Humor & Life Quote by Ben Elton

Elton’s joke lands because it’s an apology that refuses to behave like one. “Yes, OK” has the weary cadence of someone cornered by a very minor scandal, and “farty” is the perfect low-stakes offense: childish, bodily, impossible to take seriously, yet somehow capable of triggering a grown-up conversation about taste. That mismatch is the point. He’s parodying the modern expectation that public figures must constantly self-audit, issuing statements not just about what they did, but what kind of person they are for having done it.

“I wish I’d never used it” mimics the language of contrition, but the comic subtext is: we’re really doing this? The punchline is in the pivot to biography: “I’m 34.” Age becomes a punchy moral credential, like he’s filing paperwork to prove he’s outgrown his own vocabulary. “Perhaps it was a word for my 20s” turns personal development into branding strategy, as if words have expiration dates and adulthood is a rebrand away from embarrassment.

Contextually, Elton sits in that very British lane where self-mockery doubles as social critique. He’s not only poking fun at himself; he’s mocking the anxious policing of tone and the idea that maturity equals sanitization. The genius is how he uses a tiny, stupid word to stage a bigger cultural argument: if we can’t laugh at “farty” at 34, what else are we pretending not to be?