Strange piece earlier this week from the BBC website in which John O'Farrell - formerly of this parish - plugs his new UK Onion rip-off, News Biscuit. In his article, he writes that Britain doesn't do funny on the internet.
Every Thursday the wonderful Popbitch newsletter raises a laugh in five continents. So why is there only a sprinkling of obscure and erratically funny UK sites, where is the Private Eye of the net? (Oh, I've just found it - it's at www.private-eye.co.uk).
Perhaps the average British comedy writer has been a little bit cynical about the wonders of the World Wide Web.
What? This seems, frankly, absurd to me. There's plenty of fun and games to be had on the British side of the web - and though, yes, something like TV Go Home has shuffled off into that great big web server in the sky, not everything's had its chips.
What about b3ta, that home of everything furry, fuzzy and photoshopped that's hit the media for a year or three. Or the Rockall Times, which tries exactly what News Biscuit is doing. Or the very chuckle-worthyFramley Examiner. And that's before we even get to some of the outrageously funny blogs out there.
And what has America - home of the Onion - got, apart from the Onion? No more, I'd venture, than we Brits do. In fact, I think that British comedy on the web is thriving - it's just that a lot of it doesn't come from "comedians", so of course it doesn't count.
