The Essential Ingredients of British Humour Are . . .

Nominations?

In the spirit of Chillin at PP surreptitiously getting the gathered brains trust to write his philosophy essays (!) I've got to write a review of the forthcoming Rude Britannia exhibition at the Tate, for a foreign audience, relating it to Ze British Sense of Humour.

I have my own ideas; whimsy, irony, self-deprecation, etc. What are yours?

Sarcasm, it's all about the sarcasm.

hi

How do missus?

all good
hows you lot?

Not bad. Forum life continues. We were a ruck free zone till about tea time yesterday. That's got to be progress, of sorts.

Smut/ sex, inuendo, the ability to laugh at yourself or missfortune, the class system. off the top of my head Snake

Why thank you all. It all goes in the mix.

The provinciality/parochiality of the British people.The mundane routine of our lives .Our amateurism.Our sense of fair play, we queue.

A sense of superiority over the victim of the gag

Incongruity between the set up and punchline:

2 fish in a tank

One says to the other, do you know how to drive this thing.


c/o Quirkology - Wiseman

Two words.

The shithouse.

To refer back to Trevor Griffiths' Comedians:

"A real comedian - that's a daring man. He dares to see what his listeners shy away from, fear to express. And what he sees is a sort of truth, about people, about their situation, about what hurts or terrifies them, about what's hard, above all about what they want. A joke releases the tension, says the unsayable, any joke pretty well. but a true joke, a comedian's joke, has to do more than release tension, it has to liberate the will and the desire, it has to change the situation."

Admittedly, lacks a punchline.

Perhaps if he farted at the end, Snake? You know, a couple of seconds "just think about it"...

You know, I do think he might have missed a trick there...

snake plissken wrote:You know, I do think he might have missed a trick there...

You have to admit, it does work.



























But only in the UK

Bert wrote:Perhaps if he farted at the end, Snake? You know, a couple of seconds "just think about it"...

Timing is the essence of any joke bert

bitofatwat wrote:

Bert wrote:Perhaps if he farted at the end, Snake? You know, a couple of seconds "just think about it"...

Timing is the essence of any joke bert

Indeed it is. I don't know if any of you are aware of the work of Eddie Flanagan? Journeyman comic, used to appear on the Comedians back in the 70s. The only man I've ever seen who could stand on a stage for thirty seconds and not say a word and have you laughing. If he replicated Ken Dodd's material, you'd be at his show for a week.

Saw Norman Wisom do that at the London Palladium many years ago. Came on stage eating an apple, made a drama out of chewing a mouthful while the audience giggled., indicated that his jaw was aching while the audience laughed, gestured with his arms while pointing to his watch that that he woudn't be long, then 'mistakenly' took a second bite, and the audience guffawed.

Tommy Cooper did virtually the same. There was a small gate at the back of the stage, and every time he crossed the stage from left to right or vice versa, he would walk to the back and go via the gate. A simple thing like that, but it had the audience in stitches.

My sister laughed that much at a Norman Wisdom film that she went into labour with my nephew.

Good comedy works if you can see yourelf in a similar situation and the ability to laugh at yourself.

Hancock was a master of it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arzovPRUNkc

morning_glory wrote:My sister laughed that much at a Norman Wisdom film that she went into labour with my nephew.

Amazing that your nephew was
(i) pregnant at the same time
(ii) pregnant at all

morning_glory wrote:My sister laughed that much at a Norman Wisdom film that she went into labour with my nephew.

A funny guy's a funny guy - but I wouldn't base political conversion on a gag. Unless you're a Milligan.

That would be Stephen rather than Spike.

Coroner presiding over Stephen Milligan's inquest was the same coroner for Blair Peach's. And a cunt.

Bert wrote:

morning_glory wrote:My sister laughed that much at a Norman Wisdom film that she went into labour with my nephew.

Amazing that your nephew was
(i) pregnant at the same time
(ii) pregnant at all

Bert wrote:Coroner presiding over Stephen Milligan's inquest was the same coroner for Blair Peach's. And a cunt.

is it him with the orange.milligan that is.