HUMOUR - HOW AND WHETHER IT WORKS

These are the best of times and the worst of times for comedians.

We have more jokes than ever and a medium so efficient at disseminating them that a professional stand-up deserves his millions by preserving anything vaguely original to say.

“I say, I say, I say…have you heard what Francesco Schettino’s new job is?”

“Yes. He’s a bus driver. Next?”

Isn’t this getting a bit tired now? Isn’t it bizarre that the capsizing of the Costa Concordia, a ship two and a half times the tonnage of the Titanic, has so quickly become yesterday’s news until that is someone manages to link the recent fashion shows with cruising and Italy?

And if these weren’t that strident orange it wouldn’t be so funny because here are the hot fashion colours for 2012. Yes – Tangerine Tango up in front.

And, just to prove the timelessness of ethnic humour, here are two that could have been produced at any time in history. The first to make the Brits feel good about their cunning and because it’s a classic piece of silent slapstick.

The slapper on a train

Coming back from another recent EC summit in Rome, various European leaders were forced to take the train due to a strike by Swiss ATC controllers; sitting together in the same compartment, travelling through the Swiss Alps , were Sarkozy, Cameron, Merkel and the young and a very attractive female Irish foreign minister.



The train goes into a dark tunnel and a few seconds later there is the sound of a loud slap. When the train emerges from the tunnel, Sarkozy has a bright red, hand print on his cheek. No one speaks, everyone is extremely shocked and embarrassed.

 Angela Merkel thinks: Sarkozy, not able to help himself, must have groped the Irish girl in the dark, and she slapped his cheek.


The Irish girl thinks: Sarkozy, not able to help himself, must have tried to grope me in the dark, but missed and fondled Merkel and she slapped his cheek.


Sarkozy thinks: Why me? That perfidious Cameron must have groped the Irish girl in the dark knowing that I'd get the blame for it and she slapped me... the English bastard.


And Cameron thinks: I can't wait for another tunnel, so I can smack that little French shit again.


And the next because Jack manages to incorporate everything I’ve always felt about South Africans – friendly, hail fellow well met, look like dentists (maybe that’s just me) and are totally distrait. And in case you’re worrying – no, it’s not (necessarily) racist. It’s funny.

The hijack and hygiene jokes are as old as the hills but like banana skins are always wonderfully slippery.

As with innovation and as Ed McCabe, the legendary ad man put it, “there’s nothing new under the sun but there’s always a better way.”

DEJA VU

Am I the only person over 25 viewing these riots in a slightly different way? To sound in control ministers are talking like Harold MacMillan in tones of horror and vote-for-me outrage.

I’m not saying the looting, violence and riots are to be treated lightly.  But nor can they be just brushed under that “criminality” carpet.

The Arab Spring must  have felt like this from the other side and Dave Cameron is probably feeling like Al-Gadaffi … outraged, confused, cheated (in Dave’s case of his Tuscan holiday) and very cross.

There are a few things to note.

This turned from a local protest to a series of “flash-mobs” to a wave of orchestrated gang and passer-by looting to chaos. Shopping-with-violence someone called it.

And it was a mix of very young, middle aged, of black and white but few Asians – except as vigilante protectors of property. It became infectious because the big broken society was ready for such a social explosion.

The real issue is not the criminality but the disadvantaged young whom we don’t understand. Judges (on their own planet) seemed appalled that parents weren’t accompanying their 14 year olds to court. But nearly half those over 14 are no longer under parental control. Parents-in-charge are a thing of the past; gangs as group to belong to aren’t. But the middle class doesn’t get this. I expected to hear a judge ask “were these young people on properly signed exeats?”

So we’ll send them to prison to join the other 11,000 young prisoners. We’ve had a 66% increase of young prisoners in the past 5 years. Nowhere else in the world can boast a prisoner growth of youth as high as that.
And we’ll slag off the police as soft and although they were slow and are out of touch with change, the way the senior politicians treated them was  a disgrace. Good to see a fight back from Deputy Commissioner Orde.

We’ll demand social networking is curtailed (how?)

And we’ll lament the passing of happier times.

But the opportunities this shock has created are exciting. We have a chance to sort out security; a chance to recognise parental and school authority breakdown – and do something about it; a chance to begin to dismantle those gangs; a chance to upgrade police intelligence; a chance to educate our Prime Minister and peers and a chance to invest in the future (education) as opposed to the past (the NHS).

It could be worse.  And taking those chances since the zeitgeist feels just right are worth more than an AAA rating and a focus on money. It sometimes takes a storm to blow away apathy and ignorance.

"EXCUSE ME, AREN'T YOU A PRIEST?"

Such a question being addressed to me in the street by a stranger would not be worth commenting on were it not about the fifth time it’s happened to me this year. It has not so much ruffled my agnostic feathers as made me ponder deeply on perception – the magic tool of the marketer.

And talking of magic here’s what David Berglas, Former President of the Magic Circle, said on talking about Harry Houdini: “It’s not the trick, it’s the presentation that counts.” Not that Harry wasn’t a genius …no, but he was an especially brilliant actor.

Change can impact on perception. The weather has hit my perception of life. On Saturday when I awoke in Brighton which had just undergone unusually brutal Arctic weather to find all the snow melted I had this weird feeling that Christmas had just come and gone.

WikiLeaks has changed a few perceptions too – the Americans are good guys – a bit on the naïve side but nice and the Russians are rascals. Rascals because a Spaniard said so, said it was run by the Mafia – have you noticed how this opinion has in a flash become established fact?

And FIFA. England’s derisory vote has brought about a sphincter tightening sense of national isolationism not experienced since the Suez crisis. We are a bit like Millwall Football Club and their battle cry “nobody likes us and we don’t care”.

It’s not that they don’t like us just that they don’t rate us…little England v. Big New World Russia ….the past v. the future… Cameron v. Putin (even an absent Putin)….a huge deficit v. loadsamoney. A man from Mars would have chosen Russia purely on commercial grounds. Our perception of ourselves is awry.

Back to our priest – and who wouldn’t have wanted to be one if they could have become a bishop with a great hat like that? There was something curiously exciting to have been taken for something I was not. I left this encounter preening my feathers, as it were, and feeling remarkably cheerful. Looking back at this, a rich news week I thought “we just don’t do boring around here any more do we?”

At least that’s my perception.