A question I often get asked is “How do you come up with ideas for jokes and routines?”

A question I get asked even more often is “Why do you come up with ideas for jokes and routines?”

So, now might be as good a time (I’m writing this at half-past three in the morning) as any to give you what some comedians with a high opinion of themselves would pretentiously refer to as a ‘Masterclass In Comedy Writing”.

So, here’s my “Masterclass In Comedy Writing”….I’m just joshing with you. Get over yourself!

You may have heard certain jokes referred to as ‘one-liners’.  While there certainly are jokes that only contain one line, as in “Did you hear about the karate expert who saluted and knocked himself out?”, 99% of so-called ‘one-liners’ are constructed of two lines known as ‘The Set Up’ and ‘The Pay Off’ – which is sometimes called ‘The Punchline’.

A good joke is similar to a magician’s trick. He uses mis-direction and sleight of hand to ensure you’re looking the other way before he produces the playing card you chose earlier from inside a lemon.

Similarly, a comedian initially takes the audience in one direction so they expect the joke to end a certain way and then suddenly changes direction with the pay off which, hopefully, takes the audience by surprise and causes them to split their sides.

An old example of this type of joke is…

SET UP: “I was in a restaurant last night and amazed the waiter by ordering every course in fluent French!”

PAY OFF: “It was a Chinese restaurant!”

An even simpler way of getting laughs is to add the words “…as the Actress said to the Bishop!” after an opening comment.  Why an Actress and why a Bishop, who knows? But it’s a formula that works, as I’ll prove.

“I’ve never seen one that bends in the middle….as the Actress said to the Bishop”.

“It works just as well the other way around….as the Bishop said to the Actress!”.

Don’t blame me.  It’s all in your mind!