On Funny and Funnier Writing

c/o David Schneider

That’s what comedy is — knowing what your audience is repressing, and releasing that.

If you want a tl;dr, that’s it.

The person who said this was the brilliantly acute, funny and honest David Schneider. The occasion was the Parkes Lecture at the University of Southampton, but it took the form of an In Conversation. The subject was humour, especially Jewish humour, and even more especially Yiddish Theatre in London (which David is now helping revive). David was in conversation with Dr Katie Power (who has written on Yiddish Theatre) and Dr Devorah Baum (who has written on, among other things, The Jewish Joke.)

I was in the audience, taking lots of notes.

A while ago, I tried to write a lecture on How to Be Funny in Words on a Page for Good Reason, or Satire — it’s here — but I don’t think I managed to distill the essence of how to cause laughter as well as that single quote from David.

Mostly, he was talking about stand-up. For example, his own one man show where —

I peeled an orange as if it was a striptease.

Or he spoke about scripting film and TV.

Even to have co-written only The Death of Stalin would put David among the very greatest British comedy writers. But he was a major part of the writing team for On the Hour, The Day Today and Knowing Me Knowing You, With Alan Partridge.

As he pointed out, this team was accidentally but fortuitously comprised of three Jews and three Catholics.

Guilt plus guilt.

During the evening, David said one thing which I thought was great writing advice — specifically, great advice on funny writing.

This observation came out of the moment of creation of Alan Partridge. David said, ‘I was in the room when Partridge came into being.’ As if that were something quite hard to believe.

Which it is.

Surely Partridge is eternal.

Initially, the writing team thought they would make Alan Partridge come from Milton Keynes.

Then one of the writers, I think it was Armando Iannucci, said, ‘No, that’s too funny.’

Milton Keynes — concrete cows and all — was too idiomatically comic already.

Instead, the team decided — after some discussion — to have Partridge come from Norwich.

This was part of what David called ‘an absolute rigour when it comes to being very specific.’ The writing team consciously aimed for that rigour.

David’s passed on wisdom (definitely from Armando Iannucci) was this —

Don’t get off the first stop on the funny train, see where it goes.

Instead, David added —

If you go from general to a really specific thing, you’ve gone somewhere original, and you’ve pushed on.

This, I think, is gold dust.

Milton Keynes is generally comic; Norwich is specifically funny.

Don’t try to be funnier, try to be more and more specific.