a comedian.

Although it would be wonderful if you could tell the

audience that ‘My character doesn’t deal well with hecklers’ or
‘My character expects a standing ovation at the end’, it is not that
easy to earn our spurs, I’m afraid.

Persona means the public face you present to the world. The word
was adopted by actors and trickled down into other performance
arts, including comedy.

We all try to pigeonhole everyone, including ourselves. We have

such a strong sense of self. We carry around with us a very definite
sense of who we are, even if we are completely wrong about our
capabilities and strengths. You may say ‘I’m open-minded’, but are
you? Always? Have you no limits? What if we were to catch you on
an off day? We all have an extremely high opinion of ourselves, but
we can’t all be right: the people who tell us (and believe) that they
have a ‘bubbly’ personality are probably a bit dull. Similarly, it would
probably be very tedious to be stuck in a lift with the ‘office joker’.

This public persona that we exhibit to the world often traps us. It
limits our flexibility of response, which is fatal for the comedian
who should always practise being open and fluid to situations on
stage, rather that fixed and rigid. The confining persona is another
form of the social controller trying to dominate our lives. As long
as you can don and remove these little personas that you play with,
you are in control. As soon as you mistake the mask for all of you,
you lose control.

Insight: listen to your inner idiot

What jokes do you gravitate towards? When I began I
wanted the audience to think I was very clever. It took me a
long time to realize that I was better at being stupid…

Comedic flaws and how to use them

Comedic flaws are halfway between playing an attitude and

developing a persona.

4. What sort of comic are you? 67

 During a set you may play the attitudes of love, hate, worry or
contempt in the course of five minutes. But those attitudes will play
out differently if you have revealed the underlying character flaw of
being a slob rather than being a little bit anally retentive.

COMEDIC FLAWS: BOB HOPE

One of the flaws that fuelled Bob Hope’s comedy was the idea
that he was a complete physical coward. This in no way limited
his performances in film, radio and TV. His cowardice would
simply inform his performance. He could woo a woman (play the
attitude of love), pick a fight (argumentative) or enact a business
transaction (attitude of shrewdness) and at the same time leave the
audience in no doubt that he was a complete chicken.

COMEDIC FLAWS: FRANKIE HOWERD

Frankie Howerd’s comedic flaw (or one of them) was his enormous
sense of personal vanity. His own inflated sense of self-belief was
so at odds with his shambling body and his hangdog expression
that it created an instant dissonance in the audience’s mind. How
could this man think for a moment that he was a devil-may-care
danger to women? Yet he generated much laughter over the course
of his career by portraying his shambolic version of what he
thought might be debonair.

COMEDIC FLAWS: WILL SMITH

A contemporary example is that of the very funny British comedian

Will Smith. His comedic flaws complement each other to the extent
that he could almost be mistaken for a character act. He portrays
himself as terminally upper middle class, with no understanding
of women. He tells the women in the audience to know their
strengths: while men are good at building, ladies are better at
cooking, and daintiness and prettiness; his opinions make it plain
why he lives alone. He is continually being ripped off by workmen
who overcharge. He is far too nice, yet deeply suspicious of anyone
or anything outside his limited background. He comes from a

68
massively dysfunctional family. He is useless at relationships;
he tells us he is neither straight nor gay, he is a third category –
he is nice.

Your take on particular attitudes will be different depending on

your underlying comedic flaw. A comic who plays the flaw of being
overly anxious will talk about a relationship completely differently
from someone who is playing the flaw of being overly confident.

Top tip
Try this:
Look at all the different attitudes that you enjoy playing
and then try to find if they all share certain qualities: in
other words, could you describe them as ‘symptoms’ of an
underlying comedic flaw or character trait? Beware of nailing
down every aspect of your persona early on in your career
because this could discourage you from experimentation.

Remember, while audiences don’t generally like to feel

confused, you have a perfect right to go off in different
directions during your time on stage. You don’t have to
play only one emotional note. You are allowed to contradict
yourself, just like you do in real life.

Comic archetypes

One of the most common questions a comedian is asked is: ‘Who

are your favourite comedians?’ It’s a bit of a red herring. We may
have personal heroes, but it seems to me that most comedians
admire a type of comedy that may or may not be epitomized by a
famous stand-up: it is generally the style of comedy that we admire,
rather than an individual. This is perhaps a good thing. There is
nothing worse than watching a new comedian mimicking someone
more famous, yet sometimes it does happen. Several years ago when

4. What sort of comic are you? 69

 Harry Hill first appeared, there were a little rash of ‘Harry Hillisms’
that some new comedians tried to adopt. When Eddie Izzard first
made it big, there were a number of new comics who tried to
copy his style. This conscious or unconscious mimicry is always
unsuccessful and should be avoided at all costs. Why would the
public want a cheap imitation of someone they already like? The
comedian should always strive to uncover his or her own voice.
That is the only way to become successful.

Insight
If you’re someone’s biggest fan, how will you ever develop
your own voice?

In terms of persona, there seem to be several ‘types’ that occur

again and again in different times and different cultures that
countless comedians are happy to adopt. One final caveat, before
we begin: these descriptions are not meant to be limiting to the
individual performer in any way. Most comics, fairly early on
discover their most successful voice quite naturally. It is only then,
after the fact, that audience members start saying things like:
‘You’re a natural deadpan comedian, aren’t you?’ or ‘You’re a bit
of a Jack the Lad on stage.’ But for those among us who are unsure
of who we are on stage, perhaps the following types will help
clarify the way you present yourself. Think of them as directions
in which to travel, rather than fixed goals. There is almost infinite
variety in each archetype, and the way in which you choose to
inhabit one will always be different from the way someone else
would. Ultimately it is your individuality that counts the most.

Insight
Once you have sorted out what sort of idiot you are, it
becomes quite easy to find out that idiot’s comedic answers
to particular problems.

COMIC LOSER

The world is against them. Everyone and everything is better

than them. They will always seize defeat from the jaws of victory.

70
In the game of life, they have definitely drawn the short straw. They
may exhibit great dignity, as when Oliver Hardy watches the piano
crash endlessly down the hill, or they may be reduced to a quivering
mass of neurosis, as when a bug-eyed Rodney Dangerfield endlessly
tries to loosen his tie and moans ‘I can’t get no respect!’

The comic loser’s humour comes from the fact that everything they
do will fail and that the petty (largely imaginary) victories that they
do have will be trumpeted out of all proportion to the actual deed.

They should radiate defeat. You can be an angry loser, a sleazy

loser or a loser who is in denial. In short, a loser can play just
about any attitude and talk on any subject, as long as they remain
true to their nature. They don’t just crop up on a comedy stage:
the cartoon character Wile E. Coyote, always trying and eternally
failing to turn Roadrunner into lunch, is probably one of the purest
portrayals of a comic loser in modern times; Charles Dickens’ ever-
sunny Mr Micawber could be called a comic loser; Ricky Gervais’
creation of puffed-up egotist and workplace nightmare David Brent
could also be viewed as a comic loser.

One of the strengths of the comic loser is that he or she doesn’t

present a threat to an audience. We are invited to laugh at rather
than laugh with their misfortunes.

LOVABLE BUFFOON

The buffoon is the slow-thinking idiot who gets everything the

wrong way round. Think of Tommy Cooper, a comedian who
looked perpetually bewildered by everything, including inanimate
objects. Think of the early work of Lee Evans, desperately trying
to win the approval of his audience, while his body and thought
processes run away from him.

The buffoon makes a real virtue out of that important comic

device of allowing an audience to see what is passing across
the comedian’s face. There can be something very funny about
watching the wheels turn in a comedian’s brain, especially if the

4. What sort of comic are you? 71

 audience has got there first, or if the comedian’s logic takes them
off in a completely different direction.

