Brits Attempt the British Citizenship Test - TLDR News 

"I just don't care, this sort of stuff is just so fucking completely irrelevant" this is more British than actually knowing the answer

I'd be sent to Rwanda if I did a British citizen test

'I guess not, it's got to be no, right? Otherwise coz you'd just have a bunch of Australians turning up and voting' Me, an Australian who's turned up and voted in UK elections: 😅

My wife is a US citizen and got her British Citizenship a year ago. She has a bloody PhD in Medieval English History and getting her to revise for weeks about Ian Botham and Jackie Stewart felt pretty stupid.

"There's 40 questions, you need at least 75 correct to pass" I don't think they want you to pass 😂

Wow, as an Australian I didn't know I could move there and vote in your elections, thats mad.

I suppose it is quite fitting, that in order to become a British Citizen, you have to be able to do a pub quiz.

The Loch Ness/Loch Lomond question is really quite mean; Loch Lomond is the largest body of fresh water in the UK by surface area, but Loch Ness is the largest by volume. And the wording leaves it sort of ambiguous (sure, I guess "expanse" suggests surface area, but a little specificity wouldn't harm anyone)

The question about Edinburgh Castle doesn't include the correct answer. Historic Scotland was dissolvedin 2015. Historic Environment Scotland took over its duties, as well as those of other organisations, 7 years ago.

Funny to see a question about the enlightenment when it was not particularly a British. It was all across Europe, and probably mainly France (with figures like Voltaire, Rousseau, etc.)

The first major railway … “Not the Elizabeth line cos it opened yesterday…” 😂

The computing question sounds like somebody thought that the Turing Machine is an actual piece of hardware. It's certainly important, but it's also very theoretical. Turing's work and actual hardware were, however, very clearly influential. A disgrace he was treated so badly after the war for being gay.

"There's 40 questions. You need at least 75 correct to pass".

question 14... the turing machine is an INVENTION, not a discovery. Who ever wrote these tests just faied at the english language.

I think the biggest shock is not knowing "Elgar". But overall I give this test a solid FAIL in terms of asking loads of pointless questions - I think the "Who looks after Edinburgh Castle" is the one of the worst. And the "Length of the UK" - why on earth is it important to know with 30 mile accuracy?

The phrasing of some of these almost seem designed to trip up non-native English speakers. Though for most people I know with indefinite leave to remain, coming up with the £1330 to apply (which you lose if you’re refused) is more of a barrier to naturalisation.

What I am wondering is this: would Pritti Patel have passed it? P.S. I have my doubts. For BoJo as well.

"The River Thames is not freshwater, it's disgusting old brown water." 🤣

"cuz otherwise you have a bunch of Australians turning up and voting" YES - ITS BEEN THEM THE ENTIRE TIME !

OMG you didn't even have the craziest questions. My fav was "What country is most associated with roast beef?" The one that threw me on my ACTUALLY exam was "If you sell cigarettes to a minor in Wales, what court would you be tried in?"

They should add, “Who is the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Officer?”

Notice how many questions - even the ones he got correct - were by process of elimination or an educated guess. My educated guess is that this quiz was written by a sailing enthusiast, given that there were multiple questions related to that topic. The question about Henry VIII was by far the most bullshit one, a 20 year window 500 years ago, nobody who isn't a historian would know that. But the most deceptive one to me is the question about how long Great Britain is. Most people taking this test will come from outside the UK, and most of the world outside the UK measures in kilometers, not miles. So asking that question in miles is just an added layer of trickery.

I hated taking the test but I will admit I LOVED studying for it. I had a year so I spent it binging BBC documentaries on the iPlayer and going to museums. I made flash cards and would regularly take tests. I even made a board game and forced all my friends and colleagues to play with me.

