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The age of joke

The long speak: It used to be precisely a word now it is a way of life. But is it is necessary to get down the banter bus?

Its the most fucking laughable storey, isnt it? We went to watch fucking dolphins, and we ended up in fucking Syria. Last-place summertime in the Mediterranean party resort of Ayia Napa, Lewis Ellis was wielding as a guild rep. I represent, it was fucking 8am, he told an Australian website soon afterwards, and the last fucking golf-club had closed, and we remembered, We can still depart dolphin watching. Well blag our mode on to a fucking craft and croak dolphin watching.

But when the boat voyaged so far that Cyprus disappeared from panorama, Ellis explained, they started to worry. Why are we so far from tract? they questioned the crew. Were fucking miles away and weve got no fucking wifi. Something, Ellis said, had been lost in rendition; his exuberant season as a shepherd for the useds party pilgrims used to go terribly awry. The gang wasnt taking them to watch dolphins: they were going to a Russian naval basi in the towns of Tartus, on Syrias Mediterranean coast. Yeah, it is a little ridiculous.

It was , nonetheless, a fib that had legs. Hungover lads boat errand boob territory them in Syria, wahey-ed the Mirror; British holidaymakers board defendant barge in Ayia Napa and be brought to an end in war-torn SYRIA, laughed the Express. If you envisioned these headlines at the time, you may dimly remember the rest. A stubborn trawler captain, chugging doggedly onwards to Tartus, where he turfed the friends out upon territory; interrogation at the mitts of Russian intelligence officers; mutual hilarity as the Russians realised what had happened; and, after a red-hot banquet, a speedy tour of the expanse, and a good darkness sleep, spots on the next angling boat headed back to Cyprus. It was never made clear why the captain had let them on the craft in the first place, but whatever. Everyone lapped it up.

Reflecting on the whole circumstance five a few months later, Ellis, a 26 -year-old with a business position and a marketing lords, couldnt altogether wrap his head around it. I ponder I experienced 35 narratives about us, he told me. I read about myself in the Hawaiian Express, do you know what I symbolize?( Notwithstanding that there is nothing to doesnt appear to be any such newspaper, yes, I emphatically do .)

What became it really weird to see the media pile in with such unstinting passion was that the storey was total cobblers. I could not belief how unsophisticated they were, Ellis said, a top memo of hilarity still in his tone. We were just having a chortle! It was banter!

Lads: this is the age of joke. Its long been somewhat about the banter, but over the last few years, it has come to seem that its all about the banter an unabashedly bumptious posture that took up a position on the outskirts of different cultures in the early 90 s and has been larging its road towards the centre ever since. “Theres” hundreds of banter groups on Facebook, from Banter Britain( no memes insinuating child abuse/ dead children !!!) to Wanker Banter 18+( Have a laugh and keep it sick) to the Premier League Banter Page( The only ruler: keep it banter ). You can buy an I banter jugs on Amazon for 9, or an Archbishop of Banterbury T-shirt for 9.99.

There are now four sprigs of a restaurant announced Scoff& Banter. When circumstances were going badly at Chelsea FC under Jos Mourinho, it was reported the team had banned all joke in an attempt to focus their subconscious, and that word appeared in the newspapers, as if you would know exactly what it entail. Person has created a banter map of London using a keyword scour on the flatshare website SpareRoom, indicating exactly where people “re looking for a” roommate with good banter( Clapham tends to facet prominently ). When a 26 -year-old man from Leeds constituted for a selfie with a baffled aeroplane hijacker, Vice swore it the high-water rating of banter.

Lewis Ellis( left) and friends in Ayia Napa, pretending to be in Syria. Photograph: Lewis Ellis

If you are younger than about 35, you are likely to hear the expression all the time. Either you have banter( if you are funny and can take a pun) or you dont( if you arent and cannot ). The mainstream, in summary, is now drink and asleep on the sofa, and banter is delightedly drawing a penis on its forehead.

As banter has risen, it has expanded. Long a word used to describe submerged sayings of fraternal charity, it is now likewise a word allows one to excuse uninhibited exhibitions of masculine bravado. Today, it is segregated by class, seized on by brands, picked over by psychologists, and regretted by culture reviewers; it is dominant, fiercely contested and exclusively hazily understood.

And so, whether he purposes it to or not, Ellis use of the expression parent some questions. Is he shedding his pile in with the most prevalent division of the blokeish mainstream, a sanitised and gracious gaiety that elongates from lad-dad panel shows to your teammates zinger about your dreadful haircut? Or is he lining up with the misogynist impersonators of the Bullingdon club, a sprinkling of prejudiceds, and, as we shall identify, an actual murderer purveyors of a malicious and insidious masculinity that insists on its indivisible dominion and calls you a slut if you object?

Ellis isnt preoccupied by these questions, but for what its worth, he does say that he and his friends never had the slightest planned of going to Syria. We werent actually trying to clown anyone, he told me, although Im not sure thats wholly consistent with the facts of the case. We were out for a saunter, and we went across this area that gazed actually run down, we thought it was like Syria. So we apply it on the team reps[ Facebook] page that thats where we were. And everyone started liking it. And then one of the people who contacted us was from LADBible which is like the Bible, but for LADS so we pronounced, well have a mess around here. Well tell a completely ridiculous tale, see if the media believes it. Find if we can become LADBible famous.