SMART ARSE

This is the comedian who thinks that they are cleverer than they
actually are: the show-off; the one who can’t refrain from saying
the wrong thing at the wrong time; the comic with the ready,
flippant remark; the know-it-all.

In the 1970s, American comedian Steve Martin played with the

idea of a know-it-all, arrogant Latino lover. One of the key lines in
this routine was when he was demonstrating how to compliment a
girlfriend’s mother: ‘Ah, Mrs Smith. I can see where your daughter
gets her breasts! (slight pause) And I can see where they are
going…’ Classic, smart-arse material.

The American comic/character act Peewee Herman summed up the

energy of the smart arse with his ten-year-old’s schoolyard taunt in
response to every negative comment directed at him: ‘I know you
are, but what am I?’

CONFRONTATIONALIST

This is the sort of comic who loves (or pretends to love) confronting
the audience. They grab the audience by the ears and say ‘Listen
to this – this is funny.’ They don’t care what the audience thinks.
It’s probably fair to say that most use anger as an engine for their
creativity, whether it’s the cold scorn of Pat Condell (‘I believe in
the right to worship whatever you want, no matter how misguided,
bigoted, wrong-headed or stupid that belief is…’) or the dripping
contempt of Mark Steel. Talking about a British politician’s
criticism of Muslim women wearing the face-covering niqab he says:

Why didn’t [Jack] Straw mention the veil to the Saudis?

Somehow it all slipped his mind, and instead of questioning
their ethics he sold them arms.
(From his column in The Independent, 11 October 2006)

72
One of the most legendary performers in modern times to harness
his rage is Scottish comedian Jerry Sadowitz. Calling him a legend
is not empty hyperbole; stories seem to gather around Jerry like
dust bunnies around static electricity. His contempt as a comedian
is wide and deep, as he used to remark:

People say I hate everything. That’s not true. I only hate

two things: people and objects.

He will attack anything that he thinks is stupid. Picking on the

political correctness of alternative comedy, he said:

I’m a non-sexist, non-racist comedian, by the way.

Which is a terrible shame because I’ve got a brilliant joke
about Tina Turner.

Turning his attention to old people, he railed:

I think all pensioners should be slaughtered at birth!

He is, as he says, ‘not a “family” comedian. Not unless you belong

to the Manson family…’

In the best of all possible worlds we would have enough sensitivity

not to laugh at another’s pain. But since we do, Sadowitz feels that
we have no right in engaging in a self-censorship that is dictated by
perceived ‘good taste’. What is that, after all? Is it just a collective
decision? Some cultures think it is the height of good manners to
have granny’s bones on show above the mantelpiece. Like all good
comedians, he will question your assumptions. His preferred route
is through confrontation.

GENIAL, ALL-ROUND NICE PERSON

This is the type that most comedians tend to adopt, at least

initially. This comedian is likable, affable and eager to engage with
the audience. Their strength comes from the fact that they want
to be good communicators. In talking about the world around

4. What sort of comic are you? 73

 them, they become the conduit for the audience. They become
the witness, as if they were saying: ‘Look, these weird things have
happened to me, you probably recognize them as well.’ Rather
than confront, they seduce an audience into their point of view.
They are great charmers. Often, by plying their craft, they find that
they can lead an audience down some very disturbing paths, simply
by having been nice and friendly at the beginning and building
enough confidence in them as performers.

Think of it as a default stage energy for the comedian. Even at his

most irate, Sadowitz would generally remember to occasionally
smile and let the audience into his world.

DEADPAN

If you have ever teased a friend by answering solemnly, when

asked if they look like they have put on weight, ‘Yes, loads’, then
congratulate yourself. You have deadpanned someone.

A good deadpan is hard to find. They are often the monotone,

vaguely sociopathic figures who must never crack a smile for fear of
breaking the illusion. Rather than a personality type, the deadpan
delivery can just be a means to deliver the joke, pure and simple, to
the audience’s ear, without any sense of who the comedian actually
is getting in the way of the joke. That is why it can be quite popular
with wordsmith comics. Think of the American comedian Steven
Wright. Or the 1990s comedienne Hattie Hayridge, who would
deliver her jokes like pebbles dropped down a well, to great effect.
The British comic Milton Jones crafts his jokes very carefully and,
while not strictly speaking a deadpan, he knows the value of letting
a joke stand up on its own two feet with minimal delivery:

I was watching TV the other day and I flipped. Suddenly

all I could see were my sofa cushions really close up.

Or:

I believe the police should be given special powers. Like

flying. And turning into insects.

74
These jokes would not be helped by an animated delivery.

It is arguable whether the deadpan is a proper archetypal

persona: you could, after all, have comic-loser deadpans or
surrealist deadpans. It is, in effect, a style that most comedians
dip into. Some will try it occasionally; some adopt it as their
main approach.

THE COMIC MESSIAH

This is the comedian in tub-thumping mode. This is when,

mid-rant, the stand-up transcends the role of rabble-rouser to
become Moses descending from the mountain with the holy writ.
It is the comic touched by greatness.

I suppose that most of us, by the ends of our sets, when we hope
to have the audience in the palm of our hands, aspire to the role of
comedy messiah – that glorious condition when the audience are so
behind you that you can do no wrong, Some comedians, however,
try to assume this archetype more completely. Think of the work
of the American comedian George Carlin, who sets himself up as
judge and jury of all that is wrong in western life. (If nothing else,
try to listen to his anti-golf course rant, where he extrapolates,
slowly but surely, with the audience cheering him all the way,
that golf is a racist activity.)

The comic messiah doesn’t have to make sense. In fact, it is

probably best if they don’t take themselves too seriously or else
the magic might fly away. They just have to convince an audience
for a few brief moments that they know what’s what and where
it should be placed.

THE OUTSIDER

The outsider is a very powerful energy to play as a comic. It is the

person looking in on society from the outside and asking why we
do this or that particular thing. It can be a very effective way to
point out that the emperor’s new clothes are illusory. The outsider
draws attention to our foibles and puts them under scrutiny.

4. What sort of comic are you? 75

 Anyone who is foreign has the perfect right to don this persona and
start asking ‘Why do you people do this?’ This may be the reason
why many US comedians, appearing in London for the first time,
bang on about pound coins, or the ‘hilarious’ difference between
‘our words and your words’ (apparently a ‘fag’ means something
completely different in the US). Or the ‘Mind the gap’ messages
on the Tube. The best of these, to my mind, is by comic Chris
Mousicos who just shrugs and says: ‘You know what? I don’t
mind the gap. I quite like it.’

To be able to look in, as an outsider, is a powerful weapon in the

stand-up’s arsenal. It is not just open to foreigners: women can use
it when trying to ‘explain’ male behaviour; men can do it when
trying to understand the opposite sex; gay comics can employ it
when trying to understand the actions of the heterosexual majority.

This particular mask slips into place whenever someone asks

the question ‘Why do we do this?’ and then tries to be objective
with their answer.

The outsider, in a more extreme form, might sometimes flirt

with surrealism. This leaves the audience in no doubt that their
observations are well and truly off the map. We are in uncharted
territory; terra incognita. Please hang up your assumptions at
the door. Andrew Bailey, in his 25-year career, has successfully
bewildered and amazed audiences from a place far beyond
language. He is more like a force of chaos than a human being.
Early on in his career he had great success with ‘Podomofski’,
the great Lithuanian clown who couldn’t speak a word of English,
but who was vaguely threatening with his bag of plastic toys. Then
he reinvented himself as ‘Frederick Benson’, a ghoulish figure with
impossibly wide shoulders who would shout bass profundo threats
at the audience and march into the crowd to ‘clamp’ anyone
who dared heckle him. He also does a mean impression of Lenin
spouting nonsense. More recently, I have seen him crushed beneath
a sagging eight-feet-high inflatable gorilla while he tried to carry
on with his strangely musical tape loops.