12) Saint Helena is not a British Overseas Territories. However, it is a part of a BOT called Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha

9:44 - Question 14. As someone from Northern Ireland, I knew this as it's something that still affects NI to this very day and is the fundamental start of the current day problems. This is no sleight on the TLDR team, who I hold in very high regard, but it does not surprise me, in the slightest, that English people do not know things like this.

TO CLARIFY: The Nebula version of this video is an ADDITIONAL 40 minutes of content. Barely any of that video is included in this one, so even if you’ve watched this video in its entirety there’s still tonnes more to see CORRECTION: At 15:26 the answer on screen says that 0.1% of British people are Sikh, the correct answer is 0.8% Also, apologies for the couple of times the wrong question appears on screen. We spent hours reviewing the full length video (and it takes a while as it's 40 minutes long) but there must have been some issues when we copied that timeline across to this video. Hopefully it's not too confusing as unfortunately RU-vid won't allow us to make any changes at this point - Jack

Nothing gets Priti Patel angrier than when an immigrant doesn’t know when King Henry the 8th was crowned king

The Citizenship Test is utterly ridiculous - so say TLDR, Paul Sinha who made a comedy radio programme about it, and so say I. It tests what a pub quiz tests, not whether you'll fit in living in the UK. It would be a joke if people's lives and happiness didn't depend on it.

“Modern and thriving society” literally made me laugh out loud.

TIL: TLDR blokes didn't read Horrible Histories.

I'm Thai and had lived in England for a VERY long time.... From personal experience... I think the best test for British citizenship is to have them go on count down and they must be able to score over a certain amount of points... It has everything- usage of the English language , maths, and random banter.... get through that ordeal and you should be fine :)

The person who wrote this test needs to check out if they're British enough, lol. Question 2, what the hell is "To do THE military service"? Should that not be "To do military service"?

Wait...if everyone in the Commonwealth can vote in UK elections could they have technically influenced Brexit if they wanted to?

South African here. Had to take the test last year for citizenship, also quizzed my mates on this. They would all have been kicked out.

TLDR and their creative timestamps: 'childish behaviour, hiding from the media, new rules for them, in defence of Johnson' Edit: the timestamps were removed, very secretive

Commonwealth citizens are also eligible to be elected to the house of commons. As an Australian, I can say that's a little annoying

“There’s 40 questions, you need at least 75 to pass” Genius plan to keep everyone from citizenship.

When I was studying for my UK citizenship test, my friends took the practice tests with me and they all failed.

EVERYONE failed it when I challenged people in the office. No exception.

I'm a dutchman with an above average interest in the english language, in the UK and in its constituent countries. What's the use of knowing whether Land's End and John o'Groats are 840 or 870 miles apart? And there were some of those, questions merely designed to assure about 50 percent of applicants would give the wrong answer.

I thought it only involved being able to drink enough pints and showing smug contempt for the rest of the world. 😉

Seems like our TLDR crew are not the very model of a modern major-general! Don't know Gilbert and Sullivan...

“You have to speak English to an acceptable level…” Well, that rules out the majority of the population of the United States.

This sort of knowledge the government expects you to know is more niche than what the school system teaches

This has made my day, hilarious but serious and factual. You guys nailed It. Unfortunately HM Government didn't nail the test

I would pay all the money in my pocket to watch Boris Johnson and Priti Patel taking this test live on TV.

After living here for just shy of 4 years, I took the test and passed in 4 minutes. I only took it then because my wife was doing her application. Belizean-American here. Can I British now? 😂

I mean, anything but the tennis player would work for the “artist” one. Elgar was a composer, which is an artist.

Jack: “There are 40 questions” Also Jack: “You need at least 75 correct to pass. We are passing the details to Priti Patel and you’ll be out by the end of the day….” 0:19 Sounds legit.