It did, we are able to. Eventually, the truth “re coming out” , not thanks to any especially determined investigative journalism, but because Ellis cheerily admitted on Facebook that his narration of superb foolishnes was a story. Hahaha what a prank, he wrote, with some justification.

The confession simply raised another repetition of notice. Books that had picked up the legend in the first place resurfaced it with new headlines to manifest the daring of the fabrication; social media useds adduced it as evidence for their own views of young men, or the media, or both. The Russian delegation Twitter account announced it a telling illustration of how many Syria( and Russia) stories are made up by UK newspapers, which was great geopolitical banter. The courtesy entertained Ellis, but he alleges it wasnt the stage. We simply thought it was funny, he responded. People are too serious. I hinder being told to grow up, but I still want to have a good time. Ive had the jobs, Ive got the education. But when Im off production, I want to escape.

Ellis is an enthusiast and an optimist. He is, he told me late last year, hopeless to take every opportunity, simply to enunciate yes to everything I can. We were on a nighttime out in Manchester with his pals Tyson, John and Chris. In such courses of the evening, the following circumstances knew their mode into my brew: fingers; salt; vinegar; mayonnaise; a chip; saliva; a 10 greenback; and, I hazily recollect being told after the fact, at the least two shootings of vodka.

Everyones got a thought in the group, Ellis said, as we walked from one saloon to the next. One person, hes not even that ugly, we say he looks just like a Peperami. Tysons get this mole on his appearance, its like a Coco Pop, so youve got a Coco Pop on your appearance. I looked like Harry Potter when I was a kid, so they announce me Potter, thats my moniker. Every single one of us has something. So you youve gone Chinese attentions. Youre Chinese.

For the record, I didnt think this was OK, but coming after such a harmless litany, it didnt seem malicious enough to confront. Of course, tacit promotion is what shapes such offensive epithets a platitude, and so it is a matter of concern that it saw “i m feeling” mysteriously accepted, just as it had when John perforated me softly in the pellets when I arrived. There was no doubting Elliss candour: as he spoke, the sheer daft beautiful of male friendship seems to astounded him, almost to the point of physical suffering. We just take the piss out of each other, and thats how we establish our passion , he spoke. So many group converses on the phone, and you just take the piss until they cry . And its like, when youre certainly killing them, you go, Ill stop if you miss, because you know they cant say yes, so you exactly keep going. Then we arrived at the next rail, where I was made to drink something called a Zombie.

Early in the evening, before any of this had eroded my ability to take helpful notes, Ellis smashed off from talking as we moved down wall street and sidled into a window display at Next Home, where he Tracey Emined a carefully established bottom by climbing into it and reeling around. Everyone cracked up. Contribute “the worlds” a shriek, Ellis tends to think, and the world will smile back at you. Jump on a craft, and youll end up somewhere enormous; stimulate the boat up, and youll got to get faster. Its all about having fun, its all about the banter, he articulated, after hed rejoined us outside. Banter is about realise “the worlds” a more exciting place.

If nobody can agree on what joke is, thats scarcely a new difficulty. The first habit of the word recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from memo Restoration lad Thomas dUrfey, also known for his hit hymn The Fart, in a sarcastic 1677 participate called Madam Fickle. Banter him, banter him, Toby, a character called Zechiel urges, which may be the first time that someone called Toby was so instructed, but certainly wasnt the last.

The OED also notes early attempts at a description by Jonathan Swift and Samuel Johnson.( Speedy mentions a banter upon transubstantiation, in which a cork is turned into a horse, and fair enough, revolving a stopper into a mare “wouldve been” classic joke .) Both “re a bit” disgusted by the word, and neither unearths often of an origin narrative: by their chronicles, joke is so coarse that it rose, amply structured and without antecedent, out of the mouths of oafs.

As it is about to change, though, the OED is not at present amply able to handle the banter. According to Eleanor Maier, an associate editor on the dictionary, a research of earlier English texts reveals that a number of previous patterns are missing from the dictionarys definition, which is now being first drafted in 1885 including a quote from a 1657 rendition of Don Quixote.( After examining the history, Maier told him that she would be adding banter to the listing of introductions that are up for evaluate .)

dougie stew (@ DougieStew)

Welcome to London #BagelGate pic.twitter.com/ KcJoz0ycZU

February 26, 2017

In recent years, joke has barged into our lives at a impressive time. Googles Ngram Viewer, a implement that assesses( with some limitations) the frequency with which a period shall be published in a large database of written sources, finds that banter popped up approximately twice as often in 2008, the most recent year plowed, as it did in 1980.

But banter plugged away for a very long time before it became an overnight success. In the 19 th century, it often designated a kind of formal sparring. Even as the term progressed over the 20 th, it continued to seem a bit prissy. In the House of Commons in 1936, Ramsay MacDonald, the former Labour prime minister who had recalled in a brand-new sit after losing his old one, was subjected to a great deal of banter Dear old-time Granny MacDonald !, among other witticisms.In 1981, a Guardian report that chess champion Anatoly Karpov and his handlers have succeeded in protested at his challenger Viktor Korchnois constant cross-board talk ran under the unlikely headline: Chess joke banned.

