Valentine’s Day (And jokes for Valentine’s Day)

It’s Valentine’s Day! My girlfriend is in a different country, so that’s a pain, but still…

I’m DJing at a bar called Baby Love tonight (hmmm…considering the fact that they run a gay night called Man Love, I do hope it’s not a theme bar…), which seems fitting.

Anyway – yesterday I had a fair few hits from people looking for Valentine’s jokes, and I’m aware that post had none in, so this is an entirely love-joke and love poem themed post, with a juicy video surprise on the theme of love at the end.

Without further ado, a small and sometime tenuous selection of my Valentine’s Day/Love Jokes:

Last Valentine’s Day, I took my girlfriend camping. The weather wasn’t great, but the sex was in tents.

My girlfriend broke up with me at a ceilidh. Left me reeling.

My girlfriend and I stayed at her parents’ house, but her Dad wouldn’t let us sleep together, which was a shame, because I fancy him.

I said it was a small selection. I tend not to write jokes about love. I hope at least one of the three tickles you.

However, in January 2009, I did give a 15 minute speech at the world-famous Cambridge Union Debating Chamber, on the subject of love, and here is a selection of the best moments. It’s quite funny, I promise, and has my renowned ‘Kiss:Love Ratio Theorem’, and a lovely poem in it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeWYhQWk49c

If you enjoyed that, the full hour-plus debate is here, where you can see my full 15 mins, including a reading of my brother’s awful love letter…

http://www.archive.org/details/cus_2009-01-29_debate_comedy-all-you-need-is-love

That’s all from me for now – happy Valentine’s day to all the lovers out there, happy February 14th to all the non-lovers, happy TalonVines day for those collectors of wine and birdclaws, and happy Vale ‘n’ Tyne day for those who love the UK’s North-Eastern river and the depression it’s contained in.

All my love

xxx

J is for Jokes

Jokes. The ‘things’ you tell that make people laugh. Hopefully.

As you may notice, this post is incredibly delayed, because A) I’m usless, and B) I’m busy. However, it means that it has coincided with a recent ‘scandal’ of sorts, involving Keith ‘Thief’ Chegwin and some other people’s jokes. A helpful precis and thoughtful article are linked to below:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10725773

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2010/jul/22/keith-chegwin-comedians-jokes-twitter

I’m not going to say anything on the matter, as I’ve already commented on it previously in this blog; except to say that hopefully this makes people more aware of the fact that, in the words of Tony Cowards: “Jokes don’t just appear from thin air but someone has to go to the time, trouble and effort of writing them…it’s a bit galling if someone then steals them and takes the credit”.

Anyway, on to the bit where I write about jokes.

Personally, I find it quite hard to sit down and write; most of the jokes I use in my set just come to me when I’m out and about, and I see something/hear something and then twist it a bit to make it funny. I find that while I’m perfectly capable of writing jokes on demand, they’re never as funny as the ones that come in moments of inspiration, near ‘perfectly’ formed – all of my favourite jokes were written this way.

As hard as it is to provide a definition for ‘joke’, there are a few rules/guides/points that I, as a one-liner comedian, keep in mind when writing them, as I feel (as do the majority of comedians) that they are vital to a funny joke:

• Punchline at the end of the joke. AT THE END. People will laugh less (if at all) if you carry on after the funny word. For example, “Laminator: Baby sheep, it’s a machine that kills them” is rubbish compared to “Laminator: A machine that kills baby sheep”.
• Keep it as short as possible. As Shakespeare, through Polonius, said, “Brevity is the soul of wit”. A funny idea is funnier if it’s encapsulated and communicated in as few words as possible.
• If I find it funny, the audience probably will too. Sometimes there’s jokes that I write that I dislike, but the audience do, so I perform them. There’s some that I love, that the audience don’t, so they’re consigned to a notebook to be re-visited at a later joke.
• Timing makes a huge difference. If it’s a good joke, and they don’t laugh, you’ve done something wrong. Or it could just be a bad joke.

I’d like this post to be longer than this, but there’s been so much written on the subject of jokes – Jimmy Carr’s book being my favourite – that I’m not really adding anything to it. I just couldn’t think of another thing for J.

Tomorrow, K for Killing.

5kgag – The Laminator

So yeah…One of my jokes (Just one? Did you not see the quality of them?!) got into the final 20 of Highlight Comedy’s ’5kgag’ competition (which I blogged about here) and the voting to choose the winner finishes tomorrow.

I have no pretentions of winning – there’s better jokes in the competition (frankly, I never thought mine was any good until my girlfriend read it in a notebook of mine and said it was funny) including ones by much harder working (proper) comedians who deserve to win.

Have a look at the list:

5kgag Top 20

Well, top 19, as one of the jokes has been removed, as it was entered by someone who wasn’t its writer…which is the case with a few of the jokes – number 1 is a very famous Tommy Cooper joke, and I doubt he entered it. There are other examples, and it obviously isn’t against the T&Cs of the competition – it’s just annoying. Someone could win £5,000 for entering a joke that isn’t theirs.

Having already discussed this, I won’t continue along this thread, but will conclude by weighing up pros and cons of the 5kgag competition and jokes on twitter:

Pros:

• There is a small possibility I could win 5 grand, and I am very much entering into the spirit of advertising my joke on twitter/facebook in order to get votes – I could do with that money; student loans aren’t cheap nowadays.
• My twitter username (an my name), ChrisPJTurner has more hits on google, it has helped this blog, and my overall internet presence has grown (a very small amount). This, for me as an amateur, new comedian, is good.
• I feel good when I see my joke selected as one of 20 best out of 1000s (I think) tweeted. That’s in the top 2% at least.

