The jokes themselves are largely about playing with language. Even when a joke is about the absurdity of some aspect of life, like companies pandering to the health-conscious without making an effort, it might be done through an oxymoron such as “all natural artificial flavouring.”

This means that verbal comedy does not alway translate well from one language to another. However, it’s not impossible. Puns exist in Japanese as well as English. So if you wanted to perform in Japan in Japanese, you would have to do some research to create different puns for your routine. Many Japanese parents joke that their children are kawaii/kowaii: the one word means “cute” and the other “scary”. The words sound similar and, yes, children are often both cute and scary.

So here are some categories and examples of verbal humour.

What You Say

It may seem obvious that WHAT you say is crucial to verbal comedy, but remember that not everyone knows HOW to tell a joke to make it funny. I will deal with that later in this post.

Overstatement and Understatement

These are forms of exaggeration that often work with other types of verbal humour such as simile. Types of overstatement and understatement include:

Hyperbole—exaggeration that is not meant to be taken literally. “The baby weighed a ton.” “She was as light as a feather.” However, sometimes the humour comes from saying something that sounds like hyperbole, then demonstrating that it is fact. “The baby weighed a ton; not surprising since it was twelve foot by twelve foot at birth.” We could be talking about an elephant, whale, or an outrageously large human baby.

Meiosis—a euphemism that understates a situation. “The Pond” as a reference to the Atlantic. “It’s just a flesh wound” said when a knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail has his arms and legs hacked off.

Litotes—Using a double negative to express a positive. This is very popular in Australia. “(S)he’s not half bad” referring to a good-looking person. “Gran’s not unhappy with the move” could mean Gran likes the new place. However, Australian humour being what it is, this could be meiosis and she’s spitting mad.

Poetic Language

Calling this type of comedy “poetic” may cause people to think we’re getting hoity-toity. But isn’t the very word “hoity-toity” funny? And it’s a rhyme. Poetic language gives a lovely texture to comedy, adding an extra layer of pleasure when you are playing with sounds and rhythms as well as meanings.

Rhyming—when words sound the same. You can have both full rhymes and half rhymes. Full: kitten/bitten. Half: ladies/bodies. Cockney slang is based on rhymes. Many people have heard “apples and pears” as the Cockney slang for “stairs”. Dr Seuss created humour by inventing absurd words to fill in a rhyme.”When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle’s on a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles…they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle.” (Fox in Socks) Ever hear of “tweetle” before? Lewis Carroll is famous for absurd rhyme, “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

Alliteration, assonance, consonance—These all deal with same individual sounds. Alliteration is when all the initial sounds are the same, as in “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” Assonance is when you repeatedly use certain vowel sounds, “I like white tires, they slice ice with wide files.” Consonance is when you repeatedly use certain consonant sounds, “The putrid dappled donkey galloped wide of the dandelion field.”

Onomatopeia—when a word sounds like the thing it is describing. A steak “sizzles”. A child “hiccups”. I will warn people, many words are only considered onomatopeia because of cultural expectations. In English we say, “meow” for a cat, “hoot” for an owl, and “woof” for a dog. But in French you would say, “miaule”, “hulule”, and “vaf”. In China the dogs go “wang wang”.

Simile/Metaphor—making a comparison. Similes frequently use the words “like” or “as”: her eyes were like sapphires. Metaphors will describe something by calling it something else: her eyes were sapphires. Similes and metaphors are a particular favourite for creating comedy. Rowan Atkinson was regularly using them as Black Adder: “Since then, we’ve made as much ground as an asthmatic ant with a heavy load of shopping.”

The Misuse of Language

We all enjoy laughing at a slip of the tongue. Sometimes it is used to show a character is flustered, foolish, or perhaps drunk.

Malapropism—accidentally swapping words with similar sounds and sometimes creating a humourous new meaning. Stan Laurel, “We heard the ocean is infatuated with sharks.” (instead of “infested”) In New Scientist an office worker described a colleague as “a vast suppository of information”. (instead of repository) When the worker apologised for his “Miss-Marple-ism” New Scientist reported it as possibly the first time “malapropism” has been turned into a malapropism.

