Want to understand what on earth British people are talking about? You've come to the right place!
Not The Queen's English is a weekly podcast, in which we have a casual chat about a topic relating to British English or life in the UK. We’ll be covering everything from making small talk about the weather to understanding the jokes in classic British sitcoms. We’ll be speaking the way we do in real life, using lots of colloquial British English, and explaining the slang and cultural references we use along the way.
Whatever your relationship to the English language, there’s something for you here, whether that’s a new idiom or phrasal verb, or a bit of regional slang, or just finally understanding something said on Drag Race UK that went over your head first time round.
For every episode, there’ll be a handy cheat sheet, explaining key words, phrases and cultural references from the episode, which will be available to our Patreon subscribers, along with various other treats. Patreon subscribers will also be able to download an extended version of each episode.
If there is a subject you'd love us to discuss, join our community over on Patreon and let us know.
Get bonus content on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Want to understand what on earth British people are talking about? You've come to the right place!
Not The Queen's English is a weekly podcast, in which we have a casual chat about a topic relating to British English or life in the UK. We’ll be covering everything from making small talk about the weather to understanding the jokes in classic British sitcoms. We’ll be speaking the way we do in real life, using lots of colloquial British English, and explaining the slang and cultural references we use along the way.
Whatever your relationship to the English language, there’s something for you here, whether that’s a new idiom or phrasal verb, or a bit of regional slang, or just finally understanding something said on Drag Race UK that went over your head first time round.
For every episode, there’ll be a handy cheat sheet, explaining key words, phrases and cultural references from the episode, which will be available to our Patreon subscribers, along with various other treats. Patreon subscribers will also be able to download an extended version of each episode.
If there is a subject you'd love us to discuss, join our community over on Patreon and let us know.
Get bonus content on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we’re talking about what it’s like to go to university in the UK and how that experience fits into UK culture as a whole. We cover the trauma of UCAS applications, Freshers Week and getting a Desmond, and share a little bit of our experience of attending one of the UK’s poshest universities.
In what we’ll loosely call our ‘current affairs’ segment, we discuss the recent announcement of the UK’s entry for this year’s Eurovision song contest, which we use as an excuse to briefly revisit the UK’s dubious record in the contest (don’t worry; we’ll go into all that in much, much more detail on the podcast nearer the time of the final).
The phrases we’re looking at in detail this week are: the be all and end all, Billy No Mates, piss money up the wall* and take the biscuit.
*Actually, we don't make the meaning of 'pissing money up the wall' totally clear (we got too distracted talking about Desmonds!); it's basically just a somewhat vulgar way of saying 'waste money'.
For all the things we mention but don’t fully explain, check out the Cheat Sheet for this episode, which you can download from our Patreon page. Patreon supporters also get access to our 35-page PDF accent guide. Cultural guides, including the accent guide, are also available to buy individually from our Ko-fi shop.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/notthequeensenglish
Website: https://notthequeensenglish.wixsite.com/notthequeensenglish/podcast
Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/notthequeensenglish/shop
Get bonus content on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.