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Fawlty Towers - Don't mention the war.mpg

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There is no scientific consensus on what makes us laugh but it is thought the frontal lobe at the very front of the brain, which determines our emotional responses, plays a part, along with the limbic system.

The frontal lobe is split into two halves, the left and the right. The left is the practical side and works out if the sounds and images we're experiencing are a joke or not. The right side is the creative half and determines if we actually find the joke or situation funny or not.

The frontal lobe cannot start our laughter off though. That's up to the limbic system, located beneath the cerebral cortex. The limbic system handles basic emotions such as fear, anger and pleasure, and once it gets the message from the frontal lobe that we need to laugh at something, it sends another message out which sets the physical process of laughter in motion.

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There is no scientific consensus on what makes us laugh but it is thought the frontal lobe at the very front of the brain, which determines our emotional responses, plays a part, along with the limbic system. The frontal lobe is split into two halves, the left and the right.

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I met my girlfriend whilst she was working at the zoo. There she was in her uniform - straightaway I knew she was a keeper. Tony Cowards (@TonyCowards)

People tell me I take mini-golf too seriously, but my caddy disagrees. Glenn Moore​ (@TheNewsAtGlenn)

Interesting fact: T-shirt is short for Tyrannosaurus Shirt. Because of the short arms. Alice Fraser ( patreon.com/AliceFraser)

I've been learning German for twenty years. It's zwanzig Jahren. The Horne Section​ (@hornesection)

Just a quick note to say thanks to everybody for all the wonderful birthday cards and money yesterday. And to the Royal Mail for giving me the job. Ben Turner (@benturnercomedy)

Stretch marks are basically badges to say "well done for eating all the biscuits". Laura Lexx (@lauralexx)

Too many people leave their body to science. I'm going to leave mine to Geography and see if they can do anything with it. John-Luke Roberts (@jlukeroberts)

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25 funny jokes from comedians to cheer you up during the coronavirus pandemic

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I met my girlfriend whilst she was working at the zoo. There she was in her uniform - straightaway I knew she was a keeper. Tony Cowards (@TonyCowards) People tell me I take mini-golf too seriously, but my caddy disagrees. Glenn Moore​ (@TheNewsAtGlenn) Interesting fact: T-shirt is short for Tyrannosaurus Shirt.

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From Shakespeare's comedies to Billy Connolly's command of an audience, Gavin & Stacey's taste of Welsh whimsy to Derry Girls' earthy look at life in the 1990s, humour has been central to the history of storytelling across the UK for a long time.

But where does our humour actually come from, and is it tied to a quintessential idea of Britishness? We've asked one teacher of comedy to give us his thoughts.

Can we pin it down?

People all over the world laugh, but we don't all find the same things funny. While some gags might seem universally hilarious (slipping on a banana peel, anyone?), humour normally depends on the cultural norms of a people, their history and shared experiences, as well as what the mechanics of their language allow.

If you've ever tried to crack a joke based on a pun or a play on words to a non-native English speaker, and the punchline was followed by deafening silence, you'll know what we mean.

But is it possible to point to a map and know for sure what will cause some LOLs over there?

Dr Ian Wilkie, a lecturer in performance at the University of Salford, explains: "Having taught younger American students, they take the British sense of humour to be Monty Python, by which they mean a sort-of slightly erring towards the surreal, very iconoclastic in terms of attacking the big targets, very silly."

However, he says that, while those traits can become shorthand for 'the British sense of humour', he doesn't think "that cuts the mustard."

'Port cities'

Dr Wilkie points out that there are already differences in popular humour in the four home nations. It diversifies even more between the major cities, making it difficult to pinpoint a blanket 'British' humour.

One example is the Scottish brash-with-a-twinkle style of Billy Connolly or the more gentle approach of his compatriot Susan Calman: " Scottish people like witty jokes, there is a lot of respect for learning and that it likes quite hard-hitting jokes, ones of mockery."

While he notes there are similarities between Glaswegian humour and that found in other port cities, such as Liverpool, that Scottish style might not necessarily translate into a Welsh sense of humour, or a broader English one.

Attending a comedy night, with many different acts, would show how difficult it is to categorise humour along geographical lines:
"You may laugh at different aspects of their schtick, but it would then be difficult to say, 'well, there's a British sense of humour' because of the disparate kind of approaches and world views coming across."