76
On paper it sounds pointless and contrived; seen ‘live’ it’s
like watching a one-man Theatre of the Absurd. Bailey breaks
every rule of set-up and punchline (or rather he avoids them).
The everyday world bores him. He would rather invite you into
his own personal world and make you learn a new set of rules.
He is, perhaps, an extreme version of the outsider.

Mixing and matching

A comedian rarely wears exclusively one of these masks or
personas detailed above, in the same way that a painter wouldn’t
often paint a canvas in just one colour – it might be a bit too
much. Some stand-ups do embrace one archetype almost entirely,
as we have seen. But the new comic should never think ‘Oh, I’m
obviously a comic loser’ and then consciously suppress any ideas
that fall outside of this area. In fact, to risk stretching the previous
simile to breaking point, perhaps you should think of these
personas as colours on a palette to dabble with, rather than
moulds to pour yourself into.

Adopting a persona should be a way of communicating your

message to the public. It shouldn’t be a millstone around your
neck, stifling you. At the end of the day, we are concerned with
uncovering the sort of comedian you are. This is done, most
simply, through the act of writing material and seeing what works
and what an audience will allow you to get away with. In other
words, do they buy it? If they do, then most of your worries about
who you actually are as a comedian will fall by the wayside.
You will know.

Insight
You won’t be the same sort of comedian at 20 that you will
be at 40. So that’s perhaps another reason not to get trapped
behind only one ‘persona’.

4. What sort of comic are you? 77

 Games to uncover comedic flaws
List your comedic flaws in words and pictures

Write a list of your perceived faults and then detail how

they would impact on different, specific occasions. Or if you
prefer, draw a caricature or diagram of your shortcomings.
Don’t just focus on the negative. Try to think of ways where
these flaws might be viewed as strengths: your bad anger
management might mean that you always get to the front of
the queue more quickly!

The important thing is to remember that it is only a game!

Don’t start feeling you are a terrible person afterwards – it’s
only an aspect of yourself (and who’s to say it’s a real one?)
to which you are drawing attention.

Exploring the flaws

Write down some character flaws that you have noticed in

other people. Then exaggerate them as much as you can (for
example, someone who might always like to have the last
word might be shown as someone who jams their fingers in
their ears and shouts ‘La, la, la! I can’t hear you!’).

Once you feel you have a list of exaggerated flaws, write

down a series of attitudes. Let these attitudes be very
specific: don’t write ‘love’, for example, write ‘the love
I feel towards my cat’ or something similar.

Then go down your list of attitudes, in turn, and write about

them as if you were trying to exhibit one particular comedic
flaw. Repeat, until you have covered all the flaws. With luck,
you will find yourself writing one or two jokes, and at the
very least you should find some areas worth exploring further.

78
 5 THINGS TO REMEMBER
1 Try to find out what personality flaws work for you. Does
selfishness unlock more jokes than laziness, for example?

2 All these extreme attitudes and personalities already exist

within you; it’s just a matter of picking out the ones that work
best for you and your creativity.

3 Other people may label you with a comic ‘persona’, but it

doesn’t mean you are bound by it.

4 Your flaws, your persona and your attitudes will change over
the years. This is a good thing: it will keep you fresh.

5 If a particular persona is getting in the way of you creating

new material, then drop it. It should exist for you to play with
ideas in a certain way. It should never define you.

4. What sort of comic are you? 79

This page intentionally left blank
Part two
Practical
sessions
This page intentionally left blank
 5
Unlocking your creativity
In this chapter you will learn:
• how to get yourself in the right frame of mind
to write comedy
• how games can help you to create jokes
• how all creativity comes out of play.

Often, when I’m working with a group of newer comedians I will

hear the complaint that they can’t think of anything to say or that
they feel really uncreative. What they usually mean by this is that
they have plenty of ideas, but are editing them before they are
even thought through because they are frightened of seeming too
weird or (worse!) too banal. Sometimes, they edit themselves out
of the game because they assume that what they have to say is not
what they think the teacher wants to hear. Whatever the reason,
they are allowing that demon of social control to gain the upper
hand again.

We have to trick ourselves into being creative. We have forgotten

that a lot of good ideas come out of play and feel that we must
be cheating someone if all our ideas aren’t the product of ‘99%
perspiration, 1% inspiration’. Blame the Protestant work ethic,
blame poor teaching at a formative age, but most of us have to
‘unlearn’ the idea that coming up with ideas is hard. It shouldn’t
be. It should be pleasurable.

5. Unlocking your creativity 83

 Don’t worry about the result: just write!

One good way to turn that internal editor off is to allow yourself
not to worry about being funny. If a funny idea occurs, good. If it
doesn’t immediately, tell yourself not to worry because at this stage
you are only unlocking your creativity. Let any ‘funniness’ occur
naturally without trying to crowbar old jokes into your writing.
Obviously, don’t kill funny ideas that bubble up naturally by
saying ‘I’m not supposed to be funny yet.’ If a subject doesn’t
seem funny yet, it may well be because you have not homed in
on the subject enough.

If you have been playing with the twin ideas of getting specific on
a subject and finding out what your attitude to it is, then you
are probably starting to get a feel for how funny ideas seem to
generate themselves.

Play some of the following games to trick yourself into being

creative and then try the written exercises to trick your brain into
writing funny stuff.

Insight
Rather than staring at a blank piece of paper, trying to
think of jokes, why not play a game? As I hope you are
rediscovering, anything can be made into a game.

Writing activities
By this time, if you have taken two major lessons in comedy
to heart (those of being specific and applying an attitude to
everything you write), then you are probably well on your
way to setting yourself writing tasks. The ones detailed
below are just suggestions for writing games to try on those
days when nothing occurs to you. Feel free to twist them in
any direction you wish.

84
Your biography

Earlier, I asked you to write a delusional, possibly psychotic,

liar’s biography. This time, I would like you to write the
story of your life as you remember it happening. What
happened to you to get you to this point? What chain of
events propelled you to be sitting or standing, wherever you
are, reading this sentence?

Feel free to skip over huge swathes of your life, as long

as you touch on what you think are the salient details.
Remember, no one else is ever going to read it, so be as
truthful and opinionated as you like. Try, if you can, to
play with moods. Don’t get bogged down in the depressive
stuff, so that you feel as if you live in a Dostoevsky novel;
nor should you be so hopelessly upbeat that it reads like one
of those Christmas letters people photocopy and send to
friends and family. (‘Sadly, Granny died this year, but on a
plus point, we bought a new cat!’) Although that’s not a bad
idea for an exercise (see below).

What are your own personal triumphs and tragedies? Are

there any themes that come out of your autobiography?
Does the writing give you any greater understanding as to
how you have got to where you are right now?

It is an exercise in pure creative writing. There will probably

be few or no jokes here. It isn’t, after all, written for an
audience – it’s just for you. But it is very difficult to get
writer’s block on a subject with which you are so intimately
acquainted – yourself.

Once you have the first draft (and we are not talking
War and Peace length, here), why not return to a specific
paragraph and try to become even more specific? What
other things can you uncover about yourself or some
circumstance? How much detail can you recall? Returning
(Contd)

5. Unlocking your creativity 85

 to a particular paragraph, can you play with a slightly more
extreme attitude than the first time? If so, what direction
does this take you in?