Spoonerisms—transposing letters between words. When someone meant to say “Is it customary to kiss the bride?” and instead says “Is it kisstomary to cuss the bride?”, you might assume they are extremely nervous or drunk. The phrase is funny, but so is the vulnerability that it reveals. One of my favourites was a British announcer saying, “All the world was thrilled by the marriage of the Duck and Doochess of Windsor.” Ducks are funny.

Mondegreens—Mishearing words in a phrase and replacing them with close sounding words. The one I’m guilty of is mishearing the song “Kyrie Eleison” as “Carry a Laser”. Others include: “There’s a bathroom on the right” for “There’s a bad moon on the rise” and “‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy” for “‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky” from Purple Haze.

Play on Meaning

Puns—when words sound like one another but have different meanings and/or when words look like one another and have different meanings. “I did a theatrical performance about puns. Really it was just a play on words.” In this case the word “play” both looks and sounds the same in the two senses it is used, but the punchline relies on meanings of either “play” meaning theatrical production or “play” meaning a game. Tom Swifties are a pun based on the description of how something is said. “We just struck oil!” Tom gushed. “Pass me the shellfish,” said Tom crabbily. I would classify “syllepsis” as a form of pun, though it relies solely on the different ways a verb can be used. Michael Flanders wrote in “Have Some Madeira M’Dear”, “She lowered her standards by raising her glass, her courage, her eyes and his hopes.”

Euphemisms—a way to delicately describe something that might be considered offensive. “Airbrush your undies” for farting. “Reviewing today’s menu” for burping.

Double entendre—most often sexual innuendo, but any straightforward statement that has a second potentially offensive meaning. Puns are frequently used for this: “A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.” These only work if you are familiar with various euphemisms. So, it requires some knowledge of common spoken culture: “hole” for “asshole” or “anus”. In the movie Naked Gun Leslie Nielsen’s character famously appears to be looking up Priscilla Presley’s dress and comments, “Nice beaver”. She then passes him a taxidermied beaver.

Oxymoron—a pair of words, often adjective-noun, that are apparently paradoxical. Well known oxymorons are bitter sweet, living dead, and virtual reality. George Carlin is well known for making a humorous case that military intelligence, business ethics, and freedom fighters are oxymoronic.

Non sequitur—a factual statement followed by an absurd conclusion. “If the sun is 23 degrees off of high noon, and we haven’t had daylight savings yet, I would say it’s time for an ice cream.” Ralph Wiggum from the Simpsons: “Martin Luther King had a dream. Dreams are where Elmo and Toy Story had a party and I was invited. Yay! My turn is over!”

Paraprosdokian—Hah! Say THAT one fast. This is basically a word that describes the one liner: a statement that ends with a surprise. The two part one-liner is a simple setup and payoff joke: “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it,” Groucho Marx. Slightly more complex is the introduction, validation, violation joke: “Every successful date will include three things–romance, respect, and a ton of chocolate.”

How You Say It

Timing is certainly an important part of verbal comedy. You don’t want to rush into a punchline, because people need a moment to be prepared for the full impact of your surprise ending. You don’t want your pacing to be too slow, or people may lose interest in what you have to say. Understanding where to put emphasis through starts, stops, and pauses is tightly linked to comic characterisation.

Prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Take a simple phrase like, “Could you please smile.” Someone about to take a photograph might say this in a calm even tone. “COULD you please smile,” might be said in a way that indicates frustration and anger. If you add a tight smile to the person saying this, a certain irony creeps in. “Could YOU please smile,” indicates a particular person is called upon to smile. “Could you PLEASE smile,” is begging. “Could you please SMILE,” indicates that people are doing something else, like crying or arguing.

Sarcasm is when you say one thing and mean something entirely different. Often prosody is involved to make the sarastic intent clear. “I am SO happy you invited me,” may be how someone sarcastically expresses being unhappy about an invite. The emotion expressed in the reverse may be funny in itself…a bit of vocal absurdity. However, humour may also be derived from the fact that we understand the subtext, when others do not. If the inviter doesn’t recognise the sarcasm of the invitee, that person may inflict more unwelcome invites.

Mimicry is when you imitate the speech characteristics of another person. This can be done in a cheeky manner, whereby the comedian is directly sending-up the person with whom they are speaking. It may be used to emphasise the strangeness of foreign accents. A comedian can also be caricaturising public figures by exaggerating their speech habits. People enjoy the sense of recognition. They also enjoy some of the mockery.

