what makes some­thing funny?

I ask you this not in a rhetor­i­cal way, but with a twofold pur­pose. One, I need cheer­ing up because my house is a dis­as­ter, which is upset­ting sec­ond only to the fact that we real­ly have to find a new house. Two, I have been to my first “com­e­dy writ­ing for tele­vi­sion” course and the ques­tion is actu­al­ly part of our homework!

Oh, it was such fun. I was a bit skep­ti­cal giv­en my not-so-pleas­ant expe­ri­ence in the “Cre­at­ing Fic­tion” course last autumn, where my fel­low class­mates were rather more… shall we say, seri­ous than I am. Their nov­els-in-the-mak­ing were quite grit­ty (I think that’s the word they would have used, or maybe “edgy”), and the only thing less like­ly than my read­ing a grit­ty nov­el, is my writ­ing a grit­ty nov­el. So I was the prover­bial fish out of water. This crowd, on the oth­er hand, is fun­ny. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, I guess! I remem­ber from my first act­ing class last spring, think­ing, there’s a lit­tle pres­sure on in a social way, when you’ve all come togeth­er claim­ing you want to be the­atri­cal. You can hard­ly just sit there like a lump, wait­ing to learn! You have to act. And while I turned out to be some­thing rather less than the next Kate Winslet, it was very amus­ing to be with lots of peo­ple who like to pre­tend. The same goes for the com­e­dy class. You have to be fun­ny, right off the bat.

The tutor, espe­cial­ly, was under the micro­scope from the word go. Think of it: your man­date is to help peo­ple write fun­ny things for oth­er peo­ple to say. There­fore, the first words you utter had bet­ter be fun­ny them­selves. And he did not let us down. Guy Mered­ith, isn’t that an excel­lent name? Quite spon­ta­neous­ly fun­ny, as well as hav­ing obvi­ous­ly thought up fun­ny things before­hand, to say. We start­ed off dis­cussing what are the most use­ful items for com­e­dy: cur­rent events. He asked, “Did you all read about the Suf­folk Stran­gler speak­ing out final­ly? Of course he said he did­n’t do it, but he prob­a­bly should­n’t have done so under the name ‘The Suf­folk Stran­gler.’ See, mur­der­ers always make one mis­take.” Then we were on to the first exer­cise. “Imag­ine, if you would, that you are at a dis­as­trous drinks do [“cock­tail par­ty,” to you Yanks], and it’s becom­ing obvi­ous that you’re not going to find any­one to talk to. You’re hid­ing in the kitchen, when you hear a foot­step com­ing down the pas­sage. Sud­den­ly you know, beyond a shad­ow of a doubt, that the per­son approach­ing could be real­ly impor­tant to you, if you could only get his/her atten­tion. Write down three fas­ci­nat­ing things about your­self, that you can tell this per­son. The catch is, two of the things are true, and one is a lie.”

So we each had to think of these three things, and say them out loud, where­upon Guy repeat­ed them and asked the class to vote on which thing was a lie. And what we dis­cov­ered was: suc­cess is in the details. For myself, I said 1) that I had writ­ten a book on the his­to­ry of women artists from the Renais­sance to the present, 2) that I was aller­gic to alu­minum [Guy nat­u­ral­ly insert­ed the extra Eng­lish ‘i’, for “alu­mini­um”], and 3) that I had a degree from RADA, the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Dra­mat­ic Arts. And you know what? Not one per­son thought the book was a lie. “She has a stu­dious aspect, does she not?” was Guy’s unflat­ter­ing but unfor­tu­nate­ly true con­clu­sion. Some peo­ple thought it implau­si­ble about the aller­gy, but most peo­ple imme­di­ate­ly con­clud­ed that the RADA claim was a lie. Guess why? RADA don’t offer a degree, they just offer cours­es. Did I, as a mere out­sider to the fin­er points of Eng­lish cul­ture, know this? Uh, no. And the les­son was: write what you know.

Amaz­ing­ly, sev­er­al of the female stu­dents’ claims to be, var­i­ous­ly, “exot­ic dancers, “bur­lesque per­form­ers,” and most­ly bald­ly, “strip­pers,” were TRUE! And one fel­low in his 60s real­ly was, con­trary to our guess, approached to appear in the first-ever issue of Play­girl. “Wor­ry­ing, isn’t it, that no one believed me?” he said mourn­ful­ly. One girl was found out about not being a nurse because she said “psy­cho­log­i­cal” instead of “psy­chi­atric” nurse, and a guy was found to be lying about falling off a don­key ride in the sea­side resort of Brighton, because there aren’t any don­key rides in Brighton, only in Bournemouth, appar­ent­ly. Very amusing.

