The British Comedy Rule of The Loser.
Mainly effective in the sitcom genre, British comedy has thrived over the years by employing our habit of laughing at other people's misfortunes. Hence nearly every great comedy in British history has been centered around some kind of hopeless, hapless individual with dreams of bigger things, be it Del Trotter working unsuccessfully on market trading while dreaming of being a millionaire, Arnold Rimmer being tragically inept at everything he does while still hoping one day to be an officer or Alan Partridge living his life in the shadow of his failed television career while hosting the 3am slot on Radio Norwich, we somehow feel safer to laugh only if we're asked to laugh at people more pathetic than ourselves.
That's Britain for you; cold, cynical and pessimistic, but always ready for a bloody good laugh. Should somebody produce a comedy about a guy who is endlessly successful and turns everything he touches to gold then it would probably get cancelled halfway through the pilot episode. The (scum) British tabloids are forever primed to pounce on the reputation of anyone remotely successful to belittle their abilities - it seems we don't tolerate winners at all which, it has to be said, is nothing short of saddening. But at least we have Eric Idle singing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life as our unofficial national anthem.
As for British comedy being the best in the world? Hmm, it's hard to say, we only have our own and American comedy to go by which in no way represents the whole world. As a child I laughed for hours at the adventures of Asterix and that was French! We've seen excellence in the form of The Kids In The Hall from Canada and The Michallef Programme from Australia, but that's it. The problem, as I see it, is that too many people say British comedy is the best in the world based on Monty Python and Fawlty Towers which is not a million miles from saying that the British are the best in the world at football simply because we won the World Cup in 1966. Yes, we've done some fantastic comedy over the years, but never forget that we've put out a shed-load of crap too. Even just between Britain and America, the good:bad ratio probably works out about equal.
This write-up replaces the lecture I was going to give at Oxford University before it was cancelled due to lack of interest, triggering a chain of events leading to my house being repossessed, my family disowning me and being forced to live in the back seat of someone else's car.