Influences from overseas

Another element worth considering is how much the humour of other countries has influenced British comedy.

If you've sat and enjoyed the exaggerated characters in Fawlty Towers, the characters and scrapes they find themselves in reflect the sketches of the Commedia dell'arte, a form of theatre from 16th Century Italy. Among other elements, it involved a series of recognisable characters from all aspects of society engaged in witty dialogue.

Surrealism, long considered a staple of British humour - think Monty Python, Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer - was, as Dr Wilkie puts it, performed by: "Dadaists from countries that we may choose not to think of as particularly funny, such as Germany.

"They were doing surrealism to the nth degree, quite deliberately as a performative art, in the early part of the 20th Century. I think it's something we like to appropriate in a way and imagine that we're the custodians of it, but it's not culturally specific at all."

When nostalgia meets humour

With Monty Python held up as a good example of leftfield humour from the UK, the Carry On... series of films suggests a national affection for a less sophisticated bawdiness loaded with double entendres.

While they did enjoy popularity outside the UK (Carry On Nurse ran in Los Angeles for more than two-and-a-half years on its initial release), Dr Wilkie doesn't see the humour contained within the 30 titles of the franchise as something that defines a nation. If anything, it's a comfort blanket.

Dr Wilkie explained: "Carry On... kind of made fun of itself in its day, it was already slightly self-consciously old-fashioned and seaside postcard, but people could enjoy it because they could say, all bets are off really, we're going to see something that's sexist, end of the pier and a bit silly and that was fine."

The jelly explanation

It's these different styles and presentations of comedy by British performers which Dr Wilkie believes make it impossible for an academic to point, with confidence, at various elements and state categorically that they alone make up the nation's famed sense of humour.

"No, I wouldn't say there is a British sense of humour," he concluded. "I think the best you can hope for is some big, beacon terms (eg. sarcasm, understatement, self-deprecation), that maybe, over a fair amount of time, might hold water.

"Comedy and humour is always so completely open to counter examples that you can never really pin anything down.

"It's like trying to nail jelly to a wall."

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From Shakespeare's comedies to Billy Connolly's command of an audience, Gavin & Stacey's taste of Welsh whimsy to Derry Girls' earthy look at life in the 1990s, humour has been central to the history of storytelling across the UK for a long time.

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British humour is one of a kind. The type that will make you gasp and do a quick recap of what was just being said and wonder if the person's being serious or not. The type that could actually change the way you feel about a person. Want to live in the UK?

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British comedy seems to be at an all time high in popularity across the pond, with shows like The Office, Shameless, Absolutely Fabulous and L ittle Britain, plus a catalog of British films, appealing to many in the US. However, Brits are known for their rather sarcastic sense of humour and anyone who has visited the US will know that it can be taken the wrong way. So why is it that British comedy is so popular in the US? We caught up with some British actors to ask them why they think British comedy works in America.

Karen Bryson stars as Avril in Shameless, a show that has been successfully transported Stateside, and shares her views: "British comedy does well in the US because the Brits have a warped, slightly off the wall sense of humour. We find the 'funny' in almost anything." However, to make a comedy actually work in the US is a whole different matter. Bryson continues, "the whole thing needs to be transposed. It would prove pointless trying to mix it up. The Brit comedies that work are the comedies that have taken the seed, the idea, the characters and transported them into the right American situation, with an American cast. Otherwise watch the British version!!"

"British comedy does well in the US because the Brits have a warped, slightly off the wall sense of humor." Karen Bryson

Bryson nails one of the reasons why comedy does so well "Brit comedies (films) tend to depict a slice of British life which is quite stereotypical, a little quaint, starring a slightly buffoonish, loveable lead." She is proud that British shows are being recognised in tinsel town and has a sneaky favourite American show herself, Friends. This talented actress also loves how the US version of Shameless has really worked in America " I think Shameless US has done a fantastic job of transposing the whole thing. So even though the idea, the feel, the characters and even the scripts are the same, it's a completely different show."