Funny voices takes mimicry to a meta level. The comedian extracts those elements of speech that we find funny no matter to whom we apply them: high voices, low, voices, fast-talking, slow-talking, mispronunciations, etc. You don’t even need words. The space aliens in Sesame Street are well-loved for their nonsensical alien speech.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t exhausted this subject. I hope you find enough here to start playing around and using maybe a few twists of language you haven’t tried before. Verbal comedy is a place where real wit can be brought into a story, play, television show, or film.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Types of Comedy: Part One – Physical Comedy
Types of Comedy: Part Three – Situational Comedy

1. physical comedy
2. verbal comedy
3. situational comedy

Certainly all of these get used in combination. Situational comedy in particular suggests a more theatrical presentation, whereby verbal and physical humour are used to enhance the comicality of the given circumstances. In fact verbal comedy will often allude to physical comedy without actually enacting physical events. So what do they offer individually?

Physical Comedy

This is the most basic and easily understood comedy. From babies to adults to people from all eras and cultures—farting, slipping on a banana peel, or making a rabbit appear and disappear from a hat is going to elicit laughter. We recognise the humanity of these acts, we recognise what’s at stake, and we all find it funny.

Physical comedy has mostly to do with our physicality: the vulnerability of our bodies and the strange things our bodies do such as fart, gurgle, vomit, excrete, gesticulate, and twitch. It also deals with our interactions with physical objects: such as trying to keep some object from falling over, avoiding being struck by an object, trying to get an object to perform correctly, keeping an object from getting away, attempting to remove an object, etc. Our interactions with animals and sometimes other people take on the humour of both bodies and objects.

Physical comedy can be over-used. One too many fart jokes can spoil the comic broth. Physical comedy can be abused. When sometimes humorous acts become an element of bullying, the humour will be sucked out for the empathetic members of the audience.

Empathy is one of the greatest building blocks for comedy. We cringe when someone in a cartoon hits their own thumb with a hammer. We laugh in relief when the results are a giant throbbing red thumb that heals in moments. Have a character hit another character’s thumb in an act of meanness, empathy dictates that we feel fear and anger (fight or flight) on behalf of the abused character.

Some of the most well-loved and well-remembered comedians are masters of physical comedy. Buster Keaton’s slapstick is still studied and used by comedians and filmmakers to this day. His most famous stunt was standing underneath one side of a two-storey building and having that side fall on top of him…and survive. One of the open windows, it turns out, was located precisely where Buster was standing. This same schtick was later used by another famous physical comedian, Jackie Chan.

Other physical comedians worth looking into are Frank Woodley, Rowan Atkinson as Mr Bean, Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, and Mabel Normand, the first woman to throw a pie at Charlie Chaplin. Taking a course in clowning, acrobatics, even dance is not necessary, but helpful when pursuing this sort of humour.

Next week: Verbal Comedy

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

The instant you work in the performance and arts industries, you will find yourself having to sign contracts and release forms or asking others to sign contracts and release forms. I have done this not just for my comedy, but even for my everyday work designing Web sites and logos.

The Basics

It’s vital to understand certain basic principles concerning contracts. It’s equally vital to understand when contracts and releases are needed and confidently enter into them when the details are right. I have seen people miss out on opportunities because they were afraid to sign any contract when it came to their art and performance. These same people will at times blithely sign purchasing contracts for refrigerators and the like without even reading the document.

A contract will define who the involved parties are: whether it be between two individuals or several companies. The contract will define the parties’s relationship with one another: such as employer and employee, seller and customer, production company and contractor. The contract will also outline what is expected of each party: eg confidentiality, specific work, a release of rights or ownership from one party to the other. Any special language is usually clarified: “x” means “y”. Finally, many contracts will also outline when certain agreements become null. In the case of a confidentiality agreement, the contract will become null when its information becomes public knowledge.

A good contract should be readily understood by the signing parties. Though, some lawyers have a difficult time writing in anything other than legalese. Even so it’s always worth having a lawyer take a quick look over any significant contract you may be signing. They will point out any omissions or problematic wording. If you are the one handing a contract to someone else, it’s useful and polite to go through the points with the other person and honestly explain what they mean. A contract should be about agreement, not binding people to your will.

