Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Have I lost my sense of humor or is it an age gap,because I cannot see anything funny in the so called jokes of these stand up comedians where they have to include one or two four letter words, and then the audience both sexes laugh and find it funny.When the comedians of old were on the television the jokes got a bit risky, but they did not have to include four letter words to make you laugh and you could watch the whole program and not be embarrased.I am glad that I can change chanels as I don't wish to listen to that sort of so called entertainment.
Just an old Fuddy Duddy.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

There's always been blue comedians.

Nothing new.

From the music halls, to working mens club.

Comics have sworn, people have laughed.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Compared to the Bernard Manning school of comics, I'd say the current crop of new comedians swear a lot less than in the past.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

No way, we are talking about television programs, not clubs

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

I'd say it's subjective, some can make me laugh without resorting to bad language, but there are others who use it sparingly & it still raises a laugh, but then again there are those that F & Blind the whole way through & I tend to find these types rather cringeworthy, they don't have the talent or skills to amuse without being offensive. Way of the World I suppose.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

The people I found funny in my informative years were Ken Dodd, Morcambe and Wise, and Arthur Askey, I thank you.
And still do today

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Totally agree with dig spot on that:mosher::alright:

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

agreed and no bad language there but all legends who stood the test of time

Perhaps it is an age thing but I've never liked swearing (perhaps there is a time and a place for it where it is more acceptable than in other places) What really irritates are parents effin and jeffin at their kids I'm a parent and I've experienced the tantrums of children but what example are we setting to the future generations

It might be an old fashioned view but I'm proud of my 2 teenage daughters that they have manners and respect for others

I know it's a show rather than stand up and I've only seen it a couple of times I like Mrs Browns Boys apart ffrom the language - it doesn't need it

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Oh right.

Since this isn't in the television thread, and you only referred to 'stand-up comedians', I presumed you were moaning about mirth makers in general.

Perhaps you need a new comedy scriptwriter.

Boom, boom.

It's the way I tell 'em.

;)

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Going back into the annals of time, some people have found rude, and normally socially unacceptable words and phrases funny.

It's human nature.

Like grumbling.

Some people enjoy it.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Thanks, Garinda, You have answered my post,Im just a grown up decent, happy, fuddy duddy who does not have, want, or require any four letter words or bad language in my life.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

There's a time and place for that language and its not on TV, if a so called comedian has to resort o 4 letter words to get a laugh, they aren't very good in the first place

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Same here.

No need for course language to be amusing.

Though from what I'm told, like Bernard Manning, Roy Chubbie Brown's audience mainly consists of mature people, who could be described as 'grown ups'.

That's if we consider people of pensionable age as grown ups.

Different folks...for different jokes.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

I have no problem with foul language per se. I actually like swearing, probably because it is naughty and I do actually know better. I have always been of the opinion that the use of swear words offers an opportunity to add additional emphasis to a statement; a bit like using more than one exclamation mark. But, as with spices in cooking, it's effect is best appreciated when used sparingly.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

See.

Age knows no barrier, when it comes to people who titter at rude words.

Old Acidic-babs is near eighty.

Yet you still need a mop, if someone's said something a bit blue to them.

;)

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Dirty jokes have always been with us ... Canterbuy Tales if full of them. I remember watching an Eddie Murphy video ... "Raw" I think it was ... and he deals with the topic in a quite articulate manner. He made the point, and made it well, that his brand of humour was much more than stringing together a whole bunch of dirty words ... And then there is the unforgettable George Carlin and his seven dirty words you can't say on TV. Personally, I don't give a rat's ass what words a comedian uses as long as he makes me laugh ... And don't forget the ladies: Marsha Warfield from "Night Court" has a fantastic stand up routine.:D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

I don't really mind if i happen to see one in a club,pub, people enter such places by choice, if they dont like it sod off, Think though better if not on T.V. But thats just me.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

I saw Manning at the Cav back in the 70s, he was a bit different in his cabaret show than he was in his own club, he didn't use one four letter word, so he proved that you don't have to use bad language to get a laugh

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

I used to frequent a pub in south London called the Montague Arms, the compare was a chap called Jim Jones, he was a very well known cockney comedian, but he very rarely appeared on TV, because of the contact of his act, the only thing was he was a brilliant singer too, which was even more sad really, he had no need to stoop to the depths to entertain

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

An interesting example of a crossover from clubland obscenity to acceptably amusing vulgarity is Paul O'Grady.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Well, you live and learn. I was doing a bit of reading around this subject, as you do. And I came across the odd fact that the term 'Schmuck' is a Yiddish obscenity, meaning 'Penis'. And, in 1963, its use got the American comedian, Lenny Bruce, arrested.