Please remember, it is not an essay. No one will be marking it.

It is just you writing about your life for an audience of just
you. So enjoy it.

Tree and branch

This game is called ‘Tree and branch’ because the writer

is allowed to ‘branch away’ as much as they like from the
main subject. You are expected to be opinionated, extreme
and as obsessive as you like. Feel free to lie and exaggerate
the truth. Try to fill a page on the following subjects:

The worst holiday ever.

Why everything your Mum and Dad told you is wrong.

Unsuitable presents for children.

What not to say at a job interview.

Unsuccessful ways of getting out of being mugged.

Why clowns are evil.

Scout badges that never caught on.

What really killed off the dinosaurs.

How to feng shui a room.

The least successful British explorer.

Ways to start a pub fight.

How to stalk a celebrity.

The worst TV show in the world.

Once you’ve warmed up with these, get in the habit of

giving yourself a title to play with and try exploring the
theme. Remember, the more specific the better.

Anything can be held up to ridicule

How many things lying around the house can be
parodied?

86
What’s in your fridge? What would you put at the front of
the fridge to impress anyone who should happen to open it
and why? What would you hide at the back and why?

What is your morning routine? Why do you do things in

that particular order?

What’s the last thing you do at night and why?

If you were to open a newspaper, would the horoscope page

grab your eye? Or the letters page? What if, for example, the
fashion pages were written by the football correspondent?

What attitude could you add to the mix to generate some

comedy?

Negative school report

Write a school report for someone famous. They can

be dead or alive, real or fictitious. Make sure you write
teachers’ comments for every subject.

A round robin letter

What would a Christmas round robin letter be like if it were

written by someone who was serving life in prison or was
trapped on a desert island or by Attila the Hun? (‘Good
news! The Horde and I have sacked Rome! Again!! I grazed
my knee kicking down a gate and grizzled a bit, but apart
from that the New Year’s looking rosy!’)

Love letter from a famous person

What would a love letter from a young Henry VIII sound

like, knowing what we know about him now? (‘Dear
Catherine of Aragon, I know technically you’re still my
brother’s wife, but I’ve got to be honest – I’m losing my
(Contd)

5. Unlocking your creativity 87

 head over you…’) What if Jack the Ripper wrote one?
Or Mother Teresa?

Haiku

Haiku, as I’m sure we all know, is the Japanese verse form

that only contains 17 syllables of sound. (It’s actually a bit
more detailed than that, but for the purposes of this game,
let’s just stick with this definition.) There’s not a lot of room
to manoeuvre within a haiku. Here’s one I wrote years ago:

Oh dear. Just beginning

And already I’ve used up

All my sylla-

Your job is to write some haikus trying to address specific

issues. It could be something as profound as proving the
existence of God:

Big beardy bloke in sky

Must exist. Proof?

Shooting stars are his fag ash.

It could be as trivial as dumping someone:

Just a short note to say

Expect a restraining order

In the post.

So, set yourself some specific tasks and then use the haiku to
try to address them. They don’t have to be funny, they just
have to fit into 17 syllables and they have to feel complete.

88
This game forces the writer to pare their thoughts down to
the absolute minimum. It is a lesson in brevity of thought.

Rubbish superheroes

Create a useless superhero. Back in the 1980s somebody

used to talk about Spiderman’s lesser-known contemporary,
‘Spider-Plant Man’. He was not a very active superhero, but
was very good at sitting in pots in dry, sunny places.

How will your superhero’s ability affect their job?

Here is the result of comedian and TV presenter Ed Petrie

trying his hand at this exercise:

Slight Drinking Problem Man – the pitch

He’s not an alcoholic – he just has a slight drinking problem.

He gets a call from the Police Commissioner – there’s been

a raid at the bank – the robbers have taken hostages. Slight
Drinking Problem Man has a couple of whiskies – you
know, just to steady his nerves – and he races over in the
Tipsy Mobile. The police are relieved to see him (and of
course, any mention that he may be slightly over the limit
to be driving is glossed over).

He’s sent forward to negotiate with the robbers. As he’s

talking to them they can smell whisky on his breath, and
they start talking among themselves as to whether, you
know, he might have a slight drinking problem. While
they’re distracted he takes out a small hip flask that he
carries around just in case the weather’s a bit nippy and
he needs warming up. He’s not an alcoholic. He throws
whisky in their eyes and, filled with Dutch courage, glasses
them with a pint glass he nicked from the pub next door.
Meanwhile the hostages have managed to escape.
(Contd)

5. Unlocking your creativity 89

 The criminals are arrested and the film ends with
everyone having a lock-in at Slight Drinking Problem
Man’s local.

It’ll be cheap to make. We can film it in Crawley.

Ten-word stories

This is an exercise in cutting down the information you

present to the audience to a bare minimum. It’s a game
that Huw Thomas thought up. Simply write a story that
only contains ten words. They don’t even have to be
grammatically correct as long as the story makes sense.
(As I said at the beginning of this book, we don’t talk in
full sentences, so why should we write in them?) The
stories might end up sounding like tabloid newspaper
headlines: ‘Boy meets girl, meets parents, fancies mum,
dad notices. Disaster!’ Or they may make some sort of
lateral logic: ‘A gun in your pocket? No. Bang! You’re
pregnant, baby!’)

Huw Thomas made up a very satisfying ten-word story:

A keen train spotter, he didn’t spot the three fifteen…

These stories can be based on personal events or things

happening in the news. The only hard and fast rule is that
they must contain ten words, no more and no less.

Condensed classics

Cut down some classic literature to the bare minimum, so

that the story is reduced to a handful of words. Here are a
few examples:

Dante’s Inferno: ‘I’ll be damned.’

The Old Testament: ‘You’re all bad!’

The New Testament: ‘But I forgive you.’

90
You don’t have to stop with classical literature: films can be
fair game too. The 1940s film classic Brief Encounter could
be reduced to: ‘Hello.’ ‘Goodbye.’

Practise how few words you need to convey the essence of

the book (or whatever sort of classic you have chosen). Or,
if you prefer, think how few words you need to subvert the
author’s intention. Does something funny occur when you
think of the title? For example, A Brief History of Time
could be condensed down to ‘the beginning, the middle and
the end’ without really touching on what Stephen Hawking
was writing about; all you’ve done is make fun of the title.
But similarly you could take that same book and reduce
the author’s message down to ‘I’ll write anything I like,
because no one will understand it anyway’ and still find
that you are playing the game correctly.

The shortest play in the world

What is the shortest play you could write that could tell a
complete story? Here are a few titles to get you going:

The Conquest of Everest

80,000 Leagues under the Sea

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

A Tale of Two Cities

Love Story

Farewell, My Lovely

Innocence and Experience

Stalin! The Musical.

I’m sure you can think of more. It can be a one-scene play. It

could be a three-act extravaganza. The only rule is that it must
be as brief as it possibly can be and still make sense. It doesn’t
have to make ‘literal’ sense: if a very satisfying three- or four-
word gag on the title occurs, then don’t let my instructions to
tell a complete story stop you from writing your idea down.
(Contd)

5. Unlocking your creativity 91

 Titles for autobiographies
What might be unexpected titles for other people’s
autobiographies? What would be the title of your
autobiography? Here are a few examples, illustrating the
‘gag’ nature of this afterthought game:

How to Win Friends and Influence People

by Adolf Hitler.

Knock Three Times on the Ceiling if you Want Me
(my struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)
by Howard Hughes.

Sex, Power and a Bit of Gardening by Alan Titchmarsh.

