Black and Funny

The comedian Jimmy Carr joked:

Say what you like about IEDs but we're going to have a hell of a paralympic team.

I thought about that again recently. There was a nice little piece in theipaper last Tuesday about lovers of sick jokes. Researchers described humour as a two-staged problem solving process. It's true. All jokes involve the ability to reinterpret.

The key question, 'If you want to gauge a person's intelligence tell them a sick joke and see if they laugh.'

So, in similar style to the Jimmy Carr joke:

Doctor have you got the test results on my baby?
Well the good news is you're never going to struggle to find a parking place.

Now the Jimmy Carr joke will make you laugh as long as you are sure there are no insensitive amputees in the room. Then you might worry. The first time I heard it he was telling it in Afghanistan to a group of hardened squaddies. They fell about. Its success relied on a knowledge of the risks and a willingness to embrace the reality of injured friends by laughing. If you're still trying to work out what an IED is then you've got no chance of laughing.

Yet most of us cannot imagine the circumstances in which the test-results joke is funny. We see the way the joke works, may even find ourselves briefly entertained, but have a moment of self-censure.

A few years back on social media I came across:

Research proves most suicides caused by attempting to change duvet covers

It was followed by some comments by the sickened who felt it took suicide lightly. I couldn't possibly mock. But the joke works in exactly the opposite way. It is funny because it takes the slightly annoying and awkward job of duvet-cover-changing far too seriously. And anyway, once you gotta explain it it ceases to be funny and becomes damage limitation.

A few more years back a marriage preparation course produced by a Christian Home Mission agency included a list of things a couple might get up to during intimacy. One of the things was:

Cover each other in ice-cream and lick it off

I had never used the course (or wasted good ice-cream thus) but found myself in a church, seeing couples, who had been given the material. One such couple, having discussed their wedding with me, then told me in no uncertain terms that what I had done was disgusting. Disgust works very well in a female Geordie accent by the way er, man.

I pointed out that if they agreed that neither of them ever wanted to lick anything off the other then the material had served its purpose - a discussion had taken place and agreement had been reached. But no. Their disgust went beyond that. Their disgust was at the very suggestion - this was not simply something they didn't want to do but that no sensible person should ever want to do and the church had suggested it. It was an uneducated response. The course compilers may have been daft not to foresee that but it was true. This was a couple who couldn't see the world from another's point of view.

And there, I think, is the rub. See the world from another person's point of view. Those of us who walk near the edge of humour's cliff from time to time need to rely on the joke-hearers also being sensitive. Sensitive to the fact that offence may not have been the primary aim. For, to be sure, comedians cannot give offence; that is to allocate them too much power. It can only be taken.

Must dash. Those kittens won't torture themselves.

Humorous Thoughts 2

One of the most amusing people I have ever met is Bishop Colin Buchanan. As my college principal at St John's he managed entertainment with intellectual rigour. In his worship lectures and seminars we all did our preparation and reading. We knew that the grilling we would get would be merciless if we didn't. His ability to expose the false arguments or a lack of proper thought was remarkable. Tuition by sarcasm maybe wouldn't work for all of you but it worked for me and I loved it.

Should he read this post it is likely that the comment box will be correcting 'Tilley English.' It's my style Colin but hey, I'm happy to hear your points. He edited the first booklet I ever wrote (Grove Evangelism 16). No-one read it but it wasn't his fault. I chose a stupid title.

His college lunchtime notices were also the epitome of concision, brevity and if possible, humour. Once, noticing that the whole college was in a giggly mood, he stood up and suggested that he would like to do a survey on the relative humour-merits of various words which may or may not be funny. He then chose a list of words which were not at all amusing, ending with deaconess which brought the house down.

So if you don't subscribe to the Church Times go and buy a copy of this week's issue simply for Bishop Colin's letter deconstructing the ridiculous reasoning one of our bishops is giving for 'going over to Rome.' It's priceless. The Church Times is also one of the most entertaining reads if you enjoy the seriousness with which people describe problems you will never have.

What is the correct way to fold a crosier?

How do we remove earthworms from the churchyard?

What do I do if my vicar is female?

I have, of course, made all these up. They are less weird than the real ones. Trust me.

Some random prejudices to conclude.

Never, ever wear a cartoon tie unless you are a surgeon in a children's hospital.
Never, ever, ever wear cartoon socks.
Only wear entertaining T-shirts once then destroy them.
(All three of these come under the heading of  'I only know one joke'. You don't want to make that widely known.)
Don't imagine you will ever hear anything amusing from someone who says they have a good sense of humour.

I'll try and write something serious next.

Humorous Thoughts

How can you tell if you're sleeping next to an axe murderer?

In one of the great jokes of all time Bob Monkhouse said, 'My family laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian; they're not laughing now.'

It's brilliant because, and I accept that if I have to explain why a joke is brilliant I might be struggling, firstly he got the pause at the semi-colon right every time. Secondly because it turns the tables twice. As he turns the tables on his family he turns them on us too.

I credit him with the joke, as I always do if I know who done them, because I know how long it takes to write a joke. If you can look and talk you can do observational comedy moderately well but to do jokes - that takes skill.

