The Art of Communication

How to tell a joke

Robin Kermode Season 1 Episode 18

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0:00 | 22:30

How to tell a joke.
Can anyone be funny? What about timing?  What if no one laughs?! When should you tell a joke? Should you laugh at your own jokes?! Is it best to tell jokes or funny stories?  In this episode, we take a look at how to tell jokes and funny stories. Join Robin Kermode and Sian Hansen for this fun episode.


SPEAKER_02

Hello and welcome to the Art of Communication Podcast with me, Robin Kermode. Have you ever wished you could become a confident speaker or presenter? Then why not join my online masterclass? Speak so your audience will listen. In 10 easy to follow modules, you can become a confident and authentic speaker.

SPEAKER_01

For more information, visit robinkermode.com.

SPEAKER_00

Hello, this is Siena Hansen, and welcome to the Art of Communication Podcast. As ever, I'm here with Robin Kermode.

SPEAKER_02

Hello!

SPEAKER_00

I'm so excited about this one because this episode is how to tell a joke. And I am the worst at telling jokes. I'm going to learn a lot from this. So, Robin, what's a joke? What what makes us laugh?

SPEAKER_02

Well, Charlie Chaplin says, you know, he was asked what is comedy, and he said, Well, comedy is basically this is you see a man eating a banana and he throws the skin away. You see another man walking towards the banana skin and you think, oops, he's gonna slip on the banana skin. So you have a close-up of the banana skin, a close-up of the man's foot coming towards the banana skin. He gets very close to it, and the audience think, oh my goodness, me, he's gonna slip on the banana skin. But no, the man steps over the banana skin and falls down an open manhole colour. Now, that's funny because it's unexpected. I mean there are there are jokes and there are funny stories. You can take your pick as to which one you choose at different times. But the kind of things that do make us laugh are somebody who's very pompous and we prick the bubble. There's lots of shared experiences. Yes. So that's kind of observational comedy. Yeah. This dark humour, you know, somebody falling into an open grave, is kind of comic, even though it's not really funny, but it's kind of kind of laugh. And then there's self-deprecating humour is it's quite endearing of the teller.

SPEAKER_00

Do you like any one of those better than others?

SPEAKER_02

Well, the classic one is two people walk into a bar. Now, the thing is, if you're sitting at a dinner party, right, or you're around the barbecue and somebody says to you, okay, so two people walk into a bar and you go, You're telling me a funny joke, and if it's not funny, this is going to look really embarrassing now. But there's a way of telling that joke to make it look like it actually happened. And you could say, Do you know what, Robin? I was I was in the pub the other day and two people walked in and one of them went up to the barman and said, right, now that's kind of you get away with it because it's a funny story. If you don't get a laugh at the end of it, it's not so embarrassing because you haven't said this is a joke.

SPEAKER_00

You mean just with that simple adjustment, you can avoid telling a joke that may be tried and tested, but you can make it your own?

SPEAKER_02

You can pretend it happened to you. The trouble is though, what a lot of us do is we hear a funny joke on television the night before, you know, some of these great comedians, and then we go into work the next day and we go, I've got a funny joke for you now. And then what happens is you go, uh sorry, uh, how did it start? Hang on. Uh sorry, no, no, hang on, no, that's the punchline. Sorry, but sorry. Uh no, pretend you haven't heard that. I'm gonna go back to the beginning again. There were two men, actually, no, three women, sorry, at an airport. No, at a bar. Um, they were on their way to the airport. Now, all of this is just chaos, right? And actually, funny, I find that very funny actually.

SPEAKER_00

In fact, you once told me a hilarious story about the lovely Tommy Cooper, who you said was telling jokes before he even got on stage. I know this podcast isn't about, you know, to be a stand-up comedian, but can you just tell us about that? Because that's just hilarious.

SPEAKER_02

Well, Tommy Cooper used to do this thing that the curtains went up and the show started, and you just heard the sound of him, apparently in his dressing room, and he was locked in. He couldn't get out. He was trying to get out of the dressing room, and it was all the various ways that he was trying to open this door. So before he even came on stage, you were laughing. Some people just have that in their face, don't they? Some people are just funny. You can't see people look funny. I mean they look funny. I mean, they have uh a twinkle in their eye that makes you want to laugh. You want to be their friend because they find life funny. I know lots of people who are not famous, who are really, really funny.

SPEAKER_00

Are jokes something that human beings have been doing forever?

SPEAKER_02

Well, apparently the world's oldest joke was recorded, this is apparently true, was recorded in 1900 BC. So that's nearly 4,000 years ago. It's a saying of the Sumerians who lived in what is now southern Iraq, and it goes like this something which has never occurred since time immemorial. A young woman did not fart in her husband's lap. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

What does that even mean?

SPEAKER_02

I don't know what that means, but apparently that's the oldest joke. And apparently the oldest British joke dates back to the 10th century, which revealed again the bawdy face of Anglo-Saxons at that time, and this was the joke, apparently, 10th century, so a thousand years ago. What hangs at a man's thigh and wants to poke the hole that has often been poked before? The answer is a key.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, a little saucy that one.

SPEAKER_02

Well, it's saucy, and I suppose what it is really, it's the it's the kind of Christmas cracker joke that you get now without the bordiness, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00

Well, it looks like we've always had a sense of humor.

SPEAKER_02

Well, it's got a bit better than that.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know. I don't know about that. But the most important thing is that you've been laughing. Even before you tell those jokes, you're laughing. So it sounds to me like, because you're very good at telling jokes, it sounds too- No, I just find myself funny.

SPEAKER_02

That's all it is.

SPEAKER_00

But it sounds to me like you have already set up in your head and are confident enough to know that this joke is going to be funny.

SPEAKER_02

The thing about laughing at your own joke, it's a really good fail-safe because if you don't get a laugh, you fill it with your own laugh, so you feel less embarrassed. And when you say I feel confident in telling a joke, I only tell a joke if I actually find it funny. So if I find it funny, I'm assuming other people will find it funny. And if I don't find it funny, I wouldn't tell it. So it's not that I'm super confident or anything. I just think this makes me laugh and I'll share it. And I laugh anyway. And I love the line from Billy Connolly, I think it's Billy Connolly, who does this thing where he starts laughing and he says, I'm sorry to laugh, he said, I know what's coming next, which is even funnier.

SPEAKER_00

Listen, you mentioned Billy Connolly. There are many, many stand-up comedians, but that's not what this podcast is about, is it? This podcast is more about how the ordinary folk amongst us can tell a joke. Well, we can learn from them.

SPEAKER_02

They are setting the bar very high. I mean, these are professional comedians and they've been on tour for years and years, and they've played lots and lots of audiences. They know what works, they're really good at their pauses. In terms of the actual delivery, they're amazing because they've been doing it a long time.

SPEAKER_00

Who is the comedian who you said to me told a joke every one and a half minutes?

SPEAKER_02

Oh no, every twenty seconds.

SPEAKER_00

Every twenty seconds.

SPEAKER_02

And Ken Dodd, yes.

SPEAKER_00

Wow.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, I saw Ken Dodd at the palladium, and his second half, the second half of the show was two and a half hours long. And he said, I'm not leaving here until everybody's literally physically in pain. I'm not leaving the stage. Two and a half hours. Now we can never do that, of course, and we're not trying to do that. The thing that stand-ups do is they tell jokes. We can try to tell jokes if we want to. The danger with jokes is that you set yourself up for a joke, which means you've kind of got to deliver it. Or you tell funny stories, which I think all of us can learn. And we tell funny stories because they come out of the conversation, they don't feel so wedged in.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, you're so right. It's the context in which you tell the joke, isn't it? Yes. Because if somebody's standing up and making a speech and just gives a joke that's irrelevant to the speech, everybody knows they just slammed it in.

SPEAKER_02

Weddings particularly, I've noticed it a lot. Because people feel the pressure to be funny at those occasions. And they stand there and they said, Here's a funny joke I got off the internet. And I'm thinking, that has nothing to do with the couple, so why wedge it in there?

SPEAKER_00

No, okay, so let's unpack that. So you've now mentioned that there's different types of jokes. There's assumed knowledge jokes, there's, I don't know, ones that are stories, but then maybe those are easier to do.

SPEAKER_02

One of my favourite assumed knowledge jokes was not so much a joke, actually, it was a story that Graham Norton, and Graham Norton, for those of you who don't know, is a top BBC chat show host. And he was saying that he was in the supermarket and he bumped into Ian McKellen, Sir Ian McKellen, who of course is famous for playing Gandalf, and he just had a chat to him because he'd been on his show the week before. And then a few minutes later, he was going down an aisle and he heard the voice of Sir Ian McKellen, hugely loud, like Gandalf, just shouting, It's in the bag. Now, that's only funny if we know the self-pay Tills have a habit of talking to you. They go, please put your item in the bag, and you want to shout at it, it's in the bag. But the joke only works if the audience knows that that's what the machine does. Does that make sense? Yes, that makes sense. So I think always if there is assumed knowledge, we always need to make sure that the audience do understand that. And if they don't understand it, we have to give them the information. But really, the biggest thing about telling a joke or telling a funny story is the setup. You have to get the setup right.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so what do you need to do to get the setup right?

SPEAKER_02

Well, if I give a sort of an acting story here, if I was on stage doing a comedy and I'm the feed, in other words, I'm going to give the setup line, of which the other actor gets the laugh. But the thing about being a feed is you have to give the feed line very clearly. So you give all the information the audience needs in the feed line. When the punchline comes, it's super easy because they know all that information. And to explain this, I was at a wedding once and a grandfather stood up and he said, I'd like to say a few words. And he said, Do you know what? When this man here, Peter, when he was three years old, I said to him, I hope you never become a hairdresser. And he's now a very famous hairdresser. That story is only funny if there was a setup. And the setup was when he was three years old, he got his sister's doll, he got a pair of scissors, and he cut the hair off this doll very badly. And the grandfather apparently did say to him at the age of three, I hope you never become a hairdresser. He is now a famous hairdresser. Now, if you don't set that up properly, you'll never get the laugh on the joke. So it's really about the setup, and it really is about who, what, where. So if you were telling a story, I don't know, it might be, you know, so three nuns are standing at the pearly gates.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_02

So you've got the who, the what, and the where. The who, three nuns, what, they're standing, where, the pearly gates. So once you've done the who, what, where, that's the way that most jokes are constructed, actually.

SPEAKER_00

Well, me as a listener, I'm comfortable now because I can see a picture in my head.

SPEAKER_02

Otherwise, you think, in which context was this said? Was it one nun walking down the street on her own, or was it two of them in the supermarket? Oh no, it's three of them at the pearly gates. Ah, okay, so they're likely to have a conversation that's going to be in that context then, and then we're prepared for it. So it's all about preparation.

SPEAKER_00

Let's say, for instance, you're thinking about one of those best man or best woman speeches. They're supposed to be funny.

SPEAKER_02

People feel a huge pressure to be funny. But of course, in a wedding, actually you have the best audience you're ever going to have on you because they want it to go well. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00

A wedding speech is is a good place to start with this. How do you make a joke feel spontaneous? Do you know all your jokes? Do you have about 20,000 jokes which you can just pull out of your pocket at any one time? Should you rehearse a joke? You've said to us in previous podcasts, you must rehearse a speech to make it look like it's spontaneous.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Is it the same with a joke?

SPEAKER_02

It is a bit with a joke because if you tell a joke a few times, actually, you know that it works. I don't have 20,000 jokes in my pocket. I have about three jokes that I tell, which are my actual favorite jokes, and don't worry, I'm not going to tell them now. But those are my actual favorite jokes.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, why not? You should tell them.

SPEAKER_02

I won't tell them now because they are quite long and involve jokes. But I tell lots and lots of funny stories. I have a bank of stories that I know that I know work. Yes. Yeah. They didn't all necessarily happen exactly as they tell them, but all the elements of it happened. Right. So you never say you want to hear a joke. You can say that, and you can say, Oh, I had a really funny joke last night.

SPEAKER_00

So you don't go quiet, everybody.

SPEAKER_02

That would be annoying because it kind of doesn't feel the right tone. But I think if somebody is talking about food, for example, and you happen to know a funny joke about food, that would be the time to say, actually, I had a funny joke the other day. And when you tell the joke and it involves food that you were talking about, it somehow seemed relevant why you're telling that joke at that particular point. You're not just sandwiching it in as if it's a food joke. Did you mean to do that? I did, of course I meant to do it.

SPEAKER_00

Did you mean to do that? I did. Can you tell me about how some people tell a joke badly? The reason I'm saying this is that even if they've rehearsed it, I've noticed that they almost signal the punchline before you get to the punchline. What is that?

SPEAKER_02

Well, I think it's about a twinkle in the eye. It's just as I've said about people giving speeches or any form of communication really. You want somebody who has a little twinkle in their eye. And if the joke teller doesn't find it funny, then the audience won't.

SPEAKER_00

So in telling that you've given me another thought. Is telling a joke physical? In other words, can you just sit at a table and tell a joke and expect it to be funny? Or do you actually have to physically use your body?

SPEAKER_02

Well, you have to use the physical energy of the body, and it could be vocal energy then. So this is a podcast, so you can't see what I'm doing. I am actually gesticulating my hands, but you wouldn't know that if you were just listening to that. But the thing about telling stories, I think, is that we have to relive the story. So we have to kind of be in the story. So if I'm saying, do you know, I was in a pub the other day, I was having a glass of cider actually, and the door opened, and two elderly men walked in. Now, one of them looked so old I didn't think he could make it to the bar. Anyway, he finally gets the bar and he says, right, now I can tell the joke that we talked about earlier. The fact that I've given more information, I kind of describe the whole scene. I send my mind back to the scene, I'm saying, so there I am in this dusty pub, you know, with my glass of cider, the elderly man struggling to get the door open, didn't think he was going to make it. All that is kind of part of the setup. But if you just say, some people walked here and they did this, you're not really in the stories. You you want to be there just in the same way. Have you ever had that thing where you suddenly smell something? You suddenly go back 20 years and you smell a smell, like a cut grass or something from school or whatever it might be. And the same thing when we're telling stories is we have to go right back into it and and relive it properly when we're telling the story.

SPEAKER_00

I was just watching you then, and I know the listeners can't see it, but you were moving your shoulders and you're pointing at the bar and you're you're looking in the distance. So do we use our body that way? Do we animate ourselves?

SPEAKER_02

People often say to me when they're making speeches, can I use my hands? And I said, Well, of course you can use your hands. The only thing we don't want to do is anything repetitive. So if you do the same gesture on the same tonal inflection on every other line, it gets boring because it's repetitive. But actually, the thing about using our arms and our shoulders and things, without knocking wine glasses over, the reason that that's a good idea is that it helps us punctuate the story. It helps us with our rhythm. And the thing is that often, just before the punchline of a joke, there's often a pause. And the really good comedians will hold that pause. And the reason for the pause is actually you kind of want the audience to get there ahead of you because audiences love to feel clever.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_02

So if you set it up and you say, this is what's gonna happen, and they go, Oh, they start laughing because they're like, oh no, I know what's gonna happen. And then it does happen, they feel great. So that pause is good.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, but don't you have to be very good at what you're doing, that they're that far ahead of you.

SPEAKER_02

But that's to do with the setup of the joke, and some stories will help you do that just naturally. Right. But there is something I think about slowing down. And if we're nervous about telling a joke, the temptation is we're going to speak super fast, and then people will miss some of the bits of the setup, and then you'll never get the button.

SPEAKER_00

So don't be alarmed if if you're slowing down and and you're really setting it up because it's you'll get a bigger laugh in the end.

SPEAKER_02

I think so, because you're saying, no, this actually happened.

SPEAKER_00

But what if you've told a joke and nobody laughs? What happens? What do you do?

SPEAKER_02

There's nothing worse than telling a joke and not getting a laugh. But here's quite a good idea. Always have a little comeback. And professional comedians, of course, will have comebacks, but there are a couple that are quite useful. One is saying, that's not my joke, by the way, that's my friend's joke. Or that's not my joke, that's my husband's joke, right? So there's a kind of way of getting away with it. I think having something up your sleeve that can get you out of trouble is not.

SPEAKER_00

My funniest joke is that when I tell a joke, I'm so bad at telling the joke that I actually have to say to my family, I have to tell them that I've just told a joke.

SPEAKER_02

But that's a bit like those 1950s TV sitcoms where they had the audience there and they held up the sign saying applause.

SPEAKER_00

It's like now, yeah, now we've set it up. I did catch Robin the other day just standing laughing. And I said, Why are you laughing? And he said, Because I just told myself a very funny story.

SPEAKER_02

No, just in my head. In your head, I know.

SPEAKER_00

It's just bizarre. I know. But I know you find life funny. And I think what this is is about an attitude, isn't it? It's about let's look on the bright side of life. Seeing the humor in what can be very dark situations, but seeing the humor, understanding where we can find humor and a light touch, that we can bring a smile to somebody else's face is a good thing.

SPEAKER_02

It's a good thing, as long as it's done sensitively at the right time. And there are times where, you know, I've sat in rooms with people who just don't stop telling jokes. And you just think, okay, enough already. We need to get on with the business of the day. And it's kind of irritating now.

SPEAKER_00

I think this has been brilliant because, of course, what this means is just say to yourself, it's part of everyday life, it's part of who I am. I love telling jokes or funny stories. Be self-deprecating because that's universal humor. And I think that probably is. I can't imagine a culture, I can't think of a culture where they aren't finding self-deprecation funny.

SPEAKER_02

I used self-deprecating stories all over the world because everyone can relate to those, the nerves that we have before going for a job interview that we really want, you know, that kind of thing. So everyone kind of gets that wherever we are. Yeah. On self-deprecating humor, there's something the British do which I find quite funny. I was working with a Danish businessman once, and he was going through his team on the PowerPoint, and he had these, as you can see, here's my team, and uh, we we are okay. And I said, You're okay? I said, That doesn't sound very good. He said, Don't you want to sort of say you're amazing or brilliant? He said, Well, in Danish culture we play everything down. And I said, Okay, okay, I understand that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And the Americans might say we're amazing, and some cultures might be more factual and whatever. And the the Brits do something that not many other cultures do, but I find very funny. I saw a British guy do this once. He said, Well, this is our team. We're a bit rubbish, but I think we know what we're doing. Now that is kind of funny because it's self-deprecating and it's just had a bit of a twinkle. I think all human beings at some level will always get that.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I think so. And what it means, of course, is that we can communicate through humor.

SPEAKER_02

Well, if it we can communicate through humour. And also, if we want an audience to like us, or even remember us, actually, as simple as that, they will remember us better if we tell funny stories. There's no doubt about that.

SPEAKER_00

That's true.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

It's true. If you tell a funny story, they'll remember. The number of times, though, Robin, me and many of the other people who you've coached say, I just can't tell a funny story. It's not going to land. I'm not going to be able to do it. And you need the confidence to do it.

SPEAKER_02

You do. And it is about the rhythm. I had a client once who said to me, I want to start my big speech, the big conference speech, with a joke. And I said, Okay, tell me the joke. So he told me the joke, and I said, Okay, it is a funny joke. And he said, But I didn't tell it very well. I said, No, you just got the rhythm wrong. But I said, Let me tell you what the rhythm is. I said, So this is why this is the rhythm and this is why it's funny, right? So I said, basically follow my rhythm. So I said, in this particular case, it was like did-did-dee, did-did-dee, did-d-dee, bomb. Right? That's the rhythm. So he went, okay, right. He went, dill-d-dee, d-d-dee, did-d-dee, bomb. And he went, Oh, that's funny, isn't it? I went, great, now you've got it, because that's the rhythm. And I watched him do it. He started his speech with this. He had like a thousand people or something, and he came out and I thought, oh, please get this rhythm right, right. He came out and he said, Good morning, everybody. Dill-d-dee, dill-de-dee, did-d-dee, bang. And the place erupted with laughter. And and literally, but he he sort of grew. He had about, he looked about an inch taller, and he was twinkling away. And the rest of his speech went like a dream. I love this joke here. This is this is about speed and rhythm, right? So a snail was mugged by a slug. And the police officer asked for a description of the attacker, and the snail said, I can't give you one, it all happened so fast. But again, you have to tell that joke slowly, otherwise it doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00

Well, thinking about that, there used to be something on British television called Trigger Happy TV. Oh, I love Trigger Happy TV. And that was situational comedy, wasn't it? Now, this isn't about telling a joke because actually there's no words in this joke, but it just it's the one thing that makes me laugh is there's this man dressed as a tortoise, and this little tortoise is making its way across a zebra crossing, a crosswalk really slowly, and it's about 30 seconds or 40 seconds, a long time for TV.

SPEAKER_02

And there's somebody in the car looking at this going, Yeah, go ahead because they're waiting to wait now.

SPEAKER_00

What's going on? And then suddenly a woman dressed as a hare goes running really fast across the crosswalk, and it's just hilarious.

SPEAKER_02

The other trigger happy TV that made me laugh so much was the the guy is that dressed up as a traffic warden, and so the traffic lights go red and the cars have to stop. The traffic warden goes up to the car and he puts a ticket on it, and he says, I'm sorry, sir, you can't park here. And the driver says, I'm not parking, the traffic lights just gone red. He went, Yeah, they all say that, mate. And now that made me laugh so much because it's comedy of the absurd. We also know what we would feel like saying. If we go with the matter car.

SPEAKER_00

Whenever Robin tells a joke, right at the end of the punchline, he takes a sip of a drink, whether it's water or a glass of wine or whatever you.

SPEAKER_02

And do you know why?

SPEAKER_00

No, I d I've never known why.

SPEAKER_02

It's the same reason that comedians do it. You're riding out the laugh. So you're saying, so this is this is a if I've so I've got my glass of water here, right? So you can hear. So this is a funny story. Did Lee? Bang. Now I do that when they're laughing. And if they don't laugh, I cover the fact that they haven't laughed with my doing something. I'm not just there with egg on my face. So it's a way of never having egg on your face.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Well, I need gallons of water then to cover up the fact that nobody ever laughed at my jokes. I need to know: can anybody be funny?

SPEAKER_02

Well, when we were at drama college, they said we can teach you everything about how to engage an audience. We can teach you how to hold an audience through your voice, your body language. We can't teach you two things. We can't teach you to be funny, and we can't teach you to be sexy.

SPEAKER_00

Whoa.

SPEAKER_02

You either are or you're not.

SPEAKER_00

Whoa.

SPEAKER_02

And I've often thought about that as I've been coaching over the last 15, 16 years. And I thought, I wonder if that is true. And I think you can teach people to tell funny stories. I think all of us can tell funny stories, and all of us can learn how to tell funny stories, and it really is in the rhythm and the setup.

SPEAKER_00

Robin, we talked about jokes and stories a part of everyday life. Was there anything that happened to you that just set off your funny bone because you just couldn't believe how funny it was, even though it happened right in front of you and it was real?

SPEAKER_02

I think actually one of the funniest things that ever, it wasn't that recent, but it was really funny. I was at the BBC at Television Center and the King of Jordan came in, because obviously he was going to be interviewed or something. And so there was a bit of a fanfare around him and everything. And the BBC receptionist, the concierge guy. They're fairly dry at the BBC. They're very unimpressed by anyone because they see famous people all the time. So he says, Who are you? And he said, I'm the King of Jordan. He goes, Oh, fair enough. And then he picks up the phone and he says, I've got a gentleman for you. And he leans over to the King of Jordan. He says, Sorry, mate, he said, Where did you say you were the king of? He said, Jordan. That's absolutely true. Have you ever wished you could become a confident speaker or presenter? Then why not join my online masterclass? Speak so your audience will listen. In ten easy to follow modules, you can become a confident and authentic speaker.

SPEAKER_01

For more information, visit robinkermode.com.