Learning To Be Funny

NOT everyone can be Hale & Pace. But that doesn’t mean wannabe comedians should stop trying.

Indeed, they should try harder. And we at Anorak champion Funnyman Idol, a show in which men and women (don’t let the title put your off, girls), see if they can make us laugh.

First up is John Cleese. You may have seen him before. As with so many wannabes, Cleese has form, having appeared in Monty Python and Fawlty Towers.

And now Cleese - who seems to have become one of the fusty colonels he parodied so brilliantly years ago - is back.

Cleese is going to make humour from the impossible. He is going to make humour from analysing it. “I want to teach young talent the rules of the game,” he says in the Times.

As fans of Hale & Pace know, there is only one rule: the audience must be drunk, on prescription medication or - for a full belly laugh and possible tears - high on a combination of the two.

As the Times reports, Cleese will act as a “comedy professor”.
He will educate students who want to understand what it is to be funny.

And anyone can learn how to be funny because Cleese will put his thoughts in a book. His history of comedy will take in the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton and Ricky Gervais.

One chapter will tech “creating the perfect comedy-drama” for the stage.

Other than that, we know not what else the book will contain. Although scholars should look out for Hale & Pace pop ups and chapters on how to get your audience drunk and load a gun…

Posted: 12th, June 2006 | In: Uncategorized Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink