a showoff parent flying off a skateboard

Isn't that the point? The truly funny ones have something to do with high expectations brought low. A toddler hurting itself isn't funny, it's either dull (toddlers do it all the time) or sad (it's bad enough that we worry). But whether it's Laurel bustling off to do something, and being flattened by Hardy's mistake with the plank, or the conceited parent with no idea how stupid they look coming to grief, it's the gap between their intentions and perceptions and brute reality that makes us laugh, because that's an extreme example of the human condition we all exist within. Most of the best comedy works like that: Alan Partridge, of course, Ricky Gervaise, and also one of my favourites, Smack the Pony, in a more surreal way

Emma

Schadenfreude is a fantastic word. I love it. Comedy is an interesting thing. Why is anything funny? What is the purpose of the laughing response? Why biological need does it fulfil? Why do we universally take pleasure in the - well timed - misfortunes of people we either don't know or dislike?

I don't know the answers to these questions, probably why I'm neither a comedian a particularly funny at all. All I know is comedy is almost exclusively poking at something and saying "look how stupid this is".

I have never, ever been able to laugh at this sort of stuff. or even smile. It just doesn;t strike me as at all funny