Well for what its worth and at risk of further thread drift, I suspect there is as always a middle ground if you know where to look. Binary thinking though creates problems of its own.

When I think of high class British humour on television Fawlty Towers and Yes Minister/PrimeMinister are right up there at the top for me at least. Sadly the Yanks just cant do humour like that at least as far as I'm aware.

Neg's work on the other hand actually isn't funny because he's just using people for his own ends. Its not like he's putting a new twist on things we take for granted, challenging the 'system' or let alone commenting on life, the universe and everything which is more in line with what good humour does.

That aside, when I look around theres a lot of very unfunny things happening out there in the world right now so maybe the decline in the global humour index over the past couple of decades is a function of all that.

Cheers,

Andrez