Negotiations

Big companies will often ask for more than they should in a contract. You will need know in advance how much you are willing to give away, given the particular company with whom you are working. A company may ask for something like all the toy rights to your comedy show. Technically, you should be getting a percentage of those sales. However, you may be making so much money on other aspects of the contract, you might be willing to forego that revenue stream (though I wouldn’t recommend it). Some smaller public television channels will also ask for more than they should, because they are a bit desperate for the money. You will have to decide whether or not it’s worth it for that foot in the door with them as well.

Once you know where you are willing to be flexible, you don’t have to start negotiations by being flexible. You are much better off by stating upfront what you want out of the agreement, then bending when you have to. For small productions such as an agreement concerning the takings for a fringe festival show, you will need to do this for yourself. For bigger productions which involve more money, it’s useful to have an agent, manager, or lawyer who will keep you from giving away too much or alternatively getting too stubborn.

Often the other side of a contract is willing to let you push for what you want, especially if you are pleasant and polite. I easily changed several things in my contract with Reed Publications for my book Surf’s Up. The contract was standardised, not set in stone. I remember other authors who out-right signed that contract, grumbling about the terms later on. From simply asking, I was free of those same terms.

Here are some thoughts that should help you feel more confident when you enter negotiations.

You are the goose who lays the golden eggs. Low-level contractors sometimes forget this and believe the “egg” is more valuable than the “goose”. The dotcom era was notorious for this. People would buy certain intellectual property, but without the know-how of the people who first conceived and created it, they couldn’t build a sustainable business from the property. You are the person who is bringing in ticket sales or film and television viewers, if a contractor asks too much from you, they will lose both goose and egg.

It’s okay to walk away from a bad deal no matter how big the company or how big the star with whom you are signing an agreement. From experience I can say with conviction, if a deal looks like it could lead to a big prize but at the cost of a lot of grief, don’t sign it. Be careful that it’s not a matter of your ego getting in the way, but otherwise life is too short to muck around with unpleasant people and situations. You can find something better. Just remember that the other side is in the same position concerning yourself.

Particular Documents

For those in comedy the legal documents you are most likely to see are: release forms, confidentiality agreements, work for hire, profit sharing and venue agreements. The last two I will have to deal with in another post. Nevertheless, I can offer a few points concerning releases.

Once you are dealing with a group of people, be it for a stage show, television series, short film, feature film, etc, you MUST have release forms. Everyone must understand what is expected of them, everyone must agree that this is a group endeavour and a public endeavour, and allow the production team to do what is necessary to create and sell your performance. The problem is that without release forms, one person can cause everyone’s hard work to go to waste.

As an example imagine a symphony orchestra with eighty some people in it. Let’s say that orchestra decides it wants to make a CD of their music. This will bring more money in to pay their wages. If none of them signs a release, but the third violinist decides (s)he doesn’t want to be represented by her/his performance on the day of their recording, then that person can withdraw their consent to have their music published and sold. This of course means no one’s music is published and sold. So the entire orchestra loses money due to this one individual’s change of heart.

What a release will most prominently ask for is your “moral rights”. In this case we are speaking of a legal term not religious or philosophical. Moral rights have to do with those rights creators have in their creation. These include the right to be attributed as the creator of a work, but also the right to publish a work anonymously or pseudonymously; and the right to the integrity of a work, to not have a creation altered in any way without the creator’s permission. Copyright can be sold without necessarily selling moral rights: eg, you can publish my book, but you are still required to put my name on the cover. When a comedy performance is recorded for television, the performers have to sign over their moral rights concerning alteration to give the production company the right to edit that performance. Otherwise, the performers could sue the company simply for cutting in a shot of the audience laughing at a joke.

Conclusion

When you are just starting out and joining with other people who are just starting out, they are still going to have to ask you for legals precisely because of the precariousness of any collaboration. You can’t merely trust one another, you have to trust one another enough that you are willing to lay things out in writing and sign your name to it. If you don’t trust all parties involved then don’t even bother with the contract. You can’t be 100% protected from someone who is untrustworthy, no matter how well written the document.

If you are working together for gratis, but your intent is to break into the arts market professionally, it really does create more harmony amongst the group if everyone knows what is expected of them and where they stand. Being willing to behave responsibly and cooperatively with a group is a very good way to build success. Don’t be afraid of the legals. Use them as a foundation for good relations amongst your team.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

A comedian can either have a set of these to pull out whenever a rough patch occurs, or write specific saving lines for specific jokes.