Such floors do little to prepare us for what banter has become. Consider the viral video that became known as #bagelgate earlier this year. In the recording, a minor hassle broke out on the 00.54 improve from Kings Cross to Huntingdon, and then for no plainly related rationale the status of women who had a large crate of bagels decided to put one on the heads of state of the person sitting in front of her, and then another after “hes taking” it off and hurled it out of the window, and another and another, and then everyone in the carriage started chanting hes got a bagel on his head, and eventually the slightly spoddy prey who is me when I was 13 and someone filled my pencil client with Mr Kipling apple pies( squashed, exuding) because I was fatty completely lost and hollered Get the fuck out of my appearance !, and then another campaign broke out on the programme, and then the police got on to the teach, and every single person fell into not-me-guv stillnes: this is not Granny MacDonalds joke any more.

If it is hard to understand how these activities can fall under the same umbrella, it should be noted that a phenomenon may predate our choice of expression to describe it its precisely that the act of description draws it most visible, and perhaps more likely to be imitated. At some place, though, joke became the call for what British boys already regarded as their natural tone of voice. There is a very deeply embedded folk culture in the UK of public ribaldry, extreme satire, facetiousness in other words, of laddishness, speaks Tony Thorne, a linguist and cultural historian. What you might think of as banter now is rooted in that tradition.

That tradition firstly flogged itself to banters mast in the early 1990 s, and polemic soon followed. In June 1992, a Guardian storey headlined Police fire sex banter officer, about the removal of a sergeant for sexual harassment, entered an early skirmish in the modern banter battles, and its significant brand-new bed to its meaning in the wild: The move is seen as part of the Metropolitan polices desire to reassure women officers that what has previously been tolerated as banter is greater acceptable. Two year later, the cubs mags arrived.

The first edition of Loaded magazine appeared in May 1994, with a picture of Gary Oldman on the figurehead inhaling a dog-end, under a placard that showed him a super cub. What fresh crazines is this? the editors note spoken. Loaded is a new publication dedicated to life, liberty and the endeavours of fornication, booze, football and less serious matters Loaded is for “the mens” who guesses he can do anything, if merely he wasnt hungover.

If banter chagrins you, James Brown, the magazines firstly writer, is quite an easy bogeyman. As he recognise himself, he composed a claim that defined a genre. Loaded was swiftly recognised as a foundational text for a resurgent and exuberant masculinity that had been searching for public showing. While it was always overtly horny, the publication was initially more interested in a lonesome, slackjawed and self-ironising acknowledgment of -Alisters( one reversible posting had Cindy Crawford on one side and a steam train on the other) than the grot-plus-football formula that successors and imitators like Maxim, Zoo and Nuts milked to shattering. But the committee is also flirted with something murkier.

To its pundits, Loaded and its imitators aimed to sanitise any particular hooliganistic worldview with a tactical renunciation. Banter emerges as this relentless gloss of incongruity over everything, told Bethan Benwell, elderly lecturer in speech and linguistics at the University of Stirling and the author of several newspapers on mens publications. The constant explain of sexist or homophobic feelings with this winking that says you dont really mean it. Benwell drawn attention to Loadeds emblematic strapline: For men who should know better.

Brown is denying that his periodical fabricated banter. Instead, he tells, it captured a zeitgeist that the media had previously failed to acknowledge; the kinfolk culture that Tony Thorne refers to, brought forward into the open. Before Browns intervention, GQ had extended John Major and Michael Heseltine as embrace hotshots, for Gods sake. I took the advantages and the mentality of the young men that I knew, and I give them in a publication, Brown suggested. Im not responsible for the atmosphere of the later entrants to the market. We were criticised because we fancied wives , not because we maligned them.

The thing about Loaded was that the mode we wrote manifested the way we were with our mates, he went on. Theres definitely a act that exists in the male outlook: you take the piss out of the person or persons you like, and you ignore the people you dont.

Accept this as your starting point, and dissents become exhausting to prolong: what youre objecting to is an behave of affection. Of route, “its what” stimulates it insidious. Because Browns account remainders on the intention behind the publication, and Benwells on the effect it had, they are impossible to reconcile. Its a very difficult act to withstand or objection without looking like the stereotypical humourless feminist, said Benwell. But by laughing, you are complicit.

Loaded leaved this new various kinds of banter escape velocity, and it has started to colonise other worlds. On BBC2, for example, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner were staking out their own territory with Fantasy Football League, a mixture of sketches and personality chit-chat that managed to be enthusiastic and satirical at the same occasion, and reached its peak when the pair became national icons, thanks to their Euro 96 chant, Three Lions. While a long-running joke about the Nottingham Forest striker Jason Lees pineapple haircut seems flatly racist in retrospect Baddiel did an impression of him in blackface by and large, the colour was milder and more conventional than the publications were: this was the insight of colleges and universities graduate slumming it before starting on grown-up life.

Baddiel implied that laddism is likely to be dominates a range from ogling to literature, depicting a line to Nick Hornbys memoir of life as an Arsenal fan, Fever Pitch. Hornby formerly said to me that all this stuff you are familiar with, imagination football and his journal is gentlemen speak about things that they like and for a while in the mid-8 0s they werent allowed to, he said in 1995. Ive always liked football and Ive always liked naked women, and its easier to talk about that now than it was eight years ago. Those explains manifest a kind of sneer at its pundits that you could often detect in Fantasy Football League, even as its hosts protested that they were just having a laugh though Baddiel himself is denying that view. Twenty times on, he, like Brown, is at hurtings to draw a line between the approach that he and Skinner popularised, and the forms that arose afterward. I approximate me and Frank did specialise in joke, he said in an email. In a hour before it was known as bantz.

Over the next 10 times, two things happened that ushered in persons under the age of joke.( You might call it matured joke, except that its too the opposite .) First, instead of just has become a circumstance that happened, it became a situation that people talked about. Then, as it became a more tangible culture make, everyone started trying to make money out of it. The watershed instant, the forms equivalent to Dylan extending electric, was the invention of Dave.

Like most good theories, it examines simple enough in retrospect. Before Dave was Dave, it was UKTV Gold 2. The precede channels gathering share was 0.761%, and no one could tell who on globe it was supposed to be for. But we had the contents, remarks Steve North, the channels brand director in 2007 and content of a specific kind that the existing appoint did very little to communicate: Have I Got News for You, They Belief Its All Over, Top Gear. Sees said they adoration the repartee, the comedy. It reminded them of spending time with their funniest friends.

The first issue of Loaded magazine, from May 1994

The target audience was highly specific. It was men marriage or in relationships, maybe with young children , not going to the inn as much as they used to, enunciates Andy Bryant, managing director of Red Bee, relevant agencies brought in to work on the rebrand. And they missed that camaraderie.

Their purpose thus fixed, North started to run brainstorming periods at which people would shout out recommendations for the call. One of the ones we compiled was Dave, he enunciates. We felt, enormous, but we cant call it that. But then we reputed, Its a replacement friend. If the audience really pictures it as that, if they see it as genuinely providing the banter, maybe we can really pay it a name.

They employed their hunch through its paces. The market research corporation YouGov was commissioned to test Dave alongside a cluster of other refers( Matthew and Kevin were also on the shortlist ), but nothing else had the same everyman resonance. For us, Dave is a sensibility, a place, an spirit, a sense, announced North, his tone astute, virtually gnomic. Everyone has their own gumption of who Dave is, thats the important thing. Its difficult to find anyone who doesnt know someone called Dave.

Now the channel had a firebrand, it needed a motto. Lots of people claim they played a part in the identify, announces Bryant. But it was just as important to encapsulate what the channel was all about. And at some part someone, I dont was well known that, wrote it on members of the board: The dwelling of funny joke. The rebrand contributed 8m brand-new spectators in six months; Dave watched a 71% increase in its target audience of affluent young men.

Conceived by the first generation of senior professionals to have grown up with joke as an unremarkable part of their demographics culture desegregate, the canal crystallised a change, and accelerated it. In 2006, The Ricky Gervais Show, in which Gervais and Stephen Merchant relentlessly poked fun at their in-house jerk savant Karl Pilkington, became the most popular podcast of all time. In 2007, its first year of Daves rebrand, Top Gears ratings shoot from below 5m to a record high-pitched of 8m. The following year, QI moved from BBC4 to BBC2.( A tie-in volume written the same year, QI: Advanced Banter, sold more than 125,000 transcripts .)

North checked the kind of fraternal pestering that was being monetised by his canal, and the panel shows that were its lifeblood, as fundamentally benign. The key happening is that its two-way, he responded. Its about two parties riffing off each other.

But like his 20 th-century forebears, he can see that something ugly has advanced, and he wants to keep his brand well away from it. Bants, he added with dislike. That circumstance of cover for dubious behaviour we detest and hate it massively. When we propelled, it was about enjoyable, being light-hearted, maybe pushing one another without being disrespectful. When people talk about Ive had a go at that person, great banter no, thats just nasty.

By the become of the decade, as other labelling bureaux simulated the success of Dave, banter was everywhere, a folk tradition that had acquired a strange kind of respectability. The all those people who celebrated it werent precisely fellows in the inn any more: they had spending ability and organisation allies on their surface. But they were, by the same token, more visible to commentators. Invasion from an underdog can be overlooked; aggressivenes from the establishment is serious enough to become a matter of public concern.

Take Richard Keys and Andy Gray, Sky Sports brand-defining football presenters, who got themselves up to their cervixes in some highly bad joke in 2011. Keys accused dark armies, but everybody else blamed him and Gray for being misogynists. We knew this because there was footage.

The firestorm, as Keys called it, centred on claims that the two men had said and done heinously sexist acts off-air. Most memorable, at the least for its phrase-making, was the time in which Keys eagerly requested his fellow pundit Jamie Redknapp if hed smashed it it being a woman and asserted that he could often be found hanging out the back of it.

Gray became promptly. In the days before he followed, Keys burned hot with sin in a series of mea-sorta-culpas, specially focused on the strip in which he conveyed his derision at the idea that the status of women, Sian Massey-Ellis, could be an aide referee in the Premier League.

It was just banter , he suggested. Or, more exactly, just a bit of joke, as he mentioned Massey-Ellis had assured him she understood in a later telephone conversation in which, he added, much joke elapsed between us. She and I enjoyed some joke, he protested. It was lads-mag joke, he contended. It was stone-age banter, he acknowledged. We liked to have banter, he explained. Richard Keys was sorry if you were offended, but likewise, it wasnt his faulting if you didnt get onto. It was just banter, for goodness sake!

Up to their necks in some particularly bad banter Andy Gray and Richard Keys in 2011. Picture: Richard Saker/ Rex

Keys insistence that his correct was simply a failure to move with the times was nothing new: banter has always seemed to carry a longing for the past, for the purposes of an guessed age before male love was so cramped by the tedious obligations of feminist scrutiny. But while his underlying deems were painfully dated, his thought of joke was only modern: a sly expansion of the words signify, and a self-conscious contention that it provided an impregnable defence.

The Keys variation understood banter, first, as a catch-all means of disavowing responsibility if someone was hurt; and, second, as a means of reinforcing a bail between two beings by being cruel about a third. The comparison wouldnt satisfy got a couple of alphas like Keys and Gray, but both strategies accompanied it closer to a style of communicating with classically feminine associations: gossip. Deborah Cameron, the Rupert Murdoch( lol) Professor in Language and Communication at Oxford University, argues that the two modes of interaction follow basically the same organization. People gab as a trust competition, she alleged. You tell someone your unsayable private secret, and it bonds you closer together. Theyre supposed to do now reciprocate with a confidence of their own. Well, banter works in the same way now. You say something appalling, and you see if the other person dares to top your remark.

The trust game in joke was traditionally is expected to be: do you trust me when I read were friends in spite of the aim circumstances Im replying about you? But now theres two seconds version of the game: do I trust you not to tell anyone the mean thoughts Im announcing about other parties? I repute initially it was a harmless event, enunciated Cameron, whose analysis is rooted in an repository of male group conversation, predominantly entered by her students, that goes back to the 1980 s. But then it started to be used as an excuse when gentlemen were caught out fully participate in forms of it that werent so harmless.

It comes down to context and meaning, says the comedian Bridget Christie. The gentler pattern of joke is still knocking around, she suggested, but now it exists alongside something darker: I obtained The Inbetweeners youngster banter hilarious, because it was equal and unthreatening. But there is obviously a world of difference between a group of teenage boys benignly taking the piss out of each other, and a bigot being racist or misogynist and trying to pass it off as a joke.

Trace the rise of banter, and you will find that it corresponds to the rise of political correctness or, anyway, to the backlash against political correctness gone mad. That word and just joke reflect each other perfectly: one denoting a priggish culture that is deemed to have overreached, the other a laid-back culture that is deemed to have been unfairly reined in. Ironically enough, merely joke does exactly what it alleges political correctness of, seeking to close down argument by say to you that making is settled by category rather than material. Political correctness is saying that a racist prank is mainly racist, whereas banter asserts that a racist pun is mainly a pun. In the past, the men who use it rarely had to define it, or to explain themselves to anybody else. Today, in contrast, it is mentioned all the time. The biggest change isnt the banter itself, remarks Bethan Benwell. Its the explicit call of the word as a disclaimer.

By sheer repetition and by its give as an unanswerable defense, joke has altered from an abstract into a vast and calcified description of wars as well as texts: started from a lane of talking to a way of life, a form that inadvertently became a worldview. He joked you, people sometimes remark: you always used to banter with your copulates, but now it often sounds like something you do to them. Once it was directionless, inconclusive yak with wit as the engine that drove it, said the comedian Russell Kane. Now, if I errand you up, thats banter.

You might think the mortification suffers from Keys and Gray would have constituted banter less plea as a get-out, but not a bit of it. Banter, increasingly, seems like the first sanctuary of the indefensible. In 2014, Malky Mackay, who had been fired as manager of Cardiff City Football Club a year earlier, was caught having transported textbook that referred to Chinese beings devouring bird-dogs, black people being criminals, Jewish people being avaricious, and lesbian parties being snakes all of which were initially optimistically defended by the League Managers Association as letting off steam to a friend during some friendly text letter banter. The comedian Dapper Laughs, whose real identify is Daniel OReilly, established himself as jokes rat king, with his very own ITV2 display, and then completely lost after he suggested that an audience member at one of his gigs was gagging for a assault. A man was convicted of assassinate after he mashed his friend against a wall with a Jeep Cherokee after an disagreement over badger-baiting, a course of action that he added had been intended as banter. Another trounced the throat of someone he had met in a pub and described the accident as a few moments of joke after 14 or 15 pints. Both are now in prison.

By any sane quantity, joke was falling into dishonor, as often a disguise for malice as a word for the ribaldry of fellows on the lash. Still it did not go away: instead, the worst of it has mutated again, insisting its expert in public and saving its creepiest partialities for the shadows or, at the least, for the company of five, or 10, or 20 of your closest mates.

At the London School of Economics, it started with a circular. Each year at the universitys freshers fair, LSE Rugby Football Club shared a banterous primer on rugby culture. In October 2014, suggests the then-president of the student solidarity, Nona Buckley-Irvine, a student has now come to her in tears with a emulate in her hand. The brochure “was talkin about a” trollops, slags, crumpet, mingers, and the desirability of misogyny; there were legislating cites to the frights of lesbian mortification and outright lesbian gluttony. Anyone charmed by all this was invited to sign up for the team and meet the banter register, entitling them to participate in the exchange of chappish email conversation.

To anyone with a run knowledge of university laddism, it was hard to suppose a more everyday iteration. Still, after the unreconstructed chappishness of the circular has now come to sunlight, the association knew it had a problem. It questioned a collective justification admitted that we have a lot to learn about the injurious effects of joke, and promised to organise a workshop. But there are still reason to be sceptical about the magnitude of that commitment.

When Buckley-Irvine and her peers published a report on the accident, they memo a fibre of others, including an antisemitic assault on a university ski tour to Val dIsere in 2011. And there were other follies it didnt mention. According to two people who were present, one club dinner at an Indian restaurant on Brick Lane ended with a stripper having bottles thrown at her when, already intimidated, she refused to take her invests off. She obscured in the toilet, and had to be escorted out by a member of staff as the team vandalised the restaurant.

