The doctor asked me if I have any difficulty passing water. I said no I didn't.
— Steve Oliver(@SteveOliver76) November 23, 2012
A woman asks the barman for a double entendre. He informs her that there's no such drink.
— Steve Oliver(@SteveOliver76) November 23, 2012
I asked the butcher for a pound of bacon. The butcher said "lean back?". I said no, I wanted streaky.
— Steve Oliver(@SteveOliver76) November 23, 2012
I don’t know how the above tweets (and more) came to me, but once I started doing it, I couldn’t stop. Once I start tweeting jokes I get on a roll and sometimes can machine gun out a handful of zingers while I’m waiting for the kettle to boil. I posted these non-jokes a few days ago and wasn’t surprised to garner absolutely no response from it. No retweets and not a single ‘like’ on Facebook.
It’s a shame to waste the idea, and today it came to me. How would the public cope with seeing non-joke after non-joke rattled out on stage at a comedy club? Like the total opposite of Tim Vine, I would recite a well known joke before delivering not a punch line but a dose of realism. Jokes are not based on fact, (never has a speak your weight machine said “one at a time please” to a fat person, in fact I might go so far as to say that the speak your weight machine has never even existed), they are based on nonsense. What these non-jokes set out to achieve is taking away the punch lines and making the jokes real.
As I reported a few days ago, the idea of doing stand up comedy has always appealed to me, but nerves and a lack of material has always held me back. If I went on stage and immediately told the audience that I didn’t want them to laugh, that would throw them. I make it clear to the audience that I’m not there to make them laugh, I’m there to establish facts are straight, and hope that someone understood what I was doing. The open mic circuit would have to be my starting post, until I was able to develop the idea into an actual show. If I had enough money to take a risk, I could even take it to Edinburgh in August. Not this August coming obviously, I doubt I’d be ready by then. If nobody got it, then that’s their problem, I don’t expect to be hailed a genius until after I’m dead.
