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 Contents
Introduction........................................................................................................................ 5
How Be Funny is Organized .................................................................................................. 7
How to Use Be Funny .......................................................................................................... 7
Part One: How to Be Funny............................................................................................ 8
The Nature and Brief History of Humor................................................................................... 8
The Two Underlying Rules of Comedy .................................................................................... 9
Comedy is Truth.............................................................................................................. 9
Comedy is Unexpected.................................................................................................. 10
Using the Rules to Make Up Your Own Jokes ........................................................................ 11
Learning to Think ‘Funny’ ................................................................................................... 12
Exercises to Generate Humor ............................................................................................. 13
Getting Your Own Content For Jokes .................................................................................... 13
Dictionary Diving .......................................................................................................... 13
Working With Cliché ...................................................................................................... 14
Brainstorming .............................................................................................................. 15
Utilizing the Different Meanings of Words ........................................................................ 20
Utilizing Literal Interpretations of Everyday Expressions..................................................... 21
More Meaningful Nonsense – Innuendo and Double Entendre ........................................... 22
Puns and Limericks....................................................................................................... 23
Write Your Own Limerick ................................................................................................ 25
Delivery – How to Get the Best From Your Speech ................................................................. 26
Controlling the Way You Breathe..................................................................................... 27
Proper Breathing Exercise .............................................................................................. 27
Inflection and Pitch ....................................................................................................... 28
Using Body Language to Enhance Your Humor ................................................................. 29
Body Language Practice ................................................................................................ 30
Comedic Timing................................................................................................................ 31
How to Successfully Memorize and Tell Jokes ...................................................................... 32
Developing Comedic Spontaneity....................................................................................... 34
Exercise to Encourage Lateral Thinking ............................................................................ 35
Asking Questions to Stimulate Ideas ................................................................................... 37
Developing Confidence and Overcoming Fear ...................................................................... 38
12 Stunning Ploys to Help You Stay Cool Under Pressure .................................................. 39
The Secrets of Rehearsal ................................................................................................... 40
Why rehearse? ............................................................................................................. 41
What to Rehearse? ....................................................................................................... 41
When to Rehearse? ...................................................................................................... 42
How to Rehearse? ........................................................................................................ 43
Summary and Conclusion.................................................................................................. 43
Part Two: Enhance Your Humor .................................................................................. 44
Recognizing the Different Types of Humor ............................................................................ 44
Physical Humor ............................................................................................................ 45

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 Farce........................................................................................................................... 46
Clowning ..................................................................................................................... 46
Verbal Humor ............................................................................................................... 47
Joke ............................................................................................................................ 54
Parody, Satire and Irony ................................................................................................ 58
Understatement and Overstatement ............................................................................... 60
Absurdity in Surreal Humor ............................................................................................ 61
Using Sound Devices to Add Interest to Your Jokes ........................................................... 61
The Role of Comedy Props in Humor ................................................................................... 66
How to Use Humor in the Workplace ................................................................................... 67
Suggestions for Fostering Fun at Work............................................................................. 68
How to Use Humor in Presentations .................................................................................... 69
Suggestions for ‘Safe’ Humor ............................................................................................. 70
Dealing With Put-downs .................................................................................................... 71
Ten Steps to Recover When Things Go Wrong ................................................................... 71
Using All Your Senses to Maximize Your Comedy Potential ..................................................... 72
The Role of Listening and Watching in Developing a Comedic Mindset.................................... 74
Cultural, Gender and Other Differences in Humor ................................................................. 75
Know Your Audience ......................................................................................................... 75
Different Connotations in Different Parts of the World ........................................................... 76
Cultural Differences .......................................................................................................... 76
Gender Differences ........................................................................................................... 77
Top Tips for Writing Jokes ................................................................................................... 78
Top Tips for Telling Jokes.................................................................................................... 79
Part Three: Web Resources ......................................................................................... 80
Motivational Speakers/Humorists .......................................................................................... 81
How to Use Humor in Presentations ................................................................................ 81
Pick-Up Lines ....................................................................................................................... 82
A Collection of Favorite Quotes and One-liners ..................................................................... 83
The Be Funny Guide to Great Writing ................................................................................... 94

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 Introduction
A woman gets on a bus with her baby.
The bus driver says: ‘Geez, that's the ugliest baby I've ever seen.’
The woman stomps to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming.
She says to a man next to her: ‘That driver just insulted me!’
The man replies: ‘You march right up there and tell him off – go ahead, I'll hold your monkey
for you.’

Can you imagine being able to put a smile on someone’s face? That’s the power of humor and the
goal of this course: Be Funny. Finding and developing your own style of humor will allow you to:

? feel more confident socially, either at work or play;

? express yourself more easily and honestly;
? defuse potentially difficult social situations;
? release your hidden potential.

Did you know that one of the most admired personality traits is the ability to use humor? Women like
men to be funny. Men admire other men for their quick wit.

The truth is that life goes better with a laugh. When we generate good humor, we feel better about
ourselves and others.

Be Funny offers you step-by-step guidelines to develop your own unique style of humor. In this
course you will learn:

? How to make up your own jokes. Don’t use stale lines well past their sell-by date! Generate
your own original material.

? How to deliver humor for maximum effect. How to use comedy timing coupled with easy-to-
learn actor’s techniques (such as voice and body control) to guarantee an appreciative
audience.

? How to quicken your wits. Our exercises will develop and train your mind for speed and
spontaneity helping you respond more quickly to situations.

? How to use special language devices to heighten your humor. Put more ‘punch’ in your
comedy tool kit; add flair and finesse to your delivery; learn how to give your jokes variety
and ‘audience appeal.’

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And that’s just the beginning. Be Funny will also teach you:

? Exactly what the mechanics of humor are and the secrets behind what makes something
funny.

? How to recognize and understand different types of humor.

? When and where to use humor. Discover how to read your audience accurately. Find out
how to use humor in presentations or your workplace.

? How to control and master your fears, enabling you to use humor with ease and confidence.

? How to use humor as part of the healing process. It is a proven fact that good humor makes
good medicine.

In addition to step-by-step guidelines you’ll find a treasure trove of resources to inspire you. Learning
how to be funny is easy with:

? Hundreds of carefully selected, witty quotes and one-liners.

? Links to websites providing jokes

? Advice on how to use humor in presentations or the workplace

? Information on the health benefits of humor

? Names of motivational speakers and humorists available for keynote speeches or

workshops

? Examples of improvisational exercises for comedy

? Lists of comedy companies.

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How Be Funny is Organized

The course is in three parts:

? Part One contains the basics. In this section you’ll find the fundamental ‘funny recipe’ with
all the ingredients you need to make up your own jokes and find suitable material. There are
also plenty of examples and exercises to help you develop and successfully deliver your
jokes to any audience.

? Part Two contains information to enrich your understanding, the things you need to know to
add spice and kick to your jokes. Here you’ll find examples and exercises that will embellish
what you learned in Part One.

? Part Three contains the treasure trove of resources for you to explore, with links to websites
containing additional material and guidance on building your repertoire. You’ll also find a
collection of quotes and one-liners ready to help you get your comedy skills going as soon
as possible.

How to Use Be Funny

Read the whole text to gain an overview of the material covered. This will help in two ways:

1. You’ll know where you’re going, allowing you to pace your learning and set goals more
easily.

2. It will help determine your starting point. If you are already familiar with some of the
material, you can simply read through to refresh your memory before moving on to the less
familiar information.

Where there are guidelines, the subsequent exercises have been specially prepared to take you
through a sequence of steps. Each one builds on the step before it. Please don’t be tempted to skip
through quickly. Take your time and attempt each exercise before proceeding to the next. That way
you’ll know which exercises you are already capable of doing and which ones need practice. Take all
the time you need. Consolidate before moving on!

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 Part One: How to Be Funny
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Groucho Marx

So you’ve decided you want to learn to be funny, to put yourself among those people that make
other people laugh. The great news is that you are entitled to join them and this course is your entry
ticket! All you need now is the willingness to learn and the patience to practice. Your humor is
waiting. Are you ready?

The exercises and information found in this course will not necessarily turn you into a gag-a-second
stand-up comedian. But they are guaranteed to put you in touch with and help you develop your
unique style of humor. You are not going to copy anybody else. You may use other people’s
experiences, their knowledge, and their expertise but you are going to integrate it to create your own
original material. The message is simple: you are learning to find and flex your own particular ‘funny
muscles’.

The Nature and Brief History of Humor

Everything is fodder for fun, according to comedy experts. Nothing is too sacred that it can’t be made
fun of. The very things in your life that make you cry, cause you to despair, or fill you with rage also
have the potential to make you laugh. That might seem absurd on one level, but the concept has
been with us now for thousands of years. The very history of Western theatre is built on it.

As long ago as 600 BC the ancient Greeks held Drama Festivals in honor of Dionysus, a God of
multiple influences. Known also by his Roman name, Bacchus, Dionysus was worshipped as the god
of wine, agriculture, and fertility in nature, and also as the patron saint of the stage. In this guise his
worship promised divine ecstasy through spiritual or physical intoxication, as well as the possibility
of initiation into secret rites. Believers were transported from their daily reality into purifying and
illuminating bliss by witnessing plays - tragedies and comedies alike.

The guiding principle behind the festivals was to present the tragedies first. The audiences would
‘live’ through the content, identifying with it so completely that a healing catharsis would occur in
their own lives. The comedies would then take the material of the tragedies and turn it into humor.
Now the audiences were laughing at that which had made them cry earlier. In the comedies no
subject was spared. Politics, sexuality, marriage, and stupidity of all forms were fair game. Their
treatment ranged from obscene buffoonery to sophisticated quick-fire witticisms.

Those influences are alive and well today. The joker (also known as the clown, jester, or fool) is just
as important now as he was centuries ago. In English history the joker was a key figure at court. His
role was to entertain, to make the courtiers and their monarch laugh. As well as providing humor, he
had more leeway in terms of subject matter than anybody else. Since he was exempt on account of
being a fool, he could comment on matters ordinary members of court wouldn’t dare mention for
fear of losing either favor or their heads.

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It was a brilliant system ensuring the monarch got to hear controversial or topical things he otherwise
wouldn’t. Only an idiot would be fool enough to comment and because he was the fool he could get
away with it because everybody knew he was an idiot! In developing your own style of humor and
knowing where and when to exercise it, a major part of its effectiveness is recognizing the key
difference between being the clown or wit and behaving like an idiot.

You’ll be encouraged by appreciative audiences to play the fool, but condemned if you play it
without discrimination. The person who falls into the trap of becoming the stereotypical ‘office clown’
is seldom taken seriously. He does not earn respect, raises in pay or promotion. Instead he is often
dismissed as the sad case that others try to avoid. On the other hand, the person who uses humor to
lighten the load or brighten up the day is often admired and respected.

The Two Underlying Rules of Comedy

So let’s begin to help you develop your own style of humor with the basics. There are TWO rules
underpinning original comedy:

? Comedy is Truth
? Comedy is Unexpected

Comedy only works when both rules are applied in the order given. Truth or believability MUST come
before the unexpected event which lends humor to the situation. The truth sets up the joke, and the
unexpected twist delivers the punch line.

Now let’s explore these rules in more detail.

Comedy is Truth

A foal and his mummy are soon parted.

In your mind summon up a comic genius you admire. What is the source of their raw material?
Where did their humor have its roots before they worked their own particular brand of magic on it?

The answer is - their experience. They have taken their view of the world, the things that happened
and are happening to them in their everyday lives, as the basis for their humor.

They don’t rely on a bunch of ready-made gags from a book. They haven’t memorized a zillion clever
punch lines for future use. Instead they use the material they know best - their own. They apply their
skills to subject matter largely drawn from their own lives. Obviously they change, alter, add, and
exaggerate in whatever way they need to. But the basic underlying truth in their humor comes from
their own experience.

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The common denominator uniting all comedy is the element of truth. Whether your audience is a
group of friends, colleagues, one special person or a whole stadium, it has to believe what you are
doing or saying has validity.

However you treat it, your material must resonate as true or believable. The particular ‘twist’ you give
to this truth is what determines whether or not it is funny. For example, look at this quote from Bob
Hope:

The rich aren’t like us – they pay less tax.

Here you can see how he identifies with the audience, most of which we can assume is composed of
ordinary members of the public and therefore not rich, by simply telling the truth: the rich aren’t like
us. Then he turns it into a joke by adding the tag at the end, which is funny in an ironic sense, and
also probably true!

Comedy is Unexpected

Ninety percent of my money I spend on women and whiskey. The rest I just waste.
Tig McGraw

Truth or believability sets the scene for comedy to occur, but to ignite the comic potential something
unexpected must happen. If we analyze a joke, a great one-liner, an amusing story, a skit or an
entirely unscripted spontaneously funny event, the common thread that makes them funny is the
element of the ‘unexpected’.

In other words, given the set of circumstances presented we expect one thing to happen, but an
entirely different thing occurs. The jolt or shock experienced by the sudden shift of reality or meaning
makes the unexpected outcome funny.

In the joke by Bob Hope mentioned above (“The rich aren’t like us…”) you might expect the second
half of the line to read ‘they can afford everything.’ But not only is this not very funny, it’s not
unexpected.

Here is a simple visual example of the type that is the backbone of slapstick comedy:

A man reads a newspaper while walking along the footpath. He’s been doing this for some
time and expects to go on doing it, but he comes to an exciting article and no longer takes
any notice of where he is going. He walks straight into a lamp post and tumbles over, much to
the amusement of others using the footpath.

The comedy is in the eyes of the observers, seeing the folly in reading while walking, and the
unexpected experience of being knocked down.

Some comedians go one step further, believing comedy must have an unexpected outcome AND
always move in a negative direction…downhill. They believe it must always have a ‘butt’ to kick,
something to push against or deviate from to create the possibility of humor.

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In the example above, the negative direction or consequence comes in the form of being knocked
over by the lamp post. We, the observer, may have found it funny but it was ‘negative’ for the reader
of the newspaper: the humor came at his expense. Now let’s analyze an example of verbal humor.

My father taught me how to swim the hard way - he threw me out into the middle of a lake.
Learning to swim was easy: the hard part was getting out of the burlap bag!

The scene is set in the opening line. The speaker recalls how he learned to swim and how tough it
was. We believe him as he tells us he got thrown out into the middle of the lake. This is expected. It
makes sense given what we’ve already been told.

The unexpected shift making it funny comes in the last phrase: ‘the hard part was getting out of the
burlap bag!’ Suddenly we have a completely different picture in our imagination from the one we
started with. The father has gone from being someone who raises his children with a firm hand, to a
would-be murderer! Like the first example, it too is negative. The joke is at the expense of the teller.

So there you have it! Humor is built on applying these two rules in the correct order. The first rule sets
up the scene as true or believable. The audience expects the scene or story line to unfold in a
manner consistent with its beginning. The second rule introduces the unexpected. It takes the scene
and shifts it into a new and surprising reality.

Using the Rules to Make Up Your Own Jokes

The simplest way to achieve this is with the comedian’s bread and butter, the one-liner. Here you
have a chance to quickly build a rapport with your audience and get those laughs started. As long as
it sticks to the rules, truth followed by the unexpected, you’re sure to be on to a winner:

Marriage is more than a word: it’s a sentence.

A great way to make up your own one-liners is to take a well-known phrase or saying and alter it. We
did that very thing with the phrase ‘a fool and his money are soon parted’ at the beginning of this
chapter, turning it into ‘a foal and his mummy are soon parted’. Most of these sayings already have
an element of truth in them, making your job a little bit easier. All you have to do is find a way to
change the saying slightly so that it is funny and unexpected.

There are a number of ways you can do this, the simplest probably being to add bits on the end of
the saying to extend it and give it a new and original twist:

There is no I in ‘team’, but there are four in ‘platitude-quoting idiot’.

Two can live as cheaply as one – for half as long.

It’s not who you know, it’s whom you know.

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Here we’ve taken familiar sayings and extended them to make new, funnier sayings. Another method
you can try is the ‘fool and his money’ trick, keeping the saying more or less intact but altering the
words or letters to make something new:

Those that forget the pasta are doomed to reheat it.

A good pun is its own reword.

Clones are people two.

We are all prawns in the game of life.

One-liners also give you an easy way to test out your humor. They can be used in almost any
situation and because they’re so short, you’ll know immediately if you achieved the result you were
after. Just don’t be tempted to try them out on your boss on a Monday morning.

The next critical step in learning to be funny is being able to think funny. This is the foundation of the
second rule.

Thinking funny is what separates comedians or humorists from everybody else. Their minds are ever
alert for the unexpected, the sudden shift from an accepted truth to something new and surprising.
The ability to think funny is what we’re going to focus on next.

Learning to Think ‘Funny’

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

Hector Berlioz

At the heart of humor lies the capacity to view life from more than one perspective. That can mean
literally turning things upside down, so that normality as we know it no longer exists.

Do you remember watching children as they learned to balance or walk? Often you’ll see them bend
over and peer through their legs or hang upside down. They are busy experimenting with how the
world looks and it is still fluid in their minds. The ‘rightness’ of seeing things in only one way has yet
to encase them. To discover and develop your own style of humor you need to find that flexible way
of looking at things once more.

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Exercises to Generate Humor

The following exercises introduce two important ingredients that, when combined, will produce
‘maximum funniness’. These are:

? Content, or what you say when you’re being funny.

? Delivery, or how you speak when you’re being funny.

Read the exercises through first to get a general feeling about what you’re going to do. For maximum
benefit, work on one area or skill at a time. Concentrate on getting to the point where you feel you
understand and are comfortable with it before moving on. You’ll find more information to broaden or
enhance your knowledge in Part Two and Part Three.

Keep a notebook for jotting down observations made during the day, snippets of overheard
conversation, references to handy books, websites, television shows or films. It is a fact that we tend
to think of brilliantly funny lines only after we need them most. Carrying a notebook in your pocket
increases the likelihood of recording these lines for future use.

Getting Your Own Content For Jokes

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
Albert Einstein

We’ve already had a look at one way to get good content for jokes; that is, adapting well-known
sayings. Here are a few more suggestions for other ways to successfully develop your own supply of
one-liners.

Dictionary Diving

Whenever you’re stuck for an idea, get out your dictionary. There are plenty of words in there that will
help inspire you and spark off some ideas. Just select a word and look up its meaning, even if you
already know it. Then use that meaning to create your own twist and come up with a new one-liner all
your own.

For example, suppose you looked up the word ‘amnesia’. Depending on the dictionary, you’ll get a
definition something like: ‘loss or impairment of memory’. So amnesia means you can’t remember.
Use that information to make up your joke:

I had amnesia once – maybe twice.

As long as I can remember, I’ve had amnesia.

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Or how about the word ‘bigamy’? The dictionary tells us that bigamy means being married to more
than one person at the same time; a criminal offence. Surely there’s plenty of ammunition here to
make up some good gags. Let’s try one:

Bigamy: one wife too many. Monogamy: same thing.

