I ate an entire head of broccoli while watching the British version of “Whose Line is it Anyway?” last night in bed. Afterward, I battled two whole hours of gaseous blotation wherein the elastic on my underoos nearly snapped against the force of the bubbling pressure.

“I’m going to be farting broccoli all night,” I warned The Roommate, affecting the best British accent I could muster. His consequent horrified glare informed me succinctly that no matter how hard I try I will never be so deliciously charming as even the most craggy and toothless resident of Her Majesty’s Kingdom.

When the British fart, goddamn, it’s funny.

And why are those snaggle-toothed gits so consistently funny? So effortlessly huggable? Why can a four-year-old British child in checkered school uniform say to her younger infant sister, “You wretched baby, just shut it!” and my immediate reaction is to chase her with a tape recorder knowing that somewhere in the next two sentences she’ll sing the words “delightful,” “extraordinary,” “lovely,” and “restorative broth” as if it’s completely natural for a four-year-old to talk like a humanities professor?

Perhaps it’s the simultaneous propriety and vulgarity of their culture, that they talk in complete sentences and snack on tea and biscuits while feverishly devouring every naughty detail of the monarchy’s sexual proclivities and potential:

“I’d like to nibble a bit of Prince William’s biscuits.”

“Naturally.”

“Heavens, he’s bloody delightful.”

“Have you seen the set of knickers on that lad?!”

(rumbling closed-mouth snickering ensues)

“More tea, love?”

Maybe it’s their bad teeth and the eyebrow that begins at one earlobe and continues uninterrupted across the entire forehead in an explosion of heathered countryside; it could be that “wanker” is just the most appropriate word I’ve ever heard an 80-year-old woman call a fellow pedestrian. Perhaps it’s just the way Terry Jones says, “And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana shaped.”

I’m certain, though, that it’s got everything to do with the fact that a British fart is nothing more than a bit of wind.

Right then. I’ve got wind.