(Is The Finest Music in the World)

Laughter is part of the human survival kit, a sticking plaster on the wounds of existence. It’s helped folks to endure wars, persecution and politicians. One of the great mysteries of life is how so apparently shallow and transient an entertainment can create an impression so deep and lasting.

Whilst in the Bellac Tourist Office the other day I saw advertised a special one-night retrospective at the Theatre du Cloitre of Billy Wilder’s classic 1955 movie ‘The Seven Year Itch’ starring Tom Ewell. The promotional blurb for the evening refers to the movie as a ‘memorable laugh machine’, which it definitely is. The everyday guy Tom Ewell portrays has an ordinariness and warmth that one can relate to. He spends most of the movie fantasising about two unobtainable women, Julie London and Marilyn Monroe, but significantly in a comedic awkward way.

Warmth is more important than veneer and it is my experience that audiences only truly enjoy a comedian when they feel genuine warmth emanating from him/her and the comedians are totally free of menace. What better example of this than Tommy Cooper who didn’t have to tell jokes but just be there to make us all laugh. His jokes were often ancient but he told the kind of story in a style beloved by the undemanding.

France arguably lays claim to the greatest silent comedian of the sound era. Jacques Tati. This is not a misnomer, for although Jacques Tati’s films are in sound it is the choreography of the silent sight-gags that’s responsible for much of the humour. In Les Vacances de M. Hulot and Mon Oncle, with his shrunken raincoat, cockeyed pipe and oddly elongated walk he comes across as somewhat bemused by the workings of the seemingly ordered world he inhabits and without trying he invariably throws the whole lot into chaos … and it is from his reality that the funniness arises.

The extraordinary things that happen to him are only too possible – they could happen to anyone. The period of Jacques Tati and Tommy Cooper was a period of true warmth and humour. I think we’ve lost a lot of humour because we’ve lost a lot of humanity! I particularly enjoy the humorous one-liners from John Lewer that feature regularly in etcetera. I’ve always been fond of one-liners, such as:

Shakespeare went into a pub …. The Landlord said “get out, you’re Bard”.

Van Gogh walked into the same pub … his mate said, “want a drink?” …”No thanks, I’ve got one ‘ere”.

“Have you ever tried a Chicken Tarka?” “No? … You should … It’s like a Chicken Tikka but a little ‘otter”.

If one synchronised swimmer drowns, do the rest drown too?

Isn’t it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do a ‘practice’?

I’m desperately trying to figure out why Kamikaze pilots wore helmets!

I don’t go to keep fit. My philosophy is; no pain, no pain!

Chesney Allen (Flanagan & Allen, remember them?) said, “it’s the greatest of all epitaphs if they say you played it just for laughs.” How very, very true!