WRITERS INK
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Founded in 2010 by WordPlay, our purpose is to encourage writers to write and get them published and read. Keep writing!
Greetings,
Don’t know about you, but – as long as you haven’t just dented your car or been scammed in some way – reading or hearing a joke, funny tale or feel-good story immediately raises the value and flavour of the day. Let’s face it, there’s so much gloom and doom around, we need all the smiles and laughter we can find.
If you enjoy humour in your reading matter – and I certainly do – two of the top books recommended to make you chuckle are Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island, and Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of a dog) by Jerome K Jerome (1889). The first mentioned, I have read and did smile a lot (the author is American and makes the Brits grin about themselves), the second I haven’t read but it has been highly praised.
Of course, the whole subject of humour and what makes different people laugh is vast. It is said that some French humour is ‘corny and childish, mocking and silly but beloved all the same’. They are also said to express themselves more crudely than Americans or the British.
American humour, like British, seems to encompass a whole range, from slapstick and plain silly, to sophisticated and hugely entertaining. Both can churn out banal TV sitcoms, but also some outstanding ones, depending on taste…
I loved MASH, from the original novel about three army doctors, written in 1968 by Richard Hooker (a pen-name for former military surgeon Dr H Richard Hornberger and writer WC Heinz), about a mobile army surgical unit in the Korean War; Cheers, Taxi, Frasier
(all US); and Only Fools and Horses tops the British offerings, although, in the past The Goons, Monty Python and a few ‘gentler’ offerings, plus Yes, Sir, and Black Adder all raised my lips’ corners…
And, when it comes to actual jokes and funny stories, for my taste you can’t beat Jewish humour. Their jokes are often ‘about something’ like food (noshing is sacred!) and some follow that path between the rational and the absurd.
They ridicule grandiosity and kick pomposity into the gutter, and sometimes mock everything - including God. ‘Hope’ is often present in their jokes, as well as dark humour, conversely to lighten their sufferings.
The comedian Jon Savitt wrote a brilliant piece about Jewish humour in The Washington Post. He said: “Humour is as Jewish as challah (bread) and as important to Judaism as motzah ball soup!
“Humour is more than just humour — it’s hope. It’s invaluable. It’s the feeling that everything will be all right, even if just for a few moments.”
Joke - When someone said: “Follow your curiosity old man. How about ‘super sex’?” He replied: “I’ll take the soup.”
Also read somewhere – not Jewish! – that it seems Enoch Powell was once in need of a haircut, so he approached the House of Commons barber, resident and chatty, who asked him, ‘How should I cut your hair, sir?’, to which he replied ‘In silence!’. It is said that this joke had whiskers, as Cicero said the same thing to his barber way back when.
I do hope everyone feels better now? Or has some of the above left you groaning? Keep well, folks, and take care. Sincerely,
Joy Lennick