I did this test and I kept telling people it was bullshit init, a lot of the questions a person on the streets would fail

I had once the idea of apply for British citizenship. I had to learn this stupid- trivial- pursuit booklet. It felt offensive. I passed then I learnt that I had to take loads off other tests, pay the home office to have the nationality all in all it would have cost me 2000£ without being sure of being successful . I abandoned the whole idea and left the uk until it will recovers its mind

Even more telling and hilarious would be an American version of this. While everyone has laughed at those "Stupid American" videos--a whole genre unto itself--the truly terrifying truth is that we Yanks are now simultaneously functionally illiterate, terrified of history (the teaching of which we are currently outlawing) and extremely, overtly hostile towards immigrants. This in the most famous "land of immigrants," although, as with most hype, it isn't really true. There were a hundred million indigenous inhabitants here before the first European ever raped or enslaved a native Britain is probably a far better example of a true immigrant nation, with its endless, successive waves of invasion and, more usually, peaceful immigration. Fookin' Nigel immigrant-bashing Farage himself came from Huguenot refugees fleeing for their lives. Funny how he ended up living in Gammonland instead of Rwanda, isn't it? Anyway, and getting back to the outlandish idea of giving Americans such a history- and geography-based citizenship test even as we demonize our Mexican friends--by far the hardest working, least demanding and most law abiding of all our immigrant groups--is simply a brilliant idea. Not that the results would be surprising to the rest of the world, but it would be so very, very eye-opening to the millions of morons here who promote the the idiotic, right-wing populist Nativism that puts babies in cages and denies citizenship to immigrants who serve in our military. My personal favorite is the all too common scenario of ignorant, fat, white morons telling Mexican-Americans, who have been living the Southwest for 500 years, and the indigenous, First Peoples who have been here for many, many thousands of years to "go back where they came from." These folks would not do well on such a citizenship test, or any other, for that matter.

Most of those questions were pointless and most british people either don't know them or they are rather inconsequential. You could literally go through life not knowing many of those things. Even the guys that passed it in this video did so via guessing many of them.

Well, as a French lawyer, I took a look about the test given to me by a former asylum seeker to become a French citizen. More or less, the same difficulty about "being French"... Nothing really new. Most of the French people themselves won't make it.

Personally I think if you know "divorce, beheaded, died, divorce, beheaded, survived" and can identify John Barnes as the singer from love's got the world in motion. You get citizenship.

Imagine fleeing a warzone, getting to somewhere safe, then someone gives you a questionnaire and asks who sailed around the world without stopping, and if you get it wrong you're going to Rwanda, lol.

This test is totally unfit for purpose. It's better off asking questions like: you're a young woman walking the streets of London and a lone Met police officer asks you to stop and get into his car. What should you do?

I had to take the test in late-2020. My partner, who is Scottish, was struck with the kinds of questions and details noted in the practice tests and the book. The primary criticism we both had was how English-centric the book was. There were details about England that really had absolutely no relevance to life in Scotland. The same criticism was levelled in reverse, where a friend in Kent who took the test was unhappy with some of the minutae of details about Scottish life she had to know. In the end, the test I ended up taking had around 18/24 questions focused on Scottish life, and that made it remarkably easy... but that detail about being regionalised is not well publicised!! In contrast, the Canadian citizenship test focuses on topics that are relevant and apply to all Canadians, and they explicitly have a section of questions that relate to the province you've chosen to settle in. That test isn't perfect either, but at least there's not the same sense of frustration of being expected to know a lot of details about a part of the country you have never lived in, and don't intend to live in either. (And it's not that unknown that Edinburgh Castle is managed by Historic Scotland. At least for me - I have a membership with Historic Scotland though!)

Very surprised that a newsperson was struggling with Gilbert and Sullivan. Premier political satirists.

It should be called the Tory test. Most people in the UK would fail it.

Born in London of British parents. I failed it 17 times. My wife, French, passed it first time. It’s a scam and nothing to do with cultural identity.

I'm curious is there any questions about British culture or traditions? If i created test for my country these questions definitely would be included .