Cremation is defined in the dictionary as ‘the act or process of burning the dead.’ Depending on your
sensibilities, there are bound to be a few twists and turns you can add to make a decent one-liner
out of this.

For example, not many people think about it, but funerals cost money, even cremation. But what of
the person being cremated was in a horrible accident that caused his or her death?

Should crematoriums give discounts for burn victims?

So you can see how it works. You should never run out of material for your jokes considering the size
of most dictionaries these days.

Or if you’re computer savvy, you could simply type words into your search engine and see what
comes up. Either way you’ll have plenty of material to base your gags on.

Working With Cliché

Another tremendous source of material can be found in the world of cliché, those phrases everybody
uses to sum up often complicated circumstances in just a few words. Examples could include:

Never go to sleep on an argument

Don’t let the cat out of the bag

A picture’s worth a thousand words

Hard work never killed anyone

You get the idea. There are literally hundreds of these, and again there are books full of them in
libraries and bookstores, not to mention what you can find on the internet. Now all you have to do is
take the cliché and give it a twist. For example:

A picture’s worth a thousand words, but it uses up a thousand times the memory.

Hard work never killed anyone – but why risk it?

Letting the cat out of the bag is a lot easier than putting it back in.

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You can do the same thing with famous quotations, lines from Shakespeare or anything that
qualifies as a common and well-known phrase that most people will be familiar with.

2B or not 2B: I can never decide which pencil to buy.

It’s also possible to take your one-liner and turn it into a longer joke, saving the punch-line until the
end.

Here’s an example of what we mean. Let’s take the saying ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’.
There are plenty of options for humorous situations in this phrase. Let’s try one out.

A woman put her groceries on the conveyor belt in her local shop. The male cashier noticed
one can of soup, a frozen meal for one, one banana, the smallest jar of coffee and a tiny
bag of sugar. ‘You must be single,’ he said to the woman. ‘What makes you think that?’ she
replied. ‘Because you’re ugly.’

Even this short story type of joke has to follow the rules. The first part of the joke sets it up in the real
world, where truth or believability can be found. Then the punch-line delivers the surprise element,
the unexpected, the twist that makes the whole thing funny.

Sometimes the twist will be subtle, sometimes it might seem cruel, and at other times it will involve
little more than relating one idea to another completely different idea. But where do you find these
ideas in the first place?

Brainstorming

Better to have loved and lost a short person than never to have loved a tall.
David Chamble

A brainstorm is a simple but effective means of pulling together large numbers of loosely associated
ideas or things around a central topic or starting point. It is a technique widely used to foster
creativity and an excellent way to generate your own jokes and humorous stories. Once you get your
creative juices flowing, brainstorming will likely yield a few nifty one-liners as well.

You can start with any idea at all, but brainstorming works best when the topic you choose is
something you feel strongly about. As a starting point, why not use something that has made you
really angry, excited, depressed, or frustrated? Good strong emotions like these usually yield plenty
of ideas. Anything that pops into your head should get put down on paper immediately. The idea is
to exhaust all the possibilities, no matter how far-fetched they seem.

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To begin, take a sheet of paper and write a topic or starting point in large print in the center of the
sheet. Examples of starting points you might like to consider could include:

? Schools
? Teachers
? Gardens
? Parents
? Food
? Ghosts
? Fears
? Childhood
? Sports
? Public Transport
? Politicians

From the list above let’s choose ‘Teachers’.

No matter who you are, you will have had several different teachers throughout your life. That means
that everyone can relate to this topic in one way or another. That gives your joke, story or one-liner its
first essential criteria: believability.

Your next task is to write down absolutely everything you can think of that is associated with
teachers. DO NOT SELF- EDIT: there are no wrong answers. Everything you can think of can be used
to comic effect at some time, if not right away then perhaps at some point in the future. Just let the
ideas pour out of your brain and keep the sheet for future reference.

Your brainstorm might go something like this:

TEACHERS …loud, bossy, authoritarian, weedy, chalk covered, mousy, screeching, caring,
kind, rushed, teach because they can’t do what they teach, nerds, drive old cars, tell
weak jokes, carry books, wear glasses, old, forget your name, have favorites, set
homework, talk too much, unfashionably dressed, lose control of classes…

Each one of these could also be expanded to generate more loosely connected ideas, and on
another sheet of paper you might write:

LOUD…voices, yelling, laughter, squeals, bell ringing, colors of clothes, clashing colors, back
firing car, arguments, discussions, silences…

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Or taking the word ‘homework’ from the original idea, you might come up with:

HOMEWORK…pain, hard, waste of time, busy work designed to keep you occupied or to fool
you into thinking you are achieving something, excuse activator (so you have creative
explanations as to why you didn’t do it), late night activity, put off, procrastinate, copy
someone else’s, last minute, anxiety producing, rows with parents, rows with teacher,
bad grades, goody-goody, phone call (ring friends to make sure you’ve got the
assignment straight), leave behind, lose, get ‘sick’ when due…

Or the words ‘talk too much’ might generate:

TALK TOO MUCH…get stuck in a groove, get stuck on repeat, drown in words, more words than
sense, all talk and no action, a dictionary, hot air, gas bag, verbal diarrhea, loose mouth,
big gob, word attack, talk up a storm, fill a library, run off at the mouth, river of words…

And each one of these could be expanded as well. When you run out of ideas on one branch of your
starting point, you simply pick up on another. On the other hand, if you start with one topic and find
you can’t think of anything to write, simply stop and choose another subject.

Once you’re satisfied you’ve exhausted the topic or gone as far as you wish to go, the fun really
begins.

Take time to look over your lists for unlikely or surprising combinations. It’s these you will extract for
further work. They’re going to be the basis of your new and witty observations.

To illustrate the process let’s take two examples from the ideas above:

? Teachers are often unfashionably dressed

? Teachers often talk too much

Now we try to put them together. In this segment of the operation you ‘play’, arranging the ideas in as
many patterns as you can until you find ones you like. You are looking for patterns that link the two
concepts together in an interesting and witty way. Of course you can crop the original, discard pieces
that don’t fit and if you want, put more ideas in.

Your first attempts may be clumsy, may not make much sense or perhaps may not be funny at all.
Keep going. Trust yourself. Once you ‘get it’ you’ll find your brain will have a zillion new thoughts all
rushing to get out. What you finally end up with may be far away from the original starting point, but
that doesn’t matter. What matters is the process and learning to view your material in new and
surprising ways.

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Here’s an example showing one way these two concepts - ‘Teachers are often unfashionably
dressed’ and ‘Teachers often talk too much’ – may be linked for comedic effect.

We figured out why our teacher wore spectacularly old-fashioned clothes to school. It took
a while…about five minutes into the lesson. She talked too much… way too much. Some
people talk up a storm but Miss Jones could talk up an entire climatic system, from
summer breeze to cyclone season in sixty seconds.

She talked herself sick. She had verbal diarrhea on speed. It was running from the mouth,
sprinting and spilling in all directions…frothing down her front, cascading in waves from her
skirt to the floor. It’s just as well she wore old clothes: good ones would have been ruined in
no time.

That’s it! Now let’s analyze it so you can see how and why it works as a humorous story:

? It’s written as a personal account. The use of ‘we’ and ‘our’ makes it seem as though the
writer had actually been in the classroom witnessing the teacher talking too much. A
personalized story appears more real to the listener or reader. It is believable or true. (Rule 1
– Comedy is Truth)

? The scene is set in the opening line. We know where we are (classroom). We know who is
talking (student) and we know who the story is about, (our teacher who wore unfashionable
clothes). This is called the set-up in comedy terms. Most jokes begin with one. The set-up
uses easily recognizable settings and characters. Since most listeners will know what you’re
talking about you do not have to spend a great deal of time filling in the details. Example:
There was a man who walked into a bar… (This also fits Rule 1 – Comedy is Truth)

? The story is based around two main ideas. Any more and it becomes too complex to deal
with inside the joke or humorous story format. The two ideas are: our teacher who talks too
much AND wears unfashionable clothes. This in itself is not funny but becomes so once you
make the links and sprinkle in a liberal dose of other ‘humor tricks’.

? The principal link between the main ideas is our teacher wore old clothes because she
ruined good ones through talking too much. It only works because of the literal
interpretation of the phrase ‘verbal diarrhea’. Her clothes became covered in it. Note how
the introduction of verbal diarrhea was set-up by the use of the phrase ‘talked herself sick’
in the previous line. The link is between sick and diarrhea. (This fulfills the requirements of
Rule 2 – Comedy is Unexpected.)

? Rule 2 is applied in another way by putting unexpected descriptors together. Example:

‘spectacularly old-fashioned’. ‘Spectacular’ is not usually a word associated with something
out-of-date. It heightens the interest of the listener through its exaggeration.

? Contradiction in terms. Example: ‘It took a while…about five minutes…’ The phrase ‘a while’
generally implies a much longer period of time than five minutes. Again it serves to heighten
the interest for the listener and is yet another interpretation of Rule 2.

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 ? Use of hyperbolic exaggeration combined with colloquialism (a common well known
saying). Example: ‘Some people talk up a storm but Miss Jones could talk up an entire
climatic system, from summer breeze to cyclone season in sixty seconds.’ Hyperbole
(pronounced hi-purr-bul-ee) means to exaggerate in an extreme way. It is a common device
used by advertisers to say something is not merely the best, but the best in the world. In this
story examples of hyperbole are: ‘could talk up an entire climatic system in sixty seconds.’
Both the time and what she did within it are exaggerated.

? Use of metaphors given a literal interpretation. The primary example is verbal diarrhea,
already discussed above. A secondary example is an extension of verbal diarrhea. She had
verbal diarrhea on speed. Speed can be interpreted in two ways. One of those is literal, as in
fast. The other is as a colloquialism for a recreational drug whose side effects include doing
things speedily. The words used in the story pick up the fast connotation to introduce
another commonly used saying or metaphor: running at the mouth. To run at the mouth and
to have verbal diarrhea both mean to talk too much. The link used to tie these together is run
which goes with speed which yields to sprint. (All of this is further evidence of Rule 2 at
work.)

? Use of action words (verbs) to describe exactly what Miss Jones’ ‘words’ did. These add
color, heightening interest and emotion for the listener. Examples: running, sprinting,
frothing, cascading.

? Use of sound devices, again to add interest for the listener. Examples: Alliteration (repetition
of the same sound at the beginning of a word, which may be one word after another or
words in close proximity). For example, cyclone season, sixty seconds, sprinting, spilling,
frothing, front.

Of course, once you get to this stage you’ve got what we’d call the beginnings of a good joke. It may
be too long, or you might find an audience doesn’t respond to certain phrases as well as you’d
hoped they would. That’s where the art of rehearsal comes in. You can find out more about this later
in the course.

The more brainstorming you try the easier it will become. Essentially all you are doing is rearranging
what you already know into new forms and allowing yourself the freedom to play with it. You’ll find
out more about the humor tricks - exaggeration, hyperbole and sound devices - in Part Two, listed
under ‘Recognizing Types of Humor’.

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Utilizing the Different Meanings of Words

It’s not the men in my life; it’s the life in my men.

Mae West

The English language is famous for its layers of meaning, often achieved through one single word
alone. This exercise will help you develop a flexible approach to language and become aware of
those multiple possibilities. What’s more, you can do it anywhere: in the car, the elevator, walking
along the street, in the privacy of your head or on a piece of paper. The more you practice the quicker
you’ll become, and the quicker you are the faster you can reel off those witty remarks or stunning
one-liners!

It also makes a great game to play with a partner. One of you nominates the word to be ‘played with’
and the other has to give as many different usages (with examples) as quickly as possible. You can
add excitement by giving yourselves a time limit, say one minute. The winner is the person who
comes up with the largest number of legitimate interpretations inside the time frame.

Your task is to think of as many differing meanings as possible for any given word. Start with easy
words, as these will help build your confidence. You can progress to more difficult words as you
improve. Let’s take the word ‘light’ as an example of a good starting point.

Light may mean absence of darkness as in: ‘It’s light outside’, or: ‘This is a light room.’ Light in this
context also refers to a sliding scale of degree of color. The more intense or deeper the color, the
‘darker’ it is. Colors of lesser intensity are called light. For example at the dark end of the scale is
navy blue and at the light end is egg-shell blue.

Light may also mean the opposite of heavy when referring to the weight of things. A common
example of usage in this context is ‘It was as light as a feather.’ Or in boxing, fighters in the lower
weight divisions are called ‘lightweights’.

Light is used colloquially too. It can refer to the absence of brain cells or thinking power. To call
someone a ‘lightweight’ is to infer they do not have the capacity to think or use common sense.
Another form meaning a similar thing is ‘a bit light in the head.’ Or ‘light up top’. Yet another
variation is, ‘lights on, no one home’. This means even though the person has their brain switched on
there is no evidence of thinking taking place. To take something ‘lightly’ means not to take it
seriously, yet to have a ‘light touch’ is to be delicate or deft. But ‘light-fingered’ implies the person is
a thief!

Food marketing companies use the word ‘light’ to describe foods associated with healthy eating or
weight loss. There are ‘light’ oils, yogurts etc., in which some of the fat content has been reduced or
replaced with a substitute. We are supposed to believe when we buy and consume these products
that we are helping ourselves become leaner.

Yet another usage is as a verb. Example: ‘I’ll light the candles.’ Or ‘I’ll light the fire.’ In both instances
light means to set alight, to put a flaming match to the candles or to the kindling in the fireplace to
start them burning.

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Once you are conscious of the multiple meanings you can play with the word ‘light’ to produce your
own jokes. The humor comes from replacing the expected meaning with another. Here are a few
examples using the word light as the stimulus:

Her eyes lit up. Lucky she didn’t burn her eyebrows.

If these are light foods, I’d sure hate to eat heavy ones.

I have to get a replacement bulb for my light touch.

She was more than the light of his life. She was an inferno.

The lights are on but there’s nobody home.

Utilizing Literal Interpretations of Everyday Expressions

In the same way we can make humor out of sayings that are part of our everyday language, sayings
we’ve become so used to hearing that we understand their implied meaning immediately. But
instead of interpreting them metaphorically as intended we go for the literal meaning (another
application of Rule 2 – Comedy is Unexpected). Practice taking common sayings and reinterpreting
them. Listen and you’ll hear numerous examples in everyday conversations among the people
around you.

In the examples below the expression is italicized, followed immediately by the literal interpretation.

He was talking complete rubbish. In ten minutes several old car tires, a couple of chipped
plates and an empty cardboard box fell out of his mouth.

He was led by the nose and very painful it was too.

We went out to paint the town red but the shop was out of it.

She is so man hungry she eats them for breakfast.

It’s raining cats and dogs. Thank goodness it’s not sheep and cows - they’d make a mess of
my new roof.

They came to a fork in the road. Later they found a knife in the gutter and a spoon under a
hedge.

Love is blind - which explains all the fumbling in the dark.

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More Meaningful Nonsense – Innuendo and Double Entendre

Have you got a large one?’ ‘I've had no complaints so far!

Sid James to Barbara Windsor in Carry On Abroad

One of the most frequently used humor devices is the innuendo or double entendre, which actively
encourages us to find a double (usually naughty) meaning in innocent sounding words. Some of us
don’t have to work too hard to get it. (Even that last sentence was one!) Once you’re thinking along
those lines putting the brakes on becomes the problem, rather than starting the engine.

Double entendre means ‘double meaning’, and usually refers to a bawdy or indelicate connotation.
An accidental double entendre is often termed a ‘Freudian slip’ or a ‘slip of the tongue’, after
Sigmund Freud’s suggestion that people reveal their inner thoughts through verbal ‘mistakes’.
Whether that is true or not doesn’t concern us, because we want to intentionally create our own
double entendre on purpose.

Simple forms of double entendre don’t require practice, but the less obvious or direct form takes a
little bit more thinking through. Mae West’s famous ‘Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just
pleased to see me?’ is a classic example. The fundamental building blocks could include any words
that readily provide suggestive connotations, such as:

? Tool
? Hump
? Hard
? Soft
? Come
? Jerk
? Toss
? Toy

… and the little word ‘it’ which has been made to work overtime. ‘It’ in this instance refers to the
sexual act. Hence we get numerous lines like: ‘Comedians do it standing up.’ Or ‘Conservationists do
it in the park.’

The delivery of double entendre is particularly important. The speaker must appear innocent or
ignorant of the double meaning, which is seemingly left to the listener to discover. The most frequent
use of double entendre is with reference to sex and the sexual act, also known as sexual innuendo:

What’s better than roses round your piano? Tulips round your organ.

A quarreling couple went to stay at a nudist camp to air their differences.

How long after you start dating is it acceptable to take a girl up the aisle?

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A word of caution: Not everybody finds this kind of humor funny. Pick your time and your audience
before letting loose. Some people may be deeply offended by sexual humor. Getting it wrong could
ruin an otherwise successful show, or even result in a lack of self-confidence. Study your audience
carefully and proceed when you’re sure it’s safe to do so.

You’ll find further information and references concerning innuendo and the double entendre in Part
Two under ‘Recognizing Types of Humor’.

Puns and Limericks

The best comics don’t rely on one type of joke to relay their material. They might start with a couple of
one-liners, tell a short story or two, and end with a poem or limerick. Variety really is the spice of life,
and the more varied your material is the easier it will be for you to maintain the interest of your
audience.

While puns might make some people groan, nevertheless they usually smile while they’re doing it.
And a smile is halfway on the road to a laugh. Again, you might like to vary your routine by dropping
the occasional pun or play on words in between longer jokes. For example:

Cole’s Law: thinly sliced cabbage.

Quantum mechanics: the dreams stuff is made of.

A Hangover: the wrath of grapes.

Puns are explored in further detail in Part Two, ‘Recognizing Types of Humor’.

Another way to get some laughs is through the use of limericks. Using rhyme may be considered
somewhat old fashioned, but again the objective is to make people laugh. If it works and you’re
comfortable using it, then what’s to stop you?

Just as with everything else, don’t base your entire routine around a few dozen limericks. After one or
two, the audience will want something new and will be baying for your blood if you don’t give it to
them. The best advice we can offer you is to use them sparingly, when the audience least expects it.

The great thing about limericks is that you can make up your own and they can be as ridiculous as
you like. There aren’t any rules other than the fact that they usually (but not always!) follow the same
pattern of five lines, with the first, second and last having the same rhyme scheme, while the third
and fourth rhyme with each other but not with the rest. Here’s an example of this kind of limerick by
the poet Ogden Nash:

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 There once was a miser named Clarence
Who Simonized* both of his parents;
“The initial expense,”
he remarked, “is immense,
But it saves on the wearance and tearance.”

* Simonized = waxed.

If circumstances dictate, there are also possibilities to use limericks with sexual connotations. We’ll
leave that decision up to you. Sometimes it can be more effective to let the audience THINK there’s
something rude coming, and then to resolve the rhyme in an innocent manner:

There once was a man from Nantucket

Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket (Nan took it).

