Britain has many successful comedy exports, Monty Python, Benny Hill... and some other ones. But here are some of the less famous British (and one Irish) comedy geniuses, brought to you by the power of YouTube:

Ed Byrne

Adam Bloom, Part One:

The latest crazy show that has taken our interest is Man Vs. Wild. It's a simple premise: Survival expert Bear Grylls (and that IS is his real name) is dropped into one of nature's many hostile environments and has to survive unaided until he can get back to civilization. Highlights so far have seen him eating ants, drinking the water squeezed out of elephant dung and pissing on his own T-shirt so he can use it to keep cool.

Apart from the ludicrous parts such as above, he does show some useful things if you ever were to get lost, such as building rafts and shelter etc. But the main reason the show works is that he's just a personable bloke, and for an ex-SAS soldier he's not the typical gruff bastard you see on these kind of things,which helps, as he's more like just a normal bloke trying to survive than some superman. He has the enthusiasm for what he's doing that someone like Steve Irwin had, but without getting over the top and annoying.

In celebration of getting a promotion at work, I decided to splurge and get a Tivo. We have been thinking about getting one for ages, as once we are done with work and dinner, we normally only have from like 8-10 to watch TV and if nothing's on during that time we end up watching crap that we never wanted to. If this is you, get Tivo now.

Seriously, I've only had it a week and I love it. Being able to watch movies that were on at 1am the night before whenever you want, or watch the episode of the Simpsons that was on while I was driving home etc, without even having to do much programming on it. Basically you set shows that you want it to record regularly, and you can rate shows that are on by hitting a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" button, and it is pretty smart once you tell it the shows you like - a bit like Amazon's suggestions, recording things automatically based on what I have already recorded.

As the few TV shows I am currently watching have (mostly) gone into midseason breaks, I decided to try a show I had previously skipped: Jericho.

A nuclear explosion occurs in Denver, visible from the small town of Jericho. Communications are lost and the power is cut off, nobody knows what has happened - is it an accident? Terrorism? War? Gradually (very gradually) we learn more about what has happened as the inhabitants of Jericho struggle to understand what has happened and how they will survive the new, changed, world they are living in.

Well the "fall TV season" is now in full effect here in the States, so I thought I would ramble on about some of the shows I enjoy. First, here are the TV shows I watch on a regular basis:

• Lost - While it has fallen victim to the flaw that I predicted when the show started (That dragging out the story via constant flashbacks would start to get old) I am still glued to the program just to see what is going to happen.
• Extras - The second series of Ricky Gervais' sitcom is still hilariously funny, especially the ridiculousness of Gervais' character's new-found stardom in his own completely terrible hit sitcom.
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While channel-hopping tonight, we saw the intriguingly titled : Am My Own Twin on TLC (The Learning Channel).

It turned out to be about a strange condition where people are actually comprised of 2 sets of DNA that fused during the first few days of their conception. Two women had found out that they were so-called "Chimeras" when they had genetic tests done for various reasons, and found out that according to conventional science their children were not genetically theirs. DNA taken from one location on their body was totally different from that taken from another part. As much as it was a serious condition, comments like : "It was discovered that her children seemed to be the biological offspring of her husband and her brother." along with the bizzarreness of the title kept making me laugh.