Funny, isn't it, how few people would know or even care what the word really meant.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Um I used to work for Ray Lyndon, now I know what he ment:D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

And more...From the giddy heights of serious Drama daahlings, comes this....

"Oscenity has often been regarded as a characteristic of a broad, jocular mind. The opinion prevailed that it was a more or less necessary feature of Old Comedy, a kind of humour which was the only one really to be savoured by the rustics and illiterates a sort of concession to the groundlings, for which the upper strata of the audience were indeminified by the high intentions, the lyrics and the aesthetic forms of comedy.

That was Thalien M. de Wik-Tak, writing in Mnemosyne. (vol 21, 1893).

He was, of course, writing about Ancient Greek theatre in the 5th Century BC, but you knew that. Strange though, how little really changes.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Yes, but he's nowhere near as funny as Lily was, when she worked the Vauxhall Tavern, amongst other places.

Really used to make me laugh.

Mind you, I'd be in stitches, sat behind two real life scouse woman, when I was on the bus in Liverpool.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

You always were a bit of a giddy-kipper.:D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Though it was always my ambition to be a giddy-Gertie, but I kept failing the medical.

:D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Sigh. Happy days. Now it's all relentlessly left-wing, right-on, observational scheisse.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Nah, comedy's moved on.

All that Jo Brand PMS stuff is so old hat.

The young comics tell racist, sexist, swear ridden jokes.

But they do so 'ironically'.

Which means it's different from Bernard Manning et al because...

Er, I'll have to get back to you on that one.

:rolleyes::D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

But that is precisely the point of Thalien M. de Wik-Tak's comment; it doesn't move on, it merely goes round in circles. What was funny and obscenely funny in the 5th century BC is still funny two and a half thousand years later. Aristophanes' 'The Frogs' being a case in point.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Slapstick and the comedy of cruelty did not originate with the comedians of the music hall and the silent cinema, it is first formalised in ancient greek theatre, but it's origins are as old as humanity itself. The same goes for bum jokes!

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

I pretended to slide back into the primeval swamp, the very first time I'd just slithered out of it.

Purely for comedic effect.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

You lost your grip then?

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

I have noticed that tastes in humour change as society changes.

I have listened to 'old style' humour on Radio 4extra (Goon show and Ray's a laugh etc), and it isn't funny any more. I find the Carry On films and Norman Wisdom 'cringeworthy'.

I think our society grew out of slapstick and became cynical, causing satire to be popular.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

It's so hard to define why something's funny, and makes us laugh.

Silent Laurel and Hardy films amuse me, whereas Charlie Chaplin leaves me cold.

Monty Python, never get it. Fawlty Towers, hilarious.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Well I certainly agree about Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, the only problem with Fawlty Towers is they only made 12 episodes:eek:

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

I'm the world's worst at concentrating on stand up comedians .... glaze over most of the time.

Does depend on the delivery though. Billy Connelly never made me cringe when he swore.

Just flicking to a TV series, every time Mrs. Brown swears, she (he) makes me laugh just because she does.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Bacardis to blame fer that.:D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

I must, somewhere along the way, have lost my sense of humour.
I find most of the supposed comedians contrived and so far up their own rectums, that seven men with miners' lamps would never find them.

The only one that I can tolerate is John Bishop....and I have to be in the right frame of mind for him too.
I do not like bad language.....if something has to rely on foul or coarse language to make it funny, then it never was a topic of humour.

And it is Ok talking about Canterbury Tales and such like things.......That language was the language of the day. But surely we have moved on. I think that some of these stand up comics use bad language for its shock value(except that after a while, it loses its shock value because we have heard it all before)......much as they use some of the crass and insensitive topics for the same reason. They remind me of 12 year olds who don't know any better.

If you hit your thumb with a hammer, trap your finger in a door, burn yourself on the iron...then an expletive is acceptable as a release of tension.

Swearing is not entertainment....and if it is on TV, I leave the room.

So I guess I am in the old fuddy duddy camp.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

get the frankie boyle dvd, stand up "if i could reach through the tv and strangle you i would" he is hilarious and tells it like it is

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Nope, Frankie Boyle is something that should be lanced. He is about as funny as a boil on the btm. He is an insensitive goon. If it makes you laugh then all well and good, but not for me.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Would that be a joke Margaret?;)

(It's the way she tells 'em!):D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

No not really Dianne...even as a pun - it is only half a pun and that is bumping weight(ask your Mum she might know what I mean) :D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

I don't think that tastes in humor change. They remain a constant; it is societal attitudes that change.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

There must be something wrong with me. I could happily listen to the goon shows, the Navy Lark, Round the Horne....Ron and Eth were in another serial (the name of the program escapes me right now, but I'm sure that in the wakeful hours between two and four am, it will knock on the inside of my cranium).
Oh, no...it has come to me.......The Glums. Meet the Huggetts was another one I could happily re-visit.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

You're just weird is all;):D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Yes, my other half would agree with you, but I prefer the term eccentric.:D

Oh and for some reason the site will not let me put ETH....an abbreviation of Ethel.....it changes it to the.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Round the Horne was positively filthy.

