Humour And Its Dark Secret

I loved treasure hunts when I was growing up. They were the thing I looked forward to above all else. And I have to admit I was pretty devious. I knew all the tricks, you see. One of my favourite tricks was to replace the real treasure with my rubbish treasure. It never failed! I can still see Jenny Finnegan’s face when she reached under the plant pot and found a gift wrapped up in golden foil–then her face when she unwrapped it and, instead of finding chocolate discovered a ‘gift’ from Barney, the dog next door–

The Barney incident made me a loner. The children didn’t get the joke (and looking back at Barney the Irish Wolf Hound’s enormous gift, I can see why).

Humour is strange, you see. And through the years people have forgotten that humour gives not a monkey’s for good taste, morals or the feelings of those it assaults. Humour really only cares about making people laugh: the point is that it doesn’t care how it does it, as long as the end result is achieved.

Clearly this presents a number of problems for the comedians of today; problems which the comedians of yester-year were able to laugh in the face off. Nowadays a comedian has to tread a fine line between pleasing his audience and not insulting them. To make it more complex, what constitutes an insult is different in the mind of every person. So, really, how can we expect comedians to not occasionally cause a stir?

Jimmy Carr has done it several times, and the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand are also no strangers to controversy. But I think we need to keep an open mind with comedians in general. After all, it is only humour. Providing it doesn’t single people out, we have to always keep in mind that sometimes humour goes too far but should be accepted: accepting this will always be a problem comes hand in hand every time a comedian climbs on stage.