During another stonking gig, this time at the college in High Wycombe, I noticed a young man sitting on the front row who seemed entirely unamused and unimpressed by anything I said. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves or at least groaning in disgust at some of my more unseemly remarks, but this guy and to a lesser extent the girl he was with remained unmoved.
It seemed an odd decision to me for someone to come out to a comedy gig, sit on the front row and then seemingly refuse to be remotely amused by any of it. Towards the end I couldn't resist asking him why he wasn't enjoying it and he turned out to be quite a humourless and stiff person. I took the piss out of him a bit and then did my best to make him laugh. He seemed unamused though by my suggestion that he had won the battle between the two of us because he would be receiving oral pleasure from a 20 year old woman that night, whilst I would be driving home alone just dreaming of such a thing. I took from his discomfort at this idea that he wasn't actually having sex with the woman he had his arm round and so did some of my Christian material for him. I know it's a big leap to make such an assumption, but I think the leap was correct. He didn't like the Jesus jokes. I asked him if he liked Bo Selecta and he said that he quite did and I accepted that all wa probably lost, but I did offer to dress up in a rubber mask and say "Shamone motherfucker" and nothing else for the next six weeks, but still he didn't crack. I gave him my best knob joke and maybe some shadow of mirth flickered across his face for the briefest moment, but I had to accept defeat and get off stage.
Other people in the audience told me that he comes every week and refuses to laugh at anything, which seems like a weird way to spend your time. But then he does live in High Wycombe, so failing to laugh at something you don't like might possibly be the greatest entertainment there is.
But it brought to mind something I've been thinking about, which is a theme I may have touched on before. I think some people are born without a sense of humour, just as some people are born unable to sing in tune or unable to differentiate between green and red. This may seem arrogant and I do accept that it is possible (though unlikely) that someone could watch my act and be unamused and yet still have a sense of humour, but I think there are some people for whom humour is an impenetrable muddle, just like the written word is for the dyslexic person.
I base some of my evidence on an experiment I have been casually carrying out on small children - not like that. It's a nice thing. Despite my current claims in my act I really like children. I always have done and I always seem to get on well with them. If there is a child in my immediate vicinity I will always try to make it laugh. They are one of the toughest crowds and you have to rely on mainly visual skills, but I usually succeed in pulling a face, or giving a look that will turn their suspicious look into a smile or a giggle. Kids aren't as stupid as they appear and I think they understand that a grown-up behaving in a childish way in public is inappropriate and amusing behaviour. But they can, I believe, also tell what is funny behaviour and what is just annoying attention seeking. They are a tough crowd, but I have a good success rate and I think this proves that I am genuinely funny.
Some children don't like me or find me funny though (and again unlikely as it might be, it could be because they find my antics insufficiently ribald), but in general I think this confirms my thesis that some people don't have a sense of humour and that the child maketh the man and we can see very early on whether they will be someone who likes comedy or someone who is bemused by it.
There are probably two main alternatives to the majority who will laugh. There are the few sensitive souls who will see a hairy, fat man pulling a face at them and then immediately start to cry. Sometimes this is just shyness and nerves and can be overcome if I pull exactly the right kind of surprised face. But in general I think these people will grow up to be cry-babies and over-sensitive with humour, probably walking out of a show or writing to the papers to complain. That or they will become comedy critic for the Daily Telegraph. Zing!
But the group that I am interested in are the ones who just hold your gaze as you pull your best funny face and look at you with a mixture of pity and disgust. Even at 1 years old they are finding my brilliant physical comedy incomprehensible and puerile. They won't think, "well that's an amusing juxtaposition, an adult behaving in a childish manner and from thence the humour arises", they just think "That is not amusing. It is childish. I am not a child. I am a kind of autonomen who was hatched in a pod and will go on to live in a village of the damned. I will just stare at this hairy clown, completely unmoved."
What I am saying is that they have no sense of humour and had I seen the young man in the front row in a pram 20 years ago (and who knows, maybe I did), I am confident he would not even have laughed if I had blown a raspberry and made a sound similar to a fart. He would have just looked at me with disdain. Mind you if I had then been as rude to him as I was tonight then I would probably have been sent to prison.
Well it's a theory.
We're a third of the way to the programme target, which is brilliant, but really only a handful of you have donated so far. I could start to threaten to withdraw this free service if more of you don't pull your finger out and donate. I won't do that, it would be churlish, but £10 seems a small price to pay for a year's worth of Warming Up. It's not even 3p a day (in fact I know there are many of you who have read it for three and a half years and never given anything in return - £10 wouldn't even represent one pence a day. Surely this is worth one pence?)
Go and donate. It will at least stop me going on about it. It's all for charity after all!
You're good people with a great sense of humour, so I know you'll be there for me!