Little Book of Calm by Radovan Karadzic.

Writing in clichés

George Orwell wrote an essay in 1946 called ‘Politics and the

English Language’, in which he spoke of (among other things)
the dangers of giving yourself over to cliché when writing. His
point, in a nutshell, is that when we start employing clichés
then we stop saying what we mean and start to let the cliché
do the thinking for us. Politicians do it all the time, it is a way
of speaking without ever saying anything: ‘In these troubled
times, when it is darkest before the dawn, we must put our
nose to the grindstone and, standing shoulder to shoulder, ride
out the storm rather than reap the whirlwind…’ Absolutely
nothing has been said.

Your task, with this game, is to say nothing using a great deal
of wind. Try not to use an original thought or phrase if a
meaningless cliché will do. The idea behind the exercise is that
you should try to recognize these clunking phrases that inhibit
thought so that you can either avoid them or poke fun at them.

92
 What are all those redundant phrases doing in our language?
Phrases like: ‘At the end of the day…’; ‘My point is this…’;
‘Between a rock and a hard place’; ‘It boggles the mind’;
‘That’s let the cat out of the bag’. Even modern clichés like
‘24/7’ or ‘Talk to the hand ‘cos the face ain’t listening’ are fair
game. Happy hunting.

Insight: if you’re bored, we will be too

All creativity comes out of play, so if the game you are
playing stops being fun, stop playing it and move on to a
different one.

5. Unlocking your creativity 93

 5 THINGS TO REMEMBER
1 Don’t worry about being funny – just write.

2 You don’t talk in full, grammatical sentences, so why should

you write in them?

3 Don’t feel you are writing an essay. You are simply getting
your thoughts on to paper. If bullet points help, or lists, then
use them.

4 If you can’t of anything to write, then make up a game

(lists are good!).

5 If you are really stuck, you could always try writing as

another person.

94
 6
Emotional exaggeration
In this chapter you will learn:
• why a more extreme version of you might be more
appealing to an audience
• why some comedians exaggerate their performance
• why style is so much more important than substance.

If your emotional range is narrow, you can only convey to

the audience a limited range of emotions, but if you work on
expanding this range then you can show so much more. It is no
good trying to show apoplectic rage in a comedy routine if all you
can demonstrate is looking mildly peeved.

Breaking the habits of a lifetime: be bigger,

be broader!

Many fledgling comedians come to the job after years of working

in some incredibly ‘straight’ button-down job. They have spent
most of their adult life hiding how they really feel about things
and presenting a socially acceptable face to their workmates.
This means that when they begin as a stand-up, they are inhibited
and use the same narrow range of social behaviour on stage that
they used for years in real life. But the majority of comedians, as
they continue in their careers, realize that they can be a far larger
personality on stage than they ever thought possible. They begin

6. Emotional exaggeration 95
 to exaggerate their responses to things on stage because they find
it gets a better response from the audience.

Insight
As you continue performing, you will become more
exaggerated in your responses – so why not give yourself
a head start now?

Why comics start exaggerating their emotional

responses

They discover that it helps enhance the attitude they’re trying
to communicate.

Comedians find that the crowds love it when they show an
inappropriate response towards something that is relatively
inconsequential.

Exaggeration allows the way the comic feels towards a certain
subject to border on the obsessive.

They find that a childish reaction is a bigger hit with the
audience than a more considered reaction.

They simply wish to appear as a more extreme personality.

Playing with emotional extremes make them into a
more compelling performer (they seem to be firing on
all cylinders).

Comedians, as they progress, realize that they are able to play with
the extreme attitudes on stage that they would normally use when
they are messing around with close friends. They learn to gurn,
emote and shout, rather than appear as reasonable, sane people.

They learn to relax and treat the audience as if they are friends
and co-conspirators, rather than a group of strangers who
are passing judgement on them; they learn to exaggerate their
emotional responses to get a bigger reaction from the audience.
It is a slow process for some people, however, and may take years
to discover.

96
Insight: exaggeration can turn things around
If an audience really hates you (very rare!), then all the
diffidence and emotional ‘coolness’ in the world won’t save
you. It will only alienate you further from the crowd. But
playing at exaggerated emotional responses might just seize
victory from the jaws of defeat.

At the very least, you might as well go down with all

guns blazing.

Reasons why new comedians might overlook their

emotional performance

Many ‘rookie’ comics make the fundamental mistake of

thinking that their time on stage is all about the jokes they
have written, so that they concentrate on the words alone and
not on showing us the personality that conveys these thoughts.

Being alone on stage, feeling exposed, can be a scary business
at the beginning of a career, so they decide to play safe and
not ‘rock the boat’.

It seems safer and easier, initially, to present the audience
with the same public persona that has helped them get
by for years.

The truth of the matter is that an audience enjoys watching a good

comic play around on stage. Jokes are an important part of that
experience, but they are not the whole story; in the same way that
blueprints are essential for building a house, but you need far more
to build a three-dimensional structure that you can live in. To put
it another way, the best joke in the world will die on the teller’s
lips if it is not delivered properly. Emotional exaggeration will help
communicate your message more effectively.

Comedians who come from some other performance background

instinctively ‘get’ this and are not shy of playing with their attitudes
and their emotional responses to get a better response on stage.

6. Emotional exaggeration 97
 But don’t feel too jealous of them: the actor deciding to be a comic
may have to unlearn a whole set of skills to look as if they are
being natural and not overly theatrical.

Insight
You can show us more with a look than you ever could with
several paragraphs of words.

Why comedians need to be more extreme

PLAYING WITH THESE EXTREMES IS BOUND
TO STRETCH YOU

Apart from the obvious benefit that you might actually come
up with some funny ideas, you may also unlock a much more
powerful emotional voice than you ever knew you possessed. Jerry
Sadowitz once told me that when he first came down to London
working in a nine-to-five job, he was shocked to realize that
good things didn’t automatically happen to nice people. He felt
a growing rage at being ignored and marginalized socially and at
work. Girls didn’t want to go out with him; colleagues didn’t know
he was there; he was considered the opposite of ‘cool’. He said that
when he discovered stand-up it was like a demon being unleashed:
all that anger became a driving force for his comedy and an engine
for his creativity. Had he not vented his spleen and given voice to
these extreme emotions, had he instead chosen to continue playing
the Mr Nice that was getting him nowhere at work, then chances
are we would never have heard of him.

IT ’ S GOOD TO PLAY GAMES THAT LET YOU

OFF THE HOOK

It is enormous fun to explore the limits of what you are capable of

saying or showing within the safe confines of a game. It liberates
the spirit to be able to act like an extreme emotional idiot and
realize that people are willing you to go further. You realize
afterwards that the sky hasn’t fallen and no one is looking away

98
in disgust and you begin to realize how illusory and limiting your
own sense of personal dignity actually is. This is a very good thing
for a comedian to discover.

Insight
The more exaggerated responses that you can show us, the
more we will understand the sort of idiot that you are trying
to present.

IT ’ S GOOD TO STEP OUTSIDE YOUR PERSONAL

COMFORT ZONE OCCASIONALLY

Once you are off the edge of your own personal psychological map,
you may discover much more entertaining subjects and approaches
to those subjects.

YOU MUST LEARN TO DISTRUST YOUR IDEA

OF WHO YOU ARE

Your idea of who you are is, after all, just another way of that
editing social controller inside of you trying to narrow you down.
No one cares how sensitive or responsible you may want to appear.
You are not on stage to look cool or sexy or wise or sensible.

Remember
You are on stage to make people laugh!

A comedian is paid to be a fool, not a rock star! Our

sense of dignity is not important.

Unfortunately, there are no good ways to learn how

to present extreme states by yourself. You need an
audience present to gauge the reaction to your play.
Exploring your emotional range can only come through
live experience.

6. Emotional exaggeration 99
 Activities to encourage emotional
exaggeration
Here are some group games that might help if you are lucky
enough to be working with like-minded people.

Fear, love, hatred and lust

The group splits into two groups. One half will be the
performers, the other half will be the audience. One person
will have to step outside the game to offer to lead the
participants. They tell the groups that the only rules in
all these four games is that performers are not allowed to
pick things up (like chairs, for example), and they are not
allowed to get closer to the audience than five feet (1.5
metres). The game leader might want to draw an invisible
line that the performers are not allowed to step over.

Fear: The performers line up in front of the audience and

let the audience know that there is something behind the
audience’s back which is frightening them. They must
try to communicate their fear to all the members of the
audience and not just pick on the person directly before
them. The performers start ‘small’, just exhibiting mild
panic or apprehension, but every time the game leader
claps their hands and shouts ‘Get bigger’, they ratchet up
the emotional level they are conveying. Pretty soon they are
so terrified that they are all beyond words, just gibbering
like idiots. Each time they hear the game leader shout ‘Get
bigger’, they become more grotesque and caricatured until
finally the audience must feel they are watching some scene
from Bedlam. When they can get no bigger (and remember,
bigger doesn’t necessarily mean louder – so don’t strain
your throat) the game leader shouts ‘Relax’ and they can
all stop. Then, from a relaxed neutral standing position, the
performers will snap into their most extreme caricatures

100
 of ‘fear’ after a count of three and the leader will take an
imaginary snapshot of their poses.
It is then the turn of the audience half to become the
performers, while the other half sit down to watch. They
must try to outdo the intensity of the first group.

Love: The first group stands in a line again and this time
must convey (ultimately) a cloying, sentimental love that
they feel towards all of the audience. Again, they should
start small, so that they have somewhere to travel to, and
as the game leader claps and shouts ‘Get bigger’, they
become more and more extreme. Eventually they should
be a quivering mass of undignified, raw neediness. The
game leader takes one final snapshot of ultimate love,
and then the groups swap and it is time for the other half
to have a go.

Anger: This is exactly the same, but with anger. Start with
mild dislike and build to a towering, red rage towards the
audience. Once you become larger than life and you feel
you can travel no further, try pushing the performance out
a little more; perhaps start showing them what you will do
to them if you ever get your hands on them, or building
up into a cartoon of pent-up anger. When they can go no
further, the game leader shouts ‘Relax’, then takes one final
snapshot for posterity. Then the other half takes its turn.

Lust: This time, each group starts with mild attraction
to the entire audience; the flirting soon builds to wild
abandon and finally grotesque loss of control. A snapshot
is again taken at the end, and then the other group can try.

Eventually each group will travel beyond words with each

of these emotional states and that is where, often, the fun
can begin. Sometimes individuals can beat themselves up
psychologically because they feel that they are blocking
themselves and can’t ‘do’ one emotional extreme or
another. If this happens to you, just let yourself off the
hook. Take heart that no one is going to ask you to do
this for 20 minutes a night as a career. It’s just a game.
(Contd)

6. Emotional exaggeration 101

 Hitch-hikers
This is an old ‘improv’ game that I’ve seen performed all
over the country. Everyone should split into groups of four.
Each group will perform this game in front of the rest who
act as an audience.

Set out four chairs or stools, two in the front and two
behind; this will be the car for the purposes of the exercise.
One person will choose to be the driver and each of the
other three is given an extreme emotional state to play.
They might be timid, suspicious, angry, judgemental,
sarcastic, sympathetic or any other state as long as it is
extreme. Get the audience to nominate states for each of the
passengers; this is quite a good way for the group to ensure
that individuals are pushed outside their ‘comfort’ zone.
It might be quite fun to see someone who is good at self-
deprecation being forced to play a gigantic egotist. Make
sure that these suggestions are one-note moods. Sometimes
an audience member might suggest something ambiguous
like ‘psychotic’, but that isn’t really an emotion (you could
be a happy psychotic or a sad psychotic) so make sure each
of the three passengers are crystal clear as to what their
emotional state should be.

The driver must act out a scene, with the others, where he
or she will pick up three hitch-hikers. As soon as the first
passenger is picked up, both they and the driver adopt that
particular emotional state (let’s for the sake of argument,
say ‘love’). After a while the second hitch-hiker thumbs a
lift and as soon as they are in the car all three of them adopt
this second emotional state (let’s say ‘hate’). When the third
passenger eventually gets in all four of them switch to the
third passenger’s emotional state (let’s say ‘fear’).

After a while, the third passenger feels that they are arriving
at their destination and leaves. As soon as he or she is out of
the car, the rest of them revert to the second hitch-hikers

102
emotional state (hate). Then, when the second traveller
decides to get out, the first passenger and the driver revert to
the first passenger’s emotional state (love), until eventually
the first passenger gets out and the driver goes on their
merry way. Game over.

To stop things getting a little sticky or formless for the first

couple of games, the group could always nominate an outside
director who moves things along by shouting out helpful
things like ‘They see a second hitch-hiker’ or ‘The third hitch-
hiker thinks they are getting near their destination.’ But after
a couple of goes, everyone should have a feel for the game
and be able to judge when they get in and out of the car.

Don’t be daunted by the game. All the players have to do

is think of the emotional states they are trying to show and
to make sure that they are really listening to what the other
people in the car are saying. Some of the funniest moments
can come when everyone is simply reacting and not trying
to take control of the scene. It’s also quite satisfying for the
audience to watch a carload of people turn on a sixpence
from one extreme emotion to a completely different one.

Apart from playing with emotional extremes, this can also

be a very reassuring exercise for those taking part: often
they can experience that glorious joy of collectively creating
something out of nothing.

The off

This is a great game for pairs that Huw Thomas uses. Not
only does it encourage emotional exaggeration, it also helps
the comedian practise the art of saying one thing while
revealing another.

The pair acts out a scene where they play two cowards
about to have a fight. They are extremely angry with one
(Contd)

6. Emotional exaggeration 103

 another and are about to knock one another unconscious,
but at the same time they are both complete moral and
physical cowards. If one of them makes a sudden movement,
then the other one flinches – or better still, shrieks in
terror – then tries to be brave again. If the game is going
well, there should be at least seven or eight feet (just over
two metres) between the protagonists. If the energy starts
flagging, have one outsider nominated so that they can
shout out ‘Be angrier!’ or ‘Be more scared!’ as the occasion
demands. Make sure that the players really push themselves
into emotional extremes.

104
 5 THINGS TO REMEMBER
1 The wider your emotional range is, the bigger and better your
performance will be.

2 You are never being that emotion, you are playing at being
that emotion. Real rage can be quite scary, but watching a
comedian exaggerate apocalyptic, yet ultimately impotent rage
might be quite funny.

3 The more you perform, the more you will naturally start
acting out emotional responses, so don’t worry too much if
the idea seems a bit alien to you to start with.

4 Sometimes, your tragedy becomes our comedy, so don’t be shy

of letting us see how you are pretending to feel.

5 Childish responses can lead to better jokes.

6. Emotional exaggeration 105

 7
Creating material
In this chapter you will learn:
• how to mine your head for ideas
• how to turn ideas into jokes
• how to take responsibility and workshop your own ideas.

Let us get down to the business of crafting material. You may

have found by this point that you have generated quite a bit of
material from some of the games detailed in previous chapters.
If so, well done! Book yourself a gig and try it out in front of a
live crowd.

