No, you can't make jokes about anything

I’m currently working on my children’s book concept, as I have a big trade type show hurtling towards me at speed, where I hope to sell the idea to publishers, in the hope they will take it on with a view to publication and I might, you know, make some actual money from it!

I mention this mostly because the book is meant to be a funny one, and this has made me think about what it means to be funny, to tell jokes and to laugh at people, things and situations.

You may not have considered how much humour plays a part in art, as it’s often seen as a very serious subject, something which must reach deep into the dark side of the human psyche and must be talked about be serious minded people, stroking their chins and considering deep thoughts.

This of course, is rubbish! A lot of art is very funny, that’s why we like Banksy, and a lot of artists spend a lot of time sticking two fingers up at the establishment and all the rest, even when they seem completely oblivious to it!

There is a play called ‘Art’, which was a smash hint in the West in a few years back, well, quite a few years back, witten by Yasmina Reza, which is about three men whose friendships are disrupted when one buys an abstract painting which is apparently nothing but a blank canvas. It’s a fantastically funny piece about the disruption of male manners and pretensions around art, and though I have heard a rumour that the original production was not actually meant to be a comedy,until preview audiences laughed so heartily at it, that the producers decided to change the PR material accordingly, and a massive hit was born.

In a way though, this does illustrate my one and only golden rule about comedy - only punch down.

Many comics with more well established careers than mine, such as Rowan Atkinson, Ricky Gervais and John Cleese, all protest that no subject is out of bounds when it comes to comedy, that they have the right as comedians to mock and make fun of anything, for the good of society. As an far less successful and famous human, who occasionally attempts to make people laugh, I’m here to tell them that they’re wrong.

There is a link between those three comics and the cast of the play ‘Art’ you might spot, I’ll let you work it out….

The reason that we all laugh so heartily at ‘Art,’ the play, is because it pokes fun at the world of ‘Art’ the cultural phenomenon, the world of white galleries, hugely expensive auctions and profound statements we don’t understand, and are made to feel stupid for not understanding. We laugh at ‘Art’ because the art establishment has set itself above ‘us’, and so we are really happy when it gets taken down a peg or two and we can all relax a bit. We laugh at Art th eplay, because the play shows up the pretensions and posturing of three affluent male friends, who really, have nothing to worry about, usually get everything they want in life, and have to invent things to get upset about.

I am not alone in thinking this, that the only rule of comedy is not that everything is fair game, but that no one should make a career out of being a school-yard bully, punching down basically, so no, it’s not that you can’t make comedy about everything, it’s that not everyone can make comedy about everything. That’s it.

This is relevant when you’re writing comedy for children, because it’s very easy to forget what it’s like when you are a child. It’s not easy, and if you are not aware of all the thousands of prospective authors out there writing for children, let me assure you that far fewer of them are writing comedy than you might think.

98% of book ideas I see, are worthy. Don’t get me wrong, some of them are great - a lot of them are great, and yes, we need books about what it’s like to go to big school, why sharing is nice, why we all have to help tidy up, and why the tooth-fairy needs to live in a pink castle, well, maybe not so much that last one - but boy, we need some funny books too.

So there are rules for writing comedy for children, but really, they all boil down to versions of the ‘don’t punch down rule,’ and doubly so. Children are basically at the bottom of heap, even they’re showed with love and surrounded with people who only have their best interests at heart - they are told how to behave, what to eat, what to wear, how to face their fears, how to be better, do better - boy, isn’t that a lot? On an on, the world is full of worthy adults who want to make life better for them, it really gets annoying!

So when you’re writing comedy for kids, you’ve actually got a lot to punch up at - mostly grown ups, the sort who get in the way of you having fun. Kids are a lot tougher than we give them credit for, and we don’t give them many chances to prove that in a safe way, books and films are the way we can given them a sense of independence, self determination, and rebellion.

In my book, I have created a cast of terrible adults, tourists, who are going on a trip to a special neighbourhood called ‘Nightingale Street’, and who are not going to come back….

In the book, the meet a cast of ‘monsters’ and surreal creatures who live in Nightingale Street, and at every stop, some of them stick their noses in a bit too far and they ‘disappear’, until the poor tour guide who narrates the book, is left scratching her head as to why this keeps happening.

The way to do it, as they say, is to hint at the terrible fate of each pair of hapless tourists, but to never show them being eaten, sliced up or buried alive, so that the child reader can get the idea and create their own pictures in their heads, without seeing any gory reality. The other thing, is that all the victims are adults, and so it’s perfectly fine to laugh at their demise as they’re the ones in power in a kid’s world, so are fair game.

I sometimes get asked ‘but how do the children relate to?’ seeing as I don’t have any children as main characters in the book, at which I scoff - children want to be the monsters, they want to make magic potions and spells, and imagine that they are cook witches and evil professors, and strong enough and powerful enough to be happy in a world of magic and horror, unlike all those useless, pompous, do-gooder adults.

So yes, next time someone bemoans that ‘you can’t even make a joke’ these days, you can take that as code for ‘I am not allowed to bully people any more’ and that tells you all you need to know about them.

You can see some video blogs and get a deeper look at my work on the book at my website here -

And you can see my updates about my big show on my social media - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jonas.hill/

Keep punching up!