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It took me a long time, too, to understand some of the late night political talk shows here. I just didn't know the premise for much of the humor. And they were even more challenging because they frequently had 'famous' guests I'd never heard of. I can get a grin out of most of them now, but even so my favorite has to be Craig Ferguson who is, of course, a Scot anyway and whose brand of humor is not so self-consciously political as Jay Leno or David Letterman. You will have missed some of the assumptions and inferences in HIGNFY. Paul Merton is a very well known television and stand-up comedian and has cultivated a working class image, whilst Ian Hislop is a public school (that's "private school" in America) boy and university graduate - Cambridge, I think. So there is a subtle class thing going on there. Also Ian Hislop isn't a professional comedian, he's the Editor of Private Eye, the longest running and most famous satirical news magazine in the UK, and both he and the magazine have been sued on many occasions over the years for being a little too pointed about the people they detest. These two guys have very different approaches to humor. Plus they've been the team leaders on this programme for oh... well over ten years now, I guess, so there is a kind of cosy familiarity with the audience that you aren't getting, and also the format of the show has barely changed over all those years so it does have an immediate appeal to any expats who used to watch it way back. I don't know if you have a similar show here based on the week's news? Frankly there are so many channels that I've never bothered to watch most of them, but let me know if you think there's a show you think I might like.

Asked by Chris O. on 6/6/2010