As a train enthusiast, I would object to the railway question. Parts of the WCML - and significant parts at that - opened in 1837 (Birmingham to Manchester) and 1838 (London to Birmingham) respectively. The GWML was opened in stages between 1838 and 1841 (London to Maidenhead 1838; to Faringdon Road 1840; Bristol to Bath 1840; connected up 1841). So if you count the full route, then yes, the GWML opened before the WCML (as by 1841, the Birmingham cut-off and the line north of Crewe hadn’t been built/opened); but if you count any substantial useful amount of the line, then the WCML opened before the GWML.

I would like to change the citizenship test to be much harsher and only allow people citizenship if they score 100% on the test, but then I would also change the test to only be one question and everyone gets the same question: "Would you like to be a British citizen?". I'm not telling you the right answer, though, because that might let people cheat.

It seemed that, without any preparation, I failed the test. A couple of years ago, I looked into a similar test for German naturalisation. The government there helps you a lot to prepare for it, the objective not being to fail anyone, but rather to help everyone to be better equipped to fit in as a new German citizen. Official websites are provided for you to take mock-tests. They also provide the list of all possible questions and their correct answers. On purpose, I took my first test without any preparation. I passed extreme Ely comfortably. Then i studied the list of possible questions (which is not unduly long) and I passed without any mistakes. The test is in German, therefore à reasonably fluent level of German is a must. The biggest difficulty is for the candidates whose mother-tongue' script is not the Latin script. Deciphering the questions will require more time for many of them, which is a disadvantage as the test has a time limit. Nevertheless, very few candidates fail, and all have learnt something useful.

so many of the question cards are synced up with the wrong qestion it’s actually embarrassing, did seriously not a single person check this video before rendering/publishing?

I've taken practice tests for the UK and US versions of this test. I passed both but despite having British citizenship I scored much higher on the US version. Way too many weird ones on the British test.

ALL the answers are in the official handbook 'Life in the United Kingdom' - you just need to read it. It is really a test of how well you know and remember the book, so basically a memory retention test, which some say correlates somewhat to peoples IQ.

My wife completed her ILR and that “Life in the UK” test. It is literally just “Here is a book. Read it and then answer questions about it.” So long as you can read English then and pick 1 of 4 answers then you’re okay.

I love how this was half knowledge and half test taking skills

I thought that in the UK all metric measures were always legal, and that imperial measures are also legal in some situations. If this is the case, then people in the UK are not obliged to know the distance both in miles and in KM. Or to know the conversion rate between miles and KM. And the question about the distance between the north coast of Scotland and the South-West corner of England should be both in miles and in KM. This means that this question should be illegal.

Given Bojo was not born in the UK, how did he manage to get a British citizenship, if he even has ?

I am so happy that when I did the test, there was no questions about HMS pinafore and poetry and shit. I would have failed miserably. As it was, it took longer for the lady to grope me and verify my identity than the test itself.

I past it first time. It was like a trip through memory lane because I did history in the U.K. Although some of the questions now are harder then when I took the test and more irrelevant.

The "I'll be in rwanda" joke is so underrated

I took the test a few months ago and passed it with ease. I would say the time spent studying for the test gave me a greater appreciation of the UK that I did not have despite having grown up here. Taking everything into account, I think the test was actually pretty well designed.

Brit in France here, it's not just a British thing ALL my French friends failed the French citizen test !! Lol

Citizenship in Denmark requires 10 years of legal residency in the country, permanent residence permit, full-time employment in 4 straight years (no pauses), a similar “society and history test”, not having received social benefits and level A in the Danish language. The permanent resident permit, which is a requirement for the citizenship, is also full of requirements, can only be received after 4-8 years of legal residency in the country, 4 years of employment, another “social and history knowledge” test and so on. You’ll easily spend at least 2.000 pounds with all the fees for the Danish citizenship. I’m lucky to be highly educated and the citizenship for me was just a matter of patience, but the average immigrant has no chance. To be fair, the British citizenship seems quite reasonable.

