“Beyond rude and far from funny”, wrote an anonymous commenter about one of my blog posts entitled Do Not Read This if You Come From Basildon! That got me thinking for a considerable time… What is “beyond rude”? Something criminal? Perhaps something punishable? Will I be sent to Coventry? (Better that than Basildon – only joking!) And whether or not it is funny depends on the reader’s sense of humour – it’s subjective – e.g. Geoff, who sent the joke to me, may have thought it funnier than I did, and even I thought it was quite amusing, if not side-splitting. Of course, the thing about jokes is that, by necessity, one must have a sense of humour.

As we all know, parody, satire and caricature have always played a large part in British humour. The Bard himself was fond of using satire as a foil to tragedy. He ridiculed stereotypes, the social classes, the church and political figures. For over a decade (through the eighties and nineties) the immensely popular “Spitting Image” satire relied on the importance of the individuals – and I’ve read that many celebrities, politicians and Royals didn’t think they had “made it” in the public eye until they were lampooned on the show. I remember thinking that some of the images were a bit too cruel but if I felt like that, then so did others, and the subjects of ridicule may have benefitted in a back-handed way. It may even be good for the soul to laugh at oneself.

We already have “Big Brother” (in more ways than the television programme) and free speech is a misnomer; surely we don’t want a brave new world of programmed, humourless but “happy” twits? Therefore I shall continue to be brave and put jokes on my blog occasionally. In fact I have a new one today – sent by Roly in Brisbane – about a Viking (if that’s okay with you Anonymous – bet you won’t find it funny).

Joke Definition