Of course, if you’re giving a show in front of a group of people that EXPECT a few rude gags, such as a
stag night or a military event, there’s a little bit more scope on the kind of innuendo you can employ:

There was a fair maiden of Exeter,

So pretty that guys craned their necks at her.
One was even so brave
As to take out and wave
The distinguishing mark of his sex at her.

Yet another way to keep the audience’s attention is to make them believe you’re going to say
something naughty when in fact you’re not. You can heighten the tension a little more by pausing,
just for a second, before completing the line in question:

There was a young lady from Bude

Who went for a swim in the … lake
A man in a punt
Stuck an oar in her … ear
And said “You can't swim here, it's private.”

This is also an example of how limericks don’t always have to rhyme to produce humor. Sir Arthur
Sullivan, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, once penned this limerick to be an anti-limerick, without a
single rhyme in sight:

There was a young man of St. Bees

Who was stung in the arm by a wasp
They asked, “Does it hurt?”
He replied, “No it doesn't;
I'm glad that it wasn't a hornet.”

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And of course there are plenty of options for playing with the structure of the limerick and making up
your own silly versions, such as:

There was a young bard from Japan

Whose limericks never would scan.
When asked why this was,
He said “It's because
I always try to get as many words in the last line as I possibly can.”

Or, moving from the sublime to the ridiculous:

A limerick fan from Australia

Regarded his work as a failure:
His verses were fine
Until the fourth line.

Write Your Own Limerick

To make up your own limerick, follow this simple step-by-step guide:

? Take a general idea that you want to turn into a limerick. Let’s say you want to write about a
man who lives to a ripe old age thanks to a few drops of the good stuff.

? Decide where the person comes from. Limericks always tell us where the man or woman in
question lives, as if this information is crucial to make us believe in the joke. For the sake of
argument, let’s use Capri.

? Find as many words as possible that rhyme with the name of the place from which the
person hails. For example: Capri, me, see, sea, tea, three, be, bee, knee, degree, etc. If you
get stuck, try using a rhyming dictionary.

? Now you have the basic building blocks to make up your limerick. You should already know
where the person comes from (There once was a man/woman from Capri) and have ideas
for the rhymes of the second and last lines.

? The next step is to try and come up with the first two lines of your limerick. Once you get this
far, the rest of the ‘story’ will present itself to you. Don’t worry if the first thing you think of
doesn’t work. Be prepared to try out different ways of saying what you want to say. If you
persist, you’ll get a result.

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So let’s take what we’ve discovered so far and apply it. Our first two lines will run as follows (keeping
in mind that we’ve already done all the work!):

There was an old man from Capri

Who lived to one hundred and three;

So far so good. We’ve got our main character, where he lives and the key fact of the story, i.e. that he
lived to a ripe old age. Now we need to experiment with the many possibilities that present
themselves to us, keeping in mind that the last line should rhyme with the first two and that the
‘scene’ should have some sort of resolution.

Naturally we’ve done the work in preparation for this section of the course, and so we can simply give
you the limerick that we’ve created below. You won’t find this limerick written in any other book or on
a limerick-oriented web site, because it’s completely original. And even if you did happen to come
across one that was similar, that’s the nature of the beast. Many limericks are similar to each other,
and that’s what makes them so easy to construct.

There was an old man from Capri

Who lived to one hundred and three;
When asked how he did it
He had to admit it
Was something he put in his tea!

Try it yourself and see how easy it is to come up with completely original one-liners, short story type
jokes and limericks. As long as you stick to the rules, truth followed by the unexpected, your results
will be rewarded!

Delivery – How to Get the Best From Your Speech

I got some new underwear yesterday. (pause) Well, it was new to me.

As well as learning and digesting the ingredients for humor, practicing its delivery is also important.
You might be the funniest person alive but you’ll never get the laughs you deserve if nobody can
understand or hear you.

Learning to use your voice effectively goes hand in hand with learning to be humorous. Your voice is
the vehicle that carries your humor: you need to decide whether you want to ride in a beat-up
battered old bomb of a car or a luxurious limousine!

The following voice work will give you enough basic support to get you well on your way. You can take
your vocal development further if you wish by working with a speech coach or joining a club like
Toastmasters.

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Most people assume the voice and speech mannerisms they use regularly are fixed for life. If their
voice has a high pitched tone and they end their sentences with a rising inflection, as if they’re
constantly asking questions, they accept it as ‘the way they speak’. But like any habit, it can be
changed.

As with styles of humor, our vocal patterns are laid down in childhood. What we hear around us, we
naturally mimic. This is how we develop our accents, speech habits and to some extent the tone or
pitch of our voice. But speech patterns and accents are neither good nor bad: they are what they are,
markers of where we’ve been and who we’ve associated with. Learning how to control and use your
voice effectively gives you the freedom to choose how your voice sounds.

Controlling the Way You Breathe

If you give up smoking, drinking and sex you won’t live longer: it’ll just seem longer.
Clement Freud

The key to voice control is in the way you breathe. Breathing habits determine the pitch, pace and
pausing you use in your daily speech. The amount of air you inhale and how effectively you exhale
that air is what creates either a pleasant, powerful voice or a nasal, grating, strident one. You need to
control both to maximize your voice’s potential.

The tip of the tongue, the teeth, lips, mouth and vocal chords are the articulators. Together they form
shapes determining how your words will sound when you speak. You need good exhalation habits to
enable your articulators to create a rich and pleasant speaking voice.

People are often bemused when you tell them they aren’t breathing properly. They assume that
breathing is a natural and automatic process that requires no conscious effort on their part. If your
only goal is to stay alive, then that’s true. But if you want your voice to be as clear and rich in tone as
possible, then you have to support it with the right amount of air. And the only way you can get more
air into your body is to breathe more efficiently.

Proper Breathing Exercise

Here’s an exercise to help you practice getting more air into your body and using it to your best
advantage. Don’t just read through the steps: practice each one until you feel comfortable with it.

? Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.

? Keep your shoulders still and try NOT to let them rise up.

? Place a hand on your stomach when you breathe in. You should feel the stomach push out
every time you inhale, and deflate again when you exhale.

? When you breathe in, imagine filling your stomach with oxygen. Picture your stomach as a
‘round-ish’ container, and every time you inhale imagine the air filling it up from bottom to
top.

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 ? When you exhale you want the air to flow out of your mouth steadily and smoothly. Imagine
the stomach container releasing the air from top to bottom in a steady movement.

A good speaker controls the ‘in’ breath by inhaling between phrases and the ‘out’ breath by
releasing it smoothly. You can increase your control and lung capacity by counting as high as you
can go on a single ‘out’ breath, or by reciting the whole alphabet. If you use the alphabet your goal is
to have some air left over when you have completed it.

Be aware that stress, nervousness or heightened emotion encourages shallow breathing because
you are tensing your muscles. If you have an important announcement to make or presentation to
give, make sure you spend some time getting your breathing under control before you open your
mouth.

Inflection and Pitch

If I had my life to live over again, I’d live over a saloon.

W.C. Fields

When you listen to someone telling a story you’ll hear them change the pitch of their voice and vary
the stresses to suit their material. This is another element that makes them interesting to listen to.

Pitch is the tone of your voice. When someone speaks in the same tone all the time it’s boring and
we switch off. To keep our listeners’ attention we need to use a range of tones from high to low.

W.C. Fields, whose joke we quoted above, used the pitch of his voice as one of his greatest assets.
Just by hearing his voice and the way he varied the words, you could immediately tell it was him. So
we know that variation of tone can produce some surprising results.

Inflection is the emphasis placed on or within the words to convey different emotions. For example: a
rising inflection – starting in a lower pitch and ending on a higher one – conveys suspense,
uncertainty, surprise and hesitancy. A downward inflection – going from high pitch to low pitch within
a word – indicates certainty, authority and confidence.

To understand what you do with your voice and the ‘color’ or emotional content you convey, listen to
yourself on tape. If you don’t like what you hear, practice reading children’s stories aloud. These give
clear hints as to when to use a scary voice, when to be frightened or when to laugh. Have fun learning
to change quickly from one vocal pattern to another.

Another good exercise to develop your range is to repeat the same sentence in as many ways as you
can, listening for the variations and noting the effect they have. For example, let’s take the sentence
‘I lost my keys’.

Say it quickly: Ilostmykeys.

Say it slowly:
I-I-I l-l-l-l-o-o-o-o-s-s-s-s-s-t-t-t-t-t m-m-m-m-y-y-y k-k-k-e-e-e-e-y-y-y-s-s-s-s.

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Say it softly: i lost my keys

Say it loudly. I LOST MY KEYS!

Put the emphasis on ‘I’, on ‘lost’, on ‘my’, on ‘keys’. Put equal emphasis on all the words.

This is also fun to play with a friend. Give each other an emotion to express while saying the
sentence. The first person nominates the emotion to begin with, says the sentence and then
nominates the emotion for his partner. The sentence bounces back and forth between you. For
example:

? Person A - Angry – I lost my keys. Loving

? Person B – Loving - I lost my keys. Sadly
? Person A - Sadly- I lost my keys. Amused
? Person B – Amused - I lost my keys. Bewildered
? Person A – Bewildered - I lost my keys. And so on …

If you don’t have any friends or if your partner doesn’t have the confidence to do this, you can
pretend to be the other person. Simply stand in front of a mirror and go through your list, starting
each sentence with either A or B so you’ll know which person you’re imitating.

If you’ve ever witnessed one of those ‘angry’ comedians in action, you’ll understand how much
variety and interest you can create in your jokes just by being able to get the most out of your voice.
But your voice is only a part of the story: to deliver your jokes with conviction and authority you also
need to be able to control your own body language.

Using Body Language to Enhance Your Humor

Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
Mark Twain

So far we have focused on breathing and inflection techniques. Now we need to turn our attention to
exactly what it is you do with your face and your body while you are being funny.

Think for a moment about how you ‘read’ someone to understand what they mean, or the intention
behind their words. What they actually say, the words themselves, only makes up a small part of the
communication. The rest comes from the way they use their body and, more specifically, what they
do with their face. This is called ‘body language’.

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You’ve been reading body language all your life. Since you were little you learned what faces looked
like when they were angry, sad, worried or happy. You needed this skill for your survival. It let you
know when your mother or father were pleased with you, liked what you were doing, or were upset
and about to explode!

In learning to use humor effectively, the skill to not only ‘read’ body language but to reproduce it
accurately is of great benefit. It enhances your stories or jokes immensely. If you are describing an
exciting event, reflecting this excitement in the way you move or in your face adds drama to your tale.
Your audience will enjoy the story more.

So how do you do this? It’s simple: take what you already know and make it more obvious,
exaggerating movements and expressions to make your point as clear as possible. Work at
reproducing variations of body language on demand and you will soon build an extensive repertoire
to call on. The following exercise shows you how.

Body Language Practice

? All you need is some privacy and a mirror. To start with select a core emotional state such as
sad, happy, angry or loving.

? Now stand in front of the mirror and consciously assume the emotion you have chosen. To
help you get into the mood, recall situations in which you have felt this emotion strongly

? Start by setting the scene and vividly recall as much as you can about it. The more detail you
add about what you saw, felt, touched, tasted or heard, the better. This will help you to see it
again in the mirror, reflected on your face and in the rest of your body.

? When you feel you have matched the emotion as accurately as you can, look carefully and
note all the physical characteristics of the state.

It may feel forced and odd at the beginning, but persevere. Once you have practiced with one state
choose another. Notice how and where different emotions register their presence. Notice what
happens to your breathing, your hands and your stance in each state. Are your shoulders up or
down? Is your stomach relaxed or knotted? Are your legs apart and firmly planted on the ground or
twisted round each other? Is your head high or held on one side? What are your eyes doing? Are
your lips screwed up or relaxed? Is your throat tight?

Once you feel comfortable doing the exercise, add these variations to extend it:

? Go rapidly from one emotional state to another and back again (sad-happy-sad or angry-
loving-angry). Notice the shifts and make sure each is definite.

? Add some dialogue. Try the same sentence in several emotional states. Listen and watch
carefully for the changes that occur.

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 ? Play ‘statues’ with each state. Pretend you are sculpting and want the best representation
possible so people will instantly recognize it.

? Walk the state and if possible observe your movements at the same time. Vary this by
swapping one state for another while still moving.

? Read a children’s story while looking in the mirror. Check that your face and general body
language matches what you are reading. If one of the characters is happy, jealous, angry,
etc., you should be seeing as well as hearing that.

? Practice other states: anxiety, jealousy, greed, excitement, confidence, pride, etc. noting
where and how they alter the face and body.

? Practice mimicking. Start with people you know whose speech and gestures are easy to
copy. Look in the mirror and listening carefully, trying one or two sentences. Repeat until you
are satisfied you can hear and see them. (If speech and gesture are too difficult to begin
with, start with gesture. Copy the body language first and then add the voice.)

Being able to readily assume the characteristics of any emotional state gives you another powerful
means of communication. It not only adds to your talents as a comedian or humorist but improves
your social skills as well.

One of the secrets behind people who mix and mingle easily is their ability to read, interpret and
respond to body language. They may not be conscious of what they’re doing but they’re doing it all
the same. By picking up on all the physical cues, they know how to greet people and what to say to
everybody around them.

There are huge cultural differences in body language, such as the amount of personal space
required or in making eye contact with strangers or members of the opposite sex. Never assume that
what is normal in one culture will transfer to another. Transgressions can lead to unexpected
outcomes.

Comedic Timing

A camel is a horse designed by a committee.

You may have the funniest material in the world, but it will fail if you do not understand timing. The
greatest comedians know it intimately: their success is built on it. So what is it?

There are two rules for success. Number one: don’t give away all your secrets.

Quite simply, timing is the spatial dance between words and action. It’s knowing when to pause and
how long for, when to speed up, when to slow down. It means understanding the perfect rhythm of
delivery.

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It also means knowing your material inside out. Don’t try to play for a laugh on every word. Work out
what is important and go for that. If the joke is physical rather than verbally based, the same applies.
To practice verbal timing:

Play with your delivery. Try as many variations of pace, pitch, and pause as you can think of.

Listen to yourself. Hear what you really sound like as opposed to what you think you sound like.
A tape or other recording device is useful if you can’t trust your ears.

Try your material out on a friend or colleague. Make sure it’s someone you trust and that will
give you an honest opinion.

Practice, practice, practice!

To practice physical timing, simply follow a similar process, this time watching yourself in a mirror.
Timing practice will help you identify anything superfluous in either your words or your movement.
Cut them out. Remember comedy needs clarity for an audience to ‘catch on.’ Simplicity is the key.

For hints on timing watch the comedy greats. Get some of the shows you really love and look at them
closely. In the past you will have enjoyed them as a member of the audience, but this time you will
be watching to identify just how they do what they do. Listen for the rhythms of delivery. Hear them
vary pace, pitch and pause. And then return to your own material inspired!

How to Successfully Memorize and Tell Jokes

I’m not afraid of dying: I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
Paraphrase of Woody Allen

We’ve all had the experience of being around when someone announces they have a wonderful new
joke to tell. ‘It’s so funny,’ they say, ‘It’ll crack you up.’ Then they start to tell the story.

‘There was this Irishman, and a Scotsman and an Englishman and they are all in the bar drinking. It’s
late and the Irishman says… No wait, I think it was the Englishman. Yes, that’s right, the Englishman.
I’ll start again shall I? There was this …’

Everybody is waiting, and waiting. And waiting. Several have gone to the bathroom, someone else
has ordered another round. After the third or fourth restart some people have already begun
laughing at the joker’s incompetence. Others are hoping for a miracle, for the ground to open up or
for a fire alarm to suddenly go off in the ladies room.

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You get the picture. Your fingernails are more interesting! So how do you avoid being the joke rather
than telling it? Here are a few general guidelines to keep in mind.

? Resist the temptation to begin with: ‘Have you heard the one about…?’

? Personalize the story to make it real. You remember things more readily if they happen to
people you know, because the people we know are important to us. You also remember
more if you have made the story your own. If you‘ve personalized the story, it is now your
work, rather than someone else’s joke you are simply repeating. Many jokes are old but are
given new life by the injection of your own experience.

? Focus on the experiences in the story. What were the experiences of the people involved?
Replay the story in your mind from each character’s point of view. What were these people
thinking or feeling? Where were they, in what setting? This will deepen your understanding
and make it easier for you to communicate it to your audience. It will also give you clues
about delivery.

? Live each of your characters as you tell the story. This means tell it as if it was happening
NOW from each point of view. SEE what they are seeing, HEAR what they are hearing, FEEL
what they are feeling etc.

? Listen for appropriate places to insert your story/joke/comment before stumbling blindly
into conversations.

? Repeat, repeat and repeat again. Practice all the suggestions made about delivery (timing,
voice, and breathing). Don’t allow yourself to develop sloppy rehearsal habits, for if you do
you will only end up reinforcing these bad habits, which will make them even harder to
undo.

Ask yourself this question: which is easiest to remember, a joke overheard in a bar on a late
Saturday evening after one or two glasses of wine, or a joke you made up yourself after half an hour’s
brainstorming, an afternoon spent making up your own limerick, or half a dozen puns you rewrote
from some of the less obvious clichés? If you follow the rules about truth and the unexpected, and
put your own experiences into the jokes you make up yourself, you’ll never forget them!

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Developing Comedic Spontaneity

If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?

Part of the fun of learning how to be funny is learning how to be spontaneous, being able to seize the
moment, and to do so with confidence and panache!

We all enjoy a beautifully timed quick-witted response and admire the person who can flip them out
with apparent ease. That ability can be yours too: like other skills, it can be learned. If you break
spontaneously funny responses down into an action-reaction chain, they work like this:

Person A either says or does something that potentially provokes a humorous response.

Person B rapidly reviews a range of possible responses to Person A’s action and selects one.

Person B has the ability or skill to choose the most appropriate comedic response for the
situation AND they have more than one response to choose from.

How do they do that? Do their brains think more quickly and differently? The short answer is YES.
They have developed a comedic mindset and the confidence to use it. What appears spontaneous
or instant is actually a time-compressed version of the action-reaction sequence, with the benefit
that the practicing comedian also has a range of responses to choose from.

Comedic Spontaneity = lateral thinking PLUS confidence PLUS speed

Lateral thinking is the ability to use your mind with flexibility - to come up with as many diverse but
linked ideas as you can on any given subject. It’s also what lies at the heart of most types of
improvisational humor. You used this process when you were practicing brainstorming. The only
essential difference here is the speed of the response. But how can you practice this?

The simple solution is to break it down into steps and play with each of them until you feel confident
enough to launch yourself as the reincarnation of Oscar Wilde. Let’s begin with lateral thinking using
the brainstorming process.

You will need a pen, some paper and a timer. Give yourself a few minutes per starter (subject) to
come up with as many uses as possible for the following objects:

? A brick
? A piece of string
? A cardboard box
? A plastic bag
? One shoe

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The key to doing these exercises is to disregard an item’s usual use and ask what else it could be
used for. This forces you to change your perspective. For example, the word ‘brick’ could be any of:
door stop, paper weight, marker, plinth, prop, straightedge, distance measurer (as in ‘so many
bricks long’), anchor for boat, murder weapon, and so on.