So the oth­er les­son was, in order to write suc­cess­ful com­e­dy, one must be able to lie con­vinc­ing­ly, and also know how to draw on one’s real expe­ri­ence in mak­ing things up. And I learned exact­ly how much I don’t know (as if I need­ed remind­ing) about real­ly up-close British pop­u­lar cul­ture. Have you Amer­i­can read­ers ever heard of a musi­cian called Tom­my Steele? Nei­ther had I, but he’s real­ly famous here. And he’s the sec­ond cousin of one of the class mem­bers, although we thought she was lying. Have you heard of a com­e­dy team called “French and Saun­ders”? I was not flu­ent enough in that ref­er­ence to get it right away, but my Hel­lo! mag­a­zine loy­al­ty meant that I could parse it even­tu­al­ly, and Dawn French real­ly is a nation­al trea­sure. I loved her in the clip I saw of the recent Christ­mas air­ing of “The Vic­ar of Dib­ley.” Of course I saw the clip only through the sev­er­al degrees of sep­a­ra­tion that my Matthew Mac­fadyen site pro­vides, since his wife Kee­ley Hawes was in the pro­gramme as well (look­ing irri­tat­ing­ly gor­geous, I must add in all hon­esty). Well, how about “ENO”? Eng­lish Nation­al Opera. “Red Dwarf”? Nope, me nei­ther, but it’s a cult sci­ence fic­tion show. It’s expe­ri­ences like this that I trea­sure, a chance to be a fly on the wall (the only non-British per­son in the class) and just enjoy absorb­ing what it’s like to be British. There’s one Scot­tish bloke in the class, and while Cal­lum turned out not in fact to be an air­line stew­ard, he has met Zsa Zsa Gabor and he is a mem­ber of an obscure Scot­tish sep­a­ratist group (but not the ones who advo­cate assas­si­nat­ing the Queen, impor­tant­ly). I guess I knew vague­ly that some Scots would like to be inde­pen­dent from Great Britain, and every once in awhile they’re on the BBC com­plain­ing about var­i­ous par­lia­men­tary injus­tices, but in gen­er­al, do most Amer­i­cans liv­ing in Britain get to meet one? I feel very for­tu­nate. The fact that Mel Gib­son’s face adorns one of the inde­pen­dence web­sites had a bit of a deflat­ing effect on any par­ti­san­ship I might have felt, however.

But I digress. What makes some­thing fun­ny? We decid­ed that con­trast and incon­gruity are fun­ny, and two things being com­bined that don’t belong togeth­er are fun­ny. Peo­ple being as fool­ish as you know you can be but hope you aren’t all the time, are fun­ny. Spoofs of things that are just this side of ridicu­lous, are fun­ny. There are two absolute­ly hilar­i­ous pro­grammes that we saw clips of in class that I have sim­ply got to track down copies of. One is called “Bro­ken News,” obvi­ous­ly a spoof of the con­cept of “break­ing news,” that sends up all the 24-hour news chan­nels we watch in spite of our­selves. The bit we saw was fol­low­ing a break­ing sto­ry of a woman who had died mys­te­ri­ous­ly fol­low­ing a meal that fea­tured toma­toes, and the news crews were pro­vid­ing Team Cov­er­age of the expect­ed “Toma­to Flu” pan­dem­ic that would soon be sweep­ing Britain. This is, of course, so per­ilous­ly close to our pan­ic over bird flu that it’s just embar­rass­ing, and total­ly hilar­i­ous. Here’s some­thing impor­tant though: not every­one thought it was fun­ny. So I think that’s a good point: some peo­ple will find “Lit­tle Britain” side-split­ting­ly fun­ny, some peo­ple will laugh reluc­tant­ly, and some peo­ple will be hor­ri­bly offend­ed. I myself can­not bear that pro­gramme, although I adore David Wal­liams in straight roles, so there you go.

We had a great time. My fun was only slight­ly spoiled by my jour­ney home­ward. No, amaz­ing­ly, I did not get lost, but it was actu­al­ly worse. I walked out of the build­ing and head­ed toward Oxford Street, when a cab sud­den­ly stopped in front of me and a head poked out the open win­dow, and it was the love­ly James from class (already clear­ly the fun­ni­est per­son in the group, if actu­al­ly not mar­ried to and divorced from the same woman twice, as he tried to get us to believe). “Get in, I’ll run you wher­ev­er you’re going, as long as it’s where I’m going.” So, because he is fun­ny, I got in, and we were get­ting along famous­ly, head­ing vague­ly north and west, swap­ping life sto­ries. Then I real­ized I had left my &^%^$ hand­bag in the class­room. I pulled out my vibrat­ing mobile phone to find I had a mes­sage from Guy and he’d left my bag with secu­ri­ty. I jumped out in con­ster­na­tion, even as James was pulling out his wal­let for me, said good­bye and start­ed walk­ing, not know­ing even where I was. And it start­ed to pour down with rain. I just stood curs­ing and get­ting wet­ter and wet­ter, look­ing at my watch and know­ing I had to pick Avery up at the sta­ble. What to do? Final­ly I flagged anoth­er cab and explained my sit­u­a­tion and begged to be tak­en back to school where I would get my bag and get right back in and he could have a nice long fare to the stable.

This proved accept­able, only I had to sit through one of the very few unpleas­ant cab­by con­ver­sa­tions I have been privy to: this spec­i­men of human­i­ty was one of a type of British per­son (and there’s an Amer­i­can coun­ter­part, make no mis­take) who believes firm­ly that the world is going to hell in a hand­bas­ket, every­thing was bet­ter before immi­gra­tion, we should close the bor­ders, vote out every politi­cian, turn off the per­ni­cious inter­net, and stop eat­ing any­thing green. And the envi­ron­ment? It can go to the dogs because any­way the ter­ror­ists will get us first. Urgh. What a long ride. And at the end he said, “And you know what, luv? Every­one I talk to about this agrees with me, just like you do. Nev­er get any­body in my cab what don’t. You have a nice day now, if the [exple­tives] will let you, which they won’t.” Oh dear.

Which entire after­noon, with its cast of char­ac­ters, screw-ups, weath­er emer­gen­cies and new­found Britishisms, leads me to believe that while I may need help in my pre­sen­ta­tion of com­e­dy, I’m not lack­ing in material.