YOU CAN BE WITTY IF YOU WANT TO!

Evening Star, Issue 22670, 9 June 1937, Page 7

YOU CAN BE WITTY IF YOU WANT TO!

ENGLISH PSYCHOLOGIST'S RECIPE Once a humorist, when asked how to be funny, replied cynically: “ Be yourself.” In this article an English psychologist,' without cynicism or hooey, gives you a i practical method—based’On sound psychology—-for developing and capitalising your sense of humour. It’s funny, too! ' • > ; . “ I want an ice without .flavour.”: , ’“ Without what flavour do you want it? ” ■, : “ Oh, all right, without vanilla.” “ Sorry, sir, but you’ll have -to take it' without chocolate we have; no vanilla.’ ■ <u Does that seem funny to you? ... Or this? “ When I was born, do you know,yl weighed only two, and a-half pounds.” “ Zat so—and did you.live? ” “Why, you just ought to see me now.” Or this? “Say, didn’t I meet you in the Isle of Wight ” “ Never been to the Isle of Wight, old chap.” “ Neither have I. It must have been two other chaps.” Or do you prefer to fancy yourself oozing epigrams, snapping wisecracks, shedding mellow aphorisms and wise comments ? Or catapulting hot repartee ? You know! The sort of things you usually think on the way home. Professional gangsters ' sny_ there are only sis or seven jokes. Originality is just giving a new twist to an old joke. Let’s analyse humour. Types of humour and the twists you can give it. PLAY ON WORDS. I’d horsewhip you—if I had a horse. Yes, I play the banjo—hut only for my own amazement. If capital punishment was good enough for my father, it is good enough Cor me. Poor Mrs Avoirdupois. She used to be pretty—sixty pounds ago. Now she seems resigned to her fat. Ho owes that tummy to his daily doesn’t. The audience strummed their catarrhs.

TAKING WORDS LITERALLY. “See those books—they’re my best friends.” “ Time you returned them, old chap.” Or this. 1 “ Anything you say will be held against you.” “ Joan Crawford.” ■ Or the Bachelor’s Lament: “They say I ought to take a wife—but I dunno whose.” EXAGGERATION OF UNDERSTATE- . MENT. Sassenach’s . definition of silence: A Scot whistling for a taxi. Noel Coward, on beholding the original Venus ■do Milo (the statue is' armless, as you know), turns to a lady and says : “ See what will happen if.you bite-your nails.’i -Frustrated'blondie:l'hate;him, ,1 hate-him. • I hate; him. He’s broken my heart. He’s wrecked-my-life.‘He’s messed my entire evening.” IMPLICATION BY CONTRAST. • What I admired;-about - the/Berlin mounted police was the intelligent look on the horses’ faces. , TAKING /LIBERTIES WITH LOGIC. See the jokes 'at the beginning of this article. . . • ' , DOUBLE NEGATIVES OR OPPOSITES. I’ll be independent—if I have to borrow every cent. Shortest fairy tale: Once there was an honest lawyer.... I do like a cold bath—especially if half of it is warm. Coloured man, when asked whether he would rather - meet a beautiful woman or dream about it, “ I’d rather dream about it. I think yo’ gits a better class o’ women that way.” Film star,’ overheard: “ Now let’s talk about you.' What do you think of my last picture?” ' Poor wee birdie—it hasn’t even got a cage. Yes, sir, this country has the finest critics money can buy: PERVERTED PROVERBS OR TWISTED PLATITUDES. He who hesitates is bossed. Remember the poor—it costs nothing. ' Oscar Wilde—most brilliant epigrammatist of his time—was fond of this technique: “ The sort of face that once seen was never remembered.” “ The proper basis of marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.”'

ACTION JOKES. 1. Dignity punctured. By blows, falls, insults, etc. 2. Setting a trap for someone and being caught in it. If Mr Silkhat slips on a banana peel and drops his hat in the gutter—that is funny. If he places banana peel on the pavement for the benefit of P.C. Flatfoot, slips on it himself and is arrested for drunkennes by his intended victim—that is funnier still. Being funny is a frame of mind. It conies easier to those who are a little unhappy. • The only people who have no sense of humour are the extremely happy and the extremely stupid. They have no needi of it. We laugh for a variety of reasons. To feel superior; i.e., when the pompous boss., sits on a tack. To work off hatred, ridicule arid resentment that cannot be expressed in action. >To'.'break inhibitions—when we joke about subjects tabooed by polite society. To, relieve nervous overstimulation—when tickled or tense. And children laugh for exactly the same reaspns-7-orily more so. Happy . people don’t laugh. They smile—from simple contentment. In short, laughter relieves the mental tension that . accumulates from the petty frustrations of ordinary everyday fife. It helps restore the mind to an even keel.' The natural way to learn is to acquire the habit of analysing the most brilliant jokes or witticisms that appeal to you. Invent half a dozen twists and variations on the same pattern. Then forget about it. It will have sunk into your subconsciousness. Every natural comedian has used this method—by instinct, if not by deliberation. When the right time and the right situation come along, you will find ypurself improvising spontaneously with more and! more skill. - The best humour is spontaneous and topical. It caps the moment. The best humorists have bad memories. Never pause after a joke. _ Ramble on. The pause is most effective in repartee. Watch Mae West’s masterly technique. A pause,. a look, a grimace, an “Oh ” or a diplomatic stutter —according to taste—and then the retort. Hot and tightpacked. Professional humorists call it the “ slow burn.” It gives you time to think. Two abominations. No. 1. The joker who must be funny at all costs and at all times. A serious thought puts the fear of God into him.

The sense of humcmr is part of a larger sense—a sense of perspective. The true humorist is just as sensitiva to the pathos in life as he is to its comedy. He knows that comic and tragic are two sides of the same coin. He is the last man to joke about tha wrong things. No. 2. The jokester who uses facetious humour to focus perpetual spotlight on himself. Twin plagues on ’em both!