A clergy colleague once asked me to write him some new Christmas cracker jokes. Since I often joked and punned I guess he thought this would be easy for me. It took me hours. Then I handed them over and realised, as they bombed, that I had written jokes only I could tell. This was partially because of the length of the pause needed at the semi-colon but mainly because it turned out he couldn't read.

A regular visitor once described this blog as whimsical. I loved that. People often under-estimate how much truth you can smuggle in under the cover of light-heartedness. It increases the likelihood of my occasional deepish thought being pondered.

As a clerge I've been doing stand-up for years and the trick seems to me to be to judge the audience early before trying your best moves. I find, 'Good morning and welcome to the service my name's Steve Tilley' so extraordinarily useful in assessing the congregation's mood. If it is a congregation I don't know well they will, more than likely, be blown away by the fact that the minister told them his name. You can also surreptitiously, see if anyone spots you used the exact format of the introduction to Have I Got News For You. If they're with you on that you'll have comrades and companions for the journey (and it will be fun too). But in many cases a blocking mechanism takes place. People chuckling in church somehow feel they are being naughty. They don't think it ought to be fun. I go for at least one laugh every funeral if I can. It's usually what the dead person would have wanted, unless they were... no you don't trap me that easily.

Humour is complicated. When you deliver a punchline you are resolving incongruity by a pragmatic reinterpretation (Wyer and Collins - A Theory of Humour Elicitation 1992). Bet you didn't know that. And the amount of humour is a monotonic inverted U-function of the time and effort required for interpretation and reinterpretation (op cit).

So, for example, Emo Phillips' joke. 'When I was young my parents told me not to go near the cellar door for if I did I would see things I shouldn't see. Then one day I went near the cellar door and I saw - that the hall had carpet.' The parents turn from good to bad and Phillips' quirky character has another bit of background to it.

Which is why Stewart Lee's book How I Escaped My Certain Fate sub-titled the Life and Deaths of a Stand-up is so important. As a response to the adverse reaction to Jerry Springer the Opera from certain evangelical Christian quarters, in one section he attempts to lead his audience on a journey which ends with Jesus assisting him when drunk. Most of you will find it offensive. The point though is to address the boundaries of humour and taste. For in a piece where the subject matter is unpleasant - being drunk and sick - he portrays Jesus as a sacrificial servant. But obviously not in a way any Springer-hating, evangelical Christan would want him to be. At the same time as doing this, Lee has turned his back on all cheap-shot humour which humiliates people for their appearance. Quite right too.

Something funny is happening to comedy. The label 'comic' would seem inappropriate if you are not laughing at the label-wearer's jokes. Today some comedians lead you to the joke but then deliberately try not to make you laugh. Or try to con you into laughing inappropriately. And if you sit in the front rows you are opening your life to ridicule at the hands of another who has a microphone when you don't. A live comedy event then, once you've made sure you are in row C or further back, becomes not so much entertaining as an exercise in intellectual rigour. More like a philosophy gig maybe.

Oh, and I nearly forgot, if you can tell, don't sleep next to them.

Laugh, Now

I got in trouble at college for being part of the gang who showed the film Life of Brian in the Common Room. You need to know that it was a theological college (vicar factory) and 1984 so it was, I guess, a bit edgy.

But my humour is edgy. I have to self-edit massively before blogging, tweeting and whatever ing you facebook. Honest, I do. You should see the stuff the delete key gets.

I just roared to hear Andy Zoltzman describe Jesus as a 'first century magician and raconteur'. Isn't enjoying the joke so much better than bombing his relatives?

Stewart Lee is harder work but I see what he's doing. As he said in a weekend interview, if Clarkson can call Gordon Brown a one-eyed Scottish idiot why isn't it funny when Lee hopes Clarkson's children go blind. Or wished Richard Hammond had died in agony in that car accident? It's funny. It's odd.

Do you have to have a humour chip? The ability to recognise that you can learn and laugh? Have serious fun?

I don't like Lower Sixth humour. If I did this blog would be called The Lonely Lentil or In Search of Custard or somomething, which is like something only typed wrong.

I'm writing this as the Christmas newsletter prepares to go to press. I speak as if it had a mind of its own which, to some extent, it does. It is an unstoppable force in a bland world and will be hitting the www soon (and the letter-boxes of the old and cautious) as soon as Mrs Mustard has told me what I absolutely have to ditch.

Be very ware.

Thoughts on Prank Phone Calls

In about 1993 I was speaking/training at a church in Nottinghamshire as the head of a Christian youth organisation. In an interview I was set up. The interviewer said flattering things about me being the head of a major youth organisation. He suggested (I guess I nodded) that this meant I knew a bit about youth culture, and then he asked me what was number 1 in the charts. I had no idea. He went on to ask me to name any chart record but by then my mind was blank.

The thing is that to understand youth culture you don't have to know what is in the charts, although it would be good if you knew how to find out if necessary.

That interview not only humiliated me publicly but also shot my credibility with the people, I had to go on to train. I don't think public figures should be given public intelligence tests about the facts/trivias of their brief. If, say, a world leader can't immediately recall the name of the capital of Burkina Faso (s)he has advisers, lists, databases to consult. (S)He could even google it like us plebs if (s)he wanted. Save you bothering; it's Ouagadougou but I had to check the spelling. Someone with a poor memory for names may have a great ability with strategy or vision.

I have rarely played practical jokes on a single victim and certainly haven't done so since school days. I apologise for sending taxis to teachers. I hate being the subject of those sort of jokes, so I don't play them myself.

Listening to radio or watching TV where someone is being picked 0n - Brass Eye, Ali G, Candid Camera (back a few years) makes me cringe not laugh. When he had the Radio 1 breakfast show in the 1970s Noel Edmonds used to do it. The phoned 'victim' was derided as a bad sport if they didn't say, 'Ha, ha Noel you got me,' at the end. Every now and then someone heroic told him exactly what they thought of him. Good for them.

So I have no idea what Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross did to Andrew Sachs recently, although John Humphrys just gave me a hint. Suffice it to say that I'm chuffed heads have rolled for it. Humiliation is cheap-shot entertainment.

I blame Ricky Gervais. Someone needs to. I have a certain uneasiness about what we are being entertained by when we watch The Office or Extras. There is something about caricaturing the inadequacies of well-meaning people who are trying their best that makes me uncomfortable.

Maybe I'm turning into a very dull, humbug-shouting curmudgeon. Or a control-freak.

Don't organise a surprise party for me. If I get wind of it I won't turn up.

Tasteless Insensitivity

If you followed this blog a few weeks back you will have found this post and the comments it generated. It has been a previous theme here, but is worth coming back to because it has obviously touched a nerve; how 'sensitive' should we be with our humour?

Here's my position. Firstly, I should be slow to anger and therefore slow to take offence. I find that in the Bible. Secondly, I should judge other people in the best possible light and assume good, not evil, motivation. That too, is biblical. Both are also common sense and make the world a more peaceful place.

Here's a joke:

A vox popper is standing outside a shop in central Europe and says to a group of passing people, 'Excuse me, what is your opinion of the current meat shortages?' It happens that the four people who have been approached are Russian, Chinese, American and a Jew. The Russian replies, 'What is meat?' The Chinese,' What is opinion?' The American, 'What is shortage?' The Jew, 'What is excuse-me?'

Offensive? Does it change your opinion to learn that I read it in a national newspaper and the columnist said it was told him by a Jewish friend? And notice that, out of sensitivity, I removed references to the gender of the characters in the joke. We all have axes to grind. I seem to think it is OK for jokes to pick on old stereotypes but not to make new ones?

Does your opinion of my dementia joke change if you learn I have experience of growing up with an aunt with severe learning difficulties, a grandmother-in-law with Alzheimer's and a father who underwent a quite dramatic personality change after a stroke yet lived for ten more years until a second stroke which took five days to kill him slowly. 'Did you hear about the stroke victim with learning difficulties who developed Alzheimer's?' sounds to me like a line that needs a punch. Probably not to all. I'm aware that I may be slightly unusual.

I used to work in insurance. I investigated and compensated (where appropriate) people for industrial accidents and illnesses. In the West Midlands, where I was, we had a lot of heavy industry and a number of claims for industrial deafness, white finger and pneumoconiosis. One poor guy got all three. The plaintiff's solicitor, describing his client, said, 'He gave a cough, his hand fell off, he didn't hear it fall.' I think it might have gained his client more compensation as the defence team laughed its own heads off.

All occupations that involve dealing with people suffering in some way develop humour to cope. I'm a minister. You think we don't laugh about funerals? A hearse rear door that wouldn't open wasn't amusing at the time but has since entertained me greatly. Likewise a hole too small for a coffin. Black is cool. We dress our comedy that way.

The team were accused once, on a summer camp, of someone during an organised outing damaging a coach seat with a knife. We were asked to pay for repair. I suggested that, if it wasn't a huge amount of money, for the sake of goodwill with the coach company, we should pay up. My co-leader told this joke.

A man was sitting next to an unattached, and stunningly elegant, woman at a banquet. He leaned over to her during the main course. 'After this,' he said, 'If I paid you £1000, would you go to bed with me?'

'I believe I would,' she whispered back.

During coffee the man proposed once again, 'Would you go to bed with me for £25?'

'What do you think I am?' she snorted.

'Madam,' he said, 'We've established what you are. Now we're negotiating the price.'

We had no further discussion. We didn't offer compensation to the coach company.

Humour. It's how I see life and make sense of it. It may be why I don't have breakdowns, am not a workaholic and continue to be moderately effective in public ministry after 24 years. If you feel it's inappropriate please stop visiting here. To some extent insensitivity is the tax you pay on quick wittedness. I try to be balanced about laughing at misfortune and having my own misfortune laughed at. I chronicle it for that reason.

In public, where the audience cannot select attendance, I am more circumspect, OK slightly.

Enjoy. But nobody is asking you to stay if you don't. Do comment.