WHAT'S SO FUNNY?

So said Lord Byron (1788-1824).

I've always treasured the ability to tell a good yarn, a joke or a funny story. This ability 'in the flesh', so to speak, is a very handy bonus for a writer. People have also often asked me why I don't write comedy. Believe me, I've tried, but writing jokes and funny situations is by far one of the hardest aspects of the craft there is. Providing you can get to the punch line OK, even the dullest person can get a small titter from their friends. But writing a joke? That's the province of genius to me. It also helps to know the essence of what's funny - for example, I've just used the word 'titter', and what would Ken Dodd do with such a word? "A titter ran through the audience. He was arrested at the door..." See? Looks easy. But it isn't.

 

The recent sad death of Mel Smith somehow reminded me that what makes us laugh is every bit as dependent on our own personality and world view - and taste - as any other reaction. It's the same as music. Some of us will maintain The Beatles are always going to be the greatest pop group ever. Others sniff and say 'rubbish'. I loathe and detest the song 'Layla' by Eric Clapton - I know just how much of a minority view that is. I cannot stand rap and hip-hop, and recently lapsed into an old-fart fury when some young 'dude' tried to tell me that rap is 'the greatest musical art form of the age'. Indecipherable grunting, riff-plagiarism and Neanderthal bling-drenched posturing with built-in, instant obsolescence. Yet rap fans tell me that it's no different from the blues, and that every blues record sounds the same. Well, you pays your money and you takes your choice. Give me Howlin' Wolf over 50 Cents any day.  

Like language, which is now riddled with txtspk, 'apps', 'Lols' and other extreme annoyances, we are told by pundits that culture evolves. If that's the case, then comedy has evolved with it, and not always for the better. That's not to say that there aren't enough funny comics to go around these days. There are, but comedians used to tell ... JOKES. Few people with an ear for a laugh will have heard of Johnnie Casson(right). He's been called by people like Des O'Connor (who is, admittedly, not the funniest man in the word) 'The Comedian's Comedian'. Casson is one of those Yorkshire peculiarities who mangles his words "Good evening, Ladies and Germolenes ... I was wet through when I woke up this morning - I thought the water-bed had burst ... then I remembered, we don't have a water-bed ..."  Yet you're never going to see Casson on Live at The Apollo. What's happened to 'new' comedy - observational ramblings - is probably more typified by the shouting strut of Michael MacIntrye (left, on the red carpet with his missus).  Of course, there's no such thing as 'alternative' comedy, other than the fact that at least, since that arch cultural traitor faux-'leftie' Ben Elton properly stabbed on-stage racism and misogyny in its festering heart,  then at least we now have a bit of respect for some kind of decency (although Frankie Boyle, brilliant though he can be, still likes to drag us through elements of the mire once occupied by Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson; for coloured people, simply substitute the disabled....)

 

Michael MacIntrye's triumph is in part down to his high-energy persistence, driven by his innate loudness and the fact that as the supposed 'new rock'n'roll' - 21st century comedy -  the ambient 'smart' North London-type audience are conditioned, as US audiences have always been, to whoop and scream and holler in all the right places. It is compulsory to laugh these days in the same way that in every jazz performance, it has always been obligatory to applaud every solo, no matter how lacklustre. In rock music, we might not stand and applause when Albert Lee plays that blistering guitar-break in Country Boy, but if some new laugh-merchant on Live at The Apollo reaches the end of a paragraph about hamburgers or cycling helmets, you can guarantee a whoop and a chuckle, because hey! This is comedy, and it's funny, right? We're here to laugh, dammit.

I'm being awkward and curmudgeonly about this. Nothing reveals my 70 years of existence more than what I'm writing here. There are funny men out there whose brilliance and acute observation send me into hysterics. Andy Parsons, (right) for instance - politically astute, he even looks funny - a great bonus. Sean Lock, Hugh Dennis, Mickey Flanagan, Milton Jones, Sarah Millican these, and others, all float my boat. But in the end, it's the true old Jokers, the comics who have a sense of the bizarre, those in possession of the knowledge that words like 'trousers', ''sprocket' and 'marzipan' can be manipulated into something weird and wild. Is there a more unsettling and mystifying set of funny characters than Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer's The Stotts, or the oddly macabre Master Chef sketch?

 

 In the end. comedy is down to who we are, who likes bananas, who doesn't, who prefers cats to dogs, and whether or not we're scared of spiders.

The only question I would pose is that, apart from Tommy Cooper, Morecambe & Wise and Ken Dodd, which - if any - of today's batch of comics will end up having a town centre statue erected to them? I was truly tickled to see Ken Dodd's alongside Bessie Braddock's in Liverpool's Lime Street Station.

Ken still packs'em in on his eternal tour and he's well into his 80s. Not everyone's cup of tea, but you'd need a heart of stone not to sit through 4 hours of Doddie and not laugh at least half a dozen times. So I'll leave this with his description of what a laugh is: "It comes up from your clack, works its way up into your chuckle muscle, and comes out through your mouth. Anywhere else and you're in trouble..."