I’m not sure why I was thinking about this.
Having thought about it, I reminded my wife about it, and I had a good laugh (again)
– there is a faint risk that I have mentioned this story here before, since I
am fond of it, but I don’t think so.
The underlying theme is the ancient world
of the English music hall theatre – and especially of the seaside variety show.
The significance of the seaside thing is simply that it was always a tradition
that audiences when on their holidays would laugh at or applaud anything, even
if
(1) It was rubbish
(2) They hadn’t understood it
(3) They hadn’t heard it properly
(4) They had heard it – last year, same
theatre, same act
Hence the longevity of all those
tap-dancing children, idiot ventriloquists and performing seals – and so on.
Life forms which could not have survived for an instant in any other
environment.
The focus of our study tonight, my friends,
is the 2-man comedy act. Everything was very formalised – you might say
formulaic. There will be a Funny Man and there will be a Stooge (who is even
less funny than the Funny Man), and there is a classic form of (terrible) joke
which has a very strict format. The following well-known examples will serve:
Funny Man: I say, my wife has gone to the
West Indies.
Stooge: Gone to the West Indies? Jamaica?
FM: No – she went OF HER OWN ACCORD….
FM: I say, my dog has no nose.
Stooge: No nose? How does he smell?
FM: TERRIBLE….
FM: I say, there’s a man outside, stealing
your gate.
Stooge: Stealing my gate? Did you try to
stop him?
FM: No – I DIDN’T WANT HIM TO TAKE
OFFENCE….
And that’s quite enough – you will
certainly know other examples, and they will all be funnier than the chosen
three.
To get to the point, my musician friend The
Hat and I got to discussing this form of joke, over a beer. We felt that,
though it might be traditional, it was due a bit of a makeover. First of all,
we considered simply changing the expected punchline, since no-one would notice and
they would laugh anyway, since the joke form has a kind of rhythm which makes it
obvious in which gap the laughter is required. If, we reasoned, the first
example (the Jamaica one) ended with the FM saying, “No – she went to Trinidad”
then it completely defeats any last trace of humour, since the wretched pun is
cancelled, but we were pretty sure the laughter would be undiminished – in fact,
we ourselves would laugh along quite loudly, so it might actually be increased
a little.
However, we realised we were really just
playing around with the idea, and that it would make more sense if we set ourselves
some serious objectives – made our improvement more worthwhile in some way. Well, most
English seaside resorts these days are a bit short of money, so we thought that
if somehow we could simplify the jokes a bit – shorten them – it would get them
over quicker. Since they weren’t funny to start with, the cash saving of not
having the janitor hanging around for quite so long (waiting to sweep up),
might be very welcome. We quickly became aware that our new, streamlined
versions of the jokes were not funny at all, but the originals were not
noticeably funny either, so we persevered.
The first modification was to cut out a
line – this meant that the Stooge now delivered what served as a punchline (or
at least the last line in the exchange, even if it lacked punch). Thus, with
some change in job titles, the first example now reads:
FM1: I say, my wife has gone to the West
Indies.
FM2: Gone to the West Indies? I bet she
went of her own accord.
You may debate whether this ranks as an
improvement – certainly the cost accountants on the council are very pleased –
the comedy act now only lasts 4 minutes in total.
We think the new format will become
accepted, though it may take a little while to bed in with the more conservative audiences, but we have not been
idly resting on our laurels – we have an even shorter version in the laboratory – the most efficient
joke form yet developed:
FM: I say, my wife has gone to the West
Indies of her own accord.
Or, another of our examples:
FM: I say, my dog smells terrible.
Good, eh? You getting the hang of this? The
council will love it, because we’ve actually got rid of one complete employee,
and the delivery time is even shorter. Fantastic. We think it still needs a
little work, but maybe you could all do a little offline testing for us –
convert some jokes of your own to this new, efficient format, and try them on
your friends. In the pub, if you like. I’d be delighted to know how you get on
– The Hat and I are dedicated to continuous improvement, and we appreciate any
help we can get.
