Humor what, ho!

While a student in the US, I suffered for a period of time from a lack of good programs to watch on telly, considering I dont enjoy most American shows (read Lost, Idol, Sex and the City, F.R.I.E.N.D.S, Letterman etc etc). The fact that cable had only 2 channels that showed the sports i liked (european football and tennis, and that too at odd hours : 3.24am-what the heck!? pretty inconvenient when you have a test the next day, id say!)
There was also a lack of good comedy to unwind with during weekends, what with my finding American humor alarmingly boring, and no SunTV and Vadivelu and Vivek (popular Tamil comedians).

It was during this time of desperation that I prayed and hoped for some comedic succor.

Enter Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

Considering the fact that I grew up on British humor with classics like 'Allo 'Allo, Are you being served?, Fawlty Towers, Monty Python and Yes Minister, it was perhaps only natural that I progressed to them.

Their comedy was a new type of modern British humor- downright ridiculous, sometimes even risque, and refreshingly unpretentious; thereby standing a class apart from the other types of current comedic satire that was getting so irritatingly ubiquitous.

To me, they always looked like the modern day version of Laurel and Hardy.

Some of Ricky's quotes:

As David Brent, On Pol Pot:
"Pol Pot - he rounded up anybody he thought was intellectual and had them executed. And how he told someone was intellectual or not was whether they wore glasses. If they're that clever, take them off when they see him coming!"

On Prince:
“Steve Merchant says Prince is a genius. This is Xfm, 104.9!”

And my personal favorite, in concordance with the current economic situation-

As Brent:
“What is the single most important thing for a company? ......It’s the people, investment in people. My proudest moment here wasn’t when I increased profits by 17%, or cut expenditure without losing a single member of staff. No. It was a young Greek guy, first job in the country, hardly spoke a word of English, but he came to me and he went ‘Mr. Brent, will you be the Godfather to my child?’. Didn’t happen in the end. We had to let him go, he was rubbish. He was rubbish!”

P.S-added as an afterthought-i guess you have to have a certain different type of attitude and approach towards life and comedy to get this sort of humor to work for you.