:eek:

Well if you understood the polari they used, it was.

:D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Well you see maybe I was too innocent to realise the true meaning of the humour......to the pure, all things are pure.......and I was only 11 when I used to listen to this on my old aunties Relayvision set( 4 programs only....rental at one shilling and threepence a week) :)

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Don't worry.

I never understood the rudeness either.

As I listened, sat in my pram.

:D:dummy2::D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

You know, I thought you would be far to young to have heard any of those programs.
The Glums wasn't a program as such, it was a section of the program Take it From Here.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

My thoughts entirely Margaret, I could through my shoe at the telly just seeing his smug grinning face:mad:

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Must be a generational thing, or at least have a generational twist to it John...seeing as we are of a similar era.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Actually I used to quite like Frankie Boyle on Mock the Week till people started slating him... also do like Dara O'Briain Andy Parsons and Russell Howard who all are or were on the same show. And I saw Marcus Brigstocke do solo shows here in Morecambe twice - Absolutely brilliant.

I find most current sitcoms absolutely dire and the one person I do not find remotely funny is Miranda Hart.

Can't understand why your computer will not allow you to say Eth, Marg. Ooohhh Ron!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

See it has changed Ethel into the for you too Sue!(I had to put the full name for it to come right)
I loved that program.

I don't know any of the comedians you have mentioned other than Frankie Boyle.
I have never seen Miranda Hart as a comedienne either. I do like her in Call the Midwife...but that is because she fits my imaginings of the character when I read the books.(me and my imagination!)

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

What about Mrs Browns boys, that has me crying with laughing sometimes but does contain a bit of bad language, it must be the irish accent it doesnt sound as bad:D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

No, I don't like that either......himself watches it, but I have to say by the time my brain has translated the broad Oirish into understandable english....the laugh has passed and they are onto something else.........I must have had a sense of humour bypass while I was asleep....but I don't quite understand that if this had happened, why do Ma and I spend so much time almost crying with laughing when we go away?
And that Keith Lemon on Celebrity Juice....well I can't stay in the living room while that is on.......it is crude, coarse and makes me cringe with embarassment.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

I have relatives in ireland so i must be pre programmed in me genes to understand the accent that and i have worked with quite a few good ol boys over the years:D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Ah well, that gives you a head start then......as I have siad by the time I have figured out what they are saying, the joke is lost. And no i'm not tick! :D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Swear words are just that, "words" I think it is more the intent behind the word that become offensive.

For offensive words what about, redundency, gone into administration, tax increase, waiting list. These words offend me more that someone depriving me of my parents:fire: although there has to be a time and place for it.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Oh dear, short Ethel was OK when I first posted the message. Wonder what's going on?

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Yes and if you go in as if you wanted to edit, it had the short ethel there as large as life but once you saved it was back to the.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Yes, I know they are only words, but their intent is to be offensive...lots of the words are derogatory terms for parts of the anatomy,both male and female. Many people use these words without giving a thought to the offence that they may cause.......and in all honesty they are used so much these days that they have been devalued......however, I would speak to you how I would speak to my mother.......I would not swear in front of my mother and I do not expect others to do any different.......so it follows that some people must use the most rancid language to their parents.
To use swear words to make something funny, usually means that the comic is relying on the swearword to make it funny.......so no comedy there at all.


As for your other point, yes, those words have an impact that swearwords don't, because they affect the fabric of our daily life.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Sometimes swear words are used as terms of endearment! but I know what you mean about the use of swear words especialy in public places. I dont want to hear it if I havent invited it into my ears. Also I am sickened when I hear parents swearing at their little children, but to say anything invites trouble
The swear words that were around as a child are not swear words anymore, and perhaps todays profanities will be common place in years to come. Well more so than they are now.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Don't some women call their 'underneath bit' E t h e l ?
Maybe the swear thingy blocking it... :D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

This is a fascinating little story; and it does relate to the topic;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Contact_(novelette)

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Never heard that ?

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

That's made me laugh, thanks,Katex.

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

I was trying to use the diminutive though Kate......the system doesn't seem to have a problem with the full name Ethel........only the first three letters which it converts to THE

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Both my wife's parents were Irish and she used the Irish F word until I told her what it was in English, she was always a bit naive though:D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Is that a bit like Bob Newhart the Streak, Don't look Ethel, too late she's been mooned:D

Re: Lost Humor or Age Gap
 

Some teenagers in my day called it "Heavan"