A generation intent on creating a new kind of comedy ... The Young Ones were getting laughs out of new sensitivities. ibid.
What political correctness demanded was that comedians like Bernard Manning should have no place in television’s mass democracy of rude. ibid.
Banned from television Manning became the new alternative comedy that went underground. ibid.
Viz from Newcastle. ibid.
Rude traditions of northern clubland also lived on. Here the reigning king is now Roy Chubby Brown. ibid.
One series proves that television’s mass democracy of rude can still exist today: Little Britain. ibid.
What rudeness there is has a cordon sanitaire placed around it. ibid.
There has always been a war between rude and crude. ibid.
Humour is reason gone mad. Groucho Marx
Humour is something that thrives between man’s aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humour than in anything else. Because, you see, humour is truth. Victor Borge
Humour is just another defence against the universe. Mel Brooks
The French are not noted for their sense of humour. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie III starring Geraldine McEwan & Amanda Kirby & Lynsey Baxter & Vivienne Ross et al, Brodie with lasses in art gallery, ITV 1979
Humour about Christianity ranges from gentle mockery, though sharply critical, to the downright hurtful. Ann Widdecombe, Are You Having A Laugh? Comedy & Christianity, BBC 2013
Comedy can be a window into the state of our society. ibid.
Christianity is now being subject to a level of mockery that some find disturbing. ibid.
The mocking of Jesus Christ is deeply hurtful. ibid.
Upon the release of The Life of Brian thousands protested. ibid.
The change isn’t accidental and it isn’t the product of ignorance, it is deliberate, and it sets out to vilify and to ridicule Christianity and Christian belief. ibid.
At its best, comedy can be provocative, truthful and can offer a check and balance for all of us. ibid.
The source of all humour is not laughter, but sorrow. Mark Twain
Humour is mankind’s greatest blessing. Mark Twain
Humour is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place. Mark Twain
Humour is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it. Langston Hughes
Humour is one of the leavening agents that makes the tragedy of our position possible. Professor Steven Weinberg, interview Professor Richard Dawkins
Humour is odd, grotesque, and wild,
Only by affectation spoiled;
’Tis never by invention got,
Men have it when they know it not. Jonathan Swift, To Mr Delany
And realising that humour is the most powerful way to make a political statement and say the things that you want to say. And it’s not used enough, at least not in the US. Michael Moore
The secret to humour is surprise. Aristotle
News on the March: Nixon Nominated For Nobel War Prize. Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon, article, Sky Arts 2017
This totally outrageous voice that was screaming, Here I Come. ibid. reader
Nancy Reagan’s Guide to Dating Dos and Don’ts by Doug Kenney. ibid. article
First Blow Job by Doug Kenney. ibid.
Children’s Letters to the Gestapo by Michael O’Donoghue. Dear Heinrich Himmler, How do you get all those people into your oven? We can hardly get a pork roast into ours. ibid.
Welcome Vulgarity Lovers! Here’s Your Very Own Copy of The Liz Taylor and Richard Burton Gift Catalogue. ibid.
Guns and Sandwiches The Finest in Its Field. July 1974 $1. ibid.
Telling a Kid His Parents are Dead. ibid.
Vietnamese Baby Book. Baby’s First Wound. ibid.
If You Don’t Buy This Magazine We’ll Kill This Dog. Jan 1973. ibid.
The Sixteen Amazing Differences Between Lincoln & Kennedy by David Smith. ibid.
‘It is the job of a satirist OK to make people in power uncomfortable, really uncomfortable, to the point where they go, This has to be stopped.’ ibid. Tony Hendra, Lampoon editor
Disco Beavers from Outer Space. ibid.
‘Doug was very distraught and upset that Caddyshack wasn’t as big as Animal House.’ ibid.
Doug Kenney, one of the founders of National Lampoon died in a hiking accident on the island of Kauai on August 29 1980. ibid.
Jokes: modern art is full of them. Matthew Collings, This is Modern Art V: Hollow Laughter, Channel 4 1999
Marcel Duchamp: iconic, laconic, sardonic, wry, dry, a bit austere, a bit erotic, a cool French guy, never disturbed, always amused, always ready with a sardonic joke. ibid.
The stream of black off-humour that runs through the art of the 20th century. ibid.
And this is the biggest of all … Fountain is an ordinary old urinal bought in a shop, signed R Mutt 1917 and sent to a big exhibition in New York … The great satan of modern art: Michel Duchamp. ibid.
Irony is at the heart of Duchamp’s output. ibid.
Sarah Lucas’s cast of her own finger giving the finger to the world. ibid.
New York: Artists can be big stars here and sell their art for a lot of money. ibid.
Art that questions the meaning of art: we’re all used to that now. ibid.
Art nowadays is full of texts. ibid.
Rene Magritte, the most popular surrealist ever next to Salvador Dali. Magritte: the artist of the bowler hat and the pipe that wasn’t one. ibid.
Magritte’s joke is the joke of the wrong label, the wrong word for the image, the wrong thought for the word, the wrong feeling for the thought … but it is beautiful in a way. ibid.
[Alessandro] Manzoni: Artists’s shit, each one individually signed. When he first sold them they cost their weight in gold. Now they’re worth much more. ibid.
Money, Shit, Art: the holy trinity. ibid.