Did someone just tell me (an Irishwoman) an anti-Irish joke?

[Decaffstilltastesweird]

I was sitting in a cafe with DD earlier today. We sat down next to a man who was on his own. He said hello to DD and then chatted to me a bit about the weather; how it was too warm last week.

Me: well, being Irish, I'm not great with hot weather (ho ho)
Him: did you hear about the Irishman who was on Mastermind recently?
Me: [thinking he was actually going to tell me about a Mastermind contestant] oh no, I didn't
Him: they asked him his name and he said "pass"
Me: oh... oh... em, no, no

We went back to eating lunch and he left.

So, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I am guessing this is supposed to mean he's so thick he can't even remember his name? Because he's Irish? Is that what he meant? I'm genuinely confused ! If that's what he meant, did I just confirm his prejudices by looking like this at him?

He seemed a pleasant enough man, so I don't think he was being intentionally hurtful to me. Maybe I'm missing something or being over sensitive, (although actually I feel more confused than outraged about it).

If I was chatting to someone in a cafe and they made a flippant remark about their own racial group not liking the heat, I'd definitely take that as a free pass to repeat a joke about their racial group which insulted that group's intelligence.

OP, either he was a right twat or a bit clueless on social interaction. Let's hope it was the latter.

I bet he's the type of person his family laugh and describe as 'Harmless' while he sits making their friends uncomfortable at barbeques.

I'll join your club too, Treaclesoda.

you can't say anything anymore without people being offended
People were offended years ago too, Greggers. They didn't say so because they were too often conditioned to not stick their necks out when faced with prejudice. 'Political correctness' hasn't gone bonkers. What has happened is that people who were used to sucking it up now insist that civility is important.

I hate 'off the cuff' remarks about Irish people and Irishness and Ireland. It takes a lot of neck to actually tell an 'Irish joke' these days though.

(Aside from that, my own predominantly dark haired and brown eyed Irish family does very well in the heat. I got the fair and freckled genes and I struggle.)

Sorry but I agree with pp's that you appeared to make a stereotypical joke about Irish people and the weather so he was responding to that with another ironic stereotypical joke. The fact that several of us would have read your opening comment as stereotypical is no co-incidence. I can guarantee if I refer to it always raining in wales then 9 times out of 10 it is followed by a sheep comment!!

Greggers, your mother may laugh at it, but others don't. It's not 'pc gone mad' it's people being offensive and dickish. It's about jokes based on stereotypes meant to demean and diminish an 'other.' England has a particularly long and poisonous history of this against Ireland. And in an increasingly hostile culture you become even more sensitive to it.
The 'you're not really foreign' comments don't really hold much water for me either.

Not sure why you were so confused by the joke tbh. It was obviously a joke about Irish people being thick. And it's a such a shit joke to boot.

I can guarantee if I refer to it always raining in Wales then 9 times out of 10 it is followed by a sheep comment

Only if you are talking to a twat.

Yep, unfortunately that was a standard 'Irish' joke when I was growing up, among many others. I'm 49 and through the 70's and 80's it was accepted

Scary " English people cant tell tone very well so exaggerated knowing jokes kind of don't compute and can be treated o Er seriously"

I think it's more the case that it's getting harder and harder to tell what's actually going on with such a vast amount of crazy. So even I think someone is making a joke about themselves, I can't be sure so I make a neutral face. If it's literally someone you just met, it's hard to judge.

Going back to the op, when my parents came to this country they got so much "start a nice chat, then make a racist joke" from strangers, they warned us about it. It makes you feel a right plum when someone starts a chat and then walks off after a racist barb.

If I made a joke about having a fat arse* it wouldn't be an invitation for a stranger to then make a joke about me having a double chin. One of them is a person laughing at themselves, the other is the person being the butt of someone else's joke.

• I wouldn't actually make a joke about having a fat arse but I was trying to think of something that might be viewed as laughing at oneself.

It's a tricky one. It is a normal part of British culture to try and connect with people by using insulting jokes (banter), it is sometimes an ironic way of making friends.

But sometimes it insulting jokes are just a veil for actual disdain and you need other clues to work out which one type of joke it is.

Obviously you should only use insulting jokes when you are confident that the person will find it funny and be polite to strangers. But people make bad choices .

So like PPs have said, he could be just foolish or he could be foolish and mean.

Not nice for you but Coke on, the Irish aren't faultless in their stereotyping of the English. I watched my cousins (in Ireland) on Facebook make a shit load of Essex girl jokes. Haha yes really fucking funny.

And 'the English don't get tone well?' Fucking really?

I wonder if some people go along with "it's a joke" as a form of self protection, so they don't have to confront how much prejudice is really out there.

I'll never forget a gay friend of mine being told by someone he thought was a friend, that she'd be devastated if her son was gay because "he's my son, it's different than accepting a gay man as a friend".

She actually didn't know why the friendship ended.

I am Irish and a primary school teacher. I worked in a very modern wealthy school in New Zealand for a year. Staff members would regularly send these jokes implying Irish people are thick on staff emails!! This was in the past 5 years. I was actually speechless that this was tolerated. One of the other teachers also told me that they would never hire non white teachers. The principal of this school couldn't get his head around the fact that I came from the Republic of Ireland and that it was a separate country from the UK.

My Irish dad got Irish joked. He was asked if he'd heard about the Irish relay team having a spiked baton.

In reply, He asked the Englishman if he'd heard about the English relay team having a Mountbatten, where everyone got a fucking piece?

Humour is a funny thing.

Someone in a work chat said " that's a bit Irish..." about a work policy that had been implemented. I asked him to clarify the remark, he said it meant backwards.

And I'm supposed to put up with that shit?

No thank you.

I couldn't get worked up about it. If he was meaning to be racist he wouldn't have been friendly and chatty with you.

All country's have stereotypes that people from other country's take the piss out of. No one thinks everyone in that country confirms to that stereotype. . I think some people want to get offended these days. Americans often take the piss out of the English and vice versa. Same with the aussies. And the Scottish. And the Welsh. And yes the Irish.

Oh and blond women, and people from Essex, people from Liverpool, people from London, people from the fens, people from Cornwall. Now if he'd said something like fucking Irish coming over here, thick as shit, bugger off now I'd be very very offended. but some things like an ill thought out old joke, not so much. Let it go.

English people are shit with tone and emotion in language because English.. Southern English is incredibly full-time in most speakers compared to the rest of the world. Flatness with solely downward inflection as a persistent characteristic of English

Kohi, that's interesting and sad that things haven't moved on. I did the travelling thing when I was young, Australia then New Zealand. In Australia I was referred to as a Pom just like my white boyfriend. In NZ I was asked questions "because clearly you're not really English originally". For all they know my family could be fifth generation but no. Not white, can't be English. Sigh.

In England..

@mathanxiety interesting what you say about your and your family skin tone and handle of the heat. My eldest two have my dark Arab genes and don't bat an eyelid at the blazing sun but her Dad's Irish genes are very dominant in my youngest and she goes red within minutes of being in the sun!

But Pass is a surname anyway.

I'm Australian, and I've had similar happen to me in the UK, and it's rude.

However, growing up in Australia, it was perfectly socially acceptable to tell "Irish jokes", and I have seen them told on Facebook by friends of family members within the past year or so. (I always make a comment about how unacceptable it actually is to do this. I tend to suggest that they substitute "Jew" for "Irishman", and see how many people think it's hilarious.)

There are arseholes everywhere, I guess.

I suppose you've never met an Irish person who's told the old pun about how 'Do you realise he's British' sounds in Gaelic eh OP?

Thanks everyone for comments.

Just to address my comment about warm weather. From now on, I'll definitely not make any comment beginning "as I'm Irish...". It never occurred to me that some people see that as an invitation to crack a "thicko paddy" joke. It's useful to know that a handful of posters on here think I deserved the joke for that reason. Lesson learnt. Believe me.

If, for example, a Trinidadian said they hated the cold weather in England because they were from Trinidad*. I would never think it was then ok to say something derogatory about Trinidadians (like that they were supposed to be thick). But obviously some posters on here would disagree with me. Good to know, for lots of reasons.

This did actually happen - I am not making any assumptions that all* Trinidadians hate cold weather. A former colleague of my DH hated the cold and he cracked that it was because he was Trinidadian and not used to it.