No stranger to comedy or drama, popular and talented actress Tanya Franks' comedic credits include Pulling, Skins and the The Cup. Franks openly shares that she doesn't feel qualified to answer, "because I'm not an American to whom British comedy appeals. However, I am in the know so I asked the question of my biz partner producer/lawyer Todd Shill, as he is American and adores British comedy. He hits the nail on the head and I'm sharing with you his answer: "American audiences are very used to comedy being delivered in an open and obvious manner, whereas British comedy is oftentimes more subtle and requires the audience to look deeper into character development to find humor. Not that one delivery method is better than the other, but I think it's appealing to American audiences to search for the comedy rather than just watch and react. Frank adds "or I could've just turned around and said, 'haven't got a clue'". Tanya is a fan of American comedy, naming Taxi, South Park and Girls as favourites.

Or I could've just turned around and said, "Haven't got a clue". Tanya Franks

Two of the Stars from the upcoming British Comedy Amar Akbar and Tony, Rez Kempton and Martin Delaney have their own opinions on why British comedy shows and films shine in the US.

Kempton has a very interesting point, that "Britain has such a long established tradition of blending comedy with drama. If you look even back to Shakespeare's play's you'll have laugh out load comedy, alongside really dark tragedy. More recently if you look at British movies such as The Full Monty or Brassed Off you've got serious issues being dealt with sensitivity, but laughs too."

"Britain has such a long established tradition of blending comedy with drama". Rez Kempton

He shares that the comedy might also work as "American Audiences can relate to diverse community living and sharing life's experiences together, because America has always welcomed people from the globe, to come and pursue their dream." Films like Bend it Like Beckham worked in America, Amar Akbar and Tony has a similar theme, the film follows the story of three friends from different backgrounds who live side by side and share their life's ups and downs together. Kempton loves some of the American comedies too, including Curb Your Enthusiasm, 30 Rock and like Karen, Friends.

Martin Delaney adds we do "comedy and sentiment well, without being too cheesy". He feels the Office was show that did particularly well in the US and is looking forward to the American version of Gavin and Stacey. Delaney also shares "British comedy films tend to get all the laughs, whilst finding the truth & heart in the story & performances. It also gives a slice of life from a different culture and I think that's interesting to US audiences".

"British comedy films tend to get all the laughs, whilst finding the truth and heart in the story and performances". Martin Delaney

Martin loves "... New Girl at the moment. I think the whole cast is awesome & the writing; slick. It just has so much appeal. I met Zooey Deschanel this year at a pre-Oscar party in Beverley Hills and she is the most charming lady, I am an even bigger fan now!" He would also love to see stateside Him & Her written by the awesome Stefan Golaszewski, starring Russell Tovey & Sarah Solemani. "I think it would really work as a US format. It's a great comedy and entirely up to date."

Jan Anderson has acted in comedies both sides of the atlantic, including Curb Your Enthusiasm in the US and the new British feature The Fitzroy in the UK. Anderson thinks it could be because US comedy is based more on jokes and set ups, while British comedy is subtle and character based, that makes it popular in the US. She would love to see a "US version of Absolutely Fabulous," but also thinks "it would be hard to beat the UK version." As to her American favourites, Jan loves the unique characters and writing in The Big Bang Theory and New Girl.

"British comedy is subtle and character based." Jan Anderson

So is it our comedy and sentiment, our warped sense of humour, character based scripts or our blend of comedy and drama? Whatever your opinion, it looks like our sense of humour has crept over the big pond and is there to stay.

You can catch up with the UK version of Shameless online and the new British comedies A mar, Akbar and Tony and The Fitzroy will be out at the end of the year. Tanya Franks can currently be seen on stage in Sherlock Holmes, Best Kept Secret.

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Why Is British Comedy So Popular in the US?

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British comedy seems to be at an all time high in popularity across the pond, with shows like The Office , Shameless . However, Brits are known for their rather sarcastic sense of humour and anyone who has visited the US will know that it can be taken the wrong way.

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Maeve Higgins once set herself a task. The Irish-born comedian wanted to see what life would be like if she stopped laughing at things that weren't funny. Turns out it wasn't as easy as she thought. "It was so effing hard," she says. "Laughter is a lubricant and is expected, and it's really hard not to do it."

