In His Own Words...

So the comedian's lying there in a coma; and while he's wandering lost between the worlds, Dante comes up and offers to take him on a tour of Paradise. Having nothing better to do, the comic agrees, and next thing he knows he's backstage at the best stand-up comedy venue in Heaven, and all the greatest comics of history are sitting around waiting to go on.

Groucho Marx is there, and he clears his throat and says, "Forty-seven"; and everybody laughs. Then Tony Hancock says, "A hundred and six," and everybody laughs. Then Bob Hope says, "Nineteen" and everybody laughs.

The comedian wonders what's going on. "Well," whispers Dante in his ear, "you know there's only a certain limited number of jokes in the universe. These guys know them all. In fact, they know them so well they can't be bothered to tell them any more; they've given them all numbers, and they just say the number."

Then George Burns says, "Fifty-nine," and everybody laughs. Then Tommy Cooper says "Seventy," and everybody laughs. Then Dave Allen says, "Eighty-three," and everybody laughs except Jimmy Durante.

"Hey," says Allen, "what's the matter with you?"

Durante shrugs. "I didn't like the way you told it."

There's slightly more to comedy than that, but not much. There are indeed only a certain limited number of jokes, and the skill lies in what you add to the presentation, and what you leave out. I added Dante, for recognition, incongruity and mock-literary mood enhancement, and the comedian in a coma, because I'm a miserable git who likes a darker edge. I didn't - couldn't - mess with the punchline, because there's only one way it can work. Alter a word, and the joke fails.

The characters in the joke were easy, though others who tell it get added value through appropriate casting; they take the trouble to find someone hypercritical, in whose nature it would be to find fault, to be the one who didn't laugh at number eighty-three. The danger there lies in over-complicating; the character quirks distract from the simplicity of the punch, which in this joke is everything. A joke expanded into a novel needs characters more than a punch-line. If you're going to have a joke that long, you need people in it.

But why, since they all knew the jokes, did they laugh? Because recognition is the key, especially in a full-length treatment. The jokes we know are funnier than the ones we don't. The unexpected is only funny once. The familiar has scope to be funnier, because it allows you to tell it artfully. Otherwise, all comedy would be jokes, rather than character, situation and observation. The funniest thing of all is being told something you know, as seen from a slightly different angle.

Even funnier than the funniest thing of all is being told something that isn't funny, but in a way that makes you laugh. That's real comedy. I'm working on it.