Cons:

• The next time I tell this joke, there is a possibility someone may think I’ve stolen it. That would suck, and I’d have to address it. However, I’m not dropping it (yet) as it is (and again, this is in the opinion of the audience more than me) a very good joke.
• It is (in a very small way) all over the internet – forums, twitter, sickipedia – and none of these attribute it (apart from sickipedia) to me. The original post on twitter got 2 RTs (including @highlightcomedy). Now, there’s a lot of occurances of it on twitter, none of them attributed to me, or RTed from me. It’s just a bit annoying, as if anything, it would garner me more followers, and that would be nice.

There’s more I’m sure, but it’s late, I just got back from Budapest, and I’m tired.

However, from tomorrow (unless I’m suddenly 5 grand richer, in which case I’m off to Budapest again), I’m starting back on the blog – we’re on G for Gigs incidentally, and I want to get the A-Z of Comedy (ambitious little whelk that I am) done before The Edinburgh Fringe so I can get a daily diary going to post on here during my shows’ runs.

Until tomorrow, then.

E is for Expectations.

Expectations. The audience have these. They are of you.

From the moment you step on stage, before you even open your mouth, people will have expectations of what you will be like – prejudices based on your sex, race, clothes and many other things. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as you can play with these, and manipulate them in order to get laughs. This works either way – if you look like you’re going to deliver downbeat one-liners and you do, you are meeting their expectations; if your jokes are hilarious, you will surpass these (obviously, I’m assuming that you’re a new, unknown comedian and not a household name). If you look like you’re not the cleverest person ever, and you begin to tell cleverly worded jokes with sophisticated wit, you are playing with their expectations, and will get laughs for this.

For example, I used to walk on stage and begin by shouting out a proverb, in a loud ‘actor-ish’ voice. After the initial laugh that resulted from the joke that came after it, I would then pause, and say, quietly and calmly, “Hello”. This would make an audience laugh, as their initial expectations of my act (big, bold, loud) were subverted.

What I have written is all rather clear and obvious to most people – if you walk on looking cute and cuddly and then deliver a foul mouthed set about sex and violence, their expectations have been trashed – however, there is a point other than stating that you can get laughs from subverting expectation.

The point is an obvious one, and one worth stating now, especially since  I’ve already used up the ‘A‘ of this alphabetical tips series. That is your Appearance. The audience build their expectation from the way you look, and if there’s anything different to ‘usual’ about you, then address it as soon as you get onstage – are you very small/tall; thin/fat; strange looking etc. Do this, and suddenly the elephant in the room disappears. You can get on with your comedy, with their attention on your jokes and you, and not your huge mole/wonky teeth/lack of ears. If possible, do this with a gag, it sets everything up nicely, gets it out of the way, and starts you on a laugh. When you address this, it’s surprisingly easy to get a laugh, as it breaks the tension built up in the room – just as you might say ‘bit of a rubbish one there’ after a joke flops, and get a laugh from acknowledging the fact. I get a laugh from stating that I’m no longer a teenage boy, and I still wear braces. It’s that easy.

Well, that’s it for now – I hope it was what you expected. HAHAHAHAHAHA

Tomorrow: F is for Friends.

The story of a joke.

A few days ago, Chortle published this article by Tony Cowards:

http://www.chortle.co.uk/correspondents/2010/05/25/11064/we_need_some_protection…

As a one-liner comedian, I found it extremely interesting, well argued and believe it makes a very valid point. Having gigged with Tony a few days after the article was published, I chatted to him about it, and he was very nice (just in case anyone is going to shout at us to stop moaning about our jokes) – it’s not a moan, it’s a genuine problem.

The competition that the article mentions – ‘#5kgag’ run by Highlight Comedy (ex-Jongleurs) raises issues of copyright and ownership – i’d be very upset if someone tweeted a joke of mine to enter it, let alone if they won from that tweet! As a result, and as Tony has done, I’ve entered all my jokes that I’ve previously posted on twitter, or that I know are on the internet, as I might as well get there before somebody else.

I will not, however, enter any jokes of mine that I know are not available online, despite the fact that they may be better, as (and I know I don’t have a huge number of twitter followers, and that my jokes are hardly going to spread like wildfire) I don’t want my hard work to be wiped out by it being spread round pubs and office emails etc. It takes time to write jokes, and I am fiercly protective of mine.

Recently, there have been instances where one of my jokes has been (loosely termed) plagiarised or circulated uncredited:

“I’m very familiar with 25 letters of the alphabet. I don’t know Y.”

This joke was one of the first I wrote, and is one of my favourites. Yes, it’s a pun, but it’s a good one, and tends to draw a decent laugh.

This has been the joke with which I’ve had the most ‘trouble’ – a few days after I first performed it, it was on the website sickipedia.com, completely uncredited, and had reached the status of their joke of the day. I contacted them and it was credited to me, and I’m fine with that, as long as there isn’t a sudden rush of all my material appearing on the site.

The joke subsequently appeared on twitter, with people tweeting it without my username, or without retweeting it. It has even made its way into  someone’s signature on a forum. It has been quoted in a couple of ‘bogsheets’ (gossip newsletters) at my university – credited, at least – and just last week, it was told by another comedian (uncredited, but with the caveat that it wasn’t their joke) at a gig.

I don’t mean to get annoyed, but there’s a little feeling at the bottom of my stomach when I hear/see things like this, and it makes me angry. I won’t elaborate on the obvious parallels between ownership of jokes and ownership of ideas/patents/songs, but the whole situation is out of order.

Seeing as it’s available online, I have posted it on my twitter, and, obviously, here. I’m not going to stop performing it – not because it’s a banker or anything (it isn’t), but because I realise it hasn’t reached a level where any significant number of people have heard it, and even if it did, I’d probably still tell it – but if anyone shouts ‘Heard it’ or ‘Plagiarist’…

…boy, I might kick off.