In a troubled world, we need laughter more than ever
Faced with what me must face, we have two options. We can laugh or we can scream. Don’t you prefer the former?
My way of telling a joke is to tell the truth. That’s the funniest joke of all – variously attributed to George Bernard Shaw or Muhammad Ali.
In 1990, when farm income was even lower than the rainfall (we were in the grim grip of a serious drought), my wife Patrice Newell and I decided to cheer ourselves up by collecting jokes. Our scholarly efforts resulted in a substantial volume, The Penguin Book of Australian Jokes, which sold far beyond our expectations.
Australia jokes? Jokes of genuinely local origin turned out to be as few and far between as trees on the Nullarbor. We discovered that most jokes are international – that a Thatcher joke might have previously starred Mussolini, for instance. Change the name, setting and costume ... the recycling was endless.
But we were off to a flying start with a contribution from Prime Minister Bob Hawke. “There are two bodies on the Hume Highway. A dead wombat and a dead politician. What’s the difference?” “I dunno Bob”, “There are skid marks before the wombat.”
A 21st-anniversary edition proved that the world had undergone significant changes. Reprints provoked complaints about sexism, racism and other no-nos. Quite clearly, Political Correctness would prevent others from following in our Penguin footprints.
Like many a humourist, my late friend and collaborator Barry Humphries indeed found himself increasingly constrained. A film like our Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972) wouldn’t cut it today – and Humphries was “cancelled” by the Melbourne Comedy Festival over some comments deemed transphobic.
The profession of the stand-up comic must be perilous indeed. Stand-ups are knocked down like skittles should they transgress the rules of what is deemed good taste. By their very nature, jokes are rude and offensive, blowing raspberries, farts of mockery, little detonations of humour that lose any impact when censored. Entire topics are cancelled. Remember the blonde jokes of yore? Mother-in-law jokes? Forget it.
Yet never before have we needed jokes so desperately – to puncture the pomposity of politicians. Particularly US presidents. Behold Trump’s tyrannical tantrums with the likes of Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and their late-night counterparts. Being cancelled takes on a whole new meaning with POTUS threatening the network with the loss of its license. That’s no joke.
A few US satirists survive by hiding in plain sight on social media. But in general, cross some ill-defined line and you’re out. Slip on a banana skin. Cop a custard pie in the face. In The Penguin Book of Australian Jokes (a.k.a The Old Testament of Local Humour) Patrice and I defined the joke as a tiny exorcism designed to help us cope with the threats that assail us. And that, surely, is humour’s evolutionary purpose. Humour makes us laugh – allows us to laugh in the face of horror, even in the face of death. And there’s a lot of that around in 2025.
Faced with what me must face, we have two options. We can laugh or we can scream. Don’t you prefer the former? (To paraphrase my old ad campaign…Laugh. Be in it.)
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