Taking another example from the list, why would you have one shoe? Perhaps you lost one. Or it fell
off while you were running. Maybe your feet are sore and taking off the other shoe provides relief. Or
your feet might sweat too much and begin to smell. Maybe you always wanted to be a detective
(gumshoe) and carry a shoe around to remind yourself. Or perhaps the shoe is a weapon to be
thrown at neighbors’ animals that keep doing their business in your garden.

The possibilities are endless. Use your imagination and think of any connection with a shoe that
comes to your mind, no matter how lame or bizarre it seems. Then take two of these and use them to
construct your joke.

For example, you could take the idea of ‘running’ and of your feet ‘smelling’ and put them together to
make another joke:

If your feet smell and your nose runs, you’re built upside down.

When doing this exercise, be certain to limit yourself to a predefined time scale. Time limits force you
to learn to think faster. The brain responds to training just like any other group of muscles in your
body. If you allow yourself lots and lots of time, your brain will dawdle along. Give it firm guidelines
and regular practice and it will learn to respond quickly.

The best way to train yourself to stick to a time limit is to use an alarm or egg timer, set it for 3
minutes, and stop when the buzzer goes off. Then move on to the next topic on your list. You can
come back to any promising material when the exercise is complete.

Exercise to Encourage Lateral Thinking

The murals in restaurants are about on a par with the food in art galleries.
Paul DeVries

Try to find the links between two apparently unrelated ideas or topics.

? Horoscopes and church officials.

? Pencils and judges.
? Roads and snakes.
? Eye trouble and dyslexia.

Use the brainstorming process. Give yourself a time limit and go for it! There are no right answers but
some will be more apt than others. The clearer and briefer the link, the better.

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For example:

? Pencils might give you: lead, words, sentence, write, sharpen, draw, pictures.

? Judges could yield: sentence, court, wig, life, oath, right.

What links these things? You might say words, write (right) and sentence. Now put it all together to
create a joke:

In what way are pencils and judges the same? They pass sentences, always have the last
word and are write all of the time.

The quality of the joke depends on two things: the amount of time you put into it and the ability to
make the joke follow the two rules of truth followed by the unexpected. If you try a joke out once and
it gets no laughs, don’t give up. Try it a few more times on different people. If you get the same result
every time, then you know the joke’s no good. Consider revising it or starting over with the same two
words to develop an entirely new joke from scratch.

Let’s try the process one more time with two more words from our list. This time we’ll use eye trouble
and dyslexia.

? Eye trouble: lazy eyes, tearing, cross-eyed, can’t see well, have trouble reading, need
glasses, world looks funny or different.

? Dyslexia: have trouble reading, letters and numbers look funny or different, can’t read
well, can’t read quickly, have trouble concentrating.

These are just a couple of quick lists thrown together in a hurry to give you the idea. Obviously there
are lots of other associations we might make from these, and yet we can already see that there are
some pretty useful links between the two. So all we need to do is to take these links, apply a bit of
lateral thinking, and presto!

If you’re cross-eyed and dyslexic, does that mean you can see perfectly?

Many excellent one-liners are constructed around this concept of two items that seem to have little
in common. But that’s what makes the joke funny! For example, what’s the connection between a
skeleton and a bar?

A skeleton asks a barman for a pint of beer and a mop.

There is no connection as such, except we recognize that when the skeleton drinks there’s nowhere
for the liquid to go except on the floor. What makes it funny is that the skeleton is UNABLE to drink
and is not only wasting his money but also wasting good beer!

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Try it yourself with any combination of two simple words. Make lists to see what they have in
common and then use this list as the basis for a joke or one-liner. Like everything else, you’ll get
better and better at it the more you practice, until eventually you won’t need to write it down at all:
the ideas will simply present themselves to you in your mind.

Asking Questions to Stimulate Ideas

All Shakespeare did was string together a lot of well known quotations.
H. L. Mencken

Questions have the power to force you to become more creative. An unanswered question can drive
you to distraction: whatever it takes, you want to find the answer, resolve the situation and move on.
So when a chapter in a novel ends with an unexpected event, you read on to find out how the
outcome is finally settled.

You can use the same theory to help you come up with more ideas for jokes. Simply make a list of 20
common nouns or names of things. For example: chair, window, pencil, telephone, glasses, watch,
computer, bracelet, business card, etc. Pick one to work with and keep the rest to use on another
occasion. Then answer the following questions as quickly as you can.

What do I think and feel about pencils if I am:

? A stationery salesman?
? A teenager?
? A baby?
? A grandmother?
? Deaf?
? Blind?
? Phobic?
? A dog?
? Another pencil?
? The table on which it sits?
? The eraser on the end of the pencil?
? The paper it writes on?
? The pencil case or handbag in which it is carried?
? The hand that holds it?
? The lead inside it?
? A crossword puzzle?

Essentially this is another version of a brainstorm, but this time more directed. Each question gives a
further perspective on a pencil. Each perspective adds to your store of lateral knowledge and more
importantly gives you extra information to play with.

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Now try to answer each question from the point of view of the questioner. For example, what would
another pencil feel about its rival? Is one pencil better than another? Are they jealous of each other?
Is one more popular? What makes a good pencil as opposed to a bad one?

You get the idea. But even this one simple example has given us some material to use in creating
another joke, such as:

If #2 pencils are the most popular, why are they still #2?

Every time you complete the exercise you strengthen your ability to access the imaginative side of
your brain. You are becoming more and more flexible and seeing more and more possibilities.

The speed at which your comedic mindset and spontaneity develop depends on how much effort you
put in. You have the tools and exercises to grow and stretch your lateral thinking ability. You know
how to apply pressure by giving yourself strict time frames to work within. The only remaining
element you need is confidence.

Developing Confidence and Overcoming Fear

Homer is dead, Dante is dead, Shakespeare is dead and I’m not feeling too well myself.
Artemus Wood

We’ll imagine you’ve done the work. You’ve been generating your own material and you have a
monster collection of superb one-liners and stories. You’ve practiced your delivery and you’re ready
to go.

What’s stopping you? If your stomach’s churning round and you think you’re going to be sick, or if
you’ve suddenly developed an unprecedented interest in cleaning the fridge, we call it nerves. And
the common cause of nervousness is a lack of confidence. What you need are methods to short
circuit any self-defeating behavior and help you learn how to deliver your jokes with poise and self-
assurance, to stay cool under pressure.

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12 Stunning Ploys to Help You Stay Cool Under Pressure

1. Take one step at a time. Start slowly: don’t run before you can walk. Develop confidence by
inserting a little bit of humor into your daily life before going for the big laughs. Practice
getting one technique at a time right, and practice on a safe audience before trying it out in
a situation where the stakes are higher. A quick joke at the check-out is less risky than one
aimed at your mother-in-law!

2. Imagine yourself after you have delivered your presentation, one-liner or joke. The people
around you are laughing. You’ve been a hit and it feels good. You revel in the thrill of getting
it right. Isn’t it worth the risk to feel like that in reality? Go for it now!

3. What happens if it goes wrong? Will the world fall off its axis? Will you be struck down by a
terrible case of paralysis? Hardly likely. This is only humor; you’re not responsible for all the
problems in the universe. The worse that can happen is you fluff the delivery. Or perhaps
you’ve misjudged your match of material and audience. But you will survive. Failure is an
opportunity to get it right the next time.

4. Fake it before you make it! A variation on ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’, this works on the
principle that you’ve done the work; you’ve acknowledged your nerves and made an
executive decision to override them. So even if you don’t feel confident, pretend you are!

5. Do some breathing exercises before the event. A series of 3 deep ‘in’ breaths, followed by 3
long controlled ‘out’ breaths will make you feel calmer. Imagine all the fear draining out of
you and flowing away when you exhale.

6. Eat lightly! If you have a presentation to do or some sort of performance, a full stomach and
a dose of nervous flutters will make you feel ill. It’s much more sensible to eat easily
digestible foods at least an hour beforehand.

7. Drink water if you’re thirsty, not alcohol! Alcohol may appear to soothe and calm but it also
takes the edge off all that carefully rehearsed timing. Your judgment may go sideways and
that’s a risk you probably shouldn’t be prepared to take.

8. Rank all your previous personal disasters from best to worst on a scale of 1-10. Where does
using your newly developed style of humor come on the scale? Is it up there with the worst?
No, so there’s nothing to fear, is there?

9. Get yourself ready in every way. If this is a presentation you need clean, pressed clothes,
shined shoes etc, etc. Leave nothing to the last minute. Don’t punish yourself by creating
extra work and stress.

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 10. Silence your inner voices. This is the chatter looping through your mind, often beyond your
control. In times of stress our minds tend to replay the worst rather than the best we think of
ourselves. So the inner voice might be nattering on with stuff like: What are you doing this
for? Who do you think you are? What makes you think you can be funny? They’ll laugh at
you rather than with you… Find the off button and push it. Replace these inner mumblings
with some of your favorite music, or better still an authoritative kindly voice telling you how
brave, admirable or courageous you are.

11. Review the reasons for putting yourself in this situation in the first place. Remember that this
is what you wanted. These are the goals motivating you to succeed. Are they suddenly all
ridiculously unattainable? No. You’ve come this far: are you really going to let fear take over
now? No. Aren’t you worth more than that? Yes!

12. Be honest with yourself. If you catch yourself deciding to do all sorts of tasks you’ve ignored
quite happily for the last year, ask yourself why. Listen to the answer and return to preparing
yourself to be funny at once!

Anyone will tell you that confidence comes with success. Small successes lead to bigger successes,
and the more success you have the more confident you’ll become. Doing nothing is not an option:
even the greatest comics in the world had to start somewhere. Be brave and give it a go. Success
could be just around the corner.

One other way to guarantee your success is to make sure you practice your material thoroughly and
understand it inside out. When you know your material well enough it will simply flow automatically
and have the feeling and appearance of being effortless. That brings us to the next part of the
course, which tells you all about the importance and necessity for rehearsal.

The Secrets of Rehearsal

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

No matter how often people tell you that life is not a rehearsal, some parts of it definitely go better
with rehearsal, and comedy is one of them! Rehearsal gives you the chance to hone your skills, fine
tune your jokes and work on your delivery until everything is as perfect as it can be. It’s possibly the
most important aspect of telling jokes successfully, and often the most frequently overlooked.

When you watch a comedian in action, you’re seeing the result of many hours of work; time spent
rehearsing not just the material but every other facet of the performance, from the way they stand to
the way their voice changes from one joke to the next. In the normal course of events we never get to
see this preparation, and it’s easy to forget about the amount of effort it takes to produce a slick
performance.

You can break the rehearsal process down into four categories, the Why, What, When and How to
rehearse. Once you understand these and begin to apply them to your own material, your confidence
will suddenly soar. You’ll be in control of your voice, your jokes and yourself.

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Why rehearse?

? To develop familiarity with your material so you know the flow of it, even if it’s not learned
word for word.

? To identify and correct any weak areas in the wording.

? To understand the rhythms of your story; when to slow, when to pause, when to change
voices, and when to get louder.

? To find the connection points with your potential audience, which parts you deliver to this
person and which to that, where you make eye contact, etc.

? To find out how long the story/joke/presentation takes to tell so you can shorten or lengthen
it as necessary.

? To practice getting your breathing, voice and characterizations right for the material.

? To collect feedback from a guinea-pig audience if you have one. This is an excellent way of
testing yourself, but make sure the audience is primed to give you workable feedback. You
don’t need to be told how brilliant you are. Even though that’s good for the ego, it’s more
useful to receive suggestions like: slow up here, leave this bit out, change the wording here,
use more eye contact, etc.

? To integrate material, voice and body movement as fully as possible.

? To spark new ideas. Rehearsal is wonderful for helping to broaden or develop what you’ve
already done. It will trigger new ideas that may even improve on the original.

? To play with varying modes of delivery; what happens if this is told with an accent, if it’s told
with no movement, if it’s told with props, etc.

? To get nerves or anxiety under control.

What to Rehearse?

? A presentation of any form.

? A story you wish to retell.

? A joke.

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 ? Spontaneity. This might sound impossible but with enough practice your material will flow
quickly and confidently, giving it the appearance of spontaneity. And of course, the better
you know your stuff, the more likely you’ll be to make changes on the fly, which really will be
spontaneous.

? The use of props if you’re planning to use them as part of your act. Fumbling to get the funny
nose on or to make the slide show behave in mid-presentation will certainly increase your
stress level.

? Anything special, different, new or unfamiliar you are introducing into your material, such as
movement, accent, songs, etc.

? Anything that involves someone else as part of the act. For something to appear effortless it
must be worked out and practiced beforehand. There are some surprises performers can do
without, and that includes anything unrehearsed! This is particularly true for novices. To be
put completely on the spot is often so threatening and overwhelming that the act simply
flops.

? Exit lines or strategies for dealing with on-stage disaster. Have something prepared in
advance for getting yourself off the stage which leaves you with some control and dignity.

When to Rehearse?

? Every day! There is always an element of comedy to work on whether it is generating new
material, practicing verbal techniques, voice work, timing or movement.

? If you have a specific presentation to give, put in place a timeline for completion of various
facets. Say you have two weeks to prepare. You will research your material, collecting notes
and resources for the first 5-6 days. Next you will write your script over the following 2-3
days. Now you have 5-7 days left for rehearsal. Some of this time will be spent working on
familiarization, some on characterization, voice, breath, movement etc.

? You will block in at least one rehearsal in front of your guinea-pig audience, but preferably
two, which will give you the chance to integrate any suggestions they make.

? Next you have a trial run in the room where you’ll give your presentation. This means you will
know where you need to place your self, your props, etc. and gives you a chance to see how
your voice works in the space.

? Lastly, you will do one more complete run-through of the material before attempting the real
thing.

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How to Rehearse?

? Have a specific area of focus in mind for each rehearsal: voice, breath control, timing, mime,
movement, use of props. This is particularly useful in early rehearsals to iron out any
problem areas before they become habitual.

? Set a realistic time schedule. Four hours straight with no breaks might be hard to sustain.
Better to use one hour well than waste the time.

? If you are working with other people, set up commonly-agreed guidelines to avoiding coming
to any grief. Arrive on time. Arrive ready to work. Give feedback respectfully. If you have
criticisms, make sure it is of the work and not the person! Sort out specific areas of
responsibility.

Summary and Conclusion

Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.
George Burns

There you have it! Being funny is easy and within your grasp. Remember the two simple rules and
apply them using the exercises and information given:

Comedy is Truth
Comedy is Unexpected

The more you practice, the funnier and more confident you’ll become. Like most new skills, using
humor takes time to learn. But once you’ve mastered the basics, you’ll find refining your content and
delivery becomes more and more enjoyable. You’ll want to do and know even more.

Learning to develop and deliver your own unique style of humor is a journey. Along the way there will
always be something new and exciting to learn. And the best part is that it is FUN!

The next part of the course will help you build on these foundations and provide you with everything
you need to take your comedy skills further.

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 Part Two: Enhance Your Humor
The material in Part Two adds depth to the basic information given in Part One. It is a mix of
information, suggestions, advice, and extension exercises. It can be read through subject by subject
or treated as a reference for specific topics, including:

? types of humor;

? special language features used in humor;

? how to use humor in the workplace or in a presentation;

? how to deepen your humor by employing all your senses;

? the role of listening and watching;

? how to deal with put-downs;

? when to use joke props such as a silly bowtie;

? what to be aware of when using humor with people from other cultures;

? how to conquer speech problems.

You can find more information on most of these topics through the links provided in Part Three. For
now, though, let’s begin exploring the different types of humor available to you.

Recognizing the Different Types of Humor

Dogs are sons of bitches.

W.C. Fields

Just as there are different types of music, there are different styles of humor. Each has special
qualities of its own. A professional comedian will therefore incorporate more than one style into his
performances. He may have a preference for a particular type but he will maintain interest by using
more than one. He knows that sticking to the same style might make his routine boring, predictable
and ‘unfunny’. Just as a singer learns more than one song and more than one style of song, so the
comedian needs more than the ability to pull funny faces or make puns.

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Below you will find the various types of humor listed in the two categories of physical or verbal
comedy, with definitions and examples. You will recognize many of these, and perhaps you might
even use some of them already. Any that you are unfamiliar with can become the focus of one of
your regular rehearsal sessions.

Physical Humor

If everything’s coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane and going in the wrong direction.

Physical humor can be broken down into three categories: slapstick, farce and clowning (or mime).
Each category has its own place in the world of comedy and some work better than others in live
events as opposed to recorded events (such as for film or television, where there are opportunities to
do ‘retakes’ when something goes wrong).

Slapstick

Slapstick is a type of boisterous comedy involving exaggerated physical violence, often including
chase scenes, collisions and practical jokes. You might see a character hit in the face with a frying
pan or custard pie, or running full-speed into a brick wall. Because the violence is so highly
exaggerated, it goes beyond the realms of common sense and becomes non-threatening and
therefore amusing. In modern terms you’re more likely to see it in cartoons and films made for
children or teenagers.

In the Italian Renaissance it was common to use physical abuse as part of comedy routines. They
employed a special club-like object made of two wooden slats, called a ‘battacchio’, which, when
struck together, produced a loud smacking noise. Actors could appear to strike each other
repeatedly, making exaggerated movements without actually causing each other any physical
damage. The English translation for this device is ‘slap stick’.

The slap stick was among the first of the ‘special effects’ devices to be used successfully on stage.
Nowadays radio and TV shows have an enormous range of materials to call upon, including digital
samples of real sounds. A similar device can be found in the percussion sections of most large
orchestras, called either a slapstick or whip.

Modern examples of comedians who make frequent use of slapstick in their work include Rowan
Atkinson, Mel Brooks and Jackie Gleason. Among professionals it is considered one of the more
difficult forms of humor to perfect, as it relies on split-second timing and finely honed
characterizations to get laughs.

Slapstick can be difficult to pull off in live situations, although it does have a place in stage shows
and frequently makes an appearance during the annual pantomime season.

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Farce

The last thing I want to do is insult you. But it IS on the list!

Farce is comedy written for stage or film, which entertains by means of unlikely and extravagant
situations, disguise or mistaken identity, verbal humor often including puns and innuendo, and a
fast-paced plot that gets even faster as the action unfolds.

Farce is essentially a theatrical tradition. Unlike romantic comedy, farce is usually less about a
storyline or plot and more about a particular character’s weaknesses and failings. This commonly
takes the form of some transgression this character struggles to hide from the others and the
unforeseen chain of events that results when the other characters inevitably discover it.

Stage farce normally uses one setting throughout the play, such as a family’s drawing room, a hotel,
or an office, mainly due to the limitations of space. There are usually numerous doors, windows and
cupboards to facilitate action into and from other rooms and to give the impression of a larger
canvas than is actually seen. Where film is used, there are no limitations on space except those
imposed by the film’s budget.

