Pope Francis and Comedians

The older Pope Francis becomes, the more he seems able to do. His recent meeting with, was it one hundred of the world's comedians, is an interesting example.

Modern day comedy and jocularity sadly does not appeal to me at all.

BBC1's Faulty Towers was side splittingly funny but that was broadcast years ago  and is frowned upon by many today as being too anti-German. However  as according to reports, the Germans, themselves love the programme, so maybe it is the woke brigade which has its claws in, or should I say out. 

Hancock's half hour which commenced broadcasting as a radio show, was even better on TV but again, old episodes are rarely shown today perhaps because some of its sketches may be regarded as a rather right of centre politically.

The Times newspaper has a cartoon usually on its centre pages. Not exclusively but still almost invariably, the  cartoon's 'joke' is  of an anti right wing political stereotype. Thus even in today's Saturday edition, with the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer both depicted, the  latter is more or less the hero with the former being  more or less the villain. 

I surmise that The Times will soon be behind Keir Starmer's party as regards the UK's general election but we shall see.

Reverting to Pope Francis and humour, The Times itself today has a good article about that.

Yet although many in the world love modern humour such 'humour' generally passes me by.

A  problem with modern day  spoken or televised humour, unlike the humour of previous generations, is that today's comedians invariably use many expletives, which seem  really  to dilute their work yet they play to packed young audiences. 

Interestingly the Noel Coward play  which I blogged about recently Noel Coward  was often extremely amusing but I recollect not a single expletive featuring in the show, which played to a full theatre.