The BBC is reporting that lawyers for the tediously overexposed Catherine Tate, Matt Lucas and David Walliams are taking action against a Christian outreach group that used catchphrases associated with them on some campaign or other.
I have never got to grips with the English taste for catchphrases, which appears to stem from a situation where people find the same joke as funny the thousandth time as it is the first. My English friends do it all the time: rather than try and find something apparently new and funny to say, they try and see if they can get some more mileage out of some recognisable phrase that has already proven funny. Of course, they only do this because they know that other similarly-minded people are also going to find it funny.
Before I forget, I abhor canned laughter in general, but I really hate the canned sound of appreciative applause, you know, when people clap at something that isn’t really funny at all, but is rather a polished piece of performance: some piece of verbal ingenuity or some long winded line that required a lot of practice to memorise.
You can’t be that funny if you need lawyers to keep you funny.
They were on the Late Late some time ago, in a dull interview made all the duller given they had only the Elm like Kenny to play off. But what was funny was that when Lucas plumbed for a self depreciating fat joke, and the audience finally found the giggles, he proceeded to chastise them for it. Comedy is a tough game, comedian and audience alike.
Bring back Bill Hicks
the English taste for catchphrases, which appears to stem from a situation where people find the same joke as funny the thousandth time as it is the first.
That’s not it at all, although if your starting point is the awful Little Britain I can understand the confusion. The best explanation of catchphrase-based comedy I can come up with is that it works with material that’s not funny – not mildly funny, funny-but-not-very or funny-but-tasteless, just unfunny – and makes it funny by force of repetition. It may be an acquired taste.
Well, I’m not best placed to say whether it’s funny or not: I just don’t feel in on the joke. Thinking a bit further about what I wrote, it’s probably wrong to confuse the device of repetition as used in Little Britain and the one used in everyday conversation (although there is some direct overlap involved: I know people who can drag out a Fast Show catchphrase for years).
Out of interest, can you think of any examples of what you’re describing?
I remember a perfect example from everyday life. A work colleague had several unfunny gags which he’d trot out repeatedly. Someone took him to task about one of them – “That’s just not funny any more – and it wasn’t very funny to start with.” He replied, “No, you’re wrong – it *wasn’t* funny to start with, but it is now.” And he was right.
On TV, the Fast Show is the best contemporary example of catchphrase-based comedy. That’s precisely the difference between the Fast Show and Little Britain – LB sketches repeatedly build to the same payoff, FS sketches repeatedly build to a payoff *that wasn’t funny to start with*.
An acquired taste, then!