Quote: sglen @ March 22 2010, 10:41 PM GMTOr Simon Munnery. I've only found one other person who thinks Simon Munnery's amazing
Perhaps you are lucky enough to be too young to remember, but about 10 years ago he had quite a high cult profile, and was regularly being broadcast, with a weekly appearance on The Now Show and slots on TV too.
Quote: sglen @ March 22 2010, 10:41 PM GMTOr Simon Munnery. I've only found one other person who thinks Simon Munnery's amazing (particularly the seemingly random parts). Everyone else just says it doesn't mean anything.
Munnery is great.
Quote: sglen @ March 22 2010, 10:41 PM GMTOr Simon Munnery. I've only found one other person who thinks Simon Munnery's amazing (particularly the seemingly random parts). Everyone else just says it doesn't mean anything.
Really? Certainly, on the live circuit, his act may confuse the scum-drunken-stag-night-cum-mcintyre-lovers that seem to make up most audiences thesedays. Alan Parker, Urban Warrior was a superb character - and not particularly surreal - just very nuanced. And 'Attention Scum'/'The League Against Tedium' was great if one bothered to listen. 
This is my all time favourite surreal joke. You will either laugh of think it is shit - there is no middle ground:
A man walks in to a butchers and says to the butcher,
"can I have half a pound of pork sausages please".
"I'm terribly sorry" said the butcher, "I've only got beef".
"That's OK", said the man, "I've got me bike outside".
Quote: Nogget @ March 23 2010, 6:45 AM GMTPerhaps you are lucky enough to be too young to remember, but about 10 years ago he had quite a high cult profile, and was regularly being broadcast, with a weekly appearance on The Now Show and slots on TV too.
Ten years ago I was 13, so I should probably remember this. But I don't.
Seen Attention Scum though. That was good.
Quote: Tim Walker @ March 23 2010, 9:09 AM GMTReally? Certainly, on the live circuit, his act may confuse the scum-drunken-stag-night-cum-mcintyre-lovers that seem to make up most audiences thesedays. Alan Parker, Urban Warrior was a superb character - and not particularly surreal - just very nuanced. And 'Attention Scum'/'The League Against Tedium' was great if one bothered to listen.
Yeah, I would have expected people who otherwise have the same taste in comedy as me would like him. They don't. But they are wrong.
Quote: will Cam @ March 23 2010, 11:27 AM GMTThis is my all time favourite surreal joke. You will either laugh of think it is shit - there is no middle ground:
A man walks in to a butchers and says to the butcher,
"can I have half a pound of pork sausages please".
"I'm terribly sorry" said the butcher, "I've only got beef".
"That's OK", said the man, "I've got me bike outside".
Sadly, this reminds me of my favourite playground joke from secondry school, 28 years ago and you have to say the dialogue in a Scottish accent.
Man walks into a butchers and approaches the counter. There is a large pork intenstine used for making sausages lying on the counter.
Man says 'Pound a' fillet'
The butcher replies ' A fiver says ye dinnae'
Quote: Madge's Vadge @ March 23 2010, 6:04 PM GMTSadly, this reminds me of my favourite playground joke from secondry school, 28 years ago and you have to say the dialogue in a Scottish accent.
Man walks into a butchers and approaches the counter. There is a large pork intenstine used for making sausages lying on the counter.
Man says 'Pound a' fillet'
The butcher replies ' A fiver says ye dinnae'
I love surreal humour. It is right up there with my other favourite type of comedy, dark comedy, and often they do overlap.
To me it shows that whoever makes it has great imagination and is very creative. It's so vibrant and different.
It's a breath of fresh air in a dull and dreary-filled comedy landscape full of Life of Rileys and My Familys and Michael-bloody-McIntyres. For which there seems to be no end of.
It's also spawned some of my favourite comedy shows such as:
Monty Python
The Mighty Boosh
The League of Gentlemen (more of a black comedy but certain elements are pretty damn strange)
I have genuinely loved surrealism in all forms since an early age. Show me a Magritte and I simply melt. What can I say, I was an odd child and an even odder adult. I remember that Who Dares Wins kind of encapsulated it for me when they gave their spoof football result "Real Madrid 1 ... Surreal Madrid Fish".
I don't think you were an odd child for liking surrealism, kids love silliness, intriguing images and puzzles, and surrealism deals in this currency.
Spike Milligan was another early favourite. Madness and oddness have always fascinated me. I'm typing this with a cork board looming over me with postcards of Salvador Dali's work on. I wouldn't ever say the Surrealists were exactly laugh out loud funny, but all of their work has such a deliciously subtle, oh-so-knowing sense of humour in, probably more so than any other art movement.
It's not a pipe, it's a picture of a pipe. Sod Kaye and his garlic bread anecdotes, Magritte could have sold out the MEN Arena for a month on the strength of that one joke.
I like it because it can be the mixture of intelligence as well as silliness. Even if I don't understand the sketches like Spike Milligan's Arr-jim-lad sketch I still find it funny.
I like Harry Hill's stand up.
You do get flashes of surreal brilliance even in You've Been Framed.
I remember one clip where a guy is filming at the top of the stairs, falls down the stairs and keeps the camera rolling.
It wasn't funny.
But at the bottom of the stairs there was a little door about 2 foot tall (gas meter?)
Harry's voice over then came in...
"Where does that little door go to? The past?"
That had me laughing, never saw it coming.
An alleged surreal joke-
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: A fish.
A lot of surrealism just relies on non-sequiturs but I'm old enough to remember The Goon Show. Spike Miiligan must have been the Godfather of surrealism but I'm not very advanced in the history of comedy.
But despite my tender years, I was able to conjure up very vivid and hysterically funny mental images of the antics of Milligan, Sellers and Secombe that I couldn't get from any stand-up comedians.
I'm watching quite a few surreal comedies at the moment, such as The Goodies and shows by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, and they are simply brilliant.