would have the same subject called “English” or “English Studies” that is taught at schools for native English speakers. Thus, they thought “English for Foreigners” should be interpreted as the study of literature, composition, grammar, usage, style and sociolinguistics… but aimed at foreign students. That’s not what they meant to say, so they thought “English as a Foreign Language” was the best option to mean the acquisition of basic English structure and vocabulary by non-native English speakers. But clearly it isn’t, as the word ‘as’ can be interpreted in a number of ways. Why didn’t they simply call it “English for Foreigners”? They also probably feared that other steamrollering people might point out that, say, a U.S. citizen is a “foreigner” in Britain. This sort of overthinking seldom happens in most non-Germanic countries. In Spain they have “Spanish for Foreigners”, in Italy they have “Italian for Foreigners” &c &c, and the phrase is understood for what it is intended to mean without any danger of overthinking it.

Not sure why this is labelled as BBC when it's a Channel 4 programme

Excellent 🤣