A general saving line:

• I think this audience is too short, you keep missing the punchlines.

Specific saving lines:

Joke—How many mice does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two, but they have to be very little and very horny.

• Saving line—The Origin Energy guy thought that joke was a hoot, as did the exterminator.
• Saving line—What? You don’t think screwing is funny? Be married as long as I have and you’ll find it hilarious.

A number of television comedians are exceptionally well known for their saving lines. They often have several tailored saving lines in a row ready to go, each one meant to cap the previous one.

Saving lines also come in several flavours:

• The one that puts down the joke.
• The one that puts down your own abilities.
• The one that teases the audience for not getting it.

Be very careful with making fun of the audience. They can go from disappointed, because they didn’t get a laugh, to hostile because you aren’t respecting the fact that they have invested time and money by coming to your show. You will need to gauge if they are up for a bit of light ribbing—because sometimes they will be.

The advantage of saving lines is that you can turn a situation where people become uncomfortable and potentially embarrassed for you, to one where you are embracing your fallibility and cajoling an audience into laughing over
your shortcomings. People will come to love your humanity and show patience because they know they will be getting more laughs than not. You become one of them, not some figure of perfection.

Exercise: Take one of your jokes and write three savings lines for it. You might try making the first saving line one that puts down the joke, the next one puts down yourself, and the final one teases the audience.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Our current culture has made an idol of violence. Conflict seems to inevitably lead to it, even though that is seldom our experience in every day life. Violence makes films, novels, computer games, etc thrilling and bankable roller-coaster rides. Stories involving violence will inevitably include suffering.  It is the threat of suffering that creates tension and drama in these cases.

“(Storytelling) represents and recreates (a people’s) shared cosmology or model for the manner in which the universe works.”

Norma J. Livo and Sandra A. Rietz, Storytelling: Process & Practice [Littleton, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited, Inc, 1986] p. 14

I’m not saying, don’t tell stories using violence. We need to be able to hold a mirror up to society and to the contents of our own hearts, which often includes violence. I am saying that we need to be aware other stories can be told, particularly for those of us writing comedy.

We have the opportunity to expand the spectrum of how people experience their lives. Otherwise, we as a culture will have a difficult time rising above our own violence to something better—a world of peaceful interactions. You’ve got to believe something better is possible before you are going to take the steps to make it a reality. Our stories, and most especially our humorous ones, makes this possible. Humorous stories have to contain at least an element of hope and/or humanity, or they become solely tragedies.

Stories are about change. The greater the change, the greater the challenges getting there, the greater the effort to achieve the change, the more meaningful the story will seem to its audience. Mind you, even small changes can be
interesting, thought-provoking, and heart-warming.

• Changes
• Challenges
• Mental, physical, and emotional efforts

Conflict will still have a place in these stories, and possibly even violence, but these will not be what makes the stories significant, rather what becomes of the people/characters on their particular journeys.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

This storytelling technique has been around for a very long time. Alfred Hitchcock popularised the term “MacGuffin” to describe it. In an interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock relates this story as the origins of the term:

“It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says, ‘What’s that package up there in the baggage rack?’ And the other answers, ‘Oh that’s a McGuffin.’ The first one asks, ‘What’s a McGuffin?’ ‘Well,’ the other man says, ‘It’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’ The first man says, ‘But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,’ and the other one answers ‘Well, then that’s no McGuffin!’ So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all.”

MacGuffin’s are invaluable to comic storytelling. Here is a tool which will help to work an audience up to the release that comes with  a punchline. The more you can milk that MacGuffin, the bigger the laugh you are likely to get. The difference between a dramatic MacGuffin and a comedic MacGuffin has to do with the contrast between how much someone desires the MacGuffin and of how much genuine value it holds.  For instance some elderly woman may be into collecting bubble-gum wrappers. Someone has just unwrapped a piece of gum and casually dropped the wrapper. The woman casts aside her walking frame, leaps over a table, beats off ninjas, then throws herself into a dive in order to catch the wrapper before it hits the ground. Comedy gold.

I have a speculative fiction writing group I organise. This last Saturday I gave them the below exercise to do with MacGuffins. So yes, I’m cheating and reusing stuff this week. However, in their case they tried in part to create dramatic situations with my suggestions, which was much harder than your trying to create comedic situations. Your exercise is to write a humorous story based on the suggested MacGuffins within a twenty minute time limit.