This is awesome.... Always enjoy these type of tests/video...

My wife was thinking of doing it but it's absolutely mad. You'd have to study for a test that should be solvable if you live in the bloody culture in the first place.

"Name two islands closely linked to but not part of the UK." "Channel islands." "Incorrect. You didn't say Isle of Man." "... That's THREE islands."

I actually did this test about 3 months ago. To study for it. There is this government supported website you can pay monthly.There you can do the test that is very similar to the final one. I did that test about 40 times in row. On last 5 tried I got 100%. During actual test, it took me about 5 minutes and I have passed. They did not tell me my score. Pretty big waste of time, I already forgot most answers :)

Comparing the American citizenship test and UK citizenship test is just funny. Don't get me wrong, there's a few things on the UK one that are solid test questions, but most of it seemed to be random bullshit. The American one on the other hand focuses on your fundamental rights and the workings of government and the legal system, with only a few bs history questions that don't really matter. TBF this is coming from an American, however it's also coming from an American who plans to dip the country in around a year.

This is the FIRST episode that has made me WANT to watch your content on nebula! ♥️♥️♥️

It's always annoyed me that the British citizenship test is basically just an obscure trivia pub quiz rather than something which actually tests the understanding of cultural and moral values of our society and law. Sure a few questions scrape the surface of a couple basic values, but really don't get into anything of substance about what it means to actually live as an upstanding citizen in the UK. And sure, morality is more subjective and could be prone to corruption, but if you are concerned with immigration and settlement surely it is more important that they know that we are committed to values of liberty, equality, and accountability, over if they know who Charles I is? Moral compatibility is surely more important by a substantial margin. Edit: then again, the current government probably doesnt want the British public to think about our devotion to the three values stated above, prevents them from doing what they want.

I need to turn up and claim my citizenship because I actually got most of these right. The Modern Society section is where I fell short; the questions seem very random and quite ridiculous.

The fact that you've put the red passport in the video rather than the blue one cheered me up.

As with every single naturalisation test, so many of these questions are "who knows, who cares?".

"What is the Latin name for the species of fish used in Fish and Chips?" "What exactly is the use of a rubber duck?" "What is a muggle?" Don't worry, we in the Netherlands have the same sort of stupid questions in our citizenship test.

I wonder if the point of this is to get people to learn other things by stealth. While you're learning the length of the country within 30 mile accuracy, you'll also learn about lands end and John o groats. While learning the year Henry VIII came to the throne, you'll find out that our monarchy are descended from murderous lunatics. You know, stuff that's good to be generally aware of.

"What is the good and proper way to have a pint?" "What finger is allowed to be extended when having tea?" "How many Welshmen are allowed in Kensington at one time?" "How many Corgis will the Queen schedule for photo ops every week?"

Fabulous idea to do this test!!! I love to follow your reasoning, how you eliminate the wrong answers, one by one. Perfect!

Brilliant, entertaining and shocking. I know people that have not moved more then 2 streets from where they grew up and they would not know many answers, yet they are as British as they come. If this doesn't make you ask questions about what society we have and the policies that shape it then ... A/ leave the country B/ go to jail (do not pass go) C/ go to your library (sorry it's closed) D/ Pretend to be above such questioning

this test is a joke though, i can gurantee most brittish citizens would fail this by a large margin

Great one!

An interesting part is I failed the British citizenship test. but when I took the British citizenship test unofficially a second time and had it adjusted for Scotland. I passed So unofficial. Am officially Scottish, but not British. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

"Took over" the land from the Catholic Irish landowners. 😑

Bit of extra cash for you: you guys should make one off videos available. Would definitely pay for this one off!

Which Prime minister said “hand, face, party at my place”?

Blimey! Quite a few tricky ones there... I had taken the (mock) test last year just to see and I don't remember the questions having been that hard back then. They really want us out, don't they? (I'm French)