Technolandy

Day 71 (of 2024/25) What was your Introduction to Comedy via James Acaster

Love James Acaster – my daughter came home and so watched Acasters “Hecklers Welcome” – she saw it live… I waited till she came home – and I loved when he recounted his introduction to comedy: reading Roald Dahl’s George’s Magnificent Medicine – and his introduction to performance by reading it to his peers and getting blank stares from his classmates.

A great reminder that comedy is personal and not everyone will love the same ‘jokes’. 

As I think back, I’m pretty sure it was an exploration of British comedy led by my dad – Monty Python got me good. So did Fawlty Towers (and later Black Adder and Red Dwarf) I loved the ministry of silly walks and the Olympics version of hide and seek. Loved when it was time for something completely different…

And the way James takes on the hecklers (none at first… growing over the performance…) reflects the scary nature of public performance – and without a doubt teaching, principaling, heck, every job in education is a performance… the audience is listening. 

But a great connection to the mixed emotions of public performing – and that not everyone will laugh (learn… get… appreciate) the same thing at the same time. An amazing lesson from the teachers perspective may not be remembered after lunch… a moment giving a book to a student, might be recalled decades later. After all, as Jerry Seinfeld once pointed out – more people fear public speaking than death… so if you’re at a funeral, most would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy! Ba-dum-dah!

It’s why it is dangerous to use some forms of humour in schools – what is ‘funny’ is so particular and based on schema… but i love that he referenced how it hit him via literature… and a dynamic author – known for his children’s literature, but if you’ve read his mainstream short stories et al… it’s an aged up version of comedy that can be very uncomfortable… the ‘haha’ comes differently – the reason why “The Office” is a very different TV show if you are watching Ricky Gervais or Steve Carell… but both hit comedy very differently… and not either is a universally loved performance…  yet school (and tv, and youtube, etc) are where we get our first doses of humour… could be Dahl… could be Garfield… comics? a bunch of Munsch? 101 knock knock jokes? Fail Army?

Some like prat falls… some love dark humour… James shows in his latest standup special, that he embraces the chaos of hecklers – making fun of comedy and not knowing where things will go… and some great observations about how audiences respond with the rules being changed… some delightful observations and allusions (airdropping is used without a tech context) as he takes on his own anxieties. Delightful… but not for all – as he admits, that one person in the audience with a flat expression will drive him crazy… even though he observes comedy with a very similar approach (unless Nish is on stage – British comedian with delightful connections to Acasters podcast and tv performances – Nish Kumar is awesome )

What is your first memory of ‘comedy’? Does it matter to you? Now we are exploring Philomena Cunk… another ‘acquired taste’ in comedy… start on youtube and then explore Netflix… your welcome