Hal’s Reading Diary: September 2005

At four and a half years Hal finds lots of thing funny. His father, psychodynamic counsellor Roger Mills, reflects on the interaction between developmental issues and the part that humour plays in Hal’s life.

Last night I sat down with Hal before he went to bed to read a Tintin book – The Castafiore Emerald . It wasn’t a great success. Too many small images and the lack of a narrative voice lost Hal’s interest fairly quickly. But there were a couple of pages that had him roaring with laughter. In these, a succession of characters tripped over a broken step in Captain Haddock’s chateau and went flying, landing in a heap with stars orbiting their heads. This got me thinking about the kinds of things that make Hal laugh. There are three basic forms of humour in his comic repertoire. The broken step joke is a classic example of the ‘banana skin’ gag – anything where someone trips, falls, bangs a finger or gets hit on the head fits the bill.

Comic form number two for Hal is nonsense. We recently had a party for him with a clown who excelled in this type of gag. ‘Hello! You must be the birthday girl,’ she greeted Hal on arrival in front of all his friends. ‘Nooooo,’ they roared, ‘He’s a boy.’ ‘He’s a toy!’ the clown shot back. ‘He doesn’t look much like a toy to me.’ ‘A BOY!’ the kids howled. Nonsense gags aren’t quite such a winner with Hal but he still thinks they are pretty good.

However, the form of gag that Hal will return to time after increasingly trying time, is anything that features the word ‘poo’. I am unclear how typical this is of four and a half year-olds. Fairly I would think. And I am also unclear if this is more of a boy thing than a girl thing. But boy does he love it. ‘Dad, you’re a poo,’ is Hal’s idea of a really very funny joke. ‘Dad, you’re a poo,’ said thirty times in succession is Hal’s idea of an even funnier joke. We have tried to wean him off it by being cross, not responding, ignoring him. But he plugs away at poo jokes undaunted.

It is easy to see these forms of humour as infantile. But a moment’s reflection shows that these comic forms are alive and well in adult comedy. The banana skin gag is a slapstick staple in many films. Nonsense also gets a lot of airplay – Monty Python being perhaps the most obvious example. And poo humour also remains a hardy perennial in adult comedy, albeit in the modified form of jokes about sex. Why these things amuse us so much is a fascinating question in itself though it will have to be for another day. But it is interesting to note that as far as humour is concerned we don’t put away childish things when we grow older. The precise material of the jokes may change, but the basic forms have been with us from when we were Hal’s age.