It's coming up for 11pm on a bone-chillingly cold Tuesday night in New York. Higgins and her friend Jon Ronson are huddled backstage behind a thick black curtain, mulling over how the latest gig in their monthly stand-up series, I'm New Here - Can You Show Me Around?, went. They're pleased. Tonight's assorted comics went down well with the punters, a youngish, hip crowd who'd braved the bitter weather to sit in a packed, dimly lit venue under a pub - all in search of some laughs.

The show is loosely predicated on the theme of being bewildered recent arrivals in a new town, as Higgins and Ronson were not so long ago in Brooklyn. Higgins (a virtuoso comic, author and TV personality in her native Ireland) and Ronson (better known as the bestselling author of The Psychopath Test and The Men Who Stare at Goats) suggest there's something particularly special about being part of the shared experience that is live comedy - that curious alchemy that occurs when people come together specifically to laugh (or not, depending on the quality of the acts).

"It's connection," Ronson says. "That's what this show's about. It's about us and the audience connecting with each other... There's something about being in the same room with somebody, reading each other's body language, too."

Higgins nods. "Definitely. It's a communal thing; it's a release." Perhaps, she says, because audiences tend to be squeezed together in comedy clubs, acts get to be accidental anthropologists and observe at close quarters how individuals interact when exposed to jokes or funny tales. "You [might] see a couple," Higgins says, "and you can tell that they're checking each other's responses. Like, can I laugh at this?"

Making people laugh has the potential to make the joke teller feel a bit better, too. "This is perfect for me," says Ronson of the set-up, an intimate informal space in which the two hosts casually banter and tell stories in between a succession of comedians taking to the stage. "This is totally a therapy for me, doing this show."

Comedy is more than just a pleasant way to pass an evening, humour more than something to amuse. They're interwoven into the fabric of our everyday existence. Whether you're sharing an amusing story down the pub, making a self-deprecating joke after someone pays you a compliment or telling a dark joke at a funeral, humour is everywhere. But what is it for? And can humour, as comedy, change how we feel, what we think or even what we do?

As an integral part of human interaction, humour has been on the minds of thinkers for centuries. As Peter McGraw and Joel Warner explain in their recent book, The Humor Code: A global search for what makes things funny, "Plato and Aristotle contemplated the meaning of comedy while laying the foundations of Western philosophy... Charles Darwin looked for the seeds of laughter in the joyful cries of tickled chimpanzees. Sigmund Freud sought the underlying motivations behind jokes in the nooks and crannies of our unconscious."

One of the most enduring theories of humour arrived courtesy of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. It asserts that humour is ostensibly about mocking the weak and exerting superiority. While this is clearly the function of some comedy - anyone who has flinched at a comic's lame attempt to poke fun at, for example, disability will attest to this - it's a relentlessly bleak and far from complete explanation of the purpose of humour.

"My first thought when I think about humour is it's a great way for us to have evolved so we don't have to hit each other with sticks," says Scott Weems, a cognitive neuroscientist and author.

In his recent book, Ha! The science of when we laugh and why, Weems reviews a raft of academic studies, including those that have used scanning to show which parts of the brain respond when we encounter something funny. In the book, he posits a theory: essentially, that humour is a form of psychological processing, a coping mechanism that helps people to deal with complex and contradictory messages, a "response to conflict and confusion in our brain".

This, in part, he says, is why we laugh in response to dark, confusing or tragic events that, on the face of it, shouldn't be funny at all. Why, for example, would jokes circulate after 9/11 if we weren't collectively grasping for ways to parse how unsettling and disruptive it was? Humour that is in bad taste or cruelly targeted at particular groups may generate conflict, but, for Weems, humour is our way of working through difficult subjects or feelings.

Over the years, researchers have built a substantial body of evidence that some types of comedy - including sophisticated satire, which is growing in popularity - perform a potent social function, from breaking taboos to holding those in power to account. Avner Ziv, who has written numerous books about humour, explores this theme extensively. As he writes in Personality and Sense of Humor, "comedy and satire possess a common denominator in that both try to change or reform society by means of humour. The two forms together constitute the best illustration there is of the social function of humour."

You don't have to look hard for examples of comics placing social justice at the centre of their work. New York-based Negin Farsad's new book, How to Make White People Laugh, has been described as "memoir meets social-justice-comedy manifesto", and the one-time social policy analyst talks about comedy as a platform for advancing social justice.

