How to Be Funny

The most baffling maxim I've ever come across is the one about how you shouldn't 'talk shop'. Why not? 'Shop' is the most interesting part of most people's lives, the only thing they are experts on. For example, I have close to zero interest in stand-up comedy. Don't go to comedy shows. Don't watch stand-up DVDs. But I've been gripped by Stewart Lee's How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian. First, he reproduces verbatim one of his comedy routines, which was partly inspired by being threatened with prosecution for blasphemy (he wrote the book for Jerry Springer: The Opera). In the act he tackles the subject of blasphemy head on. The result is, you might say, challenging. Thirty years ago he would have been prosecuted. Three hundred years ago he would have been burnt at the stake. It's pretty funny, though.

More interestingly, he footnotes the act, explaining how the jokes are constructed, where they came from, what he meant by them, what response they got. It sounds a terrible idea and works brilliantly. It constantly reminded me of the process of writing fiction, that strange mix of following your own obsession and playing with the audience's expectation. Anyone interested in writing - or reading, come to that - will learn something from this book.

PS It's clear that people go to comedy shows to get what they used to get from music or fiction. Why? I'm genuinely baffled. Years ago Victoria Wood created a character who showed her general ghastliness by saying: 'I'm sorry but I don't find humour funny.' Sometimes I secretly agree with that. I'm not certain that Shakespeare's tragedies are necessarily greater than the comedies, but they're funnier.