The main character has something to hide and is so busy trying to hide it that he fails to step back
and consider what he is doing. Any course of action is better than being found out, and this usually
leads them deeper and deeper into trouble as they twist and turn to try and keep the truth
concealed. As the drama unfolds, the pace quickens, with the problem resolved one way or another
in a frantic climax.

Farce tends to depict the protagonist in a sympathetic light that the audience can identify with and
that gives them the incentive to ‘will’ him to succeed. It plays on those human characteristics that we
are all capable of displaying but wish we weren’t, such as vanity, stupidity, arrogance, irrationality,
and jealousy.

Getting the balance right is the trick. Making situations believable that seem improbable, ridiculous,
far-fetched, filled with witty dialogue and broad physical comedy, can be a daunting task. Despite
these odds, farce is the basis for many of today’s most successful TV sitcoms. To see farce at its
best, watch any of the dozen or so episodes of the British sitcom, Fawlty Towers, featuring John
Cleese of Monty Python fame.

Clowning

Cannibals won’t eat clowns because they taste funny.

The word ‘clown’ means clumsy fellow, a clot or a clod. Clowning has appeared in virtually every
culture and was the basis for the court jester or fool, someone outside the rules of normal society
whose task was to lighten up situations or make fun of events.

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The traditional view of the clown as a circus performer with face make up, oversized shoes, baggy
clothes and a silly nose represents only one of the contemporary roles that clowns might assume.
You might just as easily find them on stage or television, in the rodeo, as an entertainer for children’s
parties, or as a busker or street entertainer. With or without the make up and costume, their job
remains similar to that of the court jester, to bring humor and levity to a situation. This is usually
done through physical comedy, slapstick being a favorite vehicle.

It has been said that clowns can do anything. This is a throwback to their central role in the circus,
where they might be required to juggle, walk a tight rope, ride a horse, stand in for the lion tamer, sit
in with the band or orchestra, or perform acrobatics. So pivotal was the clown to the circus that P.T.
Barnum once said: ‘Clowns are the pegs on which the circus hangs.’

Clowning has such a long established tradition that clowns have developed their own ‘code of
practice’, part of which gives each clown the right to his or her own costume, make up and
performance attributes. In some places this code is upheld by each clown having his face painted on
an eggshell, and custom dictates that no two eggshells can be the same.

Many successful comedians use elements of clowning in their performances, including John Belushi,
Pinky Lee, Rowan Atkinson, and Andy Kaufman. A great example of contemporary clowning can be
seen in the Pink Panther films, starring Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau.

Verbal Humor

There is no such thing as a little garlic.

Arthur Baer

With the exception of the silent movie era, even the best physical humor relies on some sort of
speech or dialogue to help make its point. And naturally when it comes to verbal humor, the choices
on offer get much more varied and diverse. In this section we’ll take a look at each one of these in
turn, giving you complete and inclusive definitions before providing typical examples.

Pun

The pun is mightier than the sword.

A pun, as we’ve already seen, is a play on words to create deliberate confusion between words that
sound the same and/or have different meanings. This play on words usually relies on the similar
sounds between two words (homonyms), as in fair and fare or write and right; the different possible
meanings within one word (polysemes), as in a mole being a burrowing animal or an agent of
espionage; or the literal translation of a metaphor.

The word pun comes from punctilio or punctilious, meaning a finely observed point of etiquette. The
exact origin of the word is much debated, with preference given to the Latin punctus, meaning ‘to
prick’.

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Puns can be constructed in all languages with varying degrees of success, depending on the
similarities amongst homonyms and synonyms. While puns are relatively easy to construct in English
and Chinese, attempts in Russian are much more complicated.

Typical examples of puns include a book called ‘Broken Windows’ by Eva Brick; or the sign outside a
barbershop run by a man called Albert Firken, which reads ‘Get a Firken Haircut’. Bad puns are often
referred to as ‘cheesy’.

Puns can be subdivided into several subcategories, so that a working knowledge of these gives you
the opportunity to make up not simply ‘puns’ but particular types of puns.

Homographic puns make use of words that look and often sound alike. For example:
‘Politics is a lot like golf: you’re trapped in one bad lie after another.’

Homographic puns also exploit the difference in meaning between words which look alike but have
different pronunciations: ‘Q: What instrument does a fish play? A: The bass guitar.’ (Bass = low
frequency sound: Bass = a kind of fish.)

Homophonic puns are between words that sound alike but have different spellings, as in: ‘We’re not
sure how worms reproduce but you often find them in pears.’ (Pun on the similarity between pears
and pairs.)

Compound puns are just what they sound like: two or more puns used together to give a cumulative
effect. For example, a sign in a golf-cart shop reads: ‘While drinking, don’t drive. Don’t even putt.’
Here the puns are on driving or putting a golf ball, as against driving or ‘putting around’ in a golf-cart.

Another example can be seen in the final part of a knock-knock joke, which runs: ‘Q: Eskimo
Christian Italian who?’ ‘A: Eskimo Christian Italian no lies.’ This is meant to be a reference to the
phrase ‘Ask me no questions I’ll tell you no lies.’

Extended puns occur when a sequence of puns referring to the same basic idea are used in a longer
story or preamble. For example:

? A fight broke out in a restaurant kitchen. Egged on by the waiters, two cooks peppered
each other with punches. One man ducked the first blows … etc.

? I’ve taken a lichen to that mushroom: he’s a fungi.

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Where Puns Are Used

Although more commonly used in the humorous one-liner, puns can be found in serious literature as
well. In fact, the pun was once considered a serious and rhetorical poetic device, as in
Shakespeare’s Richard III …

‘made glorious summer by this son of York.’

… which produces a pun on the words son and sun. You can also find puns in the works of James
Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov and the poet John Donne.

Contemporary uses of puns include everything from TV shows like The Simpsons to the Discworld
novels of Terry Pratchett (although Pratchett refers to them as ‘punes’). Puns are particularly popular
in Britain where they often form the basis of entire shows, such as the cult BBC Radio 4 comedy
series, I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue.

Testament to the show’s popularity is the fact that it has spawned its own version of puns, known as
daffynitions, which are clever reinterpretations of an existing word based on the fact that it sounds
like another group of words. Examples include:

? Alarms – what an octopus is (all-arms).

? Dynamite – to take a flea out to dinner (dine-a-mite).
? Impolite – a flaming elf (imp-alight).
? Innuendoes – Italian suppositories (in-you-end-os).
? Oboe – an English tramp (hobo pronounced ‘obo with a silent ‘h’).
? Paradox – two doctors (a pair of docs).
? Pasteurize – too far to see (past-your-eyes).
? Propaganda – a gentlemanly goose (proper gander).
? Shrewd – a rude shrew (shrew + rude).

Although often referred to as the lowest form of humor, puns also have the reputation of being the
highest form of wit! And if they’re good enough for Shakespeare …

Innuendo and Double Entendre

As we found out in Part One, double entendre means ‘double meaning’, and is often used to suggest
a word’s sexual overtones, such as referring to male porn stars’ acting abilities as ‘wooden’. Many
people confuse the two terms, innuendo and double entendre, although they are actually very
different. The main distinction is that double entendre can be unintentional, a slip of the tongue,
whereas innuendo is always intentional and is often meant as an insult or to highlight the recipient’s
stupidity in not getting the joke.

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Innuendo has a long and illustrious history with examples as far back as Shakespeare, such as Sir
Toby in Twelfth Night who says ‘it hangs like flax on a distaff.’ Since then it has had its supporters
and disapprovers in equal measure, frowned on by Victorian theatre-goers but warmly embraced by
the pundits of Music Hall.

The trick with innuendo is to do more than merely make an allusion to body parts, as in ‘that’s a fine
pair of melons you’ve got there.’ To be appreciated for its true worth, innuendo should be either
subtle or constructed in such a way as to make the listener do some work to figure it out. In the Carry
On Henry film, Barbara Windsor tells Sid James about the effects of drink on the ardor, to which Mr.
James replies: ‘the more you drink, the ardor it gets!’

Another facet of innuendo is that it could go completely unnoticed by someone who might be
unfamiliar with the ‘hidden’ meaning or allusion. That’s why some sitcoms appeal to both children
and adults, each group responding to the humor of a situation for completely different reasons.

Sexual innuendo features in sitcoms and radio comedy and can also be found in some children’s
shows, including Sponge Bob Square Pants, The Ren and Stimpy Show, and The Powerpuff Girls.

Jokes containing sexual innuendo are often referred to as ‘blue’ jokes and are pretty standard fare
these days. The British comedian Max Miller used to carry two books of jokes with him on stage, a
white book and a blue book. He’d ask the audience to choose which one they would like him to use.
If they chose the blue book, then he knew that there was less chance of anyone being offended by
any of the material.

Malapropism

A malapropism is the incorrect usage of a word by intentionally or unintentionally substituting a word

that sounds the same but has a different meaning. It comes from the French phrase mal à propos,
meaning ‘ill to purpose’ or not fit for the intended purpose.

The term malapropism owes its creation to a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 comedy
The Rivals, Mrs. Malaprop. Here are a couple of classic examples taken from Sheridan’s book:

‘He’s as headstrong as an allegory (alligator) on the banks of the Nile.’

‘He is the very pineapple (pinnacle) of politeness.’

Further examples can be found throughout the world of television and entertainment, some of which
are listed below.

‘You could have knocked me over with a fender (feather).’ Jane Ace, from the radio comedy
series Easy Aces

‘What are you incinerating (insinuating)?’ Galton and Simpson, from an episode of Steptoe
and Son

‘I heard the sea is infatuated (infested) with sharks.’ Stan Laurel

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 ‘My magnificent octopus!’ (magnum opus) Baldric in Blackadder the Third

‘It's a moo (moot) point.’ Joey Tribbiani in Friends

‘I might just fade into Bolivian (oblivion), you know what I mean?’ Mike Tyson

‘She's just going through a phrase (phase).’ Ricky in Trailer Park Boys

‘I want everyone to conjugate over here.’ (congregate)

‘You know I get ravishing when I play football.’ (ravenous)

‘Don't talk about the baby; she had a misconception.’ (miscarriage)

‘I feel like a social piranha.’ (pariah)

Dogberryisms

This is another word for a malapropism, named after Sergeant Dogberry in Shakespeare's Much Ado
About Nothing, whose famous confusions include:

‘Comparisons are odorous.’ (odious)

‘Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two auspicious persons.’ (apprehended and
suspicious)

‘Thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this.’ (damnation)

Spoonerism

A spoonerism is a play on words in which consonants, vowels, or morphemes (smallest whole parts
of a word, i.e. the root, prefix, suffix, etc.) are switched to create entirely new and meaningless words
in their place. It gets its name from the Reverend William Archibald Spooner, who lived from 1844 to
1930 and was Warden at New College, Oxford. He was famous for jumbling up words in this way and
many of his quotations have become part of the legend of the English language:

‘The Lord is a shoving leopard.’

‘It is kisstomary to cuss the bride.’

‘Mardon me, padam; this pie is occupewed. Can I sew you to another sheet?’ (Translation:
Pardon me, madam; this pew is occupied. Can I show you to another seat?)

Spoonerisms can be intentional or unintentional and are commonly heard as slips of the tongue, or
‘tips of the slung’ as they are often spoonerized. It should be pointed out that many of the quotes

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attributed to Spooner are apocryphal, that is, of dubious origin. But that doesn’t make them any less
funny, of course, including this apparently angry speech to one of his students:

‘You have hissed all my mystery lectures, and were caught fighting a liar in the quad.
Having tasted two worms, you will leave by the next town drain.’ Which translates as :
missed … history lectures, lighting a fire, wasted two terms, next down train (as in down to
London).

And here are a few more thought to have originated with Spooner himself:

‘Let us raise our glasses to the queer old Dean.’

‘We'll have the hags flung out.’

‘Is the bean dizzy?’

Any manner of rearranging words in this order is considered a spoonerism. Modern favorites include
‘I saw a butterfly flutter by’, the Canadian Broadcorping Castration (the CBC), the name of NOFX’s
best selling album, Punk in Drublic, one of the late Kenny Everett’s most popular character
creations, a blonde named Cupid Stunt, and a poem in Monty Python’s Big Red Book attributed to
the Rev. Spooner, containing the line ‘biny little tirds.’

The British comedian Jasper Carrott has frequently performed his Spooner-inspired Bastity Chelt, in
which every line contains a spoonerism of the likes of Unlick my pock. He also claims to have an
aunt who refers to him as a ‘shining wit.’ The American pop group Wheatus released an album in
2005 entitled ‘Suck Fony’, a spoonerism created to show their feelings toward the Sony record label
they had just left.

Metaphor

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players …
William Shakespeare - As You Like It

A metaphor is a rhetorical figure of speech used to make direct comparisons between two or more
seemingly unrelated subjects, for example ‘time is money.’ Some people confuse metaphor with
simile, whereas the latter makes comparisons linking the two unrelated ideas with the words ‘like’ or
‘as’, for example ‘light as a feather’ or ‘a memory like a sieve’.

An extended metaphor is simply the same thing carried to sometimes extreme lengths. The quote
above from Shakespeare is a good example of both a metaphor and an extended metaphor, running
on as it does for another 20 lines or so. It sticks to its theatrical analogy, mentioning exits and
entrances, the parts one plays throughout one’s life, until the final act is over and the curtain (of life)
comes down.

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A mixed metaphor is what it sounds like, mixing up two metaphors that usually have nothing in
common. For example, ‘He stepped up to the plate and grabbed the bull by the horns.’ Here two
commonly used metaphors are thrown together in the same sentence to produce an illogical and
absurd observation, but one that might nevertheless produce laughter.

Dead metaphors get their name from the fact that they generally go unnoticed. Also known as
metaphorical cliché, these include such phrases as ‘to grasp a concept’, ‘to get the picture’ and ‘to
break the ice.’ When these phrases are used, no one ever considers actually breaking ice to get a
conversation started!

An epic or Homeric simile is not actually a simile, but is yet another example of an extended
metaphor. This time the metaphor is extended in the form of an elaborate story or scene that has
little or nothing to do with the original metaphor. The further it goes, the funnier it gets.

A perfect example of this kind of metaphor can be found in this excerpt from the Blackadder series:
‘This is a crisis. A large crisis. In fact, if you've got a moment, it's a twelve-story crisis with a
magnificent entrance hall, carpeting throughout, 24-hour porterage and an enormous sign on the
roof saying This Is a Large Crisis.’

Other types of metaphor you should be aware of include the following:

Active metaphor – not part of everyday language and therefore noticeable as a metaphor. For
example: ‘You are my universe.’

Absolute or paralogical metaphor – a metaphor in which there is no obvious resemblance between

the idea and the image presented. For example: ‘The truth is an onion.’ Also known as an anti-
metaphor.

Complex metaphor – piling one metaphor on top of another. For example, in the phrase ‘To throw
some light on the subject’, throw some light is itself a metaphor, since light cannot be thrown.

Compound or loose metaphor – a metaphor with several points of similarity. For example, ‘Pigs
might fly!’ means that the idea won’t get off the ground, or won’t work as expected, or is a swine of
an idea, or is too fat to lift off, etc.

Implicit metaphor – a metaphor in which the subject of the metaphor is implied rather than
specified. For example, in ‘Shut your trap!’ the subject is actually the mouth of the person being
spoken to.

Submerged metaphor – a metaphor in which the subject is implied by a single aspect. For example,
‘my winged thought’ compares thinking to the flight of a bird. This is more commonly used in poetry.

Root metaphor – a metaphor that is part of the culture and has become a common fundamental
understanding or, in some cases, an assumption. Examples might include the phrase ‘Beware of
Greeks bearing gifts’, which requires no explanation, or the concept of ‘grains of sand’ and their
nearly infinite quantity.

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Dying metaphor – a metaphor that isn’t dead but has been worn out. The phrase was coined by
George Orwell in his essay Politics and the English Language to highlight the use of cliché and the
laziness of people to invent original phrases to express themselves.

As you can see, there are lots of different kinds of metaphor, and this is only a basic list! Metaphor
also contains the following within its general definition:

Allegory – an extended metaphor turned into a story to highlight a specific feature of a subject.

Parable – an extended metaphor in the form of an anecdote, often aimed at teaching a moral
lesson.

Catachresis - the incorrect or improper use of a word, sometimes unintentional. This type of
metaphor can be used:

? to alter something’s usual meaning: ‘Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon’s purse.’
Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens;

? to describe something that has no actual name of its own, such as a table’s leg;

? to take words out of context: ‘Did you hear that? Or are you blind?’;

? to create an illogical mixed metaphor: ‘To take arms against a sea of troubles.’
Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Joke

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
H.L. Mencken

A joke is something said or done to evoke amusement or laughter, such as an entertaining story or
anecdote with a punch line, or a one-liner. Most jokes are considered to be verbal in nature, while a
‘practical’ joke usually involves a visual element, such as getting a custard pie thrown in the face.

Whatever the reason for telling a joke, either in an informal gathering or as part of a stage routine,
the desired result is to generate laughter. Shorter jokes such as puns might elicit a groan or a
chuckle, while longer stage performances have the ability to build the routine up to a climax,
increasing the laughter along the way.

How and Why Jokes Work

Jokes make us laugh because our brains are constructed to recognize and follow patterns. Once
these patterns are disrupted by an unexpected element, we find it amusing and laugh at it. Laughter
releases endorphins, natural feel-good chemicals, into the bloodstream, making us happy and
therefore contributing to our overall well-being.

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This pattern recognition helps explain why jokes are only funny the first time we hear them. After that,
the patterns have been established in the brain and the result is no longer unexpected. We know
what’s coming, so it’s no longer a surprise.

At the same time comedians use this pattern recognition to help set up their jokes. An elaborate and
repetitive set-up can establish a pattern in the brain, giving the joke-teller the leverage he needs to
interrupt this pattern with the punch line.

Some jokes rely on the portrayal of characters through stereotypes. This serves the opposite
purpose, i.e. the stereotype is instantly recognizable by the audience and saves time in setting up
the joke. This is also why some comedians will take familiar stories (the genie and the lamp) and
rework them knowing that the audience is already acquainted with the basic pattern.

Types of Jokes

Of the many categories of jokes, most depend on one of three elements to create humor: the
unexpected, the mildly taboo reference to distasteful or socially improper material, or the use of
stereotypes and cultural differences.

Political jokes are usually a form of satire, directed either at the politicians themselves or the
absurdities of the political system. These make fun of the people in politics or the phrases and
blunders that politicians use and fall into:

The biggest joke in politics is that the joke usually gets elected.

Professional humor refers to the humorous representation of certain professions, such as lawyers,
doctors and so on. Some types of professional humor, such as mathematical jokes, can be
considered to fall into the category of the ‘in-joke’, which means it is only meant to be understood by
people working in that profession.

Ethnic jokes are common and poke fun at racial stereotypes, often in an offensive way. Examples
are legion, as the following list will verify:

? American jokes about Canadians.

