OLD JOKES AND NEW

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 451, 8 February 1933, Page 7

OLD JOKES AND NEW

Mr. E. V. Knox, the new editor of Punch, has been telling a London Observer interviewer something of English humour in partieular. Mr. Knox has been writing for Punch since 1906 and has seen a generation change its notions of fun completely yet still remain funny to those who , remember a time when plumbers, policemen, and Irishmen provided the nation with most of its humour. "How would you describe Punch's particularly style of humour?" Mr. Knox was asked. "That is ' not at all as easy as it sounds. You might describe it as something essentially of the upper middle-classes, if one has to use these dreadful categories. People occasion- j ally charge us with Grundyism. By that I suppose they mean that we uo not care to print jokes which no English newspaper would care to print. We may suffer from Grundyism, but if we do it is a complaint from which every newspaper in Britain suffers. If the British press were to p'^lish, for instance, some of the jokes which the Stock Exchange thinks funny, they would soon find themselves being burnt on the Stock Exchange." , The Most Strilang Difference. 'What would you say was the most striking diiference between Punch of , to-day and the Punch of Victorian times?" "I should describe it simply as the j diiference between the upper middle- ' classes of to-day and the upper middle- • classes of yesterday. People to-day | are much more sophisticated, . espe ■ j cially the nouveau-riche type from which Punch in the past has drawn I so much of its humour. People seem i to be taught everything now by saies- j men, so that there is no possibility j of their making faux-pas. They may , still drop their 'H's', but that is no longer a laughing matter. j "This brings me to a point with , which I think the editor of every hu- j morous paper will agree. It is a! rather dreadful prospect, but the fact ! is that the people comic artists nsed , to nriake fun of— policemen, yokels j housemaids, Irishmen, Scotsmen, , plumbers and their mates — are all much wiser and much more sophisticated than they used to be. They j know too much about the ways of the world and how other people live to makd the mistakes we used to thinlc , funny. There are, however, still the j politicians, and the Bright Young Thing, who does not seem to have ch'anged much — though she would probably hate to think so— since j LeeeVs or Du Maurier's day. When : these disappear— though I have hopes of eternal life for the politician in j the pages of the comic journals — there will be no more humorous paper s as we know th'em to-day. "Old Jokes the Best." "I believe, however, that some of the old jokes are still the best, and | that jokes likewise are often better ; for being old, provided, of course, j that they are carefully handled. We j may know what is coming, but we get . our amusement from speculating as j to how the dear old thing is going to ( come out in this . partieular . version. Th'at, for instance, is the secret of the J great Scotch joke. It is as old as | the mouhtains, but in a new dress it seems fresher than ever." Mr. Knox has no fears of English humour bemg killed by the Americanisation of the talkies and of certain American humorous papers which enjoy a wide circulation in England. "The best American humour, such' as ! that of Stephen Leacock Don Marquis, and, in the old days, Bret Harte, is, after all, very much like our own. The other type is of such a mechani-

cal nature that it will only appeal (after the novelty has worn off) to a race '~f people completely dominated by machines."