But getting results from a creativity exercise is only half the job.

What this chapter is going to attempt to do is to train you to

further mine your head for funny ideas.

Lists are a great way to generate material: they give you something
to aim for, rather than just letting your pen hover above the
paper waiting for inspiration to strike. A list also frees us from
the tyranny of feeling we have to write an essay on any subject.
It means that we can write as much or as little as we want on a
specific subject before moving on to the next item on our list.

Insight
If you’re thinking quicker than you write, why not bullet
point your ideas, with room between thoughts to flesh
them out later?

106
Years ago, the comedian Tony Allen came up with a writing
exercise where the comic had to thank a list of people who had
affected his or her life. Many of his students found it beneficial in
focusing their minds. But why stop with just people? Shouldn’t the
job of the comic be to draw attention to everything that takes his
or her fancy? That is what I would like you to do for your version
of a thank you list.

Workshop 1: the thank you list

For your first list, write down all the things in the world that you
would like to thank. It is your list, so be as personal as you like,
and get bogged down in as much minutiae as you like. If you have
a secret passion for something that is deemed ‘uncool’, now is the
time to revel in it. Trainspotting, live historical battle re-enactments
or collecting Pokemon cards (should they be your particular cup of
tea) are all grist to the mill. It is going to be the first draft of your
thoughts, so don’t worry about what other people might think.
The only golden rule for this exercise is be specific. Really think
about what you want to thank; don’t say ‘Chinese food’ if what
you really mean is ‘shark fin soup’.

Here are a few pointers:

Don’t worry about whether or not it will sound very

interesting to your audience. It must be of interest to you.
What you have to say about your life will be infinitely
fascinating to the rest of us if it matters to you. So don’t
edit yourself.

Do show us how you feel towards the subject (your attitude,
in other words).

Don’t feel you have to be funny. (It is a first draft, after all.)
If a funny idea occurs, then all well and good, but don’t feel
the need to crowbar ‘gag’ endings in just yet.

Try to keep the ideas open-ended so that you can return to
them later.

7. Creating material 107


Feel free to use an afterthought if one occurs.

Some things may not need explanations, as far as you are
concerned. For example, at this stage you may feel the need to
set down how much you enjoy broccoli without having to tell
us why.

Even though it is a fairly positive thank you list, feel free to
be sarcastic, bitter, sardonic or hypocritical in your approach
to individual subjects; it may, for example, sound more like
a hate list, masquerading as a thank you list. You should not
feel reined in by the exercise: comedians in the past have made
them sound like Oscar acceptance speeches or a letter to God
or a very bitter string of bullet points to ex-lovers. So, as with
all the other written exercises in this book, feel free to make
your own personal game out of it. If you are excited by the
direction you are going in then there is a good chance that
your audience will be too.

The First World War poet Rupert Brooke wrote a fantastic

example of a heartfelt thank you list in his poem ‘The Great
Lover’. In it, he draws the reader’s attention to all the things that
matter to him, greedily trying to list them all before a soldier’s
death takes him. This may seem a strange example to give for a
comedy exercise, but you could do a lot worse than emulate his
attention to detail and his celebration of the mundane.

Here’s the second half of the poem:

These I have loved:

White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;
And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;
And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,
Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is

108
Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen
Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;
The benison of hot water; furs to touch;
The good smell of old clothes; and other such
The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,
Hair’s fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers
About dead leaves and last year’s ferns…
Dear names,
And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames;
Sweet water’s dimpling laugh from tap or spring;
Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing;
Voices in laughter, too; and body’s pain,
Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;
Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam
That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;
And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold
Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;
Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;
And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;
And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;
All these have been my loves. And these shall pass,
Whatever passes not, in the great hour,
Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power
To hold them with me through the gate of Death.
They’ll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath,
Break the high bond we made, and sell Love’s trust
And sacramented covenant to the dust.
– Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,
And give what’s left of love again, and make
New friends, now strangers…
But the best I’ve known
Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown
About the winds of the world, and fades from brains
Of living men, and dies.
Nothing remains.
O dear my loves, O faithless, once again
This one last gift I give: that after men
Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed,
Praise you, ‘All these were lovely’; say ‘He loved’.

7. Creating material 109

 Now, with huge apologies to the estate of Rupert Brooke, let us use
his poem as the basis of what a sample thank you list might look like.

The first thing to be said is that each of these observations that

Brooke makes matter passionately to him. He is clearly writing for
himself – he is not trying to please anyone else; he has complete
confidence that what he has to say will matter to us. As such, it
holds our attention completely, almost a hundred years after it
was written. So have faith in your own observations and, like his
example, make your list a detailed list.

Breaking down his poem, we might list his great loves as:

White plates and cups,
Live hair that is shining

clean-gleaming, ringed with and free
blue lines and feathery,
Blue-massing clouds
faery dust
The keen unpassioned

Wet roofs, beneath the beauty of a great machine
lamp-light
The benison of hot water

The strong crust of
Furs to touch
friendly bread
The good smell of

Food and all its old clothes
different flavours
The comfortable smell

Rainbows of friendly fingers

The blue bitter smoke
Hair’s fragrance
of wood
The musty reek that lingers

Radiant raindrops about dead leaves and last
couching in cool flowers year’s ferns

Flowers themselves, that
Dear names
sway through sunny hours,
Royal flames
dreaming of moths that
Sweet water’s dimpling
drink them under the moon laugh from tap or spring

The cool kindliness of
Holes in the ground
sheets, that soon smooth
Singing voices
away trouble
Voices in laughter

The rough male kiss
A body’s pain, (soon
of blankets turned to peace)

Grainy wood
The deep-panting train

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Firm sands
Sleep

The little dulling edge
High places
of foam that browns and
Footprints in the dew
dwindles as the wave
Oak trees
goes home
Brown, new glossy

Gleaming wet washed horse-chestnuts
stones, gay for an hour
New-peeled sticks

The cold graveness of iron
Shining pools on grass

Moist black earthen mould

This is a pretty perfect list of items. He makes us think in a new

way (his way!) about familiar things (‘The comfortable smell
of friendly fingers’); he’s not shy of stating the obvious (‘Aren’t
rainbows great?’); he even supplies his own afterthoughts on
occasion (‘…and body’s pain,/Soon turned to peace;’). We can see
how, sometimes, one thought will lead to another – from sandy
beaches his mind goes on to sea foam. Sometimes he explains why
he takes pleasure in a thing (‘…the cool kindliness of sheets, that
soon/Smooth away trouble;’) and sometimes he feels he needn’t
bother (‘grainy wood’).

Write your thank you list with the same sense of passion and
commitment that Rupert Brooke did. Feel free to go into much
greater detail than he did and feel free to add any afterthoughts
as they occur. Don’t worry about being funny just yet, but do
make sure that you are specific. Being specific leads to material!

Insight: crank up the magnification!

No matter how specific you think you have been with your
subject matter, you can always get even more specific!

Workshop 2: building routines

Once you have written your list and you are sure that everything
on the list is something you feel strongly about and want to share
with the audience, then return to the list and start adding opinionated

7. Creating material 111

 or flippant afterthoughts. Be prepared to undercut your initial
statement with something that is selfish, mildly sociopathic or just
shows that you have got completely the wrong end of the stick.
In other words, try to surprise and confound your audience with
the second half of the statement. Feel free to add afterthought to
afterthought, rather like in the ‘When I say that, what I really
mean is…’ exercise in Chapter 2.

BREAK IT DOWN!

