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Transcription of interview with Brian Luff on October 29, 2012.
Douglas Goldstein, CFPÆ, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Brian Luff is from London and has been in the comedy world for decades. He runs an organization
called Think Funny which has workshops for individuals and businesses who wants to learn
more about comedy writing.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Luff on Arutz Sheva Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: Whatís Think Funny all about?
Brian Luff: When I started writing for TV about 10-15 years ago, I used to get lots
of emails from people saying, ìHow do I break into the business? Iíd really love to be
a comedy writer.î First of all, we started doing a workshop about how to write sketches
for TV. In fact, people came from all over the UK for these workshops and quite quickly,
it became a significant part of our production company so we decided for a whole range of
workshops. We do one about standup comedy where we take people who wanted to do that
first ever standup gig and we helped to build their confidence. We teach them techniques
for brainstorming ideas and teaching them a bit of a microphone technique. We basically
tell them all of the mistakes that people make when they first do their standup gig
because this is a scary thing.
Douglas Goldstein: Now you do more corporate work so you teach people in the industry how
to be funny?
Brian Luff: Yes, like for example next week, weíre doing a workshop for a company in the
city of London who have a team of customer-facing people and we are taking them to a hotel for
3 days and each day, 10 of them are going to write material about the company and at
the end of each day, theyíre going to do a show to their colleagues and hopefully,
theyíre going to get some laughs, but theyíre going to go from a standing style having never
performed comedy before and in one day, theyíre going to become comedy performers. Itís a
scary stuff.
Douglas Goldstein: What can you actually teach someone?
Brian Luff: We start off by teaching them a bit of the theory. If someoneís not naturally
funny, you canít make them funny but you canít teach them techniques and a lot of
the techniques that comedians used are very tried and tested. They are very funny. Things
like the rule of three, using repetition, using what we called substitution and callback.
These are all the things that you can actually teach and even if youíre not the funniest
born guy in the world, learning these techniques can actually help you to fight it.
Douglas Goldstein: Why would someone in my position want to learn comedy?
Brian Luff: You wouldnít necessarily go on stage and talk about all of that stuff although
they do say that you should write about what you know. People completely reinvent themselves
when they go on stage. I donít know whether youíve ever seen the British comedian called
Harry Hill. This guy has created almost a cartoon version of himself so in some ways,
you can go and become the complete opposite of your real self on stage and in doing that,
itís very liberating. Youíve always got that choice. You can either be an exaggerated
version of yourself and go and tell stories about independent financial advice or you
could dress up as a Page Three model and you could do a completely different routine about
being a Page Three model on being the tabloid press for example.
Douglas Goldstein: Letís say someone wants to learn the tools of comedy so he can use
it in the workplace perhaps maybe from a leadership standpoint or teambuilding standpoint, what
are we looking at here?
Brian Luff: Comedy is a communication skill and if you can make people smile, in my view,
I think people are more likely to like you and to trust you whether or not youíre on
stage or whether or not that is in a business setting. It can go badly wrong.
Iím sure youíve seen David Brent in The Office. This is a character created by Ricky
Gervais who was trying so hard to be entertaining and funny in the workplace that it actually
back fight on him and he became a figure of fun but for the wrong reason. A lot of people
that come on our workshops are not actually planning to be standup comedians as a job
but they simply want to become more confident people and they think to themselves, ìIf
I could go on stage in a comedy club in front of 500 people then thatís going to make addressing
the board meeting on Monday to a half full of people seems quite easy in comparison.
I do workshop on Skype and one of the guys that I did workshop with this time last year
was a vicar in Southampton in south of England. When he came on to attend funny workshops,
he only actually wanted to do was to improve his confidence and to make his servants in
church more entertaining. We persuaded him to actually go and do a 10-mintue standup
routine in a comedy club and heís actually now became quite addicted so the whole idea
of becoming a standup comedian despite the fact that that wasnít why he came to us in
the first place.
Douglas Goldstein: What are some of the tools that you bring to the table to convert someone
in one day from being a regular guy to being pretty funny?
Brian Luff: We have to remember that people that write comedy for a living, that brains
are wide, slightly different from the rest of the universe and they look the world in
a completely different way, but some of the ways they look at the world out as a I said
very formulate.
Thereís a technique called the rule of three. Writers use the rule of three. People that
give speeches use the rule of three all the time. You will see politicians continually
give information in one, two, three blocks. Iíll give you an example of a rule of three
joke which is by a British comedian in the UK called Jimmy Carr and the rule of three
is this: ìIsnít it weird when you wake up in bed in the morning and you look at the
woman lying next to you can you canít remember: 1. Where you met her 2. What her name is or
3. Why sheís dead.î
Thatís an example of rule of three where you give information, the first thing sets
up what the subject is, the second thing underlines the subject so the audience completely get
the head around what the joke is and then the third thing distorts it, turns it on its
head, put the spin on it, confound your expectation of what was going to happen next and thatís
just one example of the tool. Rule of three is something that comedians use all the time
but thereís a whole string of those types of tools that in the space of a day, you can
teach people and it changes the rhythm of the way they write and it makes them instinctively
start to structure what they say in a way that invites a laugh.
Douglas Goldstein: If I wanted to tell stories about that, where would I start to find the
three things or as youíve mentioned before, repetition?
Brian Luff: When we do workshops with individuals not with companies, one of the exercises that
we do during the afternoon, having taken them through in the series of these tools, as we
get them to dig deep in to the memories and try and find a story and anecdote that we
can work with and there were various triggers that we use for that and the most common trigger
and the one that gets the best results for us is we say to them, ìTell us something
that you would not tell your mother.î There are a lot that comes in most peopleís minds
and you can imagine that obviously on the standup circuit particularly in London, thereís
a lot of adult material. Sometimes it can just be a dark secret because standup comedy
at its best is confessional and you wanted to go and do standup yourself and that would
be a very good place to start. It would be saying, ìWhat would I like to confess to
this room full of people?î
Douglas Goldstein: What are some of the tools?
Brian Luff: There are so many different ways of using repetition. You can repeat words
over and over again and the example of that would be the famous Monty Python sketch that
goes spam-spam-spam-spam. You can create catch-phrases using repetition but using the same sequence
of words over and over again like for example The Catherine Tate sequence of am I bovvered.
You can create a whole item in certain shows. Comedy writers might use copy and paste so
actually create the same situation over and over again and very slightly change it each
time. I donít know whether you guys get a show called Little Britain. In Little Britain,
a lot of the sketch is almost identical to the way before and one different thing happens.
The reason weíd like repetition is because it makes us feel safe. We kind of know whatís
coming. When we feel safe, thereís that sense of familiarity and that makes us feel relaxed
and when we feel relaxed, we more likely to laugh. Pop music uses repetition over and
over again. Pop songs use the same lines over and over again. We like to know whatís coming
next. We like the sense that something isnít going to be a surprise.
Surprise also makes people laugh but you would be surprised how often people are prepared
to laugh even though they know whatís coming next. How many times have you seen a standup
comedian that uses the same cash prize or the same routine or very similar routine every
time and the audience actually are going to love it in the same way as when a banker goes
on stage, everyone expects him to play their greatest hit.
Douglas Goldstein: How can people follow you?
Brian Luff: They can follow us by going to www.thinkfunny.co.uk which is our corporate
website. I also do a podcast as well for Comedy 365 and thatís available on iTunes.
Douglas Goldstein, CFPÆ, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show
(Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com. He is a licensed financial professional both
in the U.S. and Israel. Securities offered through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member
FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA, SIFMA. Accounts carried by National Financial Services LLC. Member
NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company. His book Building Wealth in Israel is available
in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788
or (03) 524-0942. Disclaimer: This document is a transcription
and/or an educational article. While it is believed to be current and accurate, divergence
from the original is to be expected. The original podcast can be heard at https://sites.google.com/site/goldsteinradioshows/.
All information on this website is purely information and should not be used as the
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