For some comedians, it's not just about getting laughs - it's about changing what we think and maybe even what we do. If there's one comic who really personifies this, it's Josie Long. A social justice activist and a comedian, Long has a reputation for delightful, optimistic, whimsical humour and nimble storytelling. She's been doing live comedy since her teens and her latest BBC radio show, Romance and Adventure, has been widely lauded.

However, as her career has evolved, she has consciously put social and political topics at the heart of her act. She believes that comedians have a role to play in articulating and challenging some of the most pressing issues of the day.

"Politics can leave you beleaguered, plagued, miserable," she says. "It's that maxim where they say, 'Satire is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted'. That's why humour was important [to me]. It was a way to be useful for other people." In her work, Long filters the political realities of contemporary Britain - especially what she sees as overt injustices by government - through humour.

It's vital to understand the job comedy can do in actively providing a counterbalance to bigotry and prejudice as well as understanding the types of humour that reinforce negative stereotypes, she says. "I want to make sure I'm punching up, not punching down."

There is a "powerful place" both within the comedy spectrum and society, Long says, for the sort of audacious, disruptive and challenging observations of comics like John Oliver and Stewart Lee, who she admires. That they have a role in contemporary society beyond just making people laugh is undeniable; their work is evidence of the impact comedy can have more widely. "John Oliver is in a position where he has more people watching him than commentators," she says.

"Whatever happens in British society, stand-up immediately begins a process of discussing and reinterpreting it," says Sophie Quirk, a University of Kent academic and the author of the 2014 book Why Stand-up Matters. "This process necessarily involves more than just an expression of the individual performer's viewpoint. If we find a joke offensive, we protest by not laughing at it."

In many ways, Quirk says, the sorts of observations made by comics such as Long are reinforced by her recent academic work, which has involved lengthy interviews with jobbing comics. "I think sometimes the literature ignores [the] fact that comedy does many things," she says. "Joking socially is a way of bonding with people." Political comedy, she argues, can foster a sense of shared ideals. "If you're getting people together and talking about views that in the broader social context are quite marginal, and we're all laughing together at those, then you're kind of affirming them."

"I think comedy can be a way of passing on nasty ideas," she says, echoing Long, adding that it's important to study in what ways humour reinforces or undermines stereotypes.

According to John Fugelsang - a New York-based political comedian, writer and actor who hosts the radio show Tell Me Everything - the recent ascendance of political comedy is one of the most fascinating aspects of the role of humour in US entertainment, and in the country's broader culture, too. While you do sometimes just need something silly to watch, comedy has much greater resonance than it tends to be given credit for.

"I think it's innate that if someone can make you laugh over what a mess everything is, then that person has not just earned your admiration but, on some level, has also earned your trust." In the case of the USA, he says, the comedy has had to get so good because the news has got so bad. "This could be the best time ever to be a political comedian, and they may be needed more than ever."

The best comedians, he argues, are our most effective anthropologists and cultural critics. "Political comedy, when done right, is a delivery system for truth."

British comic Stephen K Amos sells out venues seating thousands, year in, year out, and has successful BBC Radio 4 programmes under his belt. Amos is convinced that when comics consciously tackle pressing or controversial social issues like racism and homophobia, they can reach people on a much more meaningful level than that achieved by briefly lifting someone's mood. And while it may be difficult to quantify, he says, the social and psychological impact of comedy warrants much greater recognition.

Obviously, some comedy has no overt social goals at all - it's not like the bulk of comedians are trying to change the world - but Amos contends that one of the singular properties of certain comedy "when done well" is the freedom to explore ideas in an unconventional or counterintuitive way, to subvert society's norms.

The research backs this up. Although the role of comedy is to be entertaining first and foremost, through interviewing comedians, Sharon Lockyer, a sociology lecturer and the director of the Centre for Comedy Studies Research at Brunel University, has identified a number of possible other functions. These include challenging "stereotypes and dominant discourses that marginalise and stigmatise particular individuals", for example in relation to disability and sexuality.

Amos's work frequently tackles the issues of race and homosexuality by upending stereotypes. "I don't do things for shock value," he says. "I do stuff that matters to me. In the old days it was just about doing jokes. We've moved on - people are talking about things that matter."

