Humour Down the Toilet

You only have to imagine the face of Burt Reynolds to realise, immediately, that notions of what’s funny (and why) are very dependent upon the era and, of course, upon inter-cultural issues. The French still lap up Benny Hill in 2007 but I suspect that the English sense of humour evolved away from Benny about 30 years ago. There’s a “sitcom” here in France called “Vivement Lundi” (as in “Roll on Monday”) in which I couldn’t find any amusement if I’d breathed nothing but nitrous oxide all day and, as for the way in which a show like Blackadder or Little Britain is played on French TV, well you simply wouldn’t believe your shepherds’ pies. My French is just about good enough that I can watch Blackadder in English whilst understanding the French sub-titles simultaneously and it’s totally incredible. If Blackadder punches Baldrick and Baldrick says “Ow!”, the subtitles read “Ouf!” as though it was something which wouldn’t otherwise have been understood.

If Blackadder says to Baldrick “Baldrick, you wouldn't recognise a subtle plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on a harpsicord singing 'subtle plans are here again’ “, the French sub-titles would say something like. “Baldrick, you’re unfit to teach in a modern comprehensive school environment” and yet, despite all the hurdles, Blackadder is revered over here in the same way as it was (20 years ago) in England. It’s unfathomable, bizarre, inexplicable.

Humour, therefore, seems to affect all people in similar ways but not in the same timeframe and not for the same reasons. I’m trying to sound like I get the picture but I’m lying. I don’t. This inevitable failure on my part led to a resounding “Gray falls on his arse, bemused” moment a few weeks ago.

I’d helped some people to set up a website. It was going to be like an online “message dump”, laid out like the personals in a paper. If you had something, anything, to say, then leave a message on this site and, if the marketing and networking panned out, the intended recipient of your message would inevitably read it the following day. I’d translated some intricate French terms & conditions of use of the site into English and I’d done a bloody good job of it (if I may say so) and I hadn’t charged a penny (or cent) for what I’d done so I felt, fleetingly at least, nicely involved in the project. I wanted it to succeed and I decided that, my being a “wordy” sort, I’d give them a frequent supply of daft/amusing titbits to publish on their site. I’d help them to “pad it out” until their fledgling site had enough “real” subscribers to keep it filled up.

As much as I’m seldom short of something original to say, I chose to turn to an old favourite of mine for an early offering. Something I’d read in a thoroughly British comedy magazine (Viz) many years before but which I’d found so funny that, down the years, it has always raised a quiet smirk on my face whenever it’s shuffled itself back to the front of my thoughts. Obviously, I’d need to translate it into French before submitting it but there was nothing too tough in the translation so off I went.

Remembering that the site is structured like the personal columns or classified ads in a newspaper, what I submitted was a French version of the following.

“Would any of your readers like a Giant Panda cub? I have two Giant Pandas in my apartment and they hump like nobody’s business. I’ve had to dispose of 11 cubs down the toilet these last 6 months.”

Obviously, there’s irony, surrealism, shock value and “the cute and cuddly” factor in this little piece and, personally, I can’t imagine what it would be like to swap my head for a head which didn’t understand these layers and, therefore, didn’t find it funny but, between cultural differences and political correctness, it appeared on the site as…..

“I have two Giant Pandas in my apartment and they never stop making love”.

It’s the equivalent of giving someone an empty chocolate box. You can still smell that there was once something there but all of the important content has been removed, leaving the gift utterly pointless.

Needless to say, I didn’t submit anything else to the site after that and it was around that time that I decided to start this blog. Like many people who enjoy writing, I choose my words very carefully and I resent having what I write tampered with by others, especially if they clearly don’t understand what they’re reading.