How to be funny

They all laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian.

They're not laughing now.
Bob Monkhouse
The Daily Telegraph

This Monkhouse gag is funny but, of course, it's much better heard than
read. On paper, a joke is a pale and inadequate one-dimensional version of
itself. In fact, a joke scarcely exists until someone has told it and someone
else has laughed.

The who, where, when, what and why of a joke's telling can be more
significant that its topic, and no single theory - from Freud's notion of the
joke as a release of suppressed sexual neurosis to Schopenhauer's definition
of humour as a reaction to incongruity - can explain how jokes work.

Even comedy's greats seem stuck for a proper analysis. When John Cleese
tired of questions about where he got his jokes from, he resorted to, 'I buy
them from a little man in Swindon.' The truth is much more prosaic. Jokes
are about 10 per cent inspiration and 90 per cent whittling and crafting -
much of it in front of an audience.

Jerry Seinfeld talks of the comedian's 'third eye', through which he views life
with ironic detachment. However, irony and detachment are not enough.
Joke writing and performing is a craft, and while an all-encompassing theory
of humour may elude us, it is possible to identify some of the basics in the
building of a successful joke.

Set-up, punchline, laugh?

A cowboy walks into a bar and orders a whisky. As the barman's pouring it
the cowboy looks about him. 'Where is everybody?' he says. 'Gone to the
hanging,' says the barman. 'Hanging?' says the cowboy.

'Who they hanging?'

'Brownpaper Pete,' replies the barman.
'Brownpaper Pete? Why do they call him that?'
'Well,' says the barman. 'His hat's made of brown paper, his shirt's made of
brown paper, his jacket's made of brown paper and his trousers are made of
brown paper.' 'Really?' says the cowboy. 'What they hanging him for?'
'Rustling.'

Many jokes, like this one, are written backwards, with the punchline sorted
out first. However, the punchline - the destination without which a joke loses
its way - is so potent a force that even on its own, with little or no narrative
set-up, it can make us laugh. Witness the hugely popular sketch comedy of
The Fast Show and Little Britain, in which characters get laughs from
catchphrases that function just like punchlines to the situational jokes.

This is also how an 'in-joke' works among a group of friends. Life itself
provides the set-up, and a word or two, sometimes just a knowing look
between two people who are in on the joke, provides the punchline.

A professional comic's routine may be based on true personal experience, but

real experience doesn't tend to come conveniently complete with a punchline.
That's why most comics are outrageous liars. It's also why pathological
observational comics may even begin to provoke 'hilarious' denouements by
deliberately forgetting their wedding anniversaries or leaving their children in
the supermarket.

Surprise!

I took the wife's family out for tea and biscuits. They weren't too happy about
having to give blood, though.

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Les Dawson

Surprise is the fundamental joke mechanism. Most punchlines rely on an

element of surprise - that's why they're not funny the third time you hear
them.

Jerry Seinfeld compares telling a joke to attempting to leap a metaphorical

canyon, taking the audience with him. The set-up is the nearside cliff, and
the punchline is the far side. If they're too far apart, the listeners don't make
it to the other side. And if they are too close together, the audience just
steps across the gap without experiencing any exhilarating leap. The joke-
hearer gets far more pleasure from the joke if he or she has to do a little
work.

F***ing surprise!

A very cheap and easy way of making people laugh is to throw in some swear
words. It's become something of a tradition among the more iconoclastic
comics to write a routine that is ostensibly aimed at depriving taboo words of
their power to shock, but which conveniently harnesses the power of
shocking words to make us laugh.

Jerry Seinfeld dismisses swearing as 'a trick' because it provokes laughter

even when the joke isn't funny. However, George Carlin says, 'Shock is just
another form of surprise, and comedy is based on surprise. This is a noisy
culture… If you want to be heard, then you have to raise your voice a little bit
… If it [swearing] is the only thing going for you, it won't last long. But as
long as it's just a device to draw them in…' Too ****ing right.

Oh, and timing!

The surprise mechanism doesn't work without effective timing. It's almost
impossible to explain in print because our eyes always skip ahead to the
punchline before the set-up is properly digested. But next time you listen to a
comedian, listen to the pauses. They're not that funny on their own -
obviously, they're just tiny silences - but the point is, neither are the jokes.

Surprise is often worked into a joke through the 'pull-back/reveal' technique.

The joke focuses your attention on a particular angle or detail of the scene,
then suddenly pans out to show you the whole, surprising picture. Very often
the success of these jokes hinges on the joke-teller's subtle control of
rhythm: a beat here, a breath there.

The American comedian Emo Philips is a master. Take this routine with a
pull-back/reveal in every line.

My sister had a baby. We could have company over and she'll be there with
her breast out, feeding him... cereal, or whatever. The other day she took me
aside and said, Emo, can you babysit little Derek while I go to the carnival...
and look for the father? I said, OK. So I'm pushing him through the park, and
he's crying... because I forgot the stroller. I take him home and I'm trying to
rinse out his diaper in the toilet - you ever rinse out a baby's diaper in the
toilet? Yuck. Anyway... I accidentally let go of his foot. And he's spinning
around, crying, and I'm trying to get him out with the plunger... because you
can't use Drano, that HURTS a kid!

Familiarity

We have a little pamphlet, lent us by a comedian friend, called Jokes Jokes

Jokes: Why spend 2/6 at a Music Hall? Here's 2,000 laughs for a 1/3.
Selected by Ike'nsmile Lettslaff, the book, apparently published in the late
1940s, offers such gems as: 'Lor' lumme, Bill,' said a gentleman of the course
to his pal, as a fashionably dressed lady passed, 'look at 'er wiv all 'em
buttons on 'er skirt and me 'olding up me trarziz wiv string.'

and...

