We’ve asked some of the Trespass team to share with us what makes them laugh, without fail, every time. Putting this together meant trawling through YouTube (addictive at the best of times) and watching some of the below clips over and over and over again. May they bring you as much joy as they did us - and when you’ve finished watching them, let us know what makes you laugh every time.
Sandi Tighello
British Comedy
Faulty Towers, Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em and Are You Being Served were the favourites of my childhood, and I’m quite sure, helped shaped my sense of humour. Throw in Black Books and I’m now complete.
My four-year-old nephew Luca
There’s something about him – he’s got more personality and character than most people I know. He’s been like that since he was born. With perfect timing and the best expressions, I just know he’s destined to make me laugh. Forever.
People Falling
Yes, I’m one of those people. Whether it’s witnessing someone trip down the long stairs at the MCG before a football game, or off an escalator due to their own misjudgement, I fall over laughing when other people fall over. And yes, I do the feet fumble from time to time. And I laugh just as hard at myself.
Beth Wilson
MX’s (Sydney’s free newspaper) Overheard Column
I will go to great lengths to track down a copy of an MX on late night train rides, so I can read the Overheard section. Yes it condones eavesdropping and yes many of the entries are obviously fake, but it gives me an opportunity to laugh at the stupidity of my fellow Sydneysiders. It’s true the best things in life really are free.
Never Mind the Buzzcocks (1996 – Present)
A TV music quiz with famous guest contestants, this show is requisite viewing whenever I’m back in the UK. The genius of the format is the level of mockery the guests must endure from the show’s host. Over the years Mark Lamarr and Simon Amstell have held this mantel, but in the latest run, a series of guest hosts including David Walliams, Martin Freeman and Russell Brand have taken this role. I think it is fair to say this is the ‘funniest quiz show ever’. Fact
Nathan Barley (2005)
This British TV show was short-lived, but is great for multiple viewings. The focus of creators’, Chris White and Charlie Brooker, satire is ‘trendy’ media types, with the 6 part series taking inappropriateness to new levels. You find yourself laughing, but feeling guilty about it. With a cast including Julian Barrett (The Mighty Boosh), Nicholas Burns (No Heroics), Claire Keenan (No Heroics), Richard Ayoade (The IT Crowd) and Noel Fielding (The Mighty Boosh)- what’s not to love.
Liv Hambrett
Falling Over
Like Sandi, I am also one of those (arguably terrible) people who laugh at other people’s physical blunders. If you fall over, I will laugh before I help you up. But I will help you up, that’s the important thing.
Gavin and Stacey/The Office
Like Sandi again (noticing a theme here?) I am a slave to British comedy and was raised reading largely English books and watching English programs. Both of these shows make me so happy I could cry. I’ll let them do the talking, but be warned you won’t get any work done for the next couple of hours.
Bad Dancing
In the spirit of visual representation, may I present this beautiful routine. It’s not bad dancing per se, I mean the man can move, but oh my God. And yes that is the marvelous Ruth Jones of Gavin and Stacey fame.
Romy Grbic
Trying to think of what exactly makes me laugh is no easy feat. I start to giggle just trying to sort through the memories. I may have come up with a list that somewhat makes you think all I do is sit and watch TV, but to be honest, if I even tried to explain the hilarity of my family and the antics we used to (and still) get up to, this could go on all day. Games that my sisters and I started playing when we were 9, 6 and 4, have transcended time and are still amazing when we think about or play them today, at 24, 21 and 19. Oh yea, throw in my going-deaf grandmother and we have a gay old time…
My Family (sisters especially) …
We have so many in-jokes, and when we do get to all sit around the dinner table together it can get very, very funny. The humour is extremely heightened if my Nanna happens to be there as well. Good times.
Friends
It’s been running for so many years, and I’ve seen it so many times, but it seems to get funnier every single time.
Disaster Date on MTV
One of the best reality shows I have ever seen. You must watch it. These unsuspecting people get set up on blind dates with an absolutely outrageous person, who will do anything to embarrass them. My personal favourite was the paranoid guy who made a hat out of tinfoil so ‘they’ couldn’t read his mind. Classic.
Foz Meadows
Listening to Tom Lehrer …
… particularly Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, the MLF Lullaby, Oedipus Rex, National Brotherhood Week and Bright College Days. That’s the beauty of classic humour – it never gets old. (‘Hearts full of youth! Hearts full of truth! Six parts gin to one part vermouth!’)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio series
Marvin the Paranoid Android, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, the Babelfish and Vogons – what more could you want?
Daria Morgendorffer, of Daria fame
It’s the show that got me through high school, and which I have never ceased to find funny. I wonder why.
Lin Tan
My sense of humour doesn’t quite match my age, what being 21 and all. I tend to find a lot of things hilarious, like my own jokes, which is why I have been banned from telling them. Anyway, it is safe to say that very silly things makes me cackle, like lying about my age, absolutely nothing or just complete silence. I am also blessed with the capability to induce laughter by tickling myself, and so, should you ever find me reaching for my feet whilst you’re telling a joke, it most likely means you’re not very funny. So here it is, off the top of my head, three things that always makes me laugh:
Farts
Despite its revolting byproduct, I’ve never heard a fart that didn’t make me laugh. See below:
Laughter
Even when I don’t know what started the laughter off in the first place, the sight of someone in hysterics kicks off a chain reaction before becoming a big ol’ mess – I’m laughing because he/she is laughing, he/she is laughing because I’m laughing, so on and so forth.
Spoofs and Parodies
There’s nothing better than finding a good film spoof/parody or an impersonation. Like I said, it doesn’t take much to make me laugh, and this clip by one of my favourite comedy acts, French and Saunders, is one of them:
