When I started university in Britain in 1988, political correctness didn’t exist. If a woman tried to speak at a students’ meeting, the cry would go up, “Get your tits out for the lads!” The ritual climax of bar conversations was a double entendre about homosexuality. But, in 1993, I went to study in the US and discovered PC. The American students I met didn’t make racist, sexist or homophobic jokes. When I returned home and told British friends about this strange new world, they explained that it was because Americans were humourless. This wasn’t actually true. The Americans were much funnier than th