Strange & unusual traditions of the United Kingdom

Whether you are travelling to the UK or simply studying English from home, it is fun to immerse yourself in the local culture of the region. Today, I will explore with you some of the strange and unusual traditions of the United Kingdom. I will teach you about Morris dancing, Guy Fawkes Night, toe wrestling, and much more, including a very strange museum. Where do people swim in mud? In England! Watch this video to learn more about British culture, then watch my other video about WEIRD FOODS OF THE UK (do you want to eat some jellied eels?):    • Weird foods of the United Kingdom 🍗  

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TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to engVid with me, Benjamin. Today I'm going to be telling you, sharing with you a few of our more outlandish traditions here in the UK. For a very small island we've got lots of weird and wacky things going on. So, I'm going to be trying to explain what some of these are. What's this video good for? This is understanding the sort of culture, getting underneath the skin of it, and really exploring the culture and traditions of the UK. Okay, let's go.

The "Last Night of the Proms". Not everyone is a fan of this. The Proms is a long line of concerts that go on in the Royal Albert Hall in London just near Hyde Park every summer. The last night is obviously the last of those concerts. And lots of people wave their Union Jacks and sing along to slightly jingoist-... Jingoistic, which means a funny sense of pride in one's nation. Patriotic songs, like: "Rule Britannia", etc.

"The Monster Raving Loony Party". So whereas this is very traditional and very straight down the line, this is pretty left side, pretty... pretty out there. "Monster Raving Loony Party" was started by a member at the aristocracy called "The Screaming Lord Sutch", he was some sort of Earl of Harrow or something like this. Some of his manifestos: "Vote for insanity". Now, whereas the main political parties orientate themselves in terms of left, right, or center according to their political beliefs, Screaming Lord Sutch said that his political position was: "Sitting, facing forward". Okay? I used short hand in my annotation at the board, here: "Pol" short for "Political". But he has achieved some success. These are three policies that they came up with that have all been adopted in the UK. First of all, we have a vote for anyone aged 18 or above. Before that I believe it was 21. "Pet passports", we now have pass... Dogs can have a passport and travel abroad. And we do have all-day pubs. So, it was probably a bit of a joke to start with: "Let's have all-day pubs", because they're only open in the evening 30 years ago, and now you can go in from 11 o'clock. Not to be endorsed whole-heartedly, though, all-day drinking. Right.

"Baked Beans Museum", yes, we do have a museum for baked beans. It's in Port Talbot, number... Port Talbot in Wales, and it's ranked number 4 out of 15 attractions in Port Talbot.

"The Ugly Face Competition", yes, we have an annual competition for gurning, going... Pulling weird faces. It happens in September in Cumbria which is in the northwest of the United Kingdom.

"Morris dancing", this looks a little bit like this. Okay? I wave handkerchiefs, and I would have bells down here on my feet. So waving your handkerchief, okay? This has been a tradition in the UK since 1448, that's the first recorded date of Morris dancing. I witnessed it more recently. In Suffolk there's a village there called Middleton, every Boxing Day they have a precession of the wren. It's quite strange. Basically they put sort of... They black themselves out and there is a sort of march of a dead wren to celebrate some sort of mid-winter pagan festival.

"The boat race", this is an annual event that happens in the middle of April. It's the... Is it 8-man team or 8-lady team? From Oxford and Cambridge. It goes from I believe Hammersmith Bridge to Putney Bridge, and the winner of the team, they get to throw the person who's been steering, the cox, into the river. Okay? So that happens every year. If you're watching this from Holland, I believe you're quite adept, you're quite good at doing similar activities yourselves.

Now, I know Britain are doing quite well in Olympics these days, but back in the 1970s, we struggled, and there was a couple of people who were sat outside a pub in Derbyshire, which in the middle of the country, it's in the Midlands and they were like: "Aw, we're not winning anything at the Olympics. We've got, you know... All our teams are doing terribly. Let's invent a sport we can actually win at." So they invented "toe wrestling". […]