John Clarke gave voice to a brilliant Antipodean acerbity that has always seemed a little old-fashioned in its moral and tonal dignity. His was a magnificent achievement of focused, pitch-perfect satire.
It may be worth paying attention to what your child finds funny.
Lapina/Shutterstock
Enough with the charming, naughty funny-guy rants. There are too many in a new anthology of Australian comedy writing – and women display a superior comic imagination.
Joking around with customers can improve satisfaction, as long as its the right jokes!
Zeetz Jones/Flickr
Jenni Henderson, The Conversation e Lucy Majstorovic, The Conversation
Business Briefing: being funny with customers
The Conversation16,2 MB(download)
New research shows that humour can relieve tension for employees and increase customer satisfaction, just don't make jokes when it comes to offering apologies!
Chernobyl’s liquidators have come up with some intriguing ways of dealing with what they’ve gone through – without directly confronting painful memories.
Education should be a laughing matter.
Ollyy/www.shutterstock.com
The Trevor Noah phenomenon speaks to an influential comedic revolution that is happening in South Africa. Its comics operate in an increasingly complex, high-risk and conflict-intense society.
Problem solver.
Image sourced from Shutterstock.com
In Australia, from its beginnings, humour and irony have been small weapons in the armoury of the oppressed, the outcast, or those simply fed up with cultural uniformity.
Constantina Bush flips Australia’s history on its head for laughs during Blak Cabaret.
Pia Johnson
Opinion is rife as to what Aboriginal and Torres Islander humour is, even though Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have been delivering it on a platter for centuries.
We can now know whether this rendition of Miley Cyrus is (legally) parody.
tehchix0r
You probably don’t tend to consider any legal issues while watching Rita Ora’s recent parody of Beyonce’s 7/11 or the Chatroulette version of Miley Cyrus’s Wrecking Ball. But there are limits to the extent…
With Python, audience members are primarily laughing for their own memories of laughing.
Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA
The Monty Python crew have put many caveats on their upcoming reunion shows, which starts in London today and will be simulcast live around the world. Perhaps this quote from John Cleese rings truest of…
Interpreting what different types of laughter mean requires different brain regions.
chris.huggins
There’s nothing quite like overhearing a hearty belly-laugh, unless perhaps it’s having a good chortle yourself. The happy likelihood is that, in any case, one guffaw will lead to the other. Laughter is…
Is the suffering of the Holocaust ever fair game for comedians?
EPA/Jacek Bednarczy
“Too soon” is a phrase that gets bandied about in response to jokes about tragedy or misfortune. The implication is that a certain amount of time needs to pass before we can poke fun at loss or grief…