He was rather shy and it was the first time that he had dared to bring her
flowers. She, delighted, threw her arms about his neck and kissed him. He
suddenly grabbed his hat and started out of the door. 'Oh!' she said. 'I'm
sorry if I have offended you.' 'Oh, that's not it,' he called back; 'I'm going

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after more flowers.'

No disrespect to Mr Lettslaff but the volume failed to yield the promised

2,000 laughs because the jokes rely on the audience's instant recognition of
incidental detail. In a world now sadly bereft of proper ladies and courting
swains in hats, these jokes don't have any grip on our sense of humour.
However, there are certain basic themes - hen-pecked husbands and village
idiots - that appear to endure. Likewise, some jokes have short shelf lives,
while others are surprisingly durable, flexing to accommodate themselves to
audiences in different continents, even different centuries.

To understand this, consider a joke as a sum of parts. The basic structural

component is its theme or premise - a stupid man who thinks he's clever, for
example - and that bit crosses continents and survives millennia. The second
layer of the joke is in the way the story is told, and that's incredibly culturally
specific. Individual jokes have finite significance because they rely on joke
and audience inhabiting the same world.

One of the current masters of the humour of intimate recognition is the

Bolton stand-up artist Peter Kay. His live gigs, particularly in the North-West,
are legendary. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, cry with laughter. This isn't
the comedy of incongruity or suppressed sexual neurosis. This is the comedy
of the banal made up of carefully observed vignettes that both deflate and
celebrate the minutiae of British life.

The philosopher Simon Critchley writes, 'Humour views the world awry,
bringing us back to the everyday by estranging us from it. The comedian is
the anthropologist of our everyday lives.' Anthropological comedy is
dependent on place and time. Peter Kay could perform the same act in a
comedy club in North Dakota and be met with mild bafflement. But in the
north of England - in fact, all over the UK - his audiences howl with
recognition as the comic gives them licence to find themselves ridiculous. His
act is so inclusive and warm that at times it feels like some kind of
community therapy.

Conventional two-liner jokes aren't important to Kay. The few classically

defined 'jokes' in his set are put to use to build a conversational rapport with
the audience. They are old and terribly familiar - so much so that everyone
can join in.

KAY: What's black and white and looks like a horse? (holds mic towards
audience)

ENTIRE AUDIENCE: A zebra!

KAY: How does Bob Marley like his doughnuts?

ENTIRE AUDIENCE: Wi' jam in!

KAY: You see? That's a joke, that. That's the first thing you'll tell when you
get 'ome.

Economy and exaggeration

The difference between a funny story and a joke is often verbal economy.

It's not that long, wordy jokes can't be funny, but if too much is explained,
there's no logical leap for the audience to make, and the paradigm shift
which elicits laughter is lost.

Compare: I'm not a homosexual. Mind you, I might be mistaken for one if I
went to the north of England. In places like Newcastle, there's such a culture
of macho posturing that they go out in their shirtsleeves in all kinds of
weather, so if you wear a coat they think you're gay.

And: I'm not gay. Unless you're from Newcastle and by 'gay' you mean,
'owns a coat'.

Sounds peculiar

Native English-speakers seem to find certain sounds and syllables inherently

funny. In Neil Simon's play The Sunshine Boys, the old Vaudeville

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entertainer, Willy, tries to explain.

Fifty-seven years in this business, you learn a few things. You know which
words are funny and which words are not funny. Alka-Seltzer is funny. You
say Alka-Seltzer, you get a laugh. Words with K in them are funny. Casey
Stengel, that's a funny name. Robert Taylor is not funny. Cupcake is funny.
Tomato is not funny. Cookie is funny. Cucumber is funny.

British radio comedy of the 1960s was the high-water mark for funny-name
creation when Round the Horne writers Barry Took and Marty Feldman
thronged the airwaves with creatures such as Mr Throbwalloper, Reg Pubes,
Obadiah Loombucket, J. Peasemould Gruntfuttock and, of course, the fading
starlet Dame Celia Molestrangler and the 'ageing juvenile Binkie Huckaback'.

It's not certain why all these 'k' and 'oo' sounds are funny, but some speech
experts think that the combinations of tiny facial muscles we use to make
these particular sounds might subconsciously remind us of smiling or
laughing.

Top tips

So much for the joke's basic building blocks. The question is,
is understanding them enough to make anyone a comedian?
Most professionals think that great comedians are born, not
made. However standing up and telling jokes is essentially a
craft, not an art, and therefore can be improved. So in the
spirit of self-improvement, we leave you with five basic rules
for telling a joke.
Pick your moments. It's easiest to tell a joke when everyone's
relaxed and enjoying themselves. Telling a joke to relieve
tension is a high-risk strategy, but potentially hilarious.
Besides, there'll be other funerals.
Know where you're going - the punchline - before you start.
Don't be tempted to over-elaborate. Eddie Izzard makes it
look easy, but remember that one man's surreal flight of
fancy is another man's rambling, incoherent humiliation.
Project a demeanour of relaxed confidence - it gives your
listener permission to laugh. You can try deadpan, but social
joke-telling usually requires the teller to laugh too.
Enjoy it. If your entire self-esteem is resting on whether
people laugh at your joke, then you're doing it for the wrong
reasons. On the other hand, you are showing signs of the
borderline personality disorder that characterises all the best
comedians, so perhaps you should consider telling jokes for a
living.
Edited extracts from 'The Naked Jape', by Jimmy Carr and Lucy Greeves
(Penguin), which is published on Thursday. To order for £11.99 plus £1.25
p&p, call Telegraph Books, 0870 428 4115

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