As an example of what comedy can do, Amos tells the story of a teenager who came up to him after a gig that featured Amos relaying his own tale of coming out as gay to his family. "The lad came up to me and went: 'I'm here on my own... I think I'm gay and I'm going to tell my parents about it tonight.'" In another instance, a woman who brought her "very grumpy" dad to a gig told Amos that his set had made her father rethink his views on gay people.

"Oh my god, when you touch people on that level? What I'm doing is assisting you to release those chemicals in your body to make you laugh uncontrollably. And if that means challenging your preconceived ideas about who I am, great. We can run with that."

"Very often what comedians can do is use logic to make painful things make sense," says John Fugelsang. "They can articulate complicated emotions and arguments by using jokes as a framing mechanism, when just existing in the heart unexamined can be murky and amorphous."

When it comes to issues like social justice, "humour can be a social corrective," he says. "We see this in African American comedy, LGBT comedy, Latino comedy, religious humour, feminist humour. It validates shared experiences, gets us to think more flexibly and reframe situations in this shared experience we call life."

Similarly convinced of comedy's potential to change us is Alfie Moore. A cop by profession and also a regular on the BBC, Moore's day job is a serious one, yet he harnesses his experience of it to push boundaries with his comedy. His stock-in-trade is poking fun at policing and walking "a fine line" between the serious and the silly, deploying jokes to expose nonsensical policies.

People come to his shows with their own ideas about policing, Moore says, but can leave with their perceptions altered about what the job is and how it slots into society. "One phrase I heard recently was, 'If they're laughing they're listening', and I think that's a powerful quote.

"Nobody ever listened to me when I was in the police. I had no influence. I'd never met senior officers and I'd never met my chief constable. Now I've been out of the police, lots of people listen to me. The Radio 4 show got 1.4 million listeners per episode. I had chief constables emailing me."

Liz Carr's wickedly dark comedy pivots on challenging perceptions. Like Amos, Carr, who is also an actor and writer, says that to regard comedy merely as something frivolous would constitute a failure to comprehend its place in the world. With a career spanning radio, television (she currently stars in the hit drama Silent Witness), stand-up and sketch comedy, Carr was one of the pioneers in the flourishing arena of comics with disabilities.

She's known for repeatedly defying convention: in her comedy she uses language such as 'crip' (short for cripple) that's ordinarily associated with demeaning disabled people, as a way of reclaiming it. She's about to ruffle a few more feathers by making a musical comedy about assisted dying, to be performed at London's Royal Festival Hall in the autumn of 2016. It is, she says, another example of how humour can be trained on even the most sombre of topics and prod people towards rethinking preconceived notions.

"Often we don't know how to react about things," she says. "And there's an expectation that you shouldn't laugh at this or at that. I'm thinking about disability [here]. People are, 'Oh... we don't want to offend anyone.' So there's something about, if you can break that down in laughter, it's like a relief and a release valve.

"Just your presence at any time changes people - changes interactions... I just think [comedy] opens people up in a way that I've not found any other medium works."

Social scientist Sharon Lockyer has been studying the connection between comedy and disability. She's published articles that examine disabled comedians' views on the British TV comedy industry and on the cultural shift from disabled people being largely targets of comedy to being 'comedy makers'.

Lockyer thinks that this shift and other changes, such as disparaging jokes becoming less tolerated, are indicative of wider changes in society. "The political potential of comedy clearly suggests that comedy is worth taking seriously," she says.

Our appetite for comedy is growing. The biggest comics - from Sarah Millican and Michael McIntyre in the UK to Chris Rock and Amy Schumer in the USA - pull thousands upon thousands into gigs.

Hugely successful performers such as Louis CK and shows like Broad City have distributed their comedy over the internet, and there is a profusion of funny Vines and YouTube clips. Some of the best podcasts are comedic, including Marc Maron's WTF, which gets a reported 5 million downloads a month and an average 450,000 downloads per episode. There's even a podcast for comedians by a comedian, aptly titled The Comedian's Comedian Podcast.

Academic researchers are also increasingly interested in humour, often being lumped together under the epithet 'humorologists'. In 2009, a research lab dedicated to the "scientific study of humor, its antecedents, and its consequences" opened at the University of Colorado Boulder (the Humor Research Lab there is affectionately known as 'HuRL'). And in the UK, the Centre for Comedy Studies Research (CCSR) was set up at Brunel University in 2013 to study the social impact of comedy. Then there's the International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS) and its quarterly journal, HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, and the biannual journal Comedy Studies.

