Is this a funny title for a blog entry?

Humour takes different forms at different ages. To a toddler, the funniest possible thing is calling something by the wrong name. To a ten year old, the funniest possible thing is a long, elaborate and stupid shaggy dog story as a lead up for a very weak pun.

It's also true that humour takes different forms in different eras. To the Victorians, the funniest thing was nonsense. This was the golden age of amphigory: Gilbert & Sullivan, Lewis Carrol and Edward Lear. In 1960s and 70s Britain, it was ribald humour: Benny Hill and the Carry On films.

When anthropologists look back at us, they will remark about our fondness for self-reference and meta-humour.

But they're really going to talk a lot about is the trend of cringe comedy. Maybe I'm just an old fogey, but I don't see what's the slightest bit funny about Tom Green, Sacha Baron Cohen or Steve Coogan (though I did think that Tristram Shandy was very clever, probably because it was so meta). I recently watched an entire episode of The Catherine Tate Show without so much as cracking a smile.

And don't get me started on those Ben Stiller humiliation comedies. Ouch.

Maybe the problem is that these shows aren't clever, because I apparently don't have a problem with clever cringe/humiliation humour. Frasier was no stranger to humiliation comedy, but it was always farcical and always clever. Perhaps Little Britain exemplifies the problem for me: When it's not funny, it's really not fully, but when it is funny, it's the funniest thing you've ever seen.

For cringe comedy to work, I think it needs to have a point. Making you cringe isn't enough; it needs to be done in as a means of achieving satire (I haven't seen Borat yet, but people really do end up unknowingly satirising themselves in that film) or otherwise making some kind of point. And catch phrases only really work if there are some other laughs in the show, otherwise the catch phrases don't catch on.

Anyway, I've rambled enough. The one person who has subscribed to this blog will, no doubt, read this. Some of the few who subscribe later will come back to read it. For those who do, welcome to the BWAIN, and rest assured there will be no meaningless cringe humour here.