? Canadian jokes about Newfoundlanders.
? Irish jokes about the British and the Northern Irish.
? British jokes about everyone, especially Irish, Scottish and American.
? Argentinean jokes about Spaniards.
? Iranian jokes about Turks in Iran.
? Australian jokes about the British and New Zealanders.
? New Zealand jokes about Australians.
? Brazilian jokes about the Portuguese.

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 ? Portuguese jokes about the Brazilians.
? Indian jokes about Sikhs.
English speaking countries also tell jokes beginning with the phrase ‘An Englishman, an Irishman
and a Scotsman …’ to highlight the supposed stereotypical behavior of each country, such as the
parsimony of the Scot, the stupidity of the Irishman or the uptight nature of the Englishman. Similar
types of stereotypical jokes have developed to include a range of topics from the dumbness of
blondes to the abilities of a theoretically talented individual. For example:

If blondes have more fun, do they know about it?

A jazz quartet - three musicians and a drummer.

Religious jokes are usually categorized by whether they refer to stereotypes of a religion, such as
‘nun jokes’ or ‘Jewish jokes’, typical religious subjects, such as the Bible, Adam and Eve, jokes that
highlight the differences between religions (a priest, a minister and a rabbi) or jokes in the form of
letters or poems written to God.

Just as the joke says that ‘All wisdom can be found on T-shirts’, so the same can often be said of
bumper stickers, which is one place where religious jokes are regularly seen. Some examples
include:

The Bible: if all else fails, read the instructions.

Prepare for your finals: read the Bible.

Jokes used to highlight the differences between religions are always popular, such as the story of a
man who wanted to know if sex was work or play, and if so whether it was a sin to have sex on a
Sunday. The priest said it was a sin because it was work, the minister said it was a sin because it was
work, but the rabbi said it was not a sin because it was play. ‘If it was work,’ said the rabbi, ‘then my
wife would have the maid do it.’

Religious jokes work well in the ‘my (blank) is so (blank)’ format too:

Person A: ‘My pastor is so good he can talk on any subject for an hour.’

Person B: ‘That’s nothing. My pastor can talk for an hour about nothing at all!’

And of course religion offers plenty of ceremonies from which the astute comic can draw plenty of
original material, such as this one-liner about an atheist’s funeral:

Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and nowhere to go!

Self-deprecating humor is loosely based in the racial/stereotypical genre, but in this case the joke-
teller is laughing at himself. The obvious example of this is Jewish humor, although a similar tradition
exists in the Scandinavian ‘Ole and Lena’ jokes.

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This type of humor is a powerful method to defuse potentially confrontational situations. It is also
said to help the joke-teller maintain a sense of perspective. In the case of politicians, it gives them a
chance to dodge the issue while at the same time avoiding criticism. When accused of being two-
faced, Abraham Lincoln replied: ‘If I had two faces, do you think I’d be wearing this one?’

Dirty jokes need very little explanation and are the fare of the playground or a certain type of men’s
magazine. These are often sexual in content and vocabulary, and can broach taboo subjects or
espouse sexist beliefs.

Styles of Jokes

Jokes come in a range of styles including one of the most common forms, the question and answer
joke. This is often presented in the form of a riddle with a twist in the answer for comical effect. This
type of jokes comes in a variety of formulas, notably:

? Knock-knock jokes

? Light bulb jokes as in ‘How many blondes does it take to change a light bulb?’

? Why the chicken crossed the road …

? What’s the difference between …

The running gag refers to an amusing line or event that recurs throughout a story, performance or
comedy series. Often a running gag is unintentional but becomes a fixed attraction due to the
response of readers or viewers to the event or line in question. In some cases the ‘gag’ is merely in
the number of times the line or event is repeated.

Examples of running gags are everywhere, but some of the more common ones are:

? The television series South Park, in which the character Kenny dies in every episode. When it
happens, Stan yells out ‘Oh my God! They killed Kenny!’ and Kyle responds with ‘You
bastards!’

? In the movie Airplane! there are lots of running gags, including Leslie Nielsen’s character Dr.
Rumack who responds to phrases with the word ‘surely’ in them by saying ‘And don’t call me
Shirley.’

? The repeated ‘We were on a break!’ line from the sitcom Friends, which appeared from the
3rd series all the way through to the final 10th series.

? In the television series The Simpsons there are many running gags, including a few in the
opening credits, where the message on the chalkboard, the saxophone melody and the
family’s arrangement round the sofa change from one episode to the next.

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A Shaggy-dog story is a usually long-winded narrative full of irrelevant information which is rounded
off or concluded by a pointless and often absurd punch line. It leads its listeners on a journey of
expectation, only to discover that there is no destination. And that’s the whole point of a shaggy-dog
story: there is no point!

These types of stories are also known as yarns in the tradition of tales told round the campfire. At
their best, a pun is finally achieved after a long and meandering adventure, with the joke-teller
somehow managing to unite the story and the punch line and give both an extra bit of pizzazz.
Perhaps the most notable example of this kind of artistry came from Ronnie Corbett of The Two
Ronnies fame, whose tales told in the trademark armchair represent the very best of the genre.

Parody, Satire and Irony

Also known as spoof, parody is a form of satire that imitates another work for comic effect often by
exaggerating and mocking the original work of art or the genre itself. For example, the movie
Airplane! is a parody or spoof of air disaster movies, while Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles is a parody
of the American Western.

In ancient Greek literature a parody was any poem that imitated another poem’s style. Gradually this
imitation device was used to mock the other poem, which eventually led to the wholesale use of
parody in all branches of the arts, including music, drama, theatre and film.

Parody can occur when elements of one work are lifted out of context and used in another, or when
the people or settings of one work are used to create an entirely new one. A typical example sees the
characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern transformed from minor characters in Shakespeare’s
Hamlet to the main characters in the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard.

In some cases the parody outlasts the original, such as Cervantes’ Don Quixote, which is much
better known than the tale that inspired it, Amadis de Gaula. Parody also includes the use of self-
parody in which artists ‘lampoon’ themselves, such as in Ricky Gervais’ Extras. In film, the Scary
Movie series makes fun of the horror genre, incorporating storylines and other familiar elements from
recent and mainstream movies.

Satire

Suppose you were a congressman, and suppose you were an idiot. But I repeat myself.
Mark Twain

Satire is a form of writing (or any art) used to ridicule its subject and expose the weaknesses of an
individual or organization, often with the intention of bringing about a change in the way of thinking.
In its earliest forms, satire tended to be subtle and ironic, such as in Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 film The
Great Dictator which was a satire on Hitler and the Nazi army.

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There are two distinct types of satire; Horatian satire, which is gentle and refined, and Juvenalian
satire, biting and often bitter criticism. Satire has been an accepted form of social commentary since
the early plays of Aristophanes in the 5th century B.C. Direct criticism of public figures was rare,
however, and satire remained an allegorical art until the appearance of Jonathan Swift (1667-
1745), probably the greatest prose satirist in the English language.

By the 19th century Mark Twain gladly picked up the mantle and became one of American’s leading
satirists and literary figures. He was followed by authors such as Aldous Huxley and George Orwell,
both of whom used satire in a serious attempt to highlight the sweeping changes taking place in
Europe.

Since the 1960s satire has come to be linked almost exclusively with humor, from the antics of Peter
Cook and Dudley Moore through to the hit British television show Spitting Image. Sometimes the
satire is so subtle and believable that it goes unnoticed as satire, such as the movie This is Spinal
Tap, mistaken by some critics as the real thing!

Modern television shows make use of satire in a variety of ways, through the guise of a cartoon series
such as The Simpsons, South Park and Family Guy, via comedy shows such as the American
Seinfeld show, or through satirical panel shows such as the British Have I Got News For You and They
Think It’s All Over.

Irony

When language is used to imply the opposite of a literal meaning, we call it ironic. The irony revolves
around a gap between our understanding and what actually happens. For example, tragic irony
occurs when a character on stage or in film is unaware of his fate while the audience knows exactly
what’s coming.

Verbal irony

Verbal irony is distinguished from other forms by virtue of the fact that it is meant to be intentional.
For example, if a person says ‘What lovely weather we’re having!’ while peering out the kitchen
window at a heavy downpour, that is ironic. Many people assume that verbal irony and sarcasm are
the same. However, sarcasm has come to be considered a kind of verbal irony, one in which the
intention is to ridicule or belittle another.

Situational Irony

Situational irony occurs when the juxtaposition of two things or events is unexpected. The irony is,
naturally, only obvious to the watching audience, such as a scene of a loving embrace aboard a
ship, with the characters pledging to stick together through thick and thin, only for the camera to pull
back and reveal the name ‘RMS Titanic’ stenciled on a life preserver.

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Cosmic Irony

Also known as irony of fate, this comes from the idea that the gods (or Fates) are amusing
themselves by toying with us. It shows itself in the often sharp contrasts between reality and
idealism, such as the German composer Beethoven’s loss of hearing. Another notable example is
that of Seymour Cray, a supercomputer architect, who died of injuries sustained in a traffic accident.
The Jeep Cherokee he was driving was designed using a Cray supercomputer.

Historical Irony

Historical irony is retrospective in the sense that it gives future generations the chance to comment
on he way historical figures saw their world, as opposed to the way things actually turned out. One
prime example concerns the invention of the telephone, to which one man was quick to point out: ‘I
can easily see that every town will want one.’

Understatement and Overstatement

Understatement is a form of speech which aims to deliberately attach less importance to an event or
situation than it actually warrants. When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after take-off
on January 28, 1986, NASA public commentator Steve Nisbett announced: ‘obviously a major
malfunction.’ In Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, one scene depicts a dinner party interrupted by
the figure of Death, complete with long black cloak and scythe. One guest remarks: ‘that’s cast
rather a gloom over the evening, hasn’t it?’

Overstatement

Overstatement is, as you might expect, the opposite of understatement, in other words deliberately
maximizing the subject or event by means of exaggeration or hyperbole. It is often used to highlight
strong feelings or to get a point across by the firmest means possible. It is also the premise of many
a joke of the following ilk:

If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times, don’t exaggerate!

Other examples of overstatement include:

I nearly died laughing.

I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.

I’ve heard that a million times.

This book weighs a ton.

In the world of showbiz, hyperbole has been shortened to hype, and is the practice of exaggerating
the features, talents or entertainment value of a movie, event, television show or artist to stimulate
public interest. The hip hop group Public Enemy used the word in their 1988 song, ‘Don’t Believe the
Hype.’

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Absurdity in Surreal Humor

My advice if you insist on slimming – eat as much as you like, just don’t swallow it.
Harry Secombe

In terms of humor, the absurd has been given its own classification, namely surrealism, which is
based on bizarre juxtapositions, absurd situations and/or nonsensical logic. An example of this type
of humor might run something like this question and answer format:

Q: What's red and invisible? A: No tomatoes.

The common element uniting most surrealist humor is the non-sequitur, where one statement is
followed by another with no obvious connection or logical progression, such as:

Customer: Hi, can I have a pink and blue loaf please?

Baker: No, sorry, we only have green and yellow in today.
Customer: That's all right, my bike's parked outside.

Or yet another common format:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road? A: Rhubarb.

This type of humor is not in everybody’s taste, depending as it does on the odd combinations of
disparate items, making the listener work that little bit harder to rearrange these bizarre mental
images and figure out what the joke-teller is trying to do.

The roots of surreal humor go back a long way, but recent comedy owes a large debt to the work of
Monty Python’s Flying Circus. This has led to a recent plethora of programs including The Simpsons,
Green Wing, the comedy of Reeves and Mortimer, South Park, Family Guy and Futurama, all of which
rely on surrealism as part of their appeal.

Using Sound Devices to Add Interest to Your Jokes

The following sound devices are used in language to heighten or intensify the subject matter. Each
adds a specific ‘sound’ interest for the listener. You’ll find all of them used in comedy, radio or
television advertising, speeches, poetry: in fact in any situation calling for spoken language.

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Alliteration

Alliteration refers to the repetition of the beginning sounds of words. The most obvious example of
this can be found in well-known tongue twisters, such as ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled
peppers.’

Although it began life as a literary device, alliteration has found its way into advertising campaigns,
titles of books and characters, nursery rhymes and news headlines. Part of the reason for its frequent
use is the fact that it makes things easier to remember, giving them a catchy feel, as in the following:

? Baby boom
? Back to basics
? The Big Bang
? Coca-Cola
? Hale and hearty
? Mickey Mouse
? Poor but proud
? Sesame Street
? Sink or swim
? Surround Sound
? It takes two to tango
? Tiny Tim
Characters from fiction, such as Bilbo Baggins, Daffy Duck, King Kong, and Woody Woodpecker all
have names that are easier to remember thanks to the use of alliteration. The same is true of many
of the characters found in comic books, including Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, Peter Parker and
so on.

As you might expect, Shakespeare makes frequent use of alliteration throughout his plays, an
example of which is reproduced below:

‘To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot

Comes sneaking and so sucks her princely eggs’
- Shakespeare’s Henry V

Alliteration can also be found in tongue-twisters and limericks, and when combined with a clever
punch line gives a joke an extra bit of panache:

The love of my life is the prettiest peach with the perfect pair.

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Onomatopoeia

Words that imitate the sounds of the words they describe are known as onomatopoeic, such as
smack, bang, crash, clang or whisper. These types of words exist in every language with noticeable
differences. For example, in Japanese doki doki is used to indicate a racing heartbeat, while in Hindi
the word Dhadak is used to indicate a single beat of the heart. In English a dog’s bark is either woof
or bow-wow, while in Russian it becomes gaf-gaf, in French ouah ouah, and in Chinese wang-wang.

Some animals are named after the sounds they produce, such as the cuckoo and the chickadee.
Other common English examples of onomatopoeic words include:

Bam, bang, beep, boing, bonk, boom, burp, buzz, ding-dong

Hiccup, hiss, hush, ka-boom
Mumble, murmur, ping-pong, plop, poof, pop

Then there are the noises machines make, such as:

honk, beep, screech, choo-choo, clickety-clack, ker-ching

And of course our friends the animals bring their own particular collection to the table:

Chirp, tweet, cluck, cackle, quack, moo, hoot, gobble, cock-a-doodle-do

Buzz, meow, roar, woof, neigh, whinny, roar, arf
Hiss, croak, ribbit

There are even examples of non-auditory onomatopoeia, with recent references including the word
bling, which is supposed to represent the sound of light reflecting off diamonds, and yoink, from The
Simpsons, which is apparently the sound of stealing something.

Advertisers have long used the power of onomatopoeia to make sure their customers remember
their brands or messages. A perfect example is the ‘Snap, crackle and pop’ associated with Rice
Krispies commercials, or the ‘clunk, click’ slogan used to promote seat belt safety.

Onomatopoeia has found its way into our pop culture as well, significantly in the 1960s TV series
Batman, with punches and kicks punctuated by the words POW, BAM, WHAM, CRUNCH and so on.
Readers will likely be familiar with this style of word play in those ‘Wham, bam, thank you ma’am’
types of jokes.

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Repetition and the ‘Rule of Three’

The ‘Rule of Three’ works on the aforementioned premise that the brain responds to patterns and
generates laughter when these patterns are unexpectedly broken. The use of repetition helps to
reinforce certain elements of the story, giving the unexpected twist even more emphasis when it
does come along. The ‘Rule of Three’ is a common basis for many jokes that require ‘setting up’
before delivering the punch line:

My wife’s only been unfaithful to me three times. The first was with the postman, the second
was with the milkman and the third was with the Arsenal football team.

Another common form begins with three people usually of different race in the same setting, using
the stereotypical attributes of each that we mentioned earlier in this section to embellish the joke
and give it an ‘ethnic’ flavor:

An Irishman, an Englishman and a Chinaman are sitting together on a long distance flight.
Suddenly the Irishman looks out the window. ‘Look down there!’ he says proudly, ‘There goes
Ireland.’ Then the Englishman looks down and gets all excited. ‘Look! There goes England!’
The Chinaman grabs a pile of cups from the stewardess and hurls them out the window.
‘Look!’ he shouts. ‘There goes china.

The reason this setup works so well and is used over and over again is because the human mind is
conditioned to accept patterns. If something happens once, it’s not predictable. It may or may not
happen again. If it occurs twice, it’s more predictable but when it happens for a third time, we expect
the same outcome because we have unconsciously accepted the pattern. The different ending
brings a twist and a surprise.

The formula is an old one that works because it works. Adding or reducing the number of repetitions
serves no practical value: too few and there’s not enough precedent to make it funny; too many and
it slows the joke down or makes it too predictable.

The other key to using the ‘Rule of Three’ effectively is to make the first two events completely
believable as in the jokes above. We can accept them without stretching credibility too far. Once
you’ve done that, the third event can be as ridiculous as you want to make it, providing it maintains
some continuity with the joke’s basic design (unless you’re a surrealist!).

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Overcoming Minor Speech Problems

The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds the other fellow of a bad one.
Sid Caeser

Many of us use habitual words or speech mannerisms as part of our normal conversation. Often we
are completely unconscious of them, hearing them in the speech of others but not in our own. When
you develop the habit of listening to yourself you begin to notice these mannerisms. Maybe you ‘um’
a lot: or perhaps there are particular words or phrases you sprinkle throughout your sentences, such
as ‘okay’ or ‘you see’. For example:

Like, I was in this big bus like, and it was going like, really fast.

Some of these are time fillers because we are unsure what to say next. The ‘like’ or the ‘um’ buys a
split second’s worth of thinking time. But in both cases a pause is more effective. It gives your
audience time to consider what you’ve already said before you continue. The only place for habitual
speech patterns like these is in your comedy routine, when you intend to quickly capture a character
type. Removing them from your regular speech gives you flexibility and freedom.

These speech irregularities can be banished with articulation practice. Words are shaped by the
placement of your tongue inside your mouth, as well as by your teeth and lips. To speak clearly you
need to work at shaping the sounds cleanly and opening your mouth to let the sound out.

To help improve your articulation practice saying these tongue-twisters, deliberating pronouncing
each word clearly. Start slowly and gather speed as you gain confidence. If you’re really working
you’ll feel the muscles in your tongue, mouth, lips and jaw getting stretched.

A tongue-twister is a phrase designed to be difficult to articulate properly and help you improve your
pronunciation skills. The hardest tongue-twister in English is rumored to be the following:

The sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick.

Once you get the hang of that one, here are a few more you can try. Some are purposely constructed
in such a way as to cause the accidental pronunciation of a swearword if the speaker stumbles over
the words, as in:

One sock cutter he cuts socks,

two sock cutters they cut socks,
three sock cutters they cut socks,
they all cut socks together.

Or this more familiar tongue-twister, which is nevertheless just as difficult to get right:

I'm not the pheasant plucker, I'm the pheasant plucker's mate,
And I'm only plucking pheasants 'cause the pheasant plucker's late.
I'm not the pheasant plucker, I'm the pheasant plucker's son,
And I'm only plucking pheasants till the pheasant pluckers come.