Peter McGraw, a coauthor of The Humor Code and an expert in emotion and behavioural decision theory at HuRL, was once told by an Ivy League acquaintance that studying humour was a "career killer". But he suggests that because we are likely to experience humour much more often than emotions like fear or regret, studying it has as much academic merit as supposedly more worthy topics.

"People pursue [humour] in all these parts of their lives: their entertainment consumption, with their friends and families. And there's evidence about using it to cope. Another thing I think is an important puzzle - is that when you try to be funny and you fail... you can create conflict. You can upset people. You can anger people."

Only when Sophie Quirk links comedy to an established 'serious' subject, like politics, or to negativity do people think there is any value in it. "Just because it's fun, doesn't mean it's insignificant," she says. "People think that [studying] fear must be very important. But laughter, the state of being amused - because it's fun and exciting, that's the reason it's been neglected and that's really, really odd."

Research is exploring all kinds of aspects - from what happens in the brain when we 'get' a joke, to the cardiovascular benefits of a good laugh. It could also shed light on the nature of people who choose comedy as a career. For example, research presented in 2014 suggested that, despite their work, comedians had less activity in brain regions associated with the pleasure and enjoyment of humour compared to everyone else.

"This generation is when we are going to start seeing people studying humour like they studied intelligence," Scott Weems tells me. "Humour may be the way of finally getting at what is special about the human condition... I don't know if it will be in my lifetime, but we're getting close."

On the opposite side of the USA to Maeve Higgins and Jon Ronson, Jamie Masada is brimming with energy. He's in the heavily upholstered upstairs bar overlooking the stage of the Laugh Factory comedy club on Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles. He's about to host a weekly open mic night where aspiring comics perform three minutes of the best material they can muster. It doesn't matter that most of them will be rubbish (he's seen it all in the 30 years he's run the night) - at least they'll have a go at making people laugh.

Masada, who migrated to America from Iran as a teenager, says with complete sincerity that if observing audiences night in, night out has taught him anything, it's that comedy can have a profound impact on how we feel, and even how we act. He recounts seeing people arrive at comedy clubs looking utterly miserable, but then leaving with a smile on their face, visibly transformed - married couples that turned up barely speaking leaving holding hands.

"It's so fundamental to us," he says. "We need comedy like air to breathe." Masada's ebullience could be read as self-serving (he does run comedy clubs after all), but that doesn't mean he's not on to something. For many comics there are profound mechanisms at play in their work, especially when the humour veers towards political and wider social issues.

"You should have a go!" he urges me, with a broad smile on his face. "Making someone laugh is the greatest power any human being can have!" He isn't joking.

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This is an edited version of an article originally published by Mosaic, and is reproduced under a Creative Commons licence.

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Why is humour such a powerful means of communication - and what can it tell us about the human condition?

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Non-stop British humour

Many Brits believe that the British sense of humour is unique, more subtle and more highly developed than other nations.

Popular British playwright Oscar Wilde made this point quite clearly and deliberately when he said, "It is clear that humour is far superior to humor".

Perhaps the most confusing part of British humour however, is that there is no 'off' switch. Almost every conversation between Brits is bound to feature some form of irony, sarcasm, banter, understatement, self-deprecation, teasing or mockery.

When every word exchanged between Brits has an undercurrent of humour, it becomes difficult to decipher when a Brit is joking or being serious.

This is even more problematic considering the delivery of jokes is almost always done with a deadpan face.

The rule of thumb is therefore, if someone is saying something which makes absolutely no sense with a straight face, they're probably joking.

The British are the masters of the deadpan face
Flickr / Jaume Escofet

Core of British humour: irony and sarcasm

The British have a unique partiality for irony and are always ready to whip out a sarcastic quip when the opportunity presents itself.

An extremely dry example of this would be for a British person to comment on how delightful the weather is when it is pouring outside.

The British make use of irony and it's derivative, sarcasm, to say the opposite of what they mean in order to make a point.

This typically occurs when a Brit is confronted with a silly question, such as when British actress Cara Delevigne was asked on US television if she had read John Green's book, Paper Towns, before starring in the movie.

