The Serious Guide to Joke Writing: How To Say Something Funny About Anything pdfdrive com

Chapter Seven (PRACTICAL):
Writing Jokes From Newspapers
The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow.
H. G. Wells
‘Suppose I told you that a lot of topical jokes you hear on the radio or telly aren’t
really topical jokes,’ I say to my class. It’s Week Four of the course and they are
all sitting with the newspapers I asked them to bring in. They look up at me, not
sure what to say.
‘A lot of topical jokes are normal jokes masquerading as topical jokes’ I assert.
‘Let me prove it...’
I  tell  them  a  joke  from  the  Chair’s  script  on  Have  I  Got  News  for  You,  written
about the Queen’s tour of Italy. It takes a quote from a newspaper:
The Queen spent a long time staring at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
The punchline is:
She hasn’t done that since her wedding night.
I argue that this is not actually a topical joke about the Queen touring Italy. It
makes no comment about the Royal family, and has nothing to say about Rome,
our foreign policy or the tour itself. It’s a simple play on the words staring at the
ceiling. But as long as some joke is made and the set-up comes from a current
newspaper, the audience laugh, the presenter smiles and no-one’s the wiser.
My class look intrigued.
‘I’m not knocking it, by the way,’ I say. ‘This is a fabulous way to write topical
jokes for your acts, cartoons or sketches. I go on to tell them a joke from Radio
4’s The News Quiz, delivered by the Chair, Sandy Toksvig:
The Government are stopping people who foster extremist views from
coming into the country.
I tried to foster an extremist view once, but social services said my house
wasn’t big enough.
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That  joke  doesn’t  comment  on  the  state  of  racism  in  the  country  or  that  the
Government  had  denied  a  Dutch  fascist  entry.  It’s  simply  a  pun  on  the  word
foster – another example of a non-topical joke happily masquerading as a topical
joke, on a topical news show.
To write jokes like this, you have to focus on the wording of a story, and this is
where the newspapers come in. Instead of writing jokes about the news story in
general,  you  simply  look  for  interesting  lines  that  you  can  play  off.  So,  for
example, when there were fires in California, Have I Got News for You put this
newspaper quote on the screen:
They had to douse fire with whatever they could get their hands on.
It’s  a  great  sentence  to  pick  out  because  it  opens  up  all  the  stereotypes  about
Californians. I ask my students what kind of things Californians might be able to
get their hands on.
‘Gallons of anti-wrinkle cream’ says one.
‘Wheatgrass juice’ says another.
‘Fake breasts’ says one of my more surreal students and we all get an image of
silicone implants being hurled at a fire. The actual joke was:
They had to douse fire with whatever they could get their hands on -
organic jojoba, carrot juice and, in one case, water.
Which is no better or worse than what the class came out with. It doesn’t matter
which  stereotypes  about  Californians  you  use.  This  method  of  writing  jokes
means  you  can  avoid  tackling  the  tragic  story  of  the  fires  head-on  and  foist  a
non-topical idea onto a topical subject.
Stereotypes are great in this method of joke writing. When George W. Bush had
his  watch  stolen,  a  number  of  topical  shows  took  the  angle  of  what  his  watch
might be like, or whether he could tell the time, again avoiding the actual subject
of the watch being stolen. Other stereotypes used by satirical shows are that the
lovely  David  Beckham  is  a  bit  thick,  while  Jordan,  Posh,  Paris  Hilton,  etc,  are
seen  as  shallow  bimbos.  Ex-President  Clinton  is  usually  portrayed  as  randy,
Boris Johnson as a buffoon, Prince Philip is a racist and all British MPs are now
seen as on the fiddle. Topical gag writers use stereotypes as short-hand in jokes
and so can you.

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