Dean Whitbread 2020
Contact Details
Am I the only one to derive enormous pleasure from constructing and telling deliberately unfunny jokes? I do it often, it really makes me laugh, knowing that nobody else will laugh, and that the joke is utterly pointless, except for making me laugh, at which it excels admirably.
I generate a variety of blank looks, half-smiles, frowns for wasting time, sarcastic comments, weak laughs and total ignores.
It is even better when a recipient is preoccupied, and so can’t devote their full attention to the non-joke. I absolutely love it when someone laughs as if it’s funny, when it simply isn’t, their people-pleasing tendencies revealed like dirt under a rug.
Variation on this art: to deliberately tell a good joke with bad delivery, or to tell a good joke at a bad time. These techniques can of course be combined. Yesterday in an art shop, an assistant was carrying posters, boxes of paint, all kinds of gear practically falling out of this thin arms, as he walked down a staircase with another customer, but still this nice enough guy stopped to explain that the till I needed was downstairs. I responded by smiling, and immediately told him a joke, the delivery of which I couldn’t resist ruining.
"What’s the secret of comedy?" I asked.
He looked flustered and began to reply, but I cut him short by stuttering, "T.. T… T… "
He stopped, almost dropping his goods, and waited, so I stopped. We paused.
As he started to speak, I suddenly said, "Comedy!"
It made no sense at all, but it made me laugh. He then laughed as if it was funny, which it wasn’t.
When there are language barriers, it’s even better. I sent this to my Lithuanian builder who was on a weekend birthday bender, knowing it would arrive on his mobile in the midst of mass drunkenness:
Lithuanian Man: Doctor, – I think my wife is trying to poison me!
Doctor: Why do you think that?
Man: Because I’m shagging her sister.
Doctor: No, I mean why is she poisoning you?
Man: Because her sister is in Latvia.
It’s not funny, he thinks it might be but doesn’t know why, and because of that, whenever I think about it, it makes me laugh like a drain.
There is something potentially cruel about being deliberately unfunny, which I’m careful to avoid wherever possible. I’m not trying to humiliate anyone here, and of course, it can and does backfire. I don’t want to cause pain, but I need to remove expectation, at the expense of personal pride. It’s a jolt, not a smash-and-grab raid.
The main pleasure is that it breaks the taboo of having to have fun which holds us all in place, whether we know it or not. Let us rid ourselves of the constraints of wit and well formed comedy, lest we chuckle our way into formulaic oblivion.
This thing has 3 Comments
Oh yeah, I *love* jokes that are just for me. I don't usually fool anyone – I mean, no one else usually laughs – but that's when I laugh the hardest. There's something really funny about jokes that aren't that funny… Do you love Stuart Lee? He's not NOT funny, but he will tell a so-so joke and then spend 10 minutes explaining why that joke was funny, and it's HILARIOUS.
Yes.. it's finding humour regardless of formula that's the key..
I’d like to see you try that with an Armenian. You might have to tell a funny joke to have the same effect.