Fascist

Yesterday I may have upset a funny man.

It's entirely possible that he might actually be quite funny, though I confess I have not expended a great deal of effort finding out. I spotted a RT which went thusly:

“Given the physical restrictions of ET's species, in order to build spaceships etc, they must have mastered a slave race”

After a brief moment of appreciation of the iconoclastic audacity of the tweet, I paused and thought: hang on – the film goes to great lengths to show exactly how ET’s race overcomes their physical limitations (telekinesis, multi-purpose glowing digits, that sort of thing), which rather spoils the joke. I retweeted it again, adding “> bullshit” as a coda.

I’d intended to explain myself, but I got distracted. So my hard-line joke-analysis sat unexplained on Twitter, until the joke’s progenitor spotted it and replied:

“Cheers. Nice to know a joke is still appreciated.”

So now I feel really bad, as if I’ve been caught being some sort of geeky humour-fascist. Though now I’m wondering what a geeky humour-fascist would look like – perhaps a uniform, Jarvis Cocker specs and a nose that lights up? Not a red one, a real one, but with a small LED horribly inserted in their nasal canal. They are fascists after all.

A sense of humour is a precious thing. Its absence has imperilled the career of England’s Kevin Pietersen, and of course it’s widely accepted to be a prerequisite for every woman who’s ever pursued love through classified ads or internet dating*. Scientists have also discovered that you can produce electricity equivalent to a medieval waterwheel by plugging seven clowns into a Speak & Spell. Basically, a sense of humour is vital, but a bit like a hamstring: you never think about it until it starts to stiffen up. Except that’s not entirely true. For a start no-one has ever got punched in the face or persecuted by the Daily Mail because someone thought their hamstring was off-colour.  And secondly, I suspect people think about their sense of humour quite a lot, just probably not in a very realistic way.

As Marie says in When Harry Met Sally: ‘Everybody thinks they have good taste and a sense of humour but they couldn't possibly all have good taste.’ And presumably they can’t all have a sense of humour. How many British people would own up to not having a sense of humour? It would be akin to saying “Hi, I like kitten death”, or “I still love Jimmy Saville”. But why should it be so impossible to imagine someone proudly saying, “Hello, I’m Geoffrey. I’m extremely intelligent, work in Great Ormond Street saving the lives of cute children, I climbed Kilimanjaro last year for Marie Curie Cancer Care and I haven’t understood a single joke told to me since 1986”? 

Fair enough, I’d have gone off him for the appalling boasting long before we got to the sense of humour part.

 

So, am I losing my sense of humour? Do I have to worry about it in the same way I worry about losing my hair? Do people get less humorous? According to the University of Glasgow, this happens from about 52 years old. Some clever Americans think that grandparents just can’t spot a joke. I’m just waiting for the research that says all over 65s want to invite Jim Davidson round for tea to listen to his charming views on social equality while offering him some knitted cake. Losing your sense of humour looks like a real threat. Whether that’s worse than losing hair or, say, liver function is probably a moot point, but it certainly lends yet more terror to the ageing process – as if it needed it.

Then again, some of this research compares the reaction of old people to teenagers, suggesting yet again that there’s a correlation between having a sense of humour and laughing uncontrollably at BBC3 shit starring Will Mellor. I’m not particularly convinced of that. Maybe the grumpy old bastards just got discerning on your ass.

* Do men – in general - also seek GSOH? Or are they faintly terrified at the possibility that their date might be funnier than them? 

PS: For a more serious take on recent instances of Comedy Fascism, here's Rufus Hound