UNOC NEWS

Well, this website for starters!

The big news is we've launched the United Nations Of Comedy website! The story behind the idea is as follows...

Some time ago ugly racial riots broke out on some of the beaches in Sydney, Australia. In the middle of it, with some streets road-blocked and tensions threatening to flare at any moment, I was booked to do a comedy gig at the Christmas party of the local council. Yep, slap bang in the centre of the trouble area. When I arrived I was somewhat apprehensive and managed to set a new 100 metre sprint record 'tween car and venue.

I walked into the room to find a joyous gathering of Christian clergy, Muslim clerics, Greeks, Italians, Jews, folks from many other cultural backgrounds, even the Zimbabwean Ambassador. We laughed together for a solid thirty minutes. "Look at us", I said at the end of the gig, "we're the United Nations of comedy". Everyone applauded and cheered. "Hmmm..." I thought, "I have an idea!"

In which ever part of the world you are as you read this I want to send you a big, fat "Thank You" for being a part of UNOC.

Did comedy win the Australian election?

Yes, we've had a change of government here in Australia. From conservative to progressive..well, we think so anyway. Here's an article I wrote which was recently published in the Sydney Morning Herald about the influence comedy had in determining the outcome of the election.

I've provided video clips below for our international readers who might not be familiar with some of the events mentioned in the article (and for anyone else who wants a good laugh).

ELECTION WON BY A SMILE

The 2007 poll wasn't the Seinfeld election, as some suggested, but in fact the Chaser election. Australia has occasionally produced excellent television shows featuring political satire, such as The Gillies

Report. However, satire safely confined to a TV studio or theatre poses little real threat to our politicians. It's when comedy stalks the streets and may be waiting around the next corner in ambush that attention must be paid. The Chaser posed a clear and present danger, in a way we have never seen before, to those who would be elected.

You really have to go back to the glory days of Norman Gunston to find comedy that, like The Chaser, significantly impinged on pollies by getting uncomfortably up close and personal. The footage of Gunston on the steps of Parliament House on the day of the 1975 dismissal makes for surreal viewing. His approaches are warded off by a solemn-faced Bob Hawke - "It's a bit too serious for that." It's these "too serious" things that are satire's best targets, as the Chaser team well knows, and it pursues them aggressively. Whereas Garry McDonald cleverly endowed Gunston with a low-status persona that sneaked under the defences of many a self-inflated public figure, the Chaser team's numbers and sheer bloody nerve have made it an in-your-face force that refuses to be sidestepped.

GUNSTON AT THE DISMISSAL CHASER AT OPEC THE EULOGY SONG

If the Chaser boys ever write a book titled John Howard: Our Part In His Downfall, then chapter one should begin with the APEC incursion. APEC was Howard's last chance to remind us all that he was "da man", the leader of our country who strutted his stuff with leaders of much bigger countries. When The Chaser infiltrated the multimillion-dollar conference security, transporting a bogus Osama Bin Laden to within metres of George Bush, Howard's moment was undercut and the whole APEC circus looked as silly as a dozen dorks in Driza-Bones posing on the steps of the Opera House.

When the election campaign got into full swing the issue of how politicians should react to Chaser stunts became something to which their spin doctors had to give serious thought. If confronted by what the Chaser writer Dominic Knight calls "a satirical intervention", the favoured approach by most pollies was to plaster on a smile designed to give the message: "See, I'm a good bloke who can take a joke."

Then came the infamous "eulogy song", a satirical ditty that took aim at the hypocritical glorification of dead celebrities. The jaw drops at the sight of the prime minister and the leader of the Opposition at media conferences being asked to give critiques of this comedy song. What the hell did their opinions about this ditty about dead folk have to do with the election campaign? Yet the question was put to both men as if their responses would help voters better judge their characters. Both Kevin Rudd and Howard declared that the eulogy song had violated that which fell into the category of the "too serious". Howard even had a sound bite ready to launch at the satirists when they again invaded his morning walk: "You blokes are a lot funnier when you pick on someone who's alive."

But not all on the conservative side of politics were so quick to condemn Chaser humour, especially when it might be expedient to invoke it. Jackie Kelly, a woman pivotal to Howard's 1996 victory, referred to the comedy team in her hapless attempt to spin her way out of the diabolical mess created by her errant spouse. Distributing pamphlets designed to stir up racist sentiment was just her husband's idea of a "Chaser-style prank", a bit of a laugh and seemingly not "too serious" at all, according to Kelly. Wrong. Say what you will about the Chaser boys but their humour has never promoted racism; they have skilfully exposed it.

GARRETT'S JOCULARITY RUDD'S EAR WAX

But it wasn't just left to professional comedians to influence the election with attempts at levity. Peter Garrett learned the hard way an important comedy rule - know your audience. His "short, jocular" conversation with the broadcaster Steve Price may well have cost him his expected share of the portfolio spoils following Labor's victory.

During the election it became increasingly difficult to reconcile the Garrett once known as an outspoken environmentalist with the bald guy in a suit approving toxic pulp mills. His throwaway line to Price at an airport that, once elected, Labor would "just change it all" seemed to epitomise the old adage "many a true word is spoken in jest".

But when Price dobbed Garrett in for his indiscreet jocularity you can bet Kevin07 was not amused. Result: Penny Wong, who made no such forays into witty repartee and is anointed Minister for Climate Change and Water, while Garrett gets the leftovers. Like making jokes about bombs, sometimes off-the-cuff humour at airports can blow up in your face. Yes, humour is powerful stuff and during the election Rudd projected its potency while Howard looked like he'd just sat on a whoopee cushion and didn't appreciate the joke.

Rudd won the election by more than a nose; he won it by a smile. Rudd has a natural Duchenne smile (named after the French researcher who identified it), which involves the orbicularis oculi and the zygomaticus muscles - in other words, when he smiles, his eyes crinkle in a way that lights up the whole face. Since these muscles aren't under our voluntary control, this type of smile is difficult to fake and people tend to unconsciously imbue the smiler with positive traits such as being genuine and trustworthy. Studies have been done on people displaying a Duchenne smile in their senior class photos that showed they were more successful throughout their lives than their peers.

For his part, Howard's smiles and laughter seemed forced during the campaign, as if they masked equal measures of brittle determination and desperation. One of the very few times Howard generated a genuine laugh from his audience was at his final press lunch, when he was asked if he worried about the impact of climate change on his baby grandson, Angus. His response was that he had many important conversations with Angus, a cute image that momentarily transformed him from grumpy old man to sweet grandfather.

This feel-good moment harks back to the schoolboy Howard who appeared on Jack Davey's radio quiz show in 1955. The boy Howard is cheeky and charming. "What is the unusual characteristic of a kiwi?" asks Davey. Young John searches for an answer and eventually replies: "Well, it's on the face of a tin of boot polish." The audience loved it.

Fast forward to 2007 and old John's only laugh is his line about Angus. He spends most of his time fighting off questions about Jackie Kelly's husband's "Chaser-style prank", which no one but Kelly finds the least bit funny.

The young Howard on Davey's show has no idea that one day he will be Australia's second-longest-serving prime minister or that one day his attempt to cling to personal political power will plunge his party into chaos when he is defeated by an ear-wax-eating dag with a winning grin. In the end John Howard paid the price for violating the most important rule of comedy - get off the stage while the audience is still applauding.