ChristopherWhite.info

Jonathan Freedland has a novel out. Freedland claimed in a post on Comment is Free that there are a lot of parallels between writing a novel and reporting the news. It’ll be interesting to see how his own worldview comes through in the story, particularly given that a novel could probably easily contain about a year’s worth of column material. When Richard Littlejohn tried his hand at fiction, it was quite simplistic: the baddies were asylum seekers.

More often than not, the protaganist simply stands in for the author. Bearing in mind the previous post, how does this work in comedy? Chris Morris claims to be an antipolemicist, only making a point if it’s funny, when talking about Brass Eye, but Nathan Barley exists purely as a damning indictment of “media twats”, with the weary Dan Ashcroft representing Morris’s point of view.

Freud reckoned that jokes stood alongside dreams and slips of the tongue in revealing the subconcious. Freud talked a lot of rubbish.

But look at this, from series four of Auf Wiedersehen Pet:

Government official type: “This is a sensitive post so we will be carrying out extensive background checks.”
Several members of the team look at Oz, expecting him to reveal his spell at Her Majesty’s pleasure.
Oz: “I’ll tell you this now, as it would’ve come out anyway. I’ve got a son what’s a poof.”

That isn’t a joke - not from the perspective of the character. But it is funny - to the audience.

So…

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