Funny Peculiar or Funny Ha Ha?

Posted by Allen Baird, Partner on Feb 4, 2009 in communication, positive psychology | 0 comments

Most of my blogs – funny peculiar.  This time – funny ha ha.  I hope.

On Saturday 14 March 2009 I’ll be running my toughest workshop at QUB, Belfast yet – The Power of Humour: How to Be Funny. With hindsight, I should have chosen a nice, simple subject like quantum mechanics instead.  Here’s the sort of thing I plan to cover.

“What if you were told there was a single secret to job promotion, relationship success, personal popularity, and mental well-being? What if this secret also boosted your powers of problem-solving and creativity? This secret is – the capacity for humour, or looking at life’s comical side. Learn to develop this skill by analyzing what humour is and how to use it for your advantage in everyday life.”

People have asked me now and then – mostly puzzled university staff – how I come up with my course ideas.  Here’s how.  I think of courses I’d like to go on as a participant.  Then I look around for one.  Next I find out that no such course exists, at least on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.  So I design one myself.  And because I design it, I deliver it.

I’ve already explained the origins of this particular course in my blog Borat Comes To Queen’s University.  In it I’ll link humour with mental well-being and successful interpersonal communication.  I plan to show clips of some of my favourite comedians in action.  We’ll then dissect their jokes and routines to see what makes them funny… before trying to create some jokes of our own.

Want more encouragement to come?  Then what about the experience of yours truly delivering a comedy stand-up routine?  Or maybe that has the opposite effect.

But on to more serious business.  How many university lecturers does it take to replace a light-bulb?  Four: One to do it and three to co-author the paper.

If you don’t get it, don’t worry.  Campus humour is an acquired taste (code for not funny).

So a training consultant and a Jedi Knight walk into a bar, and the barman says…

To book a place, phone the School of Education (Open Learning) on 028 9097 3539/3323 or email openlearning.education@qub.ac.uk.

Image credit: royblumenthal.