One way to do this is to break down each of your statements

into smaller chunks of information. For instance, the sentence
‘I like nothing better on a Sunday morning than to read a selection
of newspapers in bed with my lover over a cup of tea’ contains
the following pieces of information:

I like nothing better on a Sunday morning

than to read a selection of newspapers
in bed
with my lover
over a cup of tea.

If we were to add a flippant afterthought or stupid editorializing

point to each of these statements we might find that we now have:

I like nothing better on a Sunday morning (and it must be a

Sunday morning – try doing it on a Tuesday afternoon and
you’ll only get into trouble at work)

than to read a selection of newspapers (well, I say ‘read’ –
some of the words are a bit long – but I can usually work out
what’s happening if there is a picture)

in bed (it’s not as relaxing lying on a table)

with my lover (although I’ve got to be careful – I think my
wife is beginning to suspect)

over a cup of tea (literally suspended over a cup of tea – it’s
an old tantric trick I picked up in the East – it really opens up
the pores).

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 ONCE MORE – WITH FEELING!

We could even start adding afterthoughts to afterthoughts. For

example, what is the comedian’s definition of ‘quality’ newspapers?
Perhaps they read The News of the World (for political commentary,
obviously) or perhaps they avoid the Mail on Sunday, finding it
too liberal (‘Not enough articles about immigrants coming over
here and stealing our jobs!’). Perhaps for pleasure they turn to the
North Yorkshire Pig Breeders’ Gazette.

Clearly, at this stage we are in danger of overwriting the original

statement into the ground. But this shouldn’t worry us too much
just yet, as we can always cut the bits not going anywhere later on.
At this stage, it is the exploration of the thought that matters the
most. As long as we get one or two funny afterthoughts out of the
exercise then it will be worthwhile.

ADDING AFTERTHOUGHT TO YOUR

THANK YOU LIST

Let us now return to Rupert Brooke’s poem and perform an

unforgivable literary crime by attempting to ‘gag up’ the first few
lines of ‘The Great Lover’. The afterthoughts are placed in brackets.

White plates and cups… (although patterned plates and cups

are better, then you don’t have to worry about giving them
too thorough a washing up – better still, if you have a pet
dog, let them lick the plates clean as they are very good at
it and it’ll save you more time for other domestic tasks like
spying on your neighbours or watching TV)

Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light (because they always

remind me how happy I am to live in such a wet, dark,
miserable country)

The strong crust of friendly bread (but avoid the strong crust
of rice pudding – it’s a sure sign of salmonella)

7. Creating material 113

 Food and all its different flavours (in the case of British cuisine
this basically means either ‘salty’ or ‘mushy’ – usually both)

Rainbows (as opposed to the children’s lunchtime show

‘Rainbow’, which corrupted a nation’s youth by showing
Zippy and Bungle sharing a bed. They weren’t even the
same species!)

The blue bitter smoke of wood (although be careful, it could

mean your shed is on fire)

Radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers (if you’ve never

seen a ‘radiant raindrop’, try watching the clouds above
Chernobyl. They glow in the dark)

Flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,

dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon (sorry,
I’m having an LSD flashback)

The rough male kiss of blankets (rough male kisses are pretty
cool, too – if you don’t mind stubble rash)

Grainy wood (got to get your roughage from somewhere,

after all)

Live hair that is shining and free (not like toupees, which
cost far too much and always look unconvincing)

Blue-massing clouds (are best avoided during hurricane

season – it could get a bit ‘blowy’. Look at New Orleans)

The keen unpassioned beauty of a great machine (I mean –

I only like them, I’m not a freak or anything. I once went out
with a toaster, but she left me. Commitment issues. And her
warranty ran out)

The benison of hot water (is always great unless you’re

a hydrophobe)

114
 Furs to touch (but please make sure the animal is sedated
before you try this one out at home, kids)

The good smell of old clothes (although this doesn’t explain

why charity shops reek of despair and soup)

The comfortable smell of friendly fingers (don’t make a

nuisance of yourself going around sniffing fingers, however –
it’s not really a solid basis for friendships)

Hair’s fragrance (especially if the owner of said hair is

familiar with the concept of washing it. Otherwise, stand
upwind of them and, if you must, concentrate on sniffing
their fingers)

The musty reek that lingers about dead leaves and last
year’s ferns (very handy, as it can help mask the smell of
the bodies you’ve buried)

Feel free to carry on this game, adding your own afterthoughts

to Brooke’s list.

But the most important thing for you to do is to get working at

refining your own thank you list.

Be flippant, be opinionated and be stupid with those afterthoughts.

Chances are, if you have changed each item on your original list
to a thought and then a surprising afterthought, you will probably
have written the beginnings of a joke.

Workshop 3: putting your set together

Use all the tricks you’ve learnt thus far on a second draft thank you
list. Be prepared to explore every aspect of the subject, turning off
on as many side roads as you like.

7. Creating material 115

 Push your attitudes to bigger extremes; explore the gap between a
high aspiration and a low reality. Be prepared to go off on a tangent
and, if necessary, dump the original thought and concentrate on
pursuing the afterthought to an illogical, extreme conclusion.

Top tip

Don’t put all the same types of jokes together – audiences

want to be surprised, and they certainly don’t want to start
guessing the mechanisms you are using to make them laugh.

Top and tail your set with your best stuff, so you hit the
ground running and leave them wanting more.

Remember to write how you speak; your material must
sound natural to you.

Always work on your weakest bits. Why are some parts
weaker than others? Are you being specific enough?
Are you pushing an extreme attitude enough? Is your
afterthought too vague? Should you be exaggerating your
emotional responses more?

OPENING OUT YOUR IDEAS

Let us return to Rupert Brooke’s thank you list to demonstrate

how we might refine our own list. Let’s take the very first item and
see how we can open it up further. I’ve put explanations of what
we are doing with the text in bracketed capitals.

White plates and cups

Aren’t white plates and cups a bugger to clean? (THOUGHT)

I think we should all use paper ones – sod the environment –

for, after all, what have trees ever done for us? (ATTITUDE
AND AFTERTHOUGHT)

Sucking up all that carbon dioxide and pumping out oxygen

and interfering with global warming. (AFTERTHOUGHT
TO AN AFTERTHOUGHT)

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I happen to like hot summers, as it happens.
(AFTERTHOUGHT TO AN AFTERTHOUGHT)

I hate it when you go round to someone’s dinner party…

(CHANGE OF SUBJECT)

…and they make you feel all uptight by getting their best
china out… (OPINIONATED ATTITUDE)

…that’s going to go down well with the six pack of Special

Brew you’ve brought along. (AFTERTHOUGHT)

My general rule of thumb is the better the plates… (THOUGHT)

…the less chance of copping off with an emotionally

vulnerable woman in the downstairs loo. (AFTERTHOUGHT)

I mean, that’s what we all want from a party, isn’t it? The
chance of illicit sex and a massive hangover – not nice plates
and Pan-Pacific cuisine. (QUALIFYING AFTERTHOUGHTS)

Also, you can’t relax if you’re eating off plates that cost more
than your last car. (EXAGGERATION)

Middle-class people can’t just brag about it, though, they

have to find subtle ways of letting you know just how loaded
they are:

‘Do you like our crockery? We picked it up from a delightful

market stall in Bali. Have you been? Oh, you must! These
plates are all individually handcrafted with religious motifs
by the chap’s family – apparently he can’t afford to send them
to school – and I suppose it’s much better that they learn a
trade. They only cost us 48 rupai each! Which works out at
about ten pence a plate – so we both thought “What the hell?
How many times are we in a Third World country?” The man
wanted ten pence each – but we beat him down to seven –
honestly, they do try to rip you off. So, all in all, they were

7. Creating material 117