Thigh-Slapping Hilarity

"Did you see that programme about parasites the other day?" said a bloke in the office today.

"Nah. Can't stand parasites, me," said another. "Make my skin crawl."

"I've got one piece of advice for you then, mate," put in a third. "Never get married!"

Cue hilarity. And I mean proper, thigh-slapping, tears-in-the-eyes hilarity. Not from me, obviously. I've never slapped my own thigh in my life. But the rest of the office was in uproar.

"That's right!" chortled one fellow, doubled over with mirth. "Women are the biggest parasite there is!"

I promise I'm not making this up. But as I sat there in bemusement, I wondered exactly what it was about this exchange that rendered it so woefully, miserably unfunny. The casual misogyny? Certainly not - I'm all for a bit of men-together skirt-bashing, so long as it's in the right spirit. What then? The tired, 1970s 'old ball 'n' chain' cliche? Perhaps, although I'm not the sort to take umbrage at a hackneyed stereotype just for the sake of it.

I think, in the end, it was merely the fact that the 'punchline' had been delivered with such uninhibited gusto that my modern sensibilities, marinated as they are in irony, neo-irony, post-irony and pretty much any other kind of irony you care to mention, simply couldn't process such a primordial jape. Had the line been accompanied by a knowing shrug, and appended with a self-aware comedy chuckle, all fine and dandy. Ho ho, I would have thought. That's exactly the kind of thing a gurgling moron would say. Very amusing, my friend.

All of which makes me sound very much like a simpering, posturing, pseudo-intellectual tosspot, which is annoying. But the fact remains inescapable that once you stray into the rarefied echelons of irony, there's no going back. After all, who these days could spout a Wildean bon mot without first making sure that everyone present was aware that they weren't actually trying to be witty, rather they were offering up a simple pastiche of someone else trying to be witty. Does anyone have the confidence to stand naked on the front-line of social repartee and risk the flak in return for the glory?

I suppose there must be a few. I've never met the man, but I expect Simon Callow is of that sort. Perhaps Brian Blessed too. Big, blustering chaps who, one imagines, would think nothing of standing up at a dinner party and bellowing something like, "The food looks good enough to eat, my dear!" before bursting into gales of booming laughter. A little annoying, maybe. But, I think, also refreshing. Because it's rare these days to find someone willing to be uproarious, to be entertaining, to be flamboyant. Someone who interprets the world unfettered by a layer of protective irony.

So to return to my colleagues. Shall we, in the light of this re-evaluation, recast them as merry jesters, boldly lancing the post-modern bubble of pretension, and embracing, with noble heart, the true art of the entertainer? Well, no. Let's not do that. It still wasn't funny.

If only Brian Blessed had been there.

On Style

It's a tricky thing: style. That colon, for instance. That one just there. True, it did generate a subtle stylistic frisson, but was it absolutely necessary? Or, indeed, that 'absolutely'. One might argue that the very concept of necessity carries within it the notion of absoluteness. Or perhaps 'you' might argue that, depending on whether I'm trying to be academically aloof, or vaguely chummy? Which would you prefer? Honestly, I can do either.

Sadly, there are people out there in this crazy old world of ours that wouldn't recognise the intentional irony in using the phrase 'crazy old world of ours' if aforementioned intentional irony cavorted around in front of them wearing an extremely silly hat. The shades of subtlety and nuance that constitute the intricate tools of the writer's trade might as well, in many people's books, be lobbed in the bin and replaced with a simple, but very big, hammer. Want to say something funny? Don't bother your little head about the complexities of wit. Why, simply append an exclamation mark to the end of your remark. Oh, you want it to be really funny? No worries. Simply append two exclamation marks. Example:

I'm going on holiday next week.

Lucky thing!! Wish I was!!

And as if by magic (deliberate cliche) you have suddenly become a 'right laugh'. Although you will be sadly oblivious to the damning indictment implied in those inverted commas, clamped around you like a neck-brace on a simpleton. It's spot on, though, isn't it? It's right. I'm making sense, yeah? You can't doubt the veracity of that statement. A truer word was never spoken.