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You’ll find a whole supply of similar tongue-twisters listed in Part Three immediately following the
collection of one-liners. Remember that you can practice tongue-twisters while you’re out for a walk,
driving the car, waiting in line, or anywhere you like.

The Role of Comedy Props in Humor

Happiness is good health and a bad memory.

Ingrid Bergman

To use or not to use? That is the question. The answer: it depends!

Silly bowties with flashing lights are funny. So are big red noses, Dracula teeth and party hats. You
can source these and many variations in toy departments or party stores. The trick is not so much
using them, but deciding when and where to use them.

A huge polka dot bowtie and a red nose are hardly likely to send shivers up a girl’s spine on your very
first date. Neither will your boss be delighted by a set of Dracula teeth worn in a customer support
role. But both can perk up children’s hospital wards, medical centers, and classrooms. They add fun
and laughter to places that might otherwise be dull or grim. The pleasure they bring offsets the
temptation to become ground down with the seriousness of life. On top of that, studies show that
laughter speeds up the healing process.

So what are the appropriate places in which you can use your funny props?

? By consent, at your workplace. Perhaps a decision has been taken to declare a ‘big tie day’,
the idea being for everyone to wear the largest and most hideous tie they can find. This is an
inclusive activity that should make everyone smile.

? At a themed party where people are similarly dressed.

? As a health professional/social worker/dentist/teacher etc. to take some of the fear and

gravity out of the situation

? At home to amuse your children, your partner, your pets or anybody else.

Ask yourself this question: are you using the prop in order to laugh at someone or with them? If the
answer is at and people are going to be set-up for public humiliation, you might like to do think twice
before going ahead with your plans. Even if the situation turns out to be a hilarious one, someone’s
going to get hurt. And you can rest assured that revenge will be on the cards!

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A whoopee cushion in a boardroom or a pile of plastic dog feces on the photo copier could have
obvious repercussions for your career and might not prove the easiest way to get a promotion. If you
are not prepared to live with your actions, then don’t succumb to temptation. Leave your props at
home!

To find out more about the healing power of humor go to Part Three where you’ll discover links to a
large collection of articles.

How to Use Humor in the Workplace

The most popular labor-saving device is still money.

Phyllis George

Despite what you may feel about your workplace it doesn’t have to be a laughter-free zone. There are
many reputable studies by business management analysts that support the notion that business
goes better for everybody with humor. Good humored people are happy people, and happy people
are more productive, responsive and creative.

Here are 5 compelling benefits you’ll enjoy when you take your laughter to work:

? You’ll feel good. When you feel good you are relaxed, able to think more clearly and
efficiently.

? You’ll bring happiness to others, spreading the warm glow of well-being around. Everybody
works better and more cooperatively.

? Time goes more quickly when you are happy. Those work hours fly by instead of dragging.

? Your work life and the rest of your life become less dissociated from one another.

? Stress will be significantly reduced. Because you are happier, you’ll feel healthier.

Does this mean you take your entire collection of blonde jokes and feed them one at a time to the
girl in admin? No! Laughter at work needs strict adherence to guidelines if you want to reap the
benefits outlined above.

? Use humor that does not isolate or target any person as the butt of your jokes.

? Use humor supporting your co-workers to build a sense of togetherness.

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To spell out those guidelines more clearly:

? Leave that whoopee cushion at home!

? Don’t make jokes about someone’s appearance, their religion, ethnic background,
nationality or sexual orientation!

? Don’t use sexual innuendo!

? Don’t use jokes about bodily functions!

? Know when to STOP! Develop a sense when it is appropriate to ‘clown’ and when not to.

So what can you make fun of?

? Yourself! Make fun of your own fears, habits or inadequacies. This makes you real: other
people can relate to you because they know you are just like them. But don’t overdo it. Too
much undermines the respect others have for you. It becomes attention seeking and you
risk being perceived as the office clown.

? Situations you face collectively, whether they might be meeting deadlines, dealing with
difficult customers, and so on.

? Anything non-controversial or non-threatening.

Suggestions for Fostering Fun at Work

Humor does not have to be uncontrollable rolling on the floor belly laughter to make a difference.
Raising a smile can be enough to increase the ‘feel good factor’ dramatically.

? Declare a Silly Tie Day or any safe variation and set the tone by wearing one yourself to give
others the right idea! (Give enough warning so people can find a silly tie to wear.)

? Find occupational cartoons or jokes to fit your workplace and post them one at a time on the
notice board. Post a new one every few days and you’ll soon have staff looking forward to
the next one.

? Give appreciation tokens to your co-workers for any kindnesses they may have done you.
These need to be small so you don’t embarrass anyone. Examples might include cookies, a
flower, or you might leave a handwritten note saying ‘thank you’.

? Indulge in word play of all sorts: puns, malapropisms, spoonerisms, hyperbole, or jargon
creation.

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 ? Practice random acts of kindness accompanied by safe nonsense as in: ‘You have won first
prize in the Lesser Spotted Bald Eagle Competition and are entitled to 3 door openings, 2
coffee carryings …etc’.

? Use a tagline for difficult situations and change it every couple of weeks: the more innocent
and ridiculous the better! For example: ‘Well, bless my cotton socks!’ ‘Strike me pink!’
‘Great snakes alive!’ These will help to diffuse tension.

You can find out more about using humor in the workplace in Part Three.

How to Use Humor in Presentations

It usually takes me more than three weeks to write a good impromptu speech.
Mark Twain

You have a presentation to give. You know that presentations you’ve admired in the past were ones
in which the speakers found ways to make their material interesting and entertaining. You want to do
the best you can, but the prospect of standing and speaking in front of a group of people scares you
almost witless.

Relax: you are not alone. Do you know what the most common fear among most people is?
Speaking in public! They imagine all sorts of horrible things happening to them. They think either
they’ll forget their notes, or they’ll trip over words and stutter, or they’ll blush. The Power Point
presentation will fail to work or, worst of all, they’ll discover their fly is undone or they’ve tucked their
skirt into their underwear! And then someone will always ask deliberately difficult questions.

None of that need happen to you. You can take control starting now by:

? knowing your subject thoroughly;

? knowing your audience so you can tailor your material to precisely meet their needs;

? knowing the time and duration of your talk;

? knowing the layout of the room and where any equipment you might need will be;

? knowing what is expected of you by the audience, what they hope to gain from listening
and participating.

Once you have grasped these points you can begin to structure your material from your audience’s
perspective. This is most important. It’s the reason you’re there, to communicate your knowledge
effectively and efficiently.

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We know learning occurs best when people are relaxed and alert. We also know that to keep people
interested we need to vary how we present information. Too much of any one style for too long and
they’ll eventually switch off.

One of the best methods to create group or audience good will and readiness to learn is through
humor. It can lighten the atmosphere when things become heavy, rekindle interest when it is waning,
and generally keep people fascinated to see what’s coming next. But remember that humor in a
presentation is a tool to help you communicate information. It is not the goal in itself. Your task is not
to be the comedian but the teacher, using comedic tools to help put the information across.

To do this well you need to know your audience. Who are they? What are their backgrounds? What
sort of humor will appeal to most of them? What subject matter is it possible to make jokes about
without causing offence? Without thinking these questions through you run the risk of making
completely inappropriate attempts to be funny.

Laughs that fail can alienate you from your audience, making your task more difficult. Then you’ll
have to work even harder to get them to listen to you.

Suggestions for ‘Safe’ Humor

? Make fun of your self through exaggeration, blatant hyperbole and tall stories.

? Use appropriate occupational humor.

? Keep any funny story relevant to your task and personalize it.

The ‘Do Not’ List for Humor in Presentations

? Do not use any sexual innuendo, religious or ethnically based humor.

? Do not draw attention to appearance, unless it’s your own and relevant.

? Do not mistake swearing for humor.

You will also get more people paying attention if you:

? Keep to your time frame.

? State the intention of your talk/presentation. Tell people what it is they are going to learn.

? Use your voice effectively. Vary delivery. Remember people love a story: tell them one. Use
gesture. Act. Have fun!

? Use eye contact and speak to your audience.

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 ? Move out from behind a lectern.

? Use cue cards rather than reams of paper: nobody enjoys being ‘read at.’

? Use props to show and tell where appropriate.

? Summarize and exit on a humorous note.

? Rehearse thoroughly so you know your stuff and can strut it with ease!

Life is far too short to spend any of it being bored, even in a presentation! Make yours as interesting
as you possibly can by remembering all those sound devices discussed earlier in this section. Try to
incorporate some alliteration into your text, maybe the odd bit of onomatopoeia, or even a limerick if
it helps make your point and adds to your presentation.

You can find out more about using humor in presentations through the links in Part Three.

Dealing With Put-downs

Occasionally your material will fail and your act will flop.Your carefully rehearsed story, witty one-liner
or impersonation will wither and die in the air in front of you. You may feel you want to fall to the
ground with it. So what can you do to retrieve the situation?

Ten Steps to Recover When Things Go Wrong

1. Stop. Do not follow one ‘bad’ line with another. That will only get you in deeper.

2. Pretend you didn’t notice the silence or the remark and quickly regain your composure to
move right along with your presentation or conversation in a normal way.

3. If appropriate apologize for misreading the situation and then, move the attention away
from yourself.

4. Use a little self-deprecating humor to cover the gaffe. ‘Oh, bother! My mother warned me
about that x years ago. Seems I’m still a slow learner.’

5. Resist the urge to attack the audience for not appreciating your humor. That will only make
them angry and resentful and more likely to have a go at you.

6. Remember to breathe. When you’re attacked or feeling foolish your first reaction is often to
hold your breath, which can make feel tense and uptight. Regain your composure and
relaxation by taking a few breaths.

7. On a sliding scale of 1-10 of disasters, failing to make an audience laugh on one occasion
isn’t the end of the world. Put it in perspective and keep your cool.

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 8. Get out of the situation immediately if that’s what’s needed. Simply say ‘thanks for listening,
and good night’ and get off the stage.

9. Use one of those great one-liners you’ve been collecting and rehearsing.

10. Fall writhing to the floor, clutching your throat and ‘die’ loudly. (Not for the faint-hearted!)

When you’ve recovered spend some time analyzing what, how and why it happened. Don’t be too
hard on yourself or read it as defeat. Be honest and try to get as much useful feedback as possible
from the audience and your own interpretation of the occasion. This is a learning opportunity: take
as much from it as you can. Then try to put this knowledge to good use next time.

Using All Your Senses to Maximize Your Comedy Potential

Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.

Groucho Marx

Which sense is your dominant one? Most of us favor one or two over the others and use these to pick
up information or base our observations on. While that may have worked well in the past, increasing
your awareness to sharpen all your senses will broaden and deepen your potential humor. Your
audiences will appreciate you for it and you’ll enjoy the knowledge that you are reaching more of
them, more of the time.

The 5 physical senses are: seeing, hearing, feeling (touching), smelling and tasting. If you are unsure
what your bias is, try asking yourself these questions:

How do you most easily learn something new?

? Is it by having someone tell you?

? Is it by having someone show you?
? Or do you find out for yourself?
? If it is appropriate, do you taste something new?
? Do you easily remember smells and associate them with new experiences?

What do recall about a vividly remembered experience?

? Do you remember the sounds associated with it?

? Do you see it clearly as a photographic memory?
? Do you remember the physical sensations associated with it?
? Do you recall the taste in your mouth?
? Do you remember the smells?

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Rank your answers from most to least important. If you answered that sounds and having someone
tell you were the most important, hearing is dominant. If you answered seeing it clearly like a
photograph or being shown what to do, seeing is dominant. If you enjoy finding things out for
yourself by physically experiencing them, then touch or feeling is your dominant sense. If you
answered either taste or smell, then these are dominant.

Now that you know your own bias you can adjust your writing to include your less dominant senses,
thereby involving more of your audience. This skill is particularly useful when giving a presentation.
By varying the way you deliver information you can ensure that you’ve covered all the senses. The
more ‘sensual’ information you include, the more likely you’ll be to catch people’s attention or
interest. A good story or a well-loved tale contains enough hooks to keep everyone listening.

You can practice skewing your stories simply by choosing one sense at a time to focus on. Use the
same incident to tell 5 times, each time highlighting a different sense. Let’s try this out on the scene,
‘The Breakfast Rush’.

Seeing: The kitchen is a scene of devastation. The bench is littered with plates, cups, knives, half-
eaten pieces of toast and open jars of honey and jam.

Smelling: The air is all coffee fumes with undertones of burnt toast and scalded milk.

Hearing: The kettle shrieks. Someone rummages loudly through the cutlery drawer. The radio blares
out the news and the toaster pops.

Touching and feeling: Cornflakes crunch underfoot. Someone missed the bowl and got the floor
again. The toast gets scraped before butter and jam are generously applied.

Tasting: The coffee kicks in with its delicious wakefulness, working with the jam to help disguise the
otherwise unpalatable charcoal flavor of burnt toast.

When you’ve worked on identifying all the senses one at a time, you can try to use each sense as the
basis for a joke. Obviously food is a favorite subject for many jokes, particularly where taste and
smell are concerned.

You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.

Sometimes food can be the source of sight-related humor as well, particularly when you consider
how some companies label their products. Here’s an example from a pack of Fritos:

You could be a winner! No purchase necessary. Details inside.

Or you can use food to highlight the mental powers of one sex or the other, depending on your own
inclinations and the audience to whom you’re telling the joke:

Q: Why did the jock/blonde stare at the orange juice carton?

A: Because it said CONCENTRATE.

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The Role of Listening and Watching in Developing a Comedic Mindset

His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.
Mae West

Good humorists are not simply extroverts with a quick tongue. Part of their expertise for using humor
well in the right places comes from listening to and watching others closely. They are alert for
nuances of behavior, the small clues people give away without realizing it.

A proactive watcher-listener is constantly gathering information, sifting and sorting it for the
opportunity to use it in some way. By contrast a passive watcher-listener is someone who may be
part of a social setting but is not actually thinking about or processing what is going on around them.
They won’t know any more about the people at the end of an event than they did at the beginning.

By developing proactive observation and listening skills you gain:

? an insight into what and how the people around you think ;

? knowledge of eccentricities or personal habits;

? insight into any variance between people’s words and actions;

? material for future comedy reference, both verbal and physical;

? the ability to make quick and fairly accurate personality assessments about whether
someone is anxious, overbearing, ambitious;

? an overview of social functioning, such as who is the most powerful person in the room and
why, who wants to be in that person’s good books, who is anxious, who genuinely doesn’t
care at all about social ranking, who is on the outside of the group.

This is not spying, of course. There’s nothing deceitful or illegal involved. All of this information is on
offer all of the time and available to anybody who cares to take notice of it. As the working humorist
you realize that this information supplies the ‘truths’ on which your comedy will be based. Without it
you will be forced to use other people’s material to generate your laughs and you will lack the
sensitivity to know when and how to use it. But most importantly of all, you will not know who to
target with what.

Listening and watching tells you who you can joke with, what you can joke about, when it is
appropriate and how to deliver it. With practice you will also know why a particular joke or remark
works, and, more importantly, why it fails.

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Cultural, Gender and Other Differences in Humor

A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he’s finished.

Zsa Zsa Gabor

Research shows that people laugh freely when they do not feel threatened. Obviously people do
laugh under threat. However this is laughter in the face of fear: it could be bravado or simply a reflex
to release tension. But really healthy laughter occurs when people are at ease and secure.

This explains why people’s laughter responses differ according to context. What is funny in one
setting may not be funny in another. For example, when you are the one being laughed at, it can be
difficult to see the joke!

Therefore what might be considered a good laugh in one situation can quite easily become the
reverse in another. If you have ever been with someone who persists in telling jokes or making fun of
people indiscriminately you’ll know the embarrassment and anguish it can cause.

Know Your Audience

Choosing appropriate subject matter to fit your audience is as much an art as being funny is. To be
successful you need to rapidly assess what your audience will tolerate and what they won’t. Push the
boundaries too far, and you’ll fall on your face…but push just a little and you’ll leave them wanting
more.

Just as there are ‘vocabularies’ for specific social settings, so too are there informal rules around
material for comedy. For example, you would not talk to your bank manager or finance advisor using
the same words or patterns of language you would use with a bunch of close friends gathered for an
after-work drink. Likewise your choice of ‘what to make funny’ and ‘how to make it funny’ should be
guided by your knowledge of the audience.

Topics that are considered amusing do change over time. An excellent example concerns deformity
jokes or black (color of skin) humor. A person who lives with the consequences of having or being
those things has earned the right to laugh at themselves if they choose to. For others it is considered
dangerous territory and usually perceived as nothing more than an easy way to get a few cheap
laughs.

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Different Connotations in Different Parts of the World

English is an extraordinarily eclectic language. It shamelessly steals words from wherever its
speakers go. And they go everywhere - all over the world. What this means for you, is that even
though the words remain the same, their usage varies. What a word denotes on one side of the world
may morph into something very different on the other.

The greatest variations occur in colloquial or informal language largely because it is primarily oral in
character. This is the kind of language one uses in relaxed social settings amongst well known
friends or family. It reflects the flavor of the speaker’s social setting and culture.

A good example is the word ‘fanny’. In the USA ‘fanny’ is used colloquially to refer to a person’s
bottom. It is harmless and quite acceptable, an affectionate term for a rear end. However, in the UK
the word ‘fanny’ is no longer quite as affectionate or innocent. Instead it becomes a slang term for a
woman’s sexual organs. In Australia and New Zealand it carries a similar meaning.

So when entering an unfamiliar social setting, be careful about the language you use. You may
offend if you do not completely understand the nuances of meaning. Always try to listen carefully
before attempting to join in conversations with a colloquial flavor.

Cultural Differences

Cultural differences and subtleties of language are often synonymous. In countries with a multi-
cultural society the common language may be English, but the ethnic or cultural origin of each group
is what makes the difference. This can make using humor a potential minefield. Opening your mouth
without understanding these fundamental differences can be embarrassing and also a sign of
ignorance.

Before you joke about racial characteristics, sexual mores, marital roles, business practices,
religious preferences or any other topic, and pin it to a particular racial group or segment of society,
consider the context carefully. That doesn’t mean you have to go through life tip-toeing for fear of
offending: but it does mean you need to evaluate your comments. Know the taboos before you
speak but also recognize and know your own position. Who you are does influence how humor is
received. Flippant stereotypical remarks can reinforce barriers and prejudices rather than help to
break them down.

Similar warnings are applicable where your humor crosses language barriers. A good joke or
humorous quip in English will sometimes be meaningless in translation, especially if it relies on
stereotypes that are particular to its own country or culture.

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Some people make the assumption that since everybody speaks English these days, wherever they
go their humor will be appreciated and understood. For instance, it is an American custom to begin a
business meeting or presentation with humor. When an American businessman was in Japan he
made his opening joke and the audience laughed generously. Later the translator was asked what
he had said. He admitted that he couldn’t translate the joke, but rather than have the guest suffer
the indignity of silence, he told the audience to laugh appreciatively, and they did!

Gender Differences

Don’t be a sexist: broads hate that!

