and another fing.....
tell you what else is common........ television 'news' reports on this alleged 'credit crunch'..it's a good thing i turn on the tv during the day or i may have somehow forgotton the current financial crisis..... `couple that with the dross advice on how to say 'find a baby sitter so i can have an evening with mrs sharkaverage' it makes life worth living.... and do i really give a flying fuck that people aren't spending on the highstreet?.....

also is it me or are the common IQs dropping rapidly..


what i should like to see commonly is a mandatory death sentence for news agency staff who coin phrases like cre**t cr**ch... to be nationally televised......annoying twerps

crack heads are also becoming more common as is knife and gun crime

oh and people giving you really shit and obvious advice on how to raise your own offspring..

and spam mail
and old people


blah blah

did i mention that i am common
(TROLLING AWAY living under a post ironic bridge, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 13:46, Reply)

Common as....muck
People who *smother* their food in ketchup and/or salad cream. Food is supposed to taste of something, not that horrid synthetic muck.

Oh and Kerry Katona.
(cupc@ke, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 13:37, 5 replies)

Lamb dressed as mutton
I used to be a yoof worker in Torquay.

there's something particularly unpleasant about drunken smoking teenage girls in high heels, Argos bling and short skirts trying their hardest to look over 18, when they're actually 12. Especially when they fall over a lot because their experience in high-heels/drunkenness ratio isn't too great.

Lamb dressed as mutton - and what the hell for? They all looked bloody miserable as far as I could see.

Grumby old fart rant over! move along nothing to see here...
(teasus likes tea, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 13:30, Reply)

So many things! But specifically (or pacifically)
People who say "are we going pub tonight?"

PUB IS NOT A VERB!!!!
( Kitty v1.0 desperately naive, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 13:24, 10 replies)

Rod Hull and Emu
The programs we weren't allowed to watch had less to do with which ones were common, but more to do with what my mother enjoyed watching. So the list was baffling.

Yes to:
Grange Hill;
Eastenders;
The Twilight Zone;
Crimewatch;
Marmalade Atkins;
Anything with Floella Benjamin

No to:
Rod Hull and Emu (pink windmill edition);
Tizwaz;
Mini pops;
Wizbit;
Paul Daniels magic show;
Anything with Christopher Biggins in.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 13:24, 6 replies)

Been done, but I care not
Football, football supporters, football supporter's chants.
It is both common in the sense that many people in the country (nay the world!) like footie and also in the sense that I think that the majority are scummers.
I've not been in London enough to witness it, but I saw the police closed off a feckin underground station to ferry the burger munching, 'singing', cuntish mob through on Saturday afternoon.

Twats to a man.
(tweebianmonkey Should be known as Widget, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 13:22, 4 replies)

The Mensheviks
They were commonist, isn't it?
( Bert Monkeysex is waiting for the mods to delete him, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 13:21, 3 replies)

Fish
People who say "I hate fish, but I do like (tinned) tuna"

What?

Tinned tuna is the smelliest, oiliest, fishiest fish there is.
On the scale of 1 to fish, it's FISH.

Have these people ever tried bass, gurnard or bream? Even mackerel (a very common fish) cooked properly is delicious.
Heck, any fish cooked properly is fantastic, but tinned tuna? Please!
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 13:20, 11 replies)

Well....
I am never called common even though I wear a shitload of gold jewellery, use cut down variations of words from the English language and spend most of my time hanging around with my mates in my souped up van.

Then again I am Mr T.
(mon bison powered by magnets, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 13:05, 1 reply)

colonial easily confused
My ancestors departed your shores about a centuary prior to the who U/ non-U debate. Let's just say that I find it perplexing. eg. staffies, rotties and bull terriers are considered the height of cool out here.

Not entirely on point but I managed to reduce an entire meeting to childish snorts and giggles when I glibly announced that I needed to leave early because "the painters and decorators were coming"...

you English and your euphemisms...

*pop*
(MostlySunny, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 12:51, Reply)

Just popped into Asda
and bought items including Asda pot noodles, Asda instant mashed potato, Asda vindaloo and three-colour rice and plenty of Asda's finest product, cheese naan.

Asda. Mmmm.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 12:49, 11 replies)

Common People?
I knew a girl once, she came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge. She studied sculpture at St Martins College. That's where I caught her eye...

Edit: I'd like, having seen the replies, to now try and pass this off as ironic in so much that I was giving a tongue in cheek answer which has been done at least four times before. Now that's common ... ;)
( SeasonTicketless is too often the statue, and rarely the pigeon., Tue 21 Oct 2008, 12:45, 10 replies)

My Girlfriend is from Ipswich
And tends to say grarss, barth and the like, whereas I'm from the Mighty North and so say grass and bath.

Her Nan was from my part of the world (Birkenhead, I think) and when my GF was a child (really young) she used to try to teach her nan to speak properly, as they do in the south (allegedly)...

She's not stuck up or anything, it just makes me laugh that a child would do that...
(Fuckarma was masturbating into your handbag, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 12:38, Reply)

Common people
1. People who walk around the shops eating the products they're about to buy. You don't own it yet! Couldn't you wait to shovel it into your food hole, scumbag?

2. People who take mobile phone calls in libraries. There's a bloke doing this next to me right now. He's also using the word 'cushty' and 'bruv' a lot. He's just used the phrase 'bruvva from anotha muvva'. Yeh?

3. Jewellery, apart from a wedding band, on men. It looks gaudy and cheap.

4. Jewellery on children, especially pierced ears. That 18 month old had a choice, did it? It wanted someone to spear one of it's earlobes? Loving the clown necklace, also.

5. Smoking while you eat. I've seen a couple of people do this. Deeply unpleasant.
(teepee_uk sniggers whenever anyone uses the word 'period', Tue 21 Oct 2008, 12:35, 3 replies)

It's not changed a lot
Pierced ears on babies, little boys in tuxedos.

Would you tattoo your kid? No? So why shove metal through their ears? I can sort of understand it in a global, cultural sense, but doing it so you can shove the latest Elizabeth Duke 2ct creole fashions in your 8 month old's lobes is beyond me.

Small children in tuxedos or prom dresses. Gives me Athena-based shivers of sepia/coloured posters of 2 year old kissing at weddings. Kids should wear kid's clothes, it's their only opportunity to run around in dungarees and be taken seriously. Believe me, I have tested this.

This also brings me to mini-skirts and high heels for pre-teens. Just... inappropriate.

I sound like my mother. Thank you.
(niceandwarmandhot vive la résistance, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 12:33, 6 replies)

People who take their kids to the pub...
...and then proceed to stay for the entire day getting pissed in front of them while feeding them pints and pints of sugary drinks and crisps, and letting the little shits run around screaming pissing off everyone else.

I find that quite common. And cuntish.
(Slacker, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 11:48, 2 replies)

Shouting in public...

And all city centres on Friday and Saturday night; Oceana, Yates, Wetherspoons, Kebab shops, taxi ranks, fights, vomit, tears, bitterness, wailed promises of redemption, shirtless men and flashing women, shiney black shoes with buckles and short sleeved shirts.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 11:32, 4 replies)

Going out on the town with your mum

Drunken harridens bulging around elacticated waist bands and plunging tops coloured like dead animals.

The cackle of a thousand Lambert and Butler; the smashing of primary coloured, brown tooth rotting alcoholic fight starters.

The shouted claims of sisterhood and comeradery as if the key to a healthy maternal relationship was to bond over broken stilettos, vomit and STIs.

The volume, oh dear god the volume.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 11:28, 1 reply)

I think this counts...
When I worked in Martin's The Newsagent in Laindon Town Centre I served a lady who was buying five copies of 'Fiesta' magazine...

...that she was the cover star of.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 11:22, 8 replies)

H.K.L.P
Holds Knife Like Pen.

Wrong, wrong, wrong; you're not dissecting a frog in GCSE biology hold your knife properly.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 11:13, 2 replies)

This QOTW could have been a lot better...
...without the last paragraph.

Mothers' and grandmothers' odd strictures can sometimes be pretty funny. Social climbers' desperation to raise their standing above that of their peers can be hilarious to everybody else.

Sticking the boot into poor people, not so much.

In that vein, I'd just like to point out that we weren't allowed to watch Grange Hill or Sesame Street when I was growing up, as my mother considered them a bad influence. The ban only applied in other people's houses, since we didn't even have a television set. I don't think my mother ever used the word "common" about anybody else in her life though - she was far too decent a person.

Apologies for lack of teh funneh.
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 11:10, Reply)

My ickle sister
My little sister probably picked up some bad habits from her friends but her worst sin in my eyes is her misuse of bread.

She had lived with my parents for a while on her own as both my older sister was at uni and I was abroad. When I came back temporarily while I sorted myself out, it became quite obvious that my little sister had become a bit spoilt, and basically ran roughshod over my parents and did what she liked.

One thing that really annoyed me though, was at dinner time. When we used to sit down at the table she would appear when called for dinner with a large bottle of ketchup and some buttered slices of white bread.

It wouldn’t matter what we had for dinner, she would have those particular accoutrements. I remember when we had delicious fillet steak cooked rare by my mother, with salad. Superb. What did my sister do?

She picked up the salad with her fingers and lobbed it into the bread basket. She then covered half the plate with ketchup. Not only did she do that, but she did her trick of using her knife and fork to cut up the steak. Dispensed with the knife, and used her right hand to hold a fork to manipulate the steak, and her left hand held a buttered white slice of bread like a plate.

She then used bread as cutlery.

She skidded the piece of steak through the ketchup, then scooped it into a corner of the bread, and then ate the morsel with a corner of bread. When she had finished with the steak and still had some ketchup smeared bread left, she tossed the bread into the pile of ketchup left, slew it around the plate, and then lifted it up and crammed it into her mouth.

I was pretty much open jawed during this performance and asked my parents if she was allowed to do that. My parents said she was.

I pretty much left home after that.
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 10:43, 7 replies)

Sums it up really...

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3232521/Girl-13-who-smokes-drinks-and-has-sex-rewarded-by-mother-with-cigarettes.html

*despairs for humanity*
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 10:35, 11 replies)

My thrupence worth
Disclaimer: I will hold my hands up and admit to fitting plenty of the descriptions of Common that have come up. I drink supermarket value-brand wine and spirits, own a (crap) DFS sofa, watch TV shows which rely on phone votes and end sentences with prepositions such as 'up'. With these in mind, here are some things which I consider common.

1) Using words like 'Posh', 'Snobby' or 'Snooty' to dismiss anything outside your own self-constructed world. "Oh I'm sorry, no I haven't read (insert title of freely-available bestseller), we're not all posh like you", for example. I'll never forget a screen-kickingly annoying moment in a recent series of Big Brother, in which one contestant bemoaned the state of television, complaining "Some people only watch snobby programmes, like the news". THE NEWS. The programme which, on almost every channel has, in the last few years, made itself as easy as possible for anyone to understand, with reporters standing in giant doll's houses to explain the property market before handing to a 'human interest' piece in which flood victims are asked "How did it feel to see your TV float into an open sewer?". The Arts are a frequent target for this nonsense. In a Monday-morning discussion about what we did at the weekend, I once told a co-worker I'd visited the Tate Modern, and was informed that this was 'Snobby'. Apparently walking around a free gallery looking at cool things alongside thousands of other members of the public put me in the social elite. For fuck's sake. Which leads me to:

2) Constant swearing. I love a good swear, and I will defend anyone's right to make a point with a well-placed Fuck. The key is in 'well-placed', however. Use it sparingly and it works a treat. Use the word 'Fucking' as your only adjective (or worse, as a replacement for 'Erm') and it loses all power, like Christmas decorations left up all year. To me, 'Common' is starting your sentence with the word 'Fucking' while your brain gets up to speed working out what you were actually going to say, e.g. "Fucking... He was swerving all over the fucking road".

3) Item 219/4749 in the Argos catalogue. Just because I wanted three things on the list.

Apologies if these have been covered already, but the chances of me reading *all* 950 pages before the question expires are slim. I will try though, promise.
(costas, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 10:27, 9 replies)

Local variants
The list of common stuff from Dublin is a bit different and includes.

Wearing your pyjamas to the shops.

Addressing people as bud.

Aslan (band).

Keeping horses in council estates.

Celtic Jerseys.

Sovereign rings.

Tattoos.

Saying inanyway for anyway.

Calling the zoo the ehzoo.

Any locals care to add to this list.
( notsosecretagentman, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 10:26, 8 replies)

On the subject of ropey grammar..
"sat" when you mean "sitting".

"I was sat there."

Oh, were you really? and I suppose whilst you were sat there, you were watched the telly...

and then you were listened to Otis Redding singed "Sat on the dock of the bay"

It's not difficult is it? I used to do it myself and then realised. It took me a couple of days to break the habit.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 10:07, Reply)

Extensive List
After writing this, I now realise that I have a problem.

1. Being called mate, pal, dude, bub or guy by anyone (including close friends).
2. Blacon, Ellesmere Port, Connahs Quay and Flintshire/Deeside
3. Bulldogs or Rotweillers et al.
4. Calling your children Harvey/Hervey, Leyton, Tyler, Courtenay, Chelsea, Kaylegh, Romeo, Tyrone, Germaine, Leroy,
5. Chewing gum, why? Eat a wine gum instead.
6. Dragging your feet.
7. Eating in public.
8. Eating without a knife. You are not American, they cannot help doing it, YOU can.
9. External multi-coloured Christmas decorations (the white lights can be done tastefully in moderation)
10. Fake breasts.
11. Family photographs taken in a studio with a cloudy grey/cloudy brown background. Except for when you get your degree, you have no choice.
12. Fish knives.
13. Girls with shiny makeup. Why TRY to look sweaty?
14. Gold “Mr T” style jewellery.
15. Gypsy earrings (they are a type of hoop).
16. Hands free mobile kits (I once tried to talk to a woman at Morrisons because I thought she was talking to me).
17. Inflecting at the end of a sentence when you are not asking a question (again, you are not American, and even if you are you should not do it either).
18. Leather sofas.
19. Lounge, it’s a sitting room.
20. Men wearing jewellery other than a wedding band, thong/bead necklace or watch.
21. Men with any piercings.
22. Mispronouncing Anthony/Antony. However you spell it you never pronounce the aitch.
23. Not pronouncing ing, ick, t and d.
24. Onion rings.
25. Orange Tans.
26. Over using exclamation marks when either one would do, or none should be used.
27. Owning Louis Vuiton, especially authentic Louis Vuiton.
28. Plasma screens that are too big (they can be dangerous for your eyes and you cannot see the program very well), just showing off.
29. Playing dance music in your car so loud that you have to have the window open so your eardrums do not split.
30. Rap/House/Dance music.
31. Saying “Gutted”.
32. Saying “Like” at the beginning or end of every sentence.
33. Saying “Pleased to meet you”. Are you, are you really, why? Since we have only just met how can you know. My grandmother was told by her mother (who worked for the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry) to only ever say “How do you do”. Professor Higgins was right.
34. Saying “Random” instead of coincidence/coincidentally.
35. Saying “Right” at the beginning or end of every sentence.
36. Saying “So” as in Sooooooo Coooooool, Sooooooo Fit
37. Saying “You know what I mean”/”You know what I’m saying” or even just “You know” at the beginning or end of every sentence.
38. Saying naughty lady words c**t and t**t, I never use them, they are disgusting, the worst words and nobody has the right to use them EVER.
39. Shaved heads.
40. Sky.
41. Smokers/Smoking
42. Spitting in the street. Swallow it or spit into a tissue.
43. Steak knives.
44. Sun/Mirror/Star/Sport/Telegraph (very badly written).
45. Swearing in every sentence. Swear words should only be used very occasionally e.g. when I stub a toe nothing helps as much as saying fuckity fuckity fuck fuck over and over again.
46. Taking your shoes off when you go into a house. Buy a vacuum cleaner.
47. Tattoos and piercings.
48. Text speak. When I text people I use full words and decent punctuation.
49. Too high heels. If you cannot walk in them, wear court shoes.
50. Too much leg
51. Very fat people (you know you think it too).
52. Vest tops.
53. Wearing a sports shirt with someone else’s name on it (is your name Beckham? No, then give it back).
54. Wearing Burburry.
55. Wearing Fred Perry.
56. Wearing Rockport.
57. White socks without sweat pants or shorts on.
58. Women with more then one piercing in each ear (and even then only over the age of 16).
59. X-mas. I may not be a Christian but I do recognise that the word is derived from Christ Mass. Have some respect. Crimbo indeed.
(992234177, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 10:07, 77 replies)

Reading on the toilet.
Surely this peaceful practice is common in both senses of the word. What defines ones class must therefore be the choice of reading material on offer.

/Discuss.
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 9:57, 17 replies)

A 17 year old from my end of the country
Dressed in what can only be described as chavtastic attire, was donning the cover of my local newspaper a year or so ago because she named her baby girl IKEA.
(i should have joined myspace, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 9:56, 6 replies)

People not knowing the alphabet.
I've heard this a couple of times, just after they get past the letter K.

"....HIJK EMUNELO PQRS...."

Oh, and it's 'chimNey' not 'chimley'
and 'suBMarine' not 'sumbarine'
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 9:06, 9 replies)