Born and raised in London, Jack Whitehall is one of Britain’s favorite comedians and joins Condé Nast Traveler to teach a masterclass on all things British. From making the perfect cup of tea to mastering the country’s many accents, Jack Whitehall has all the tips and tricks to help make you a true Brit.Season 2 of The Afterparty is now available to stream exclusively on AppleTV+
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Hello, I'm Jack Whitehall and I am British.
00:02 Today I'm going to show you how to be British.
00:04 I'm going to teach you how to use some slang,
00:06 instruct you on making the perfect cup of tea,
00:09 talk you through a couple of British snacks,
00:11 and I'm going to introduce you to a few of our accents.
00:14 (upbeat music)
00:17 We are not a nation that is famed for our cuisine,
00:28 but we are quite good on snacking,
00:29 presumably to avoid having to eat
00:31 our bland, tasteless, horrible, flaccid food.
00:35 So, first up, Maltesers.
00:37 You don't have Maltesers in America?
00:38 - Yeah, it's Whoppers out here.
00:40 - Whoppers?
00:40 - Yeah, but they're crap.
00:41 - They're crap?
00:42 Well, these are amazing.
00:43 Like a light chocolate, they sort of melt in your mouth.
00:46 We have a lot of Maltesers in the house, actually.
00:48 My girlfriend is a diabetic.
00:50 There's an interesting little tidbit of information
00:53 about my life.
00:54 And for any of you that don't know about diabetes,
00:57 that you have to very carefully
00:58 monitor your blood sugar levels,
00:59 which means if you do strenuous exercise,
01:02 they can dip very dangerously low.
01:04 So, what that now means in my life
01:07 is that I can tell exactly how good of a performance
01:10 I've put in in the bedroom
01:11 by what my girlfriend is having to snack on
01:13 after we've had sex.
01:14 For example, if post-coitally I were to roll over
01:18 and see her tucking into an entire novelty-sized Toblerone,
01:22 I would be like, "Well played, Jack.
01:24 "Bravo, good work."
01:25 I have on occasion rolled over after sex
01:27 and seen her consuming a single Malteser,
01:30 which is not a great review.
01:32 So I do actually find the Malteser quite triggering now.
01:37 The sight of her popping just one of these in
01:39 and going, "Right, I'm going to bed now."
01:43 Not great.
01:43 Could be worse, could be a Skittle.
01:47 Okay, what have we got here?
01:49 Jelly babies.
01:50 Little sort of, I guess little jellified human beings
01:54 that we eat.
01:55 I remember as a kid eating these a lot
01:57 and taking great joy in beheading the jelly baby,
01:59 which makes me sound like a psychopath,
02:01 but all kids did that, definitely.
02:03 It wasn't just me.
02:04 So again, there's a lot of these in the house.
02:07 Oh dear.
02:09 Percy pigs.
02:11 Love a Percy pig.
02:12 These are from M&S, and they have M&S
02:14 in all of the service stations in the UK.
02:17 So these you tend to eat if you're on a long drive,
02:21 stop off at M&S, fill up on the Percy pigs.
02:24 These are the goat sweets, they're great.
02:26 Okay, cockles.
02:27 Now these are a cockney delicacy.
02:29 The old me would have told you
02:31 that these are absolutely minging,
02:32 but now I have to like these
02:34 and enjoy all of these things like cockles
02:36 and whelks and jelly deals.
02:37 Literally thinking about that makes me wretch.
02:40 It's like a bony, chopped up eel in gelatin,
02:43 and that is a delicacy in the East End.
02:45 And then cockles, you eat these as well
02:47 with like a little toothpick.
02:48 And I've had to sit in front of my girlfriend's grandfather
02:52 and pretend to enjoy these when inwardly I'm dying.
02:55 Tea, you've got tea here.
02:58 Surely.
03:00 Oh, English breakfast tea.
03:02 I mean, actually, to be fair,
03:04 the reality is when I've been traveling in America before,
03:06 I have brought my own tea with me.
03:08 I also brought Marmite with me when I came to America as well
03:10 'cause you can't get Marmite here.
03:12 I mainly like Marmite
03:13 'cause of how much it disconcerts Americans.
03:15 You're not necessarily aficionados
03:20 when it comes to making tea over here.
03:22 I have even heard stories about people putting lemon in it.
03:25 So now I'm gonna show you how to make
03:28 a proper British cup of tea.
03:30 First up, set your tea bag into the cup.
03:33 All good so far.
03:34 Hopefully everyone's up to speed.
03:37 You will take your water, which must be boiled,
03:39 and gently soak that tea bag.
03:43 Pour a little bit into the saucer as well.
03:45 That's always good.
03:46 I am fond of a little bit of tea bagging.
