… And reputedly he only had one😜
That’s fine with me and your choice.
DG…
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I somehow don’t think that this will happen on this Forum.
DG…
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The other’s in the Albert Hall ?
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Stranger than fiction? 
It’s difficult. I was an absolute expert up to my late twenties and then I’ve given it up since it was often too simple. Sometimes I’m weak though and call @skeptikal for his thing.
My best was when I was around 18/19.
I was visiting a friend and he had an interesting sister, she was into gymnastics. She was proudly telling about her training and couldn’t stop talking about it.
I responded: ‘I can imagine you in all positions’.
Her father standing next to her couldn’t keep his drink in.
Well, it’s a real story not a joke really but I do like it!
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As a rule I prefer humour that is situation based, so for example I love Whatever happened to the The Likely Lads, the Carry On movies, Fawlty Towers, Yes Minister etc. I find the problem with most stand-up comedy is that the constant roar of canned laughter annoys me.
Exceptions to this are people like Dave Allen and Billy Connoly who I do find very funny performing stand-up comedy. I agree about finding over-use of expletives annoying.
Here’s Dave Allen in magnificent form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBca1ixoEbg
Like all the best comedy, his is timeless…
JonathanG
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I couldn’t agree more - and Dave Allen was inimitable! I also like observational humour when done well - Ben Elton was very good at it, and more recently Michael McIntyre before he made it big. And that brings me to a comedian who fits perfectly with a forum of music listeners, Bill Bailey.
Not much blue in these people’s comedy, though never having seen any off TV I don’t know if they pander to the puerile off-screen.
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Bill Bailey was my wife’s favourite comedian - some classic scenes in the sketch series he did for the BBC, eg. the community philosopher addressing the crowd s from a flat-bed truck. There were many more.
Similarly, Peter Kay’s Phoenix Knights with the family day blowup penis because a bouncy castle wasn’t available…A comic genius.
I’ve been to a number of live shows of TV comedians over the years and found that their live shows are much raunchier, shall we say, than their TV shows.
However, there was one that I was really disappointed with and that was Phil Cool. His live show was exactly the same as his TV show, so there was nothing new.
I also used go and watch TV comedy shows being filmed in the studios. I recall going to see Hale and Pace and instead of a pre show warm-up man, Gareth Hale came out to do this. He was extremely funny and certainly told jokes that would not have been allowed to be broadcast.
DG…
I feel that comedians who have to swear all the time and be sex to get laughs not funny.
Think about some of the greats like Dave Allen or Tom O’Connor who were a bit smutty but very funny.
Michael McIntyre started well but now I find him not funny.
Those above used to talk a lot about the funny side of life.
It’s perfect understandable that people’s tastes differ. What is more challenging is that some people want to censor others on the basis of their personal views.
Where a large majority can agree that certain extreme material is likely to cause real harm, censorship is justified, but not IMO in the case of the run-of-the-mill stuff in the jokes thread.
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This is the same Dave Allen who was banned from Irish and Australian TV for being too offensive.
DG…
I don’t know who your favorite French humorist is or was, but bashing Schöberg after a century because of his use of the twelve tones is like mocking a painter because he’s not a figurativist - it reveals a poor, provincial and complacent mind, a narrow vision of art and, possibly, everything else.
Besides, a Quartet is not a Concerto - the general event is called a concert, a Concerto is a specific type of composition that includes a solo instrument and an orchestra. Or, more rarely, a solo instrument as in the Concerto Italiano by Bach.
Some people should really stay in bed at wakeup, but if they can’t resist the temptation to gift the world with their presence, at least remain silent.
Nothing personal - I am addressing the ‘humorist’.
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Context, delivery, intention.
I was recently listening to a podcast celebrating the making of ‘The Comittments’, a film that elevated prodigious swearing to the level of true poetry. I suppose people could have chosen to be offended by the language it contained if they wished but surely an example of it not being the words themselves but how they are used?
Bruce
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Because his observational humour made fun of the Catholic church, an institution of which he is likely to have had much knowledge. I have known Catholics who didn’t mind his irreverence and found him extremely funny, and others who were highly offended - though it was the church and its rituals he made fun of, not Catholic belief/teaching.
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And his use of the “F” word.
This was Dave Allen’s statement which caused him to be banned in Australia.
“ It was a live show, and we had live adverts, and people would come on and talk about shirts or motor cars or saws or ladders or paint or whatever it might be, and they used to throw to these live. And I was there, as the host, and I had to explain that there was another advert coming up, and then they’d do them live. The show was going very well with Peter and Dud - it was really zooming along, it was really kind of clouting along - but we kept on getting these interruptions from the producer. So at one point I said, you know, to the viewers: ‘I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. I know that you want to have a whole evening of commercials and we keep on interrupting you with this chat’. Which got a little giggle. And then, eventually, I got quite annoyed when he threw yet another ad at me and John Collins was his name - I said to him: 'John, do me a favour, please: just down the back of the studio there’s a curtain; just go there, masturbate quietly, and you’ll be happy, and we’ll be happy!”
DG…
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If anything drives me to a string of expletives it’s the repetitive ads on Global radio stations (eg. LBC). Weak attempts at humour delivered by females with strangulated articulation or dim-witted comedic men. Grrrr!
I did go to a live show featuring one TV comedy team which indeed was raunchier, but done well, and when they did use expletives they were in humorous context. It is the gratuitous f-ing and blinding because simply doing that raises a laugh that I personally find unpleasant. As for a show being boring because the same as you’d seen on TV, any comedian will only have a limited repertoire, with a show either evolving slowly over tine, or a theme used for a period of tine then changing a bit like a band when new albums are released - the live experience surely is only about atmosphere and otherwise minor performance variationas?