The science of laughter
A new book reveals the alchemy that can turn anyone into a comic genius
BE FUNNY OR DIE
by Joel Morris
(unbound £18.99, 370pp)
WHeN Ken Dodd was given a copy of Sigmund freud’s Jokes And Their Relation To The Unconscious, he said, ‘The trouble with freud is he never had to play Glasgow empire on a Saturday night.’
This is a very sensible remark. Theories of comedy can be dead boring — though, on the other hand, accounts of actual comedians and their cranky ways can be fascinating, which is why I spent my formative years writing biographies of Peter Sellers and Charles Hawtrey.
Joel Morris opts for the former, studious, route. Be funny Or Die pays respectful attention to scientists, philosophers and professors, who like to call laughter ‘play vocalisations’. Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, seldom known as a bundle of fun, is mentioned, as is Darwin, who called humour ‘the tickling of the mind’.
when Morris quotes a boffin who decided ‘the pleasure of mirth is an emotional reward for success in the specific task of data-integrity checking’, I confess to being a dunce, totally lost, and would much rather be told that if you type 5318008 into a calculator and turn it upside down, it spells BOOBIeS.
Morris tells us: ‘I’m a comedy writer, and have earned money from jokes since I was at school.’ He co-created Philomena Cunk, an ill-informed investigative reporter, played by Diane Morgan, who presents a mockumentary series on the BBC. He also contributed to the Paddington films, and was a member of the team writing scripts for Mitchell & webb and Miranda. Hats off to the man. He knows his onions.
THeRe is a skill in making people laugh, we are informed, and as Morris seems to believe the skills can be taught or imparted, his book is a bit like a textbook for a nightschool class, with check-lists and charts.
Morris bangs on about the requirement to Construct, Confirm and Confound. ‘A reference to Shostakovich in a cartoon script for kids might work better if you ensure that the context makes clear that he’s a famous classical composer,’ students are instructed, painting-by-numbers fashion.
And when Mel Brooks’s definition is up for scrutiny — ‘Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die’ — cautious schoolteacher Morris warns the class that, ‘If someone actually fell down a manhole, you might run to help.’ Really? (I wouldn’t.)
There is much of this book I disagreed with, for example: ‘watch a programme on your own, you won’t laugh. watch it with someone else, you will.’ Rubbish. I cackle away like crazy when alone — it’s the presence of other people that puts me off, especially as all my wife likes to watch is News At Ten because she fancies Tom Bradby. Nevertheless,
there are some smart observations here. ‘The middle aisle of Lidl is full of weird stuff like boat varnish and gas masks’, is a line that made me chuckle.
I also agree that the rhythms of comedy are musical — Sellers
was a drummer, Milligan a trumpeter and Secombe a singer. The Goons were a jazz trio. Woody Allen is a clarinettist. And where would Victoria Wood have been without her piano?
Morris is good on the ways comedy and horror are interlinked — the elements of shock and surprise; the scariness of clowns. Dalek inventor Terry Nation wrote for Tony Hancock. William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist, wrote the screenplay for the Clouseau vehicle A Shot In The Dark.
‘Steve Martin doing mad stuff in jeans and a T-shirt would be less funny than Steve Martin in a pristine white suit’, is a clever suggestion, except this begs the question whether Martin is funny in any apparel?
Morris says ‘the comedy that grabs you as a teenager is often the stuff you can’t shake off’. My tastes, it is true, were formed decades ago, and I remain devoted to Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Barry Humphries and the Carry On films.
Morris dislikes the Carry Ons, with their sex-starved characters. He dismisses Carry On Abroad as ‘a mismatched group of randy British caricatures going on holiday to an unfinished hotel’.
Yet what could be more of an enticement to watch? Particularly as Morris’s chief thesis is that the purpose of comedy is to enshrine our shared cultural references,
‘the recognition of common values’, which bond the clan, particularly when we laugh at outsiders — the ugly, the unfortunate, the foreign, the fat. (Life is like a box of chocolates: it doesn’t last as long if you’re fat.)
All too often, comedy can’t help but be cruel, racist, sexist, the tool of bullies. Nicknames and mockery ‘are a test of belonging, a sort of ongoing initiation ceremony’. Morris mentions that ‘gorillas are known to tease and humiliate other gorillas as a way of establishing status’. Hence, office banter, with underlings chuckling at the boss’ pleasantries or the rudeness of the late Prince Philip.
MOrrIS is correct to state that comedy is ‘foolish and messy, nonsensical and unexpected, unruly and disrespectful’, and this will be why Honours Committees look down on its practitioners ( no knighthood for Arthur Lowe, ronnie Barker or Tommy Cooper); why English Literature faculties in universities rate Tragedy higher than Comedy. At Cambridge, David Hare was considered facetious when he wanted to study Oscar Wilde. ‘Humour is a malicious interruption of serious thought,’ said Plato, and he is still believed.
Yet comedy is much more than ‘puns, twists, moments of slapstick surprise’. The true comic spirit involves a distinct sensibility: Groucho Marx’s leering and Peter Kay’s Brian Potter saying, ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, son, but I’m disabled.’ To this list I’d add the prose of Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin in his letters, Alan Bennett in his diaries talking about peg bags and linoleum.
My late friend Barry Cryer told jokes better than anybody, but he had no comic persona. ‘He’d merely act as a benevolent conduit for some great gags,’ as Morris says. And comedy isn’t about actual gags. It’s a way of looking askance at the world, a tone of voice and being subversive. Class dismissed.