Very clever unserious remarks

“I rashly agreed to give a group of students a talk on ‘British humour’.”

FUNNY THING a sense of humour. Most people like to think they have one and yet it takes different folk in different ways. Sometimes it is made to sound like an accusation: “Oh, that’s just his sense of humour.”

Sometimes the lack of one appears to be viewed as a character flaw: “You have absolutely no sense of humour, do you?”

Personally, I have always felt that humour, like measles, should be caught young, because if postponed until later years, the results could be, well, serious.

Once, in a town called Giessen in what was then West Germany, I rashly agreed to give a group of students a talk on “British Humour”.

Germany was where I had to learn my native language inside out as well as the other way round, because the minute anything new came up, German students always wanted to know the grammatical rule, the exceptions that proved it, etc, etc.

My talk on humour was the best attended lesson I ever gave. The whole school wanted to be there.

The venue was transferred to the morning assembly hall and a loudspeaker system was set up. Broadcasting links were established with several other language schools in the area.

You may think I am making this up. How I wish I were.

I did extensive research. I found examples of all types of jokes, and this was before the internet existed.

The closest I came to receiving applause was when Jurgen Baumgart nodded appreciatively after the final joke had thudded to the canvas: “Those were very clever unserious remarks, Mr Aitken.”

I draw a veil over the rest of the proceedings but I did learn one thing: some forms of humour do not travel well across cultures.

For example, unless you know the child’s rhyme “One potato, two potato . . .” when you hear the line “One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor,” the final “floor” doesn’t quite have the same impact, except for the unfortunate tequila drinker.

The problem is that many jokes rely on misdirection, on inviting you along a British mind-set which other nations might not follow.

“I hope I die in my sleep like Uncle Fred,” lulls you into a false sense of peacefulness before the pay-off: “And not screaming in fear like the passengers on his bus.”

Some “unserious remarks” are based entirely on our use of slang : “I wondered why the cricket ball was getting bigger and bigger. And then it hit me.”

I used to write in a local English paper in what was then the Persian Gulf, and an Ethiopian sub-editor pressed for space would often cut out my final punchlines.

The image of the “dour Scot” belies the fact that we do as a nation have a keen sense of humour.

I was taken aback to hear that in preparation for the Commonwealth Games in 2014, thousands of Glaswegians are to be sent to charm school, where one of the pledges they have to make is: “I will learn to smile more often.”

As I found out in Germany, learning and smiling sometimes don’t go together.