Ah, but who needs all this poncey prolix? If I may quote Mark Twain, who really ought to have known better: "I never write 'metropolis' when I can get paid the same amount for 'city'." Double plus good quote, eh? And while we're at it, let's ditch those irksome commas and apostrophes. Or even better, scatter them willy-nilly throughout our pro'se in the hope that, like in the parable, some of them, will land on fertile ground. After all, it's not like they're in short supply.

The primary role of language is communication. In the same way that the primary role of a house is to keep you warm and dry. And to give you somewhere to watch the telly. But who would want to live in a house made of mixed metaphors and hanging gerunds, if you'll allow me for a moment to mix my metaphors. No, people like to live in nice houses. And people should like to read and write and speak nice language. They should think about it. They should wonder whether that first 'and' shouldn't have been replaced with a comma, and then decided that no, it shouldn't, because the sing-song cadence fits nicely with the simplicity of the sentiment.

And perhaps one day, when this dream of mine comes true, things will be different. Maybe, in that impossible future, there will be a whole generation of people who will inwardly cringe, will silently reel, will feel a strange, ineffable hollowness in their viscera, when they notice, with mounting dread, that I haven't ended this sentence with a full stop

Not Worth Going To See

I don't like to think of myself as an uncultured lout. Nobody likes uncultured louts, apart from other uncultured louts, and their opinion is hardly worth much, what with them being so uncultured and everything. I've read books. Sometimes really very long books. I've been to the theatre. I've visited the National Gallery. I could probably tell you the difference between a sonata and villanelle, if I was allowed a while to think about it, and access to reference books. I occasionally eat alfalfa sprouts. I read The Times. I watch University Challenge. Yes sir, it all adds up to one white-hot ball of intense cultural experience. Not for me the world of chips 'n' Channel 5, with its dropped aitches, its double negatives, its LOLs, and its insistence on putting the letter 'H' in front of 'aitches'. No, I've got culture up to here. (Here being a point somewhere in the region of my upper torso.)

So why is that whenever I go out of my way to see a famous work of art, or visit a historic building, I can't help feeling... well, not bored, precisely. I appreciate that it's quite good. But then I start to wonder whether it's worth the tube journey, or the admission fee, for something that's 'quite good'. After all, there are literally thousands of things that are quite good. It's quite good when you manage to get something in the bin from a distance of several metres. It's quite good when your favourite song happens to come on the radio. Having a bath is quite good. And I look at the Haywain, or the Byzantine vase, or the medieval ivory latticework, and I wonder if these things really are much better than having a bath. As Samuel Johnson nonsensically put it:

Worth seeing, but not worth going to see.

He was talking about the Giant's Causeway there, of course (see, culture). And putting aside the obvious point that pretty much everything in the world is worth seeing if you don't have to go anywhere to see it (unless you're paranoid about wearing your eyes out), I kind of get his drift. The painting may be very pleasant. Perhaps I might even go so far as to say 'excellent'. But once you've factored in the effort I've put in to go and see it, and whizzed the whole experience through a complicated enjoyment algorithm, I imagine that what comes out the other end is a greyish, lacklustre creature; a thing that brings a modest amount of pleasure to those who come across it, but still, ultimately, rather drab and unimpressive. Not the sort 0f thing you'd want to keep as a pet.

Perhaps I'm just dreadfully low-brow. Perhaps the fact that I don't spontaneously climax at the sight of a pointillist exercise indelibly marks me out as a revolting piece of scum who should be taken into the sewer and shot. But I don't think so. Cast a quick eye around your nearest art gallery, and the one thing you'll notice immediately is the relative dearth of people spontaneously climaxing. They just don't do it. Unless they're being spectacularly discreet about it. You might catch them later on, in the cafe, braying about how marvellous it all was, but look at their faces during the experience and you'll notice slightly less animation than if they were staring at a moderately rococo dog turd.

I'm not saying art isn't good. I'm not saying that historic buildings aren't good. I'm not even saying that anti-Capitalist, experimental poetry scratched into a piece of bark by a weeping hippy isn't good (although it isn't.) I'm just pointing out that, if we're all honest, how many of these things are worth going to see?

It's a rhetorical question.

Hullo there.

I haven't thought of anything to write yet. But please treat this informal greeting as a precursor to greatness. And, if you must, a fond salutation. Not too fond, mind. We barely know each other.