Delevigne scoffed and replied, "No, I never read the book or the script, I just winged it".

For the rest of the world, there is a time and a place for irony. For the Brits, that time and place is wherever and whenever.

It is this constant use of irony in conversation which can make the British come across as tiresome and rude to outsiders.

British fondness for understatement

In refusing to be overwhelmed by anything, the British resort to rather emotionless statements, such as "Not bad" when they really mean, "That's actually quite good".

British speech is littered with understatement. The Debretts guide to British social skills, etiquette and style notes that British conversations are filled with moderating expressions, such as 'quite', 'rather', 'a bit', 'actually'.

A 'spot of bother' or 'a bit of a pickle' may understate that things are disastrous, in the same way that "Let's go out for a pint" usually means going out for many, many more drinks.

A classic example of British understatement can be seen in the 'Black Knight' scene from Monty Python, where upon having his arm chopped off the Black Knight proclaims, "Tis but a scratch":

Self-deprecation

The British do not parade their achievements and are deeply hostile to pomposity.

Instead of boasting and blowing their own trumpets, the Brits tend to make light of their shortcomings by being excessively modest and putting themselves down.

Obvious sources of self-deprecating humour include one's accent, age, physical build, baldness, prominent features, geekiness or strange name.

British comedian and self-proclaimed 'language nerd', David Mitchell, is a well-known self-deprecator.

In an episode of Would I Lie to You? Mitchell mocks himself by calling his beard a "failure in personal hygiene".

Watch David Mitchell defend his 'noteworthy appearance'

In dealing with the embarrassment of success through such self-mockery, the Brits believe they appear more humble and relatable.

Fellow Brits are able to read beneath the self-deprecation and admire them for their modesty.

It is particularly important for the Brits to not appear too big for their boots when it comes to addressing an audience.

British public speaking website, Speak Like a Pro, emphasises that people who have the ability to laugh at themselves are generally perceived as being secure, confident, and likeable.

Weak people, on the other hand, tend to feel a need to inflate themselves.

Comedian Jon Richardson is the perfect example of the extremely likeable self-deprecator.

Sexy self-deprecation

A recent two-year study on 'The Sexual Attractiveness of Self-Deprecating Humour' found that self-deprecating humour is the most attractive type of humour.

Participants in the study listened to recordings of men and women who had different levels of status, and who produced different types of humour.

The most desirable mates proved to be men and women of high status who made use of self-deprecating humour.

A self-deprecating Hugh Grant steals Julia Roberts' heart in Notting Hill
YouTube / PictureBox Films

The study warns that while effective, self-deprecation can be a risky form of humour as it can draw attention to one's real faults and diminish the self-deprecator's status.

Negative humour: Teasing and taking the piss

Besides finding it funny to self-denigrate, the British use those around them as sources of humour too.

As Julian Tan argues in an article for the Huffington Post, "Why else would you have an extra 'u' in humour if not for the fact that the joke is most often on you?"

A few years back a scientist claimed that typically British 'negative humour' which includes biting sarcasm, teasing, ridicule and self-denigration, is linked to genes only found in British men and women.

This claim followed a study conducted on 4,000 twins in the UK and US.

Dr Rod Martin, one of the researchers, said it is possible that differences exist between the UK and the US in their sense of humour as a result of different genetic and environmental influences.

The Brits use negative humour in a positive way
Toyaps.com

While classed as 'negative humour', for the British, to tease is to show approval and affection.

The same holds true for taking the piss (or taking the mickey), which quite literally means to mock and make fun of someone.

The Brits are also known to 'take the piss' in an attempt to deflate somebody of their mistaken belief that they are special. Again, this can be seen as affectionate.

Alternatively, negative humour can be used to chip away at narcissistic characters who take themselves too seriously.

British humour isn't actually funny

Much of British humour is not obviously hilarious and does not result in fits of laughter.

According to anthropologist Kate Fox, "At best a well-timed quip only raises a slight smirk".

The most difficult part of British humour for foreigners is that it is not often funny across cultures.

But those unaccustomed to British humour need not worry. For the best thing about British humour is that it is not something you can learn, it's something that grows on you.
This article originally appeared on Brits in Pieces - Explore and make sense of British behaviour

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