03:49 So I like to lift it up
03:50 and just gently dunk it in a couple of times
03:53 just to get everything out of that bag.
03:55 And then you need to let it steep,
03:57 about two minutes of steeping time.
04:00 Then we're gonna take the bag out.
04:01 And then we've got milk here.
04:02 Don't put the milk in first.
04:03 And don't ask for any other milk.
04:06 It needs to be proper milk from a cow, okay?
04:09 None of your nut juice.
04:11 I have in fact seen an American attempt to ask
04:14 for alternative milks in the UK.
04:17 And the admittedly slightly older gentleman
04:19 that was working there looked at him
04:21 with pure hatred in his eyes.
04:23 And he said, "The milk options are hot or cold."
04:26 And then a little stir.
04:28 And no sugar either.
04:29 I don't think you're allowed to have sugar.
04:30 And then maybe you are.
04:32 That's builder's tea.
04:33 That's what we call.
04:34 Because we only have about eight sugars in it.
04:37 And there, that's your perfect cup of tea.
04:39 Yeah, pretty good actually.
04:46 Trolleyed, this is a British word for drunk.
04:50 I had too many ales last night, officer.
04:54 And I'm afraid I'm a little bit trolleyed.
04:57 Just like the Inuits have 60 different words for snow,
05:00 we have a lot of different ways to describe getting drunk.
05:03 Steaming, blotto, wasted, minted, munted.
05:08 Trolleyed is a sort of interim stage.
05:10 When you're on your way to being completely shit-faced,
05:13 it's just before that.
05:15 And then a couple more drinks
05:16 and you would be annihilated.
05:18 Pants, so pants is a word that is used
05:23 to describe something that is not great.
05:26 Not pants, like underpants.
05:27 Oh no, I think it is like pants.
05:29 Yeah, it must be like pants.
05:30 It's like a derogatory term.
05:32 Oh, that's pants.
05:33 Or I went to watch my football team,
05:36 not soccer, last night and they lost 3-0.
05:40 It was pants.
05:42 Pied off, this means to disrespect someone.
05:45 The etymology of this is from pie in face,
05:48 like having a pie shoved into your face.
05:51 Pied off has become very popular,
05:52 especially with the kids of late,
05:55 because it has been popularized in a television show,
05:58 the show where they follow the dating lives
06:01 of people with learning difficulties.
06:04 Love Island, that's it.
06:06 What was your uncle, yeah, this is a really weird one.
06:08 This one means like something's really easy.
06:10 Yeah, you go down to the shops,
06:11 stick your items in the basket,
06:13 go to the till and pay for them.
06:15 Bob's your uncle.
06:16 It's got nothing to do with anyone actually called Bob.
06:19 I have no idea where this one came from.
06:20 It's pretty weird.
06:21 It's not a phrase I use a lot.
06:23 It's quite old-timey.
06:24 It's the kind of phrase that my parents might use.
06:26 From this, thus far, remember pied off.
06:28 That one gets used a lot more.
06:30 This one I feel like is gonna be phased out.
06:32 Under the cosh, this one is used
06:35 by sports telecasters a lot.
06:37 If you're watching a game
06:38 and your team is up against the wall,
06:41 they could be under the cosh.
06:43 That means under pressure, I guess.
06:45 Cosh, what does cosh mean?
06:47 Is that like a baton that you whack people with?
06:49 Could this be a cosh?
06:50 So under the cosh suggests maybe
06:52 someone getting beaten with a baton.
06:55 So Scouse accent is people from Liverpool, Merseyside.
07:02 It's a very distinctive accent.
07:04 Quite unnerving if you hear it come out
07:06 of someone's mouth for the first time.
07:08 It's quite hard on the consonants.
07:10 There are certain gateway sentences
07:12 that can help you into the Scouse accent.
07:15 Famously, bucket of fried chicken and a can of Coke.
07:18 Just 'cause there's lots of Cs
07:19 and you have to really wrap your tongue around it.
07:22 You get quite a lot of saliva building up in your mouth.
07:24 So if you're not trained in the Scouse accent,
07:27 then you do have to stand back from people
07:29 when you speak it 'cause there can be quite a lot of spray.
07:33 Geordie.
07:33 This is a dangerous one for me to attempt.
07:35 It can sometimes veer into Jamaican, which is not great.
07:38 So I will try to be careful.
07:40 This is people from the North East of England,
07:42 from Newcastle.
07:43 Oh, it's already gone a bit.
07:45 Focus.
07:46 Their big phrase out there is "How we?"
07:48 How we the lads?
07:50 That means like, how are you doing?
07:52 No, it doesn't.
07:53 It means come on.
07:54 That's what it means.
07:54 Famous people from the North East are like Paul Gascoigne
07:57 and Sam Fender.
07:58 He's in a band from the North East and he talks like that.
08:02 And if you do it really slowly, then it's a lot safer.
08:06 If I speed up any more than this,
08:09 then we may end up in Kingston, Jamaica,
08:12 which we don't want.
08:14 It's like you're sort of just belching out
08:16 each of the syllables like that.
08:18 Don't think I'm gonna be invited back to Newcastle
08:21 anytime soon.
08:22 Soon.
08:23 Yorkshire.
08:25 This is an accent from the North of England.
08:28 People from Sheffield and Leeds, former mining towns.
08:32 They got Yorkshire tea up there.
08:33 They really like gravy, which they have on everything.
08:37 They say things like, "Eh up, duck."
08:39 I think that's hello.
08:40 Received pronunciation, RP.
08:44 This is how people used to speak on the wireless,
08:46 on the radio back in the day.
08:47 And everyone was trained to talk like this,
08:49 whether you were from Newcastle or Liverpool or Yorkshire.
08:54 If you wanted to get on the telly,
08:55 you had to talk like this.
08:56 That's very clipped and you have to enunciate
08:59 all of the words and speak very quickly like that.
09:01 And it's sort of, I would say, my accent.
09:04 I speak in received pronunciation
09:06 because I tend to talk on a day-to-day basis
09:09 like I have found a time machine
09:11 and traveled from the 1930s.
09:12 Cockney, the accent that was famously murdered
09:18 by Dick Van Dyke in the Mary Poppins films.
09:21 It is an accent that is used by people
09:24 that are from the East End of London.
09:25 Traditionally, it grew up within the sound
09:29 of the bells of Bow, which is a cathedral in East London.
09:34 And if you were born within earshot of the Bow bells,
09:37 then you would be considered a Cockney.
09:39 It's an accent that I have to be careful with.
09:41 My girlfriend is from the East End.
09:43 Her family are from the East End.
09:45 Used to be an accent that I would slip into
09:47 for comic effect, but quite frankly, I'm scared of them.
09:50 Brummie, Brummie is the accent used by people from Birmingham.
09:56 You will have heard it, you lot, Condé Nast viewers,
10:00 smart, sophisticated people like you in Peaky Blinders,
10:03 which I have not featured in because, you've guessed it,
10:06 I cannot do a Brummie accent.
10:08 It's one of the few that I don't think I can do.
10:10 Brummie, that was sort of it.
10:12 Brummie, I'm from Birmingham.
10:14 Actually, that's better than it's ever been.
10:17 Wow, maybe I should have been in Peaky Blinders.
10:19 Start in London.
10:23 I think you would head off down the Thames
10:25 to wonderful Henley-on-Thames, where they have the regatta,
10:28 and it's absolutely swarming with toffs
10:31 in gilets and red trousers and boater hats.
10:35 That would be a lovely place to sort of start.
10:37 Then you might punt down the Thames
10:39 and you could head off to Oxford,
10:41 where they have the famous university,
10:43 which I didn't get into, so actually, you know what?
10:45 Fuck Oxford.
10:46 I'd go to Swindon.
10:47 There we are.
10:48 I mean, it's not necessarily the finest city in the country.
10:52 It's got a little bit of a reputation
10:54 for being possibly a little bit backward.
10:58 No, it's not backward.
10:59 It's just that Swindon has the most complicated
11:01 roundabout system in Europe.
11:03 It's called the Magic Roundabout.
11:04 It's literally impossible to navigate.
11:06 It's like eight roundabouts
11:08 surrounding a massive roundabout.
11:09 It's impossible to drive across,
11:11 and I had to learn to drive there
11:12 and obviously failed my test
11:14 because I kept getting stranded on the Magic Roundabout.
11:16 I suspect they have the Magic Roundabout in Swindon
11:18 because it's the only way
11:19 that you can keep anyone in Swindon.
11:21 It's like a moat, almost,
11:22 to keep people within the city of Swindon.
11:24 You literally can't escape.
11:25 I mean, that's probably where the road trip would end
11:27 'cause you'd just be there,
11:28 stranded on this fucking roundabout.
11:31 I mean, it's not a great road trip.
11:32 You're not seeing a lot of the country.
11:33 You're mainly just seeing Swindon.
11:36 Thank you very much.
11:37 I've been Jack Whitehall,
11:38 and I hope this gets you through Britain
11:40 without getting punched.
11:42 As the Geordies would say,
11:43 "How we why I man?
11:45 "Gunna we?
11:47 "Una toon?"
11:48 They would never say that
11:50 'cause it makes no sense whatsoever.
11:52 It's just noises.
11:53 (upbeat music)
11:55 (electronic music)