The Dilly Felfia Experiment

I've decided to challenge myself this week. I have bought a copy of 'The serious guide to joke writing', and in a moment of madness, I've challenged myself to read through the book and apply the knowledge inside. On Thursday morning(23rd), at 7am, I shall buy a newspaper and try to come up with something for six of the stories contained in it. At 7pm, I'll record and post my effort (good or bad) and see if I've actually achieved anything. As I will be at work all day, I'm hoping my background processing will kick in. I won't use anything that I have already come up with, just the stories in the paper and the techniques in the book.

Beats watching re-runs of Primeval (oh, and working).

Failure is an option.

Okay. This didn't go as well as expected. For some reason, I had to do some work at, well, work. However, I managed to pick out a few stories that seemed to have an angle on them. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do the full process on them, but as I looked for puns to do, I could see how the process would lead me to the lines I needed. When thinking of my own jokes, I tend to try and pick them out of fresh air. A bit like trying to pin the tail on the donkey, when blindfolded. Using the 'process', I would eventually be able to find the point I was after, although it would take more work.
Without further ado, here are my first 6 efforts. They are rather poor, but for a first effort (and 30 minutes of work), I was happy with them. All the story lines featured in today's Daily Express. Enjoy. Or not.

After a Harvard public health announcement, revealing eating quality food instead of reducing quantity can aid weight loss, sales of lobster flavoured pot noodles have rocketed.

Officials at Wimbledon closed Murray Mount yesterday amid safety fears. Today they will be introducing ear protection for the women's matches and a 30mph speed limit for serving.

Virgin Atlantic pilots are to go on their first ever strike. A spokesman for the company said 'Once the issue has been resolved, we will be re-branding the airline as 'Slut Atlantic'.

A new report suggests that pensioners are turning into a bunch of alcoholics. The government are tackling the issue by installing access ramps at all AA meeting places.

School resources are being stretched as more than one million pupils do not speak English as their first language. However, this year they are expecting record levels of passes in French, German and Polish.

Energy prices are set to soar, due to the continued unrest in the Middle East and the Japanese nuclear crisis.
These events have also been linked to the rise in popularity of Jedward, England's poor performance against Switzerland and an increase in the London congestion charge.

Thanks for reading.

PB.

There's some really good stuff there! I laughed at the Slut Atlantic line. Good word choice. And the access ramps at AA made me laugh out loud too. I'd say your method is working really well. Do that every day, pick the best ones and you'll have a strong catalogue of jokes.

Good stuff PB. You can condense these a bit further but the gags are there.

I should have applied the twitter rule to them.

Slut Atlantic - that's so funny! That was a really brave thing to do PB. Good for you!

I echo what the posters above are saying... These lines are sharp and will compliment the work you've posted previously, its a shame topical humour has a fairly limited shelf life, but still, if you apply this technique to wider sources than the daily papers I imagine you'll quickly amass a genuine quality set.

I think they don't work that well, sorry.

There's too much explanation and too little connection.

Ok slut-virgin atlantic is a good progression. But the linking to the strike doesn't work for me, I get that it's about doing things for the first time. But it seems to much of a leap.

The pot noodle one I think would work if it was about Knorr releasing a new version, not just random sales increases.

These topical gags are tricky because they require instant recognition by the audience.

I agree with SootyJ I'm afraid.
Not that I could do any better but it's not easy.
Have a search for the Newsjack rejects thread for this kind of joke it might be helpful, it might not.
There are nice bits & they do kind of work on the whole but there isn't anything I'd call a corker.

That went pretty much as expected.

There was something on radio4 about looking for food articles in all newspapers, the total contradiction between them etc, was amazing!

Sure someone is studying this on a University course that costs them 9000 or something.

Quote: sootyj @ June 23 2011, 11:18 PM BST

I think they don't work that well, sorry.

There's too much explanation and too little connection.

Ok slut-virgin atlantic is a good progression. But the linking to the strike doesn't work for me, I get that it's about doing things for the first time. But it seems to much of a leap.

The pot noodle one I think would work if it was about Knorr releasing a new version, not just random sales increases.

These topical gags are tricky because they require instant recognition by the audience.

View original

I disagree. I knew nothing about most of these stories but they're written so I didn't have to. They need tightening but they're perfectly decent gags IMHO.
Don't forget he's done this as a writing exercise and spent 30 minutes on it.

The Wimbledon and schools ones work best I think.

OK, they're not great but there are some pretty reasonable gags in there.

Also, even though they are topical, some of them are gags which could be worked on a bit and used in a non-topical way or are ones where the topical bits could easily be updated for other news stories to use the gags again later.

The meat of the gags the central idea is good, but the delivery is the problem. These quicky gags like I say are fiendish but are potential earners if you get good at them, but getting good at them like getting to Carnegie Hall takes practise.

Some tips.

1 The humour is all in recongition and the audience in making an intuitive leap.

2 You can explain a little bit about the story, but really only to introduce it.

3 You're joke has to end at the end of the punchline.

4 Don't repeat words in the setup and the punchline.

5 Don't confuse you have to be pretty blunt withone example. For example with age concern one, I don't think old age and wheel chair is an immediate connection, but old age and zimmer frame is.

So to reedit one of your jokes.

Government fears pensioners becoming alcoholics. Pensioner charity renamed, Age Concerned you spilled my pint.

or

Government concerns over pensioner alcoholics, when Alcoholics Anonymous opens branch with zimmer frame access

N.B. last point don't be afraid to be bloody obvious with this format if you're quick and business like you can get away with some stinkers.

I sold the 2 following gags.

1 Large number of Jewish baldmen turn up at Edinburgh, looking for the free fringe.

2 York council builds fence through football posts, explain the government told them to stop moving the goal posts.

.

Quote: sootyj @ June 24 2011, 10:33 AM BST

Don't repeat words in the setup and the punchline.

View original

Quote: sootyj @ June 24 2011, 10:33 AM BST

York council builds fence through football posts, explain the government told them to stop moving the goal posts.

View original

FFS.