Carry on laughing!

FROM WARTIME WITTICISMS TO FOOTBALL CHANTS, HISTORIAN MERVYN EDWARDS EXPLORES THE POTTERIES SENSE OF HUMOUR DOWN THE DECADES

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HOW do you like your Potteries humour? Well, making people laugh around these parts is a funny old business in more ways than one because what amuses one Stokie might discombobulate another.

Jokes also misfire or offend or may only suit certain audiences or friends.

So this week, with a little help from my archives as well as my memory, we'll look at what makes locals laugh - if we laugh at all!

I allude here to the opinion of one Sentinel letter writer calling himself Tony Oatcake, from Stockton Brook, who scribed in 1990: "From my observations as a local trader trying for the last 30 years to extract a laugh and at the same time to extract money from my fellow potters, I conclude that as much as I like our local people, we are not blessed with humorous natures.

"Our area has never produced great comedy figures like the late and much-missed Eric Morecambe and Tommy Cooper, and today's artists like Dodd, Connelly, Carrot, Harding, etc are all from other industrial towns in Britain.

"Listening to our local radio presenters desperately trying for laughs from phone-in listeners is quite painful, compared with say, Radio Merseyside which is a laugh a minute, so come on Stoke folk, cheer up, remember you are not properly dressed until you are wearing a smile."

I am told by folks that I have a big laugh on me though I can assure you that I'm not a laugh-at-nothing. A lot of Stoke humour is platitudinous or of phatic intent in other words, used to convey sociability.

So if a Stokie is asked whether he or she requires sugar in his/her tea, the answer is frequently: "I'm sweet enough." A sitting female, flanked by two males, will be described as 'a rose between two thorns.