KEY POINTS:
Of all the talents possessed by man, the most admirable is the ability to make people laugh. It's a rare gift and misunderstood by boors.
I admit to being a cheap laugh. Get me on a roll and I'm helpless with giggles, the comic's dream. But I'm hopeless at making others laugh (with me, not at me - that's easy). I swore off public debates after a disastrous night in hometown Waipukurau when, as an MP, I agreed to participate in the saleyards debate. Nervous and aware that next day my private life horrors would be splashed over the front page, I went to pieces. I should have backed out when told I'd be up against heavyweights Joe Bennett, Jim Hopkins, and Michelle A'Court.
I received an email from a local woman, whose name I've forgotten, ripping into me for being useless entertainment. She was absolutely right, but wrong about one thing; I didn't finish the night on a drunken cavort through the streets (unless you count dancing with the mayor).
What a tragedy that New Zealand's funniest person, John Clarke, now resides in Australia. Turned down, apparently, for his own series by our television channels, whose editors thought his humour would pass over our heads, Clarke left us for good.
But his legacy remains. I have friends who worked with him and still pronounce, when the telephone rings, "that'll be the phone, Trev", or when they start the car say, "kick it in the guts, Trev". (You had to be there.) Yes, I'm one of those bores who, in the company of other fans of Lear-like nonsense, fall about laughing at the memories of certain lines. Get my little brother and me together and we'll go on for hours about Fawlty Towers or The Castle. It stems from coping with a cantankerous father when we were little - the only way to survive was to laugh together.
I have nothing but praise for the success of the Flight of the Conchords, but I'm a generation too old to get their particular humour. People my age were reared on radio shows like The Goons, so we really are rather silly when it comes to what makes us laugh. Neddy Seagoon, Moriarty, Major Bloodnok - just hearing their voices in my mind gives me the giggles. What geniuses Britain bred in Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers, et al, and also what tortured souls these men harboured.
Is that the genesis of great humour?
A recent book on Fawlty Towers reveals John Cleese based Basil on the proprietor of a Torquay hotel, Donald William Sinclair, who had already "perfected the art of rudeness". Any guest who dared to check out early, fed up with the appalling service, was sent a court summons for the unpaid portion of their account. When Cleese, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin stayed at the hotel, and Palin put a "do not disturb" sign on his bedroom door, Sinclair barged in holding the sign demanding to know if it was meant to be there. Customers ordering taxis were asked "why?" in a belligerent tone, as Sinclair reeled back, clutching his hair.
Echoing the short-sightedness of our own television executives, the BBC reluctantly agreed to screen the first six episodes, with an internal memo stating, "I cannot see anything but a disaster if we go ahead with it."
Australian-born Barry Humphries is funnier than Dame Edna or Sir Les Patterson. In The Spectator diary some months ago, Humphries told of checking into an English hotel late and requesting room service. After waiting ages for someone to answer, he asked what soup was on offer. The phone was dropped, he waited another age, listening to another phone ringing unanswered, until finally the man at the other end returned and said, "It's soup of the day".
In the absence of any equivalent folk in this country (and I don't count the comedians Humphries describes as the "fokkenfokkoffyoufokker" type), we just have to make our own humour, even if that means - as us kids did when Dad went nuts - laughing at what would otherwise make us cry. At this silly season time of the year, one only has to read the papers for a good laugh.
First, the inventor of the worm-driven composting toilet who had to prove to Auckland Regional Council staff that his worms would not be traumatised by feeding on excrement.
Then there was the fat slobs who'd lived in a state house for 28 years and went bleating to the media when they were told to move out when their mother died.
But taking the prize, the news that really had me in stitches, was the residents of Karori complaining about the noise from tui songs. Even John Clarke couldn't beat that one.