Yes, there is a difference between male and female humor. Obviously there are variations between
individual men and women, but studies have shown women are more likely to respond to humor
around social incidents or quirks of human nature. Men are more inclined to laugh at bodily function
humor and ridicule of the weak, different or powerless. In other words a woman is less likely to
appreciate a ‘fart’ joke!

Apart from the material itself, there are further complications around gender issues. When is it OK for
a woman to be humorous? Is she permitted to be a wit for her male colleagues as well as her female
ones? Is she only really allowed to be funny at home? What subjects can she use in front of women,
men or mixed groups?

The answers are complex. It literally depends on the situation. Some cultures perceive a woman
being funny as threatening and consider humor as a male preserve. A woman’s role is to give
appreciative support. She can laugh at his jokes but not attempt her own. Unless she is very sure of
her social position, she may run the risk of being seen as undermining, aggressive and have her
‘womanliness’ and right to respect questioned. And while that may appear extreme, remnants of
those attitudes still exist in parts of the liberated western world.

On any top ten ‘personality traits’ chart for men, a good sense of humor is a must. Women
apparently adore a man if he’s witty and able to make them laugh. Ironically a remarkably similar but
fundamentally different item appears on women’s lists for tips to get your man: you must laugh at his
jokes. It makes him feel good and if he feels good, then in turn he’ll want to make you feel good.

That aside, there are differences to observe. In general it is not always a good idea to include explicit
sexual references or swear words in same-sex or even mixed company. The best advice is to make
sure you know exactly what your audience expects before getting into your routine. If you’re not sure,
keep it clean.

Everybody will agree that men and women are not the same. On the other hand, there are plenty of
subjects that are of interest to both genders and make equally good starting points for funny gags or
one-liners, including families, the things children say, pets, food, weather, religion, politics,
computers, television, and so on. Rather than feeling limited by the boundaries of sexual
differences, you should instead try to discover ways to make your jokes as universal as possible.

www.How-To-Be-Funny.com 77
That way, you’ll make more people laugh and be able to deliver your material with confidence and
ease.

Top Tips for Writing Jokes

? Always work your jokes in the correct order. In other words, start with the truth and end
with a twist.

? Keep your eyes and ears open for the funny things that happen.

? Trust your own observations. If you think something is funny, then someone else will.

? Use characters your audience can relate to by drawing on the people in your own life.

? Don’t take yourself or your life too seriously.

? The best way to write lots of jokes is to write lots of jokes!

? Write with a person in mind, copying their pattern of speaking.

? Never let anyone see or hear your jokes until they’re perfect.

? Research and analyze subjects that interest you.

? Use dictionaries, phrase books, quotations, proverbs, clichés, and any other sources
you can find to help you create your own jokes.

? Never plagiarize another comedian’s material.

? Learn how to manipulate your audience by taking them in one direction and then
pulling the rug out from under their feet!

? Remember that a joke takes place whenever two ideas meet, whether these ideas
have something in common or are completely the opposite of one another.

? Always respect your audience: without them, you’ve got nothing.

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Top Tips for Telling Jokes

? Keep your jokes as short as they need to be. For example: One snowman says to
another: ‘Do you smell carrots?’

? Never explain your jokes or punch lines. If they have to be explained, they need more
work!

? Relax and try to enjoy yourself. When an audience feels you’re at ease with your
material, they’ll also relax and enjoy the experience that much more.

? Understand your audience. Jokes for children need to be short and to the point in
uncomplicated language. Jokes for adults need to be mature enough so as not to seem
condescending but brief enough so as not to bore them to death.

? Practice your timing every chance you get. The reason most jokes (including good jokes)
fail is because of poor timing.

? Don’t laugh at your own jokes. That’s the audience’s job!

? Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse!

Finally, remember that the whole point of this course is to have fun discovering and making the best
use of your own particular style of humor. We hope you’ve enjoyed working your way through the
course and that it has given you some insights into the many possibilities that exist for creating and
delivering your own jokes.

In the final part of the course you’ll find web links to sites filled with jokes and information about the
art and use of comedy. We’ve also included a collection of funny quotes and one-liners arranged by
subject, several more tongue-twisters to help you improve your vocal range, the Be Funny Guide to
Writing, and a selection of jokes under the heading You Know you’re Getting Old when …

www.How-To-Be-Funny.com 79
 Part Three: Web Resources
Many joke sites share the same or similar material. Often the only difference between them is the
way the site has been organized. The sites listed below were chosen for their ease of navigation and
selection of free resources.

Please note: It is the user’s responsibility to ensure that they have adequate safeguards in place
before opening a web page. The nature of the internet is such that it is impossible to guarantee safe
surfing unless the computer is equipped with virus protection and firewall security. Although these
links have been checked for accuracy and relevance, the publishers can take no responsibility for
any subsequent pop-ups or intrusions that may occur in the future. Also, note that all sites were live
at the time of press, however unfortunately sites do expire and become deactivated. Enjoy!

Jokes

http://www.comedycentral.com/jokes/index.jhtml
http://www.workjoke.com/projoke.htm
http://www.basicjokes.com/
http://www.jokeswarehouse.com/
http://funny2.com/jokes.htm
http://www.museumofhumor.com/resources.htm

Comedians

http://www.comediansusa.com/list.html
http://www.cleancomedians.com/
http://www.comedyday.com/html/worldcomedy/comedians.htm
http://www.comedycv.co.uk/
http://www.blackrefer.com/comedy.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-comedians
http://www.chortle.co.uk/comics/comics.html

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Motivational Speakers/Humorists

http://www.otellus.com/main/humorist.htm
http://www.lectureagent.com/
http://www.lunarantics.com/links/humorconsultants.html
http://www.awesomespeakers.com/

How to Use Humor in Presentations

http://www.laughter.com/speakers/speechhumor.html
http://www.womans-connection.com/al_speaking_funny.htm
http://www.antion.com/articles/Speaker%20Series.htm
http://www.presentationhelper.co.uk/presentation_humor.htm
http://totalcommunicator.com/vol2_2/funnymeeting.html
http://www.allenklein.com/articles/howtobefunny.htm
http://www.squaresail.com/auh.html#intro
http://humorcenter.umd.edu/essays.html
http://www.humorpower.com/articles_free.html

How to Use Humor in the Workplace

http://www.warrenshepell.com/articles/humour.asp
http://www.iuinfo.indiana.edu/homepages/0919/text/workplace.htm
http://www.originallyspeaking.com/blog/2006/03/your-fired-humor-in-the-workplace/
http://www.linkageinc.com/company/news_events/in_the_news/workplace_humor.aspx
http://www.bradmontgomery.com/motivational-speakers/speakers-resources/humor_motivation-
laugh/humor_attitudes.html
http://www.mikekerr.com/articles.asp

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How to Heal With Humor

http://www.mikekerr.com/help.asp
http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Shaw2.html
http://www.allenklein.com/articles/cancercomedy.htm
http://www.aath.org/
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC39/Adams.htm
http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Russia/Moscow/blog-27831.html
http://www.donburnstick.com/articles.php
http://psychcentral.com/library/healing_humor.htm
http://www.thehumorcollection.org/
http://www.crystalinks.com/laughter.html

Pick-Up Lines
Some are good. Some are extremely bad. User beware!

http://www.goodquotes.com/pickuplines.htm
http://www.catholic-pages.com/grabbag/pickup.asp
http://love.astrology.com/pickuplines.html
http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~marcus/JOKES/pickup.html
http://humor.about.com/od/pickuplines/
http://ifaq.wap.org/sex/worstpickuplines.html

Links to Improv. Comedy Sites

http://nydi.org/improv.htm
http://www.learnimprov.com/
http://www.humanpingpongball.com/improv_games.html
http://www.improvland.com/links/index.html

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A Collection of Favorite Quotes and One-liners

Here’s a large collection of some of the best quotes and one-liners on a variety of different topics.
We’ve arranged them in order of subject so that you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for more
quickly and conveniently.

Art

The Venus de Milo is a good example of someone who won’t stop biting their fingernails.
Will Rogers

It’s God. I recognized him from Blake’s picture. Robert Frost

Money

The hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax. Albert Einstein

The quickest way to get rid of people is to lend them money. Anita Blackman

Never buy a portable television set in the street from a man who is out of breath. Arnold
Glascow

Rich widows are the only second-hand goods that sell for first-class prices. Benjamin
Franklin

Ninety percent of my money I spend on women and whiskey. The rest I just waste. Tig
McGraw

If you think nobody cares whether you are dead or alive, try missing a few car payments.
Ann Landon

Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.

Borrow money from pessimists - they don't expect it back.

Despite the cost of living, have you noticed how popular it remains?

Living on Earth is expensive, but it does include a free trip around the sun.

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Business

My office hours are twelve to one with an hour off for lunch. George Kaufman

My consciousness is fine; it’s just my pay that needs raising. Phyllis Diller

Women prefer men who have something tender about them, especially the legal kind. Kay
Ingram

I lent a friend of mine ten thousand dollars for plastic surgery and now I don’t know what he
looks like. Emo Philips

My boss has a brain like Einstein’s: dead since 1955. Gene Perret

Then the insurance man told me the accident policy covered falling off the roof but not
hitting the ground. Tommy Cooper

Confession is good for the soul but bad for your career.

Xerox and Wurlitzer could merge to market reproductive organs.

Failure is not an option. It's bundled with your software.

Change is inevitable - except from vending machines.

Beat the 5 o'clock rush - leave work at noon.

I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.

An unemployed court jester is no one's fool.

I used to be a lifeguard, but some blue kid got me fired.

October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others
are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and
February. Mark Twain

Drugs

Now they’re calling drugs an epidemic: that’s ‘cos white folks are doing them. Richard Pryor

It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.
Mark Twain

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Education

Children who have difficulty with “cat” or “car” have no difficulty with four letter words. Pam
Brown

A good education is the next best thing to a pushy Mother. Charles Schulze

No one has ever passed so few examinations as I have and received so many degrees.
Winston Churchill
Food

The second day of a diet is easier than the first. By the second day you’re off it. Jackie
Gleason

If we’re not supposed to eat late-night snacks, why is there a light in the refrigerator?

I can’t cook. I use a smoke alarm as a timer. Carol Siskind

I’ve tried to lose weight but I’ve always had this problem with my feet. I can’t keep them out
of fish and chip shops. Roy Brown

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so. Douglas Adams

The hardness of butter is directly proportional to the softness of the bread.

When cheese gets its picture taken, what does it say?

What was the best thing BEFORE sliced bread?

Red meat is not bad for you. Fuzzy green meat is bad for you.

If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?

If you’re thin, don’t eat fast. If you’re fat, don’t eat – fast.

Lawyers

Whoever said talk was cheap, never hired a lawyer. Wayne Mackey

I do not wish to speak ill of any man behind his back, but I believe the gentleman is a
lawyer. Samuel Johnson

Hell hath no fury like the lawyer of a woman scorned.

99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

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Books and Writers

That writer is so bad he shouldn’t be left alone in a room with a typewriter. Herman J.
Manciewicz

Though he tortures the English language, he never yet succeeded in forcing it to reveal its
meaning. J. B. Morton

In writing a novel, when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.
Raymond Chandler

This is a book everyone can afford to be without. Edmond Crispin

The only trouble with Seamus O’Sullivan is that when he’s not drunk he’s sober. W. B. Yeats

The covers of this book are too far apart. Ambrose Bierce

Politics

Once we had Clinton, Johnny Cash and Bob Hope. Now we have Bush, no Cash and no
Hope.

I’m for a stronger death penalty. George Bush

To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.

Sex and Relationships

The best contraceptive for older people is nudity.

Now that food has replaced sex in my life, I can't even get into my own pants.

I saw a woman wearing a T-shirt with ‘Guess’ on it...so I said ‘Implants?’

I've been on so many blind dates; I should get a free dog.

Most nudists are people you don't want to see naked.

I like my men like I like my coffee; ground up and in the freezer.

The problem with sex in the movies is the popcorn usually spills.

I think sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it.

They call it PMS because "Mad Cow Disease" was already taken.

Don't get married. Find a woman you hate and buy her a house. It's a lot easier.

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 Love may be blind, but marriage is a real eye-opener.

Never go to bed angry; stay awake and plot your revenge.

The Bible teaches to love thy neighbor, but the Kama Sutra shows you how.

Mind and Memory

Follow your dreams, except for that one where you're naked at work.

I don't have a solution, but I admire the problem.

A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.

Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don't have any film.

I tried daydreaming but my mind kept wandering.

I've got a memory like a.. a.. what's that thing called?

People

In an argument, a woman always has the last word. Anything a man says after that is the
beginning of a new argument.

If you think you're a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else's dog around.

If it's true that we are here to help others, then what exactly are the others here for?

If you think there is good in everybody then you obviously haven't met everybody.

Half the people in the world are below average.

There are 3 kinds of people: those who can count and those who can't.

Forgive and forget, but keep a list of names just in case.

I have friends who swear they dream in color; I say it's just a pigment of their imagination.

I told my wife that men are like fine wine, they improve with age. Next day she locked me in
the cellar.

No one is listening until you make a mistake.

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 Be nice to your kids: they'll choose your nursing home.

Can a blind person feel blue?

Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.

How much can I get away with and still go to heaven?

Jesus loves you; it's everybody else that thinks you're an ass.

I wouldn't be caught dead with a necrophiliac.

I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

Look out for #1, and don't step in #2, either.

I'd kill for a Nobel Peace prize.

Time

The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Time is a great healer, but a terrible beautician.

I intend to live forever - so far so good.

Birthdays are good for you - the more you have the longer you live.

Treat each day as your last; one day you will be right.

Wear a watch and you'll always know what time it is. Wear two watches and you'll never be
sure.

Time is just nature's way to keep everything from happening at once.

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Health

I drive too fast to worry about cholesterol.

Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have.

Lord, if I can't be skinny, please let all my friends be fat.

Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

Smokers are just like everybody else. Just not for long.

Hypochondria is the only disease I haven't got.

I'd like to leave this world like I came into it; screaming, naked and covered in someone
else's blood.

If you jogged backwards, would you gain weight?

Language

‘I am’ is the shortest sentence in the English language. ‘I do’ is the longest.

Is there another word for synonym?

Am I ambivalent? Well, yes and no.

Don't use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.

Whose idea was it to put an ‘S’ in the word ‘Lisp’?

All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

Some people have a way with words, others not have way.

Karaoke is Japanese for "tone deaf".

Evolution

To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add sheep was a tautology. Mark Twain

If man evolved from apes why do we still have apes?

We are born naked, wet and hungry. Then things get worse.

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The Funny Side of Life

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman where the Self Help section was. She said
if she told me it would defeat the purpose.

Where do forest rangers go to get away from it all?

How do you tell when you run out of invisible ink?

If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn?

If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

Two wrongs do not make a right, but three lefts do.

I wouldn't touch the metric system with a 3.048m pole!

We live in an age when pizza gets to your house before the police do. Jeff Manders

Why do you press harder on the buttons when the battery in the remote control is dead?

I wondered why the Frisbee was getting bigger, and then it hit me.

Signs

Police Station toilet stolen: cops have nothing to go on.

For sale: parachute, only used once, never opened, small stain.

Help Wanted: Telepath; you know where to apply.

A seminar on time travel will be held two weeks ago.

Clairvoyants meeting canceled due to unforeseen events.

Energizer Bunny arrested; charged with battery.

Honk if you love peace and quiet.

An optometrist's office: ‘If you can’t find what you're looking

for, you've come to the right place.’

Dry cleaner’s window: ‘Drop your pants here.’

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 In a bowling alley: ‘Please be quiet. We need to be able to hear a pin
drop.’

Computers

WhatDoYouDoWhenTheSpacebarKeyDoesn’tWork?

Tech Support: ‘I need you to re-boot your computer.’ Customer: ‘I’ve already kicked it
several times but nothing happened.’

Shop Assistant: ‘What kind of computer do you have?’ Blonde: ‘A white one.’

‘No, sir, clicking on ‘remember password’ won’t help YOU remember your password.’

Q: How can you tell when a computer’s getting old? A: It loses its memory.

Give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach him to use the Net and you won’t see
him for weeks.

Tech Support: ‘Click on the icon on the left side of the screen.’ Customer: ‘Is that your left or
my left?’

Hackers: computer users who smoke too much.

Animals

Save the whales: collect the whole set.

Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.

Laughing stock - cattle with a sense of humor.

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More Tongue-Twisters

For those of you who want a little extra practice working on your speech, here are some more
examples of the type of tongue-twister found in Part Two.

Round and round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran.

A noisy noise annoys an oyster.

A flea and a fly flew up in a flue.

Said the flea, "Let us fly!"
Said the fly, "Let us flee!"
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

Unique New York.

Six thick thistle sticks.

The crow flew over the river

with a lump of raw liver

Sister Susie sewing shirts for soldiers.

She sells sea shells on the seashore.

Give papa a cup of proper coffee in a copper coffee cup.

A quick witted cricket critic.

Red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry.

I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet I sit.

Betty Botter bought some butter,

‘But’, she said ‘this butter's bitter,
If I put it in my batter,
it will make my batter bitter!
But a bit of better butter will make my batter better!’
So she bought some better butter,
better than the bitter butter,
and she put it in her batter
and her batter was not bitter!
So 'twas better Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter.

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 Mr. See owned a saw.
And Mr. Soar owned a seesaw.
Now See's saw sawed Soar's seesaw
Before Soar saw See,
Which made Soar sore.
Had Soar seen See's saw
Before See sawed Soar's seesaw,
See's saw would not have sawed
Soar's seesaw.
So See's saw sawed Soar's seesaw.
But it was sad to see Soar so sore
Just because See's saw sawed
Soar's seesaw!

You Know You’re Getting Old When …

You enjoy watching the news.

The phone rings and you hope it's not for you.

People ask what color your hair used to be.

You're proud of your lawnmower.

You try to operate the microwave with the remote control that works the DVD player.

Your best friend is dating someone half their age and isn't breaking the law.

You sing along with the music in elevators.

You want a new washing machine for your birthday.

You have to text your teenagers when dinner’s ready.

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The Be Funny Guide to Great Writing

? Always avoid any alliteration.

? Avoid clichés like the plague.

? Make it your raison d’etre never to use foreign words or phrases.

? Contractions aren’t necessary; that’s just the way it’s.

? Prepositions do not exist to end sentences with.

? Remarks in parentheses (however relevant) should be eliminated.

? Don’t be redundant or use more words than necessary: it’s superfluous.

? Comparisons are as bad as clichés.

? Exaggeration is ten times worse than understatement.

? Never use one-word sentences. Pointless. Useless. Idiotic.

? One must never generalize.

? Try to be more or less specific.

? Analogies in writing are about as useful as a snowball in hell.

? Stay cool and watch your back by avoiding colloquialisms.

? Keep your writing natural by avoiding quotations or, as Oscar Wilde said: ‘Being natural
is such a very difficult pose to keep up.’

? Why use rhetorical questions?

? It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

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