• You are part of a delegation to open peaceful relations with another race of sapient beings. The ambassador plans on giving something to the leader of this people as a gesture of goodwill. You find out that the object will probably deeply insult this people.

• You have “The Icon of Kimendo”. This little figurine has mystical powers that sucks all ethereal beings into it under certain circumstances. The problem is that you want to use it to get rid of the bad ghost in the castle, but not the good ghost.

• You have a fairy locked in your wardrobe. The owner of the house in which you are living would toss you into  the street if she found out, but you want to keep it, show your friends, maybe find some way to make money from it.

• One of the technicians on your spaceship (the cute one) has accidentally put the wrong crystal in the navigation unit. It is inspection day and the inspector is a tough one prone to firing people. If he pushes the wrong button, the navigation unit could explode setting the ship adrift and losing lots of jobs. You are in the airshafts trying to fix the situation while he is inspecting.

• A very rich family hold the last bottles of a particular wine that through serendipitous circumstances has all the right ingredients to cure lycanthropy. You have worked hard to hold the right jobs and make the right connections in order to get close to this family. Tonight they are going to share a bottle of this wine. This is also the night you will turn into a werewolf.

• You’re a guy and a unicorn has just decided you are its best buddy. You are about to go to a dance and you don’t want your friends or the girl to know you are a virgin.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

The One-Liner

This is the staple of traditional stand-up comedy, though it’s used in many other places. Despite the name it can comprise of one, two, or even three sentences, but the joke needs to be self-contained and quick. Here is a “one-liner” I used in my first stand-up gig.

Guys buy their wives huge 4-wheel drives to “protect” the kids… After all… the biggest car wins.

Guys, listen to me you’re not thinking with your willies… get her an eighteen wheeler… Then the wife… can wipe out whole busloads of people to “protect” the kids… Dodge-em cars gone mad.

Steven Wright is an artist of the one-liner: <http://www.stevenwright.com/>

The Two-Step

You will note that many one-liners are done in two steps: set-up then pay-off. You start with the real or expected, then wander off on a surprise tangent. Example:

To be or not to be…my dilemma everytime I shop for a bra.

I start with a famous quote from Hamlet, then jump outside of that quote and end with a twist on the words “to be”.

An apple a day…keeps constipation at bay.

Can you hear the lovely teeter-totter effect of the two-step? It’s almost like a religious call and response, only you’re supposed to laugh rather than sing out hallelujah (though, you can do that too).

The Three-Step

I am particularly fond of the three-step. I suppose it has a more narrative flow to it. You start with two things that are
similar, then end with a third item that foils your expectations. So the pattern goes: introduction, validation, violation.

Sugarplum: Oh Delilah, it’s so good of you to join us for a party in fairyland. Everything in fairyland is made of sweetness and light. Lily here has brought the fairy cakes. Say hello, Lily.

Lily: Why hello Delilah, my cakes are made out of dancing sunbeams.

Sugarplum: This is Violet. She has brought the fairy floss.

Violet: Greetings visitor. My fairy floss is made of the sugary light that rains from the stars.

Sugarplum: And this is Ragwort.

Ragwort: Yeh-yeah! I brought the whiskey. *hic* Made of moonshine.

I have to admit that I started a list of fairy things: fairy cake and fairy floss. I then thought about what would be an unlikely third item: whiskey came to mind. When writing up the scenario to use this list, I discovered the joke about light and moonshine. When you start developing your comic perspective these sorts of things start jumping out at you.

The Running Gag

A running gag is something often mildly funny that becomes funnier with repetition, particularly in absurd situations. A running gag can, but may not lead to a three-step style payoff.

Jimeoin’s <http://www.jimeoin.com/> Australian TV series largely consisted of running gags, such as the Martyr Brothers who were constantly dealing with people and things making offerings then saying, “I offered. Can’t do more than that. I’m through with you.”

In Father Ted co-written by Graham Linehan <http://whythatsdelightful.wordpress.com/> the housekeeper offers tea above and beyond what any normal person would. Characters repeatedly refuse her, and she presses on even in outrageous circumstances.

Part of the fun in both of these is seeing how many variations can be made on the running gag.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine