"Scots generally have a dark, dry, and direct sense of humor," Veloglasgow, the Reddit user and moderator of the ScottishPeopleTwitter subreddit, told us a while ago. He added that "Observational comedy where someone points out something that everyone accepts as day-to-day reality but which would be absurd to an outside observer also goes down well." However, not all posts make it to the sub’s feed. "Most posts that make it through the mod queue are representative, any posts that use 'fooken' or 'fecking' for fu*ken/fu*king are generally removed as no Scot hears how we say those words as that way phonetically," the moderator explained.
Meanwhile, Larry Dean, a Scottish stand-up comedian, believes that defining “Scottish” comedy is a really tough question. “First off, there’s the assumption that a nationally shared sense of humor exists at all,” he said and added “Is it really possible for five million people to make the same kind of jokes and find the same things funny?”
Dean continued: “if there’s one thing we Scottish like to laugh at, it’s ourselves. Which is useful when facing internationally reinforced caricatures every time we turn on the telly. (Think of Groundskeeper Willie from The Simpsons.)"
The novelist Jenny Colgan argues that there are two views of Scottish humor. “The first, to quote PG Wodehouse, is that it is seldom difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman and a ray of sunshine. Think Gordon Brown's overhanging manse brow, and Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves. The Presbyterian suspicion about things that are comical, musical, or in any way distract you from 12 hours a day of back-breaking toil runs deep in the national psyche - what Irvine Welsh calls the 'you'll have had your tea' school of grumpy inhospitableness,” she explained in a piece for The Guardian.
#12 "In Ye Get, Carol. Get Yersel Up The Road Safe Now. Mind And Give Me Two Rings When You And Billy Are Back Home
Colgan continued that there is the other side too: the belief that Scots actually have a great sense of humor “(because it is free - yes, yes, ho ho ho).” She wrote: “And this view is probably the more accurate. Without a doubt the free-ranging Glaswegian barrowlands native wit is alive and well - at a recent concert by the Blue Nile, the famously beautiful and gloomy Glaswegian bedsit band, the heckle went up, ‘Could youse no' play something a bit mair wistful?’”
