Prom 40: Saturday 13th August 2011 at 7.30 p.m. (Comedy Prom)

[cavatina]

I think you've rather missed the point of that song Cavatina. I'm not a parent myself, but I believe the frustration felt by parents when you're dog tired and the damn child still won't go to sleep - however much you love them really - are a fairly well known trope. (see also the recent Adam Mansbach book "Go the f**k to sleep", http://amazon.co.uk/dp/0857862650). One regular prommer, who is expecting to become a grandmother for the first time pretty imminently found it all too close to the bone

I don't know...when I've taken care of my tiny nephew on nights he was wailing inconsolably, the only thing I could think of was how to comfort him, no matter how tired I was. And my (unspoken) reaction to hearing someone laughing about that book was "[bleep] you, you horrible, jaded old ********-- if you didn't want kids, you shouldn't have had them". And when I heard Minchin, you don't even want to know what I thought.

The thing a lot of people don't get about black humour is it has a kernel of ugly, honestly hateful sentiment underneath the "jest". Psychologically speaking, it's a relatively safe way to reduce tension and vent hostility, but that doesn't mean the person cracking the joke is in a healthy frame of mind. If you've ever laughed about something and felt a little gross or bad about yourself afterward, you'll know what I mean.

Each of us has things we won't joke about, either in public or to ourselves: when you find them, you know that's what you really respect. If you respect nothing and no one, the whole world's fair game.

As someone who was forced to grow up as the perfect picture of good manners around people I utterly despised (in school, I was voted by my classmates as "Most Polite and Well-Mannered Girl" the year I could have taken a machete to the lot of them) perhaps I naturally gravitated toward-- or more accurately, was warped toward-- a searingly nasty form of black humor as a kind of defense mechanism in lieu of honest communication. You can't talk back, so you acidly and mercilessly take the piss out of them in the recesses of your mind. Sound familiar, anyone?

But really, what end does it serve? Wouldn't it he healthier to just let it go? Psychologists say negative humour is all about ego assertion, aggression, projection, and displacement: and for a certain kind of person, it really fits the bill. As you may have noticed, it's something I still have a problem with, and every now and again contempt seeps out under the guise of humour. Something to work on and keep in mind, at any rate.

[David Underdown]

Hence why the person I mentioned did find it uncomfortable, but still funny

[Paul K]

I too was rather disappointed with the lack of airtime that K&tW got (and I'm not even convinced they did the whole of the ALW song, either).

Their ALW lampoon was abruptly terminated in transmission immediately after the 'Love Changes Everything/("B***er All") section by the apparent arrival of Susan Bullock. There was in fact a conclusion to the number (rapturously received) and an entire 'People Who Like Sondheim' number before she appeared.

From memory, what was cut from the ALW section went something like this: (to the obvious tune from the Sound of Music)
"Doh, Lloyd Webber said one day, Raid that show about the nuns,
Me, I wish I'd penned myself, Far outclasses all I've done,
So I'll hog the screen for weeks, La the best tunes from the show,
T V viewers think it's mine and I'll make a stack of dough!"

Whether it was the threat of litigation, embarrassment or a combination of these or other factors that caused the curtailment, people can decide for themselves.