Wit and Humour

Wit and Humour

T

arzan comes home and says to Jane, ‘I’ve had a rough day. It’s a jungle out there!’ I like this joke because I feel it’s true. The jokes we appreciate most, those we remember best, are often indicators of how we feel about life. Sometimes, of course, we remember them for other reasons, such as their being brilliantly witty. But the latter are rare.

            Bette Davis said of a woman she detested: ‘She’s the original good time who’s been had by all’. This witticism was later attributed to Kenneth Tynan, in a slightly amended form. Wit is often, like a cash cheque, easy to pass off as one’s own. Who knows whether the above gem really originated with Bette Davis or with someone else? Who cares? How many of Groucho Marx’s witticisms, for example, really emanated from him and not from his script writer?

            Our favourite jokes, those we remember and tell to others, reveal so much about us that we should really not tell them at all. This applies particularly to jokes about sex.

            A recent poll revealed that Australian women prize a sense of humour in a man more highly than they prize wealth, though not as highly as they prize a well-developed body. I am quite sure there were very fee Chinese or South-East Asian women included in this poll. As a Philippine acquaintance of ours remarked, ‘As soon as I learnt he was rich, I fell head over heals in love with him’. The frightening thing was, she was telling the truth.

COPYRIGHT (C) 2010 J D FRODSHAM