Photograph: Alamy

According to five people who were either members of the rugby society or closely associated with it, one notorious elderly member was widely thought to be responsible for the booklet.( He did not respond to requests for explain .) But when they came to defend themselves to the student uniting, members of the squad fell back on one of “the worlds largest” revered mainstays of laddism: all for one, one for all. Theyd clearly worked out a line, mentions Nona Buckley-Irvine. No private individuals was responsible. They were sorry. It was just joke. Thats what they all said.

The accountancy firm KPMG, which sponsored colleges and universities wider Athletics Union, “ve decided that” banter was not an specially helpful firebrand association, and moved funding merit 22,000. The students uniting decided to disband the golf-club for the academic year. The decision moved some commentators to disgust. It was a gross overreaction, a former unit member told me. We were the best-behaved unit when it came to actually playing rugbies but they censored that bit and they couldnt proscribe any of the rest.

Others took a less measured tint. I had old-fashioned members emailing me and calling me a tyrant, articulates Buckley-Irvine. Expecting me if I didnt understand that it was just joke. Rugby actors sung mistreat at her on nights out, she told me. They shoulder-barged her, and called her a cunt.

These kinds of interactions would tend to take place on Wednesdays, also known as boasts night, at a prohibit in Leicester Square. Sports night was the apotheosis of the rugby organizations bleak solidarity. In homage to what you might call the wingers-before-mingers code, for example, representatives from the squad who were expected to dress in dress werent allowed to speak to women before 9pm. So they would just holler abuse instead, one girl former student, who Ill call Anna, remembered. One chant, she replied, get, Nine nos and a yes is a yes. At the time, Anna thought that it was all a pun. Beings would say, Its precisely banter all the time. After everything. Absolutely everything, she spoke, sitting in a cafe in south London. If you were convening someone brand-new, saying they had good banter, that was a reasonably high congratulate. Whereas if you dont go along with that material, its seen as, you cant take the chat, you cant take the banter. And its not to be considered as having a stance against it. Its seen as not being able to keep up.

After the rugby squad was disbanded , good-for-nothing much altered in plays night social life. Many members of the club still went on the same darkness out; they are only colonised other squads. They still addressed girlfriends as Sarah 2 or Sarah 8 depending on how attractive they considered them out of 10; they are continuing had shouted speeches about their copulation lives in front of the women they had slept with but refused to acknowledge.

That culture was not confined to Wednesday nights. Anna recollects a person who took her portrait as she slept, naked, in the bunk they were sharing, and circulated it to another non-university plays crew via WhatsApp. She wasnt meant to see it on his phone.

Ask anyone well-informed where joke resides now, and theyll give the same reaction: WhatsApp groups and email yarns, the safe seats of the lad class. What youd get out of those WhatsApp threads, its a different world of drama, one former member of the football club pronounced. The details of girls people that youd read, a few amusing jibes, that was the limit for me. But where reference is moved on to, like, really, really bad trash, always about sex it was too much. Those strands are the source of everything.

If the threads were an store, they were by no means the limit. Banter, by common consent, wasnt confined to lampooning each other: it was about action. If you dressed up for a night out, one girl student remembered, “its just” kind of status quo that you could have your arse grab. It was just like, Oh, that was kind of strange, but OK, thatll happen. Like everybody else willing to speak about it, her position of that culture was perplexingly nuanced, sometimes self-contradictory. It seems spooky, she said, but that tell me anything, some of my best nighttimes were there, and like it was enjoyable. But then she enunciated: What was defined as serious just got so pushed . I envision for someone to lodge a complaint they would have to be actually hurt.

Anna recollects lots of sketchy incidents. She remembers nighttimes when her choices faded into a blur, and she wondered if she had really been in control. But at the time, I would never call it out, she remarked. And then, youre all living in vestibules together, and the next day, its like: What did you do last nighttime? Thats funny. Thats banter.

When Anna thinks about the behaviour of some of “the mens” she knew at university, she find it hard to pin down exactly what she recalls of them. Theres one in particular who sticks in her recollection. On a Wednesday night, he was a joke person, she told. He was a Wednesday animal. But the rest of the time, he was my friend.

Controversial though all this was at the time , no one seems to think that it will have expenditure the perpetrators often. Ive tried so hard to leave all that behind, said the former is part of the football crew. But those guys theyre all going on to run banks, or the two countries, or whatever. The senior rugby boy who numerous held responsible, by the way, has territory on his hoofs. Today, he has a activity at KPMG.

In 2017, every new instance of banter is immediately discerned and put through the journalistic wringer.( Immorality Joel Golby, who wrote the definitive verse on the bagel thing, has made a career from his exquisite close readings of the structure .) But when each new absolute myth rises, we dont typically have the context to shape the essential points finding: do the proponents tend towards the harmless excitement of Ellis and his copulates, or the frank hatred of the LSE rugby boys? Is their affection of irony straightforward, or a mask for something else?

As Richard Keys and Dapper Laughs and their cohorts have polluted the idea of joke, the commercial entities that endorsed its rise had now become uneasy with the label. They wanted it to go viral; they hadnt expected it to runs postal. Dave, for example, has plunged the residence of funny banter slogan. Its not about classic male mood any more, its a bit smarter, alleges UKTVs Steve North. We certainly say it less than we used to.

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Encyclopaedia Westerosa: the biggest Game of Thrones mysteries, solved

How big is Westeros? What is wildfire? And how rich are the Lannisters? Ten things you didnt know about the biggest show in the world

Warning: this piece contains spoilers for seasons 1-5 of Game of Thrones .

When George RR Martins stabby saga was adapted for TV in 2011, perhaps the biggest topic surrounding it was: why would any self-respecting adult watch a fantasy series about dragons, zombies and sorcery? Well, six seasons in, the folly of that way of thinking has been exposed like a member of the Nights Watch trapped north of the Wall. Game of Thrones is now a global preoccupation.

Much of that success is down to the detailed world created by Martin and brought to vivid and sometimes visceral life on the demonstrate. From the frozen north to the intrigue-filled chambers of Kings Landing, Westeros is a place steeped in mythos and mystery, familiar yet so alien. Even now, theres still so much we dont know about the place, so many questions that need answering. But while youve already read 713 blogs about whether or not Jon Snow has carked it, there are deeper mysteries about Game of Thrones that have never been properly addressed. Ahead of the proves season six premiere, we get to grips with Westeross biggest hows, whys and whats. Answers are coming …

Why is a White Walker able to walk ?

All white on the night. Photograph: Allstar

The blue-eyed ghouls in dire need of a dermatologist definitely have the appearance of being dead all exposed skeletons and rotted bits but are they? And, if so, how is it that they can move around and stab things in the face? It is possible to stimulate nerve and muscle electrically and cause it to contract even when isolated from the body, says Dr Matthew James Mason, university physiologist at Cambridge. If the brain dies that doesnt mean that all the other tissue of the body immediately dies, too. But, despite their appearance, White Walker arent mindless zombies, so brain death cant have resulted. My guess is that they arent dead at all, says Mason. If they look like they are decay, perhaps their immune system is compromised. Are they just frost, scurvy-ridden wretches in need of a hug? They probably require medical help and sympathy, argues Mason. Poor sods. The next time you assure one, then, perhaps chuck it an orange and a coat and dont be so quick to judge, yeah? LH

How rich are the Lannisters ?

Warriors Dance: Tywin Lannister. Photograph: HBO

They fund wars, boast one hell of a property portfolio and own actual gold mine. If a Lannister always pays their indebtedness, it can be safely assumed theyve got a few quid in the kitty. Dr Charles Insley, senior lecturer in medieval history at the University of Manchester, guesses drawing a parallel with a real-life example may be the key to finding out how many. Richard Neville[ 1428 -1 471] was the richest peer in England on his death, says Insley. Nevilles sister Cicely was also married to Richard, Duke of York, and it was the collective wealth and therefore capability to buy subsistence that constructed the Neville/ York confederation so dangerous. The Nevilles are likely to be worth more than the crown. All sounds very Lannisterian, right? But come on how rich would the Nevilles/ Lannisters be in todays fund? Billions?$ 2bn doesnt seem too little, I suppose. So, the most influential family in Westeros is only half as wealthy as Donald Trump? Thats not fretting at all. LH

Is it really possible for winter to last a generation ?

Snow help at all. Photograph: Helen Sloan/ HBO

House Starks ominous catchphrase winter is going is partly a callback to an extended cold snap 8,000 years ago when White Walker had the run of Westeros. How could one winter last 100 years? Scientific theories include the planet wobbling on its axis or having an eccentric orbit; writer George RR Martin himself says its only down to sorcery. In our world, there is a( comparatively) recent precedent a 70 -year Little Ice Age spanning the 17 th and 18 th centuries that refrigerated western Europe. It went on for several decades, crops failed, the Thames froze over, explains Professor Jim Wild, space physicist at Lancaster University. Research presents it also coincided with a period of unusually low sunspot activity. Less solar energy can have a major consequence on climate patterns. If winter is coming again the poor serf of the north should start saving up for a package vacation to Dorne. If I saw myself in that situation, Id start heading south, says Wild. It should be a bit warmer nearer the equator. GV

What is it with all the castrating ?

Conleth Hill as Varys and Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister. Photograph: HBO

Daenerys Targaryens army of Unsullied soldiers are upper-class warriors who were castrated in infancy that are intended to attain them more focused, loyal and fearless. But is this really what happens when your tackle is chopped off? Dr Shaun Tougher, reader in ancient history at Cardiff University, is sceptical. We do assure the idea that eunuchs are chaste and loyal, but we also assure the inverse: that theyre tormented and frustrated. Eunuch soldiers arent at all common in history, but the idea of eunuch generals is quite prevalent theres a very famous Byzantine eunuch general called Narses in the 6th century AD. Because of their status as luxury objects, many eunuchs who originated in the slave trade ended up serving at court, like wily manipulator Varys. Varys is in some ways the archetypal court eunuch. Although I was quite surprised when it was revealed that his castration was done by a sorcerer. Seems like the notion of using a mans lunchbox for sorcery purposes is a pure cock-and-balls narrative. SR

Could person genuinely become a dragons mother ?

Dragons den. Photograph: HBO

From the ashes of a Dothraki funeral pyre, Daenerys Targaryen emerged with three ferociously loyal newborn dragons hanging off her. In the real world, newborn lizards are genetically hardwired to be much more independent. Weve hatched dragon eggs here, explains Matt Cook, lead keeper at Chester Zoo, currently home to six Komodo dragons. But if you were to try and approach them, they would attack you rather than snuggle your hair. Theyre intelligent but they have to be selfish because its genuinely the only way to survive. They may never truly love you but it is possible to develop your dragon. Daenerys hollers Dracarys! when she wants some barbecuing done but Cook favor a system that involves a traffic cone, a audio clicker and a tiny meaty reward to wrangle his charges. They tolerate humans, genuinely, he says. Once they get to a certain size, they know theyre the upper part of the food chain so they can be quite arrogant; they think theyre untouchable. But they can also be very chilled. Khaleesi does it. GV

How long would it take to build the Wall ?

High and fighty: The Wall. Photograph: HBO

482 kilometres long. 213 metres high. 91 metres thick. In reality, a wall of this size constructed entirely of ice would collapse under its own weight. But this is Westeros, a world where dragons roam and Little Fingers accent is never questioned, so lets crunch some numbers. Its estimated that when building the Great Pyramid, a workforce of, on average, 14,567 people running 10 -hour days laid around 180 blocks per hour. Now, if the ice bricks making up The Wall are a metre squared, it would contain in the region of 9,342, 606,000( thats 213 x 91 x 482,000, maths fans ). At a sensible-sounding 180 blocks laid per minute, it would take the same workforce 51,903, 367 hours to construct The Wall. Thats 5,921 years. So, we have to assume Brandon the Builder who legend has it enlisted the help of giants had a much larger workforce than this. Even with 100 times the pyramids workforce, 14,567, 000 employees, it would take over 59 years to build. All sounds like a little bit of a faff, genuinely. LH

Why is the Seven Kingdoms in debt ?

A loan in the dark: Jamie and Cersei Lannister. Photograph: HBO

A costly five-way civil war has forced the Seven Kingdoms to go cap in hand to the Iron Bank Of Braavos. Dr James Davis, senior lecturer in medieval history at Queens University Belfast, watches a parallel with Edward III, who borrowed heavily from Italian banks. But he was a step ahead of the Lannister dynasty. Edward III was quite canny: at the same as fighting a war he was developing parliament to extract more taxation without too much unrest. At the heart of every medieval king, whatever their aspirations, it was always about where you could get the money. Davis suggests that the Seven Kingdoms needs to abandon its feudalist structures and fast. There isnt much sign of development of trade and industry. It absence stable laws that would allow entrepreneurism to emerge. Otherwise a peasants revolt is a possibility only around the corner: In a real society, thered be more riots. SR

Whats my best opportunity of beating The Mountain in a duel ?

Fight the power: Hafthr Jlus Bjrnsson, left, as Gregor The Mountain Clegane. Photograph: Alamy

Even in Westeros, a land not exactly lacking in murderous mercenaries, Gregor The Mountain Clegane is a lethal legend. So how would a layman go about tackling him in a trial by combat? Martin Oz Austwick is the founder of the English Martial Arts Academy, offering class in historical European swordsmanship. His strategy? Like the Red Viper, choose a long weapon to try to match the range of the Mountains terrifying greatsword: A spear would be good, although Id personally favor a quarterstaff. Also, forgo armour to allow yourself greater mobility and focus on injuring Cleganes massive hands: if he cant wield his weapon, he cant cleave you in twain with it. One debate in our community is whether targeting hands is an acceptable technique, says Austwick. It might seem dishonourable but against the Mountain, doing the British thing and being polite would be your undoing. So my advice would be to fight as dirty as you can. GV

How big is Westeros ?

In continents: one of Game of Thrones filming locations. Photograph: Alamy

George RR Martin has stated that Westeros is roughly the size of South America, which would make sense for a continent with climates that range from the frozen wastes north of the Wall to the balmy water gardens of Dorne in the south. Utilizing measurements given in the series, the width of Westeros is calculated to be around 3,000 miles the distance from the tip of Norway to the Red Sea and with a population of 20 -4 0 million. The topography stimulates sense for the most part, reckons Simon Willcocks of Ordnance Surveys consultancy and technical services squad. All kinds of stuff from deserts to river deltas, marshy bog, mountain passes, but nothing outlandish. But if Westeros is so big, how come the main characters manage to keep bumping into each other? Its a very long and narrow continent with few roads and river intersects, reasons Willcocks. As for Essos, a continent that Varys seems to traverse at will but that has taken Daenerys at the least five series to cross well, thats for another day. SR

What is wildfire ?

Burning down the House: Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister.

Joffreys victory at the Battle of Blackwater Bay during which the king-youd-love-to-slaps forces defended Kings Landing from Stannis Baratheon owed largely to Tyrion Lannisters procurement of an explosive known as wildfire. The resultant blue-green flames tore through Stanniss fleet like a longsword through the back of Ned Starks neck. But what the blaze is it? Dr Richard Henchman, senior lecturer in theoretical chemistry at the University of Manchester, draws comparisons to the historical episode of Archimedess fire to destroy Roman ships, which utilized mirrors to focus the sunlight rays into deadly beams. It is also similar to Greek flame, a Byzantine weapon able to burn on water, reminiscent of a crude kind of napalm. From a compositional standpoint, though, wildfires colouring suggest a copper compound. Perhaps what we have is a copper oxide/ magnesium thermite? It looks like sorcery to me, says Henchman. Oh. Never mind then. LH

Game of Thrones Season 6 starts 2am, Sunday 24 April and repeats 9pm, Monday 25 April on Sky Atlantic

This article was amended on the 15 th April to country the workforce necessary to build the wall in 59 years is 100 times that used to build The Great Pyramid , not 10