I just can't help myself, says Viv Ford

I have a problem. I’m a horrible date to bring to a comedy show. It’s not because I don’t find things funny! I’m human… I laugh when people accidentally fall, I laugh at news bloopers, I love a good ‘knock knock’ joke. 

But for some reason, when it comes to stand-up comedy, I always laugh before the punchline. And right before the punchline, the room is dead silent. It’s not the time to laugh. So, I’m a terrible date for a comedy show unless you like being embarrassed.

For me, the setup to the joke is always funnier. Here’s an example from Taylor Tomlinson’s special Quarter-Life Crisis. She’s talking about how annoying strangers’ babies are when they sit in their strollers and wave aggressively, just waiting for you to wave back. The joke is that the babies are just trying to waste your goshdarn time. 

So then she says: ‘That would be like me walking up to a French person like "bonjour"! They get excited, start talking to me in French. And I just go HAHA.’

If you didn’t laugh, don’t blame Taylor. Blame me for badly recounting the joke. But you probably laughed at the HAHA line, right? Well, when I watched this special, I laughed at the ‘they get excited’ line. All of a sudden, my brain left the special and went to the French person in the story, excited to chat with someone who has just aggressively mispronounced ‘bonjour’. 

Maybe it’s funny because, as a fellow Frenchie, I’ve never known a French person to get excited to chat to a stranger, never mind one who mispronounces ‘bonjour’. And now that I’m in la-la land, I don’t even care about the rest of the joke.

In that same special, she has another line about when she gets married, she’s going to jog down the aisle, like she’s on a crosswalk watching the numbers go down. People laughed at the end of the joke. I laughed after ‘aisle’ because my brain immediately went to all these brides jogging down aisles in their wedding attire. Some might even start from starting blocks, with an official race referee ready to fire the starting gun.

So why do I keep missing the punchline? I think it’s because I didn’t learn how to properly consume media growing up (it’s always easiest to blame your parents, right?). 

My parents are both professors in the humanities and they had a very strict rule around technology for me and my sister growing up. We were allowed 30 minutes of computer time on Saturday, which included waiting for the dial-up internet to finally connect.I basically went to sleep on Fridays dreaming about ‘eeeerrrrr... eeeerrrrr... ksssshhhh... ksssshhhh... dee-doo-dee-doo... ksssshhh... eeeerrrrr... beep-beep...’ 

And we were allowed one movie on Sundays. That was it! We weren’t allowed to watch TV, we weren’t allowed to have GameBoys or Tamagotchis or any fun digital toy.

At playdates, I would watch TV shows and movies with friends and they never finished on time. So my mum would ​pick me up and I would miss the last 15 minutes. So I would make up the ending in my own head to satisfy the experience.

When I started writing jokes, I worried I was cutting the joke too soon because I knew I had the habit of laughing too soon. I would watch some of my favourite comedians (Richard Pryor and Mike Birbiglia) to better understand when they finished a joke. How did they know there was another line that could make the audience laugh extra hard?

I’m not sure I know the answer to their process but I’ve personally gotten better, don’t worry. Improv’s famous question of ‘if this is true, what else is true?’ has helped with understanding where a joke can go.

 If you tell me you’re a dentist but you’re afraid of teeth, well then I would ask myself what else is true in your life. Maybe you’re also a parent but you’re afraid of children (including your own). And if that’s true, you also are religious and go to church but are afraid of God. So maybe you die and go to heaven but are too scared to walk through the Pearly Gates. 

Wanna know something funny? I stopped this example at the ‘parent afraid of your own children’ because I was imagining a father freaking out when his cute little son says, ‘up’ and strangers watching this hilarious interaction. But then I thought, continue the joke Viv. Always continue the joke.

• Viv Ford’s debut stand-up hour, New Kids On The Blockchain, is at Just The Tonic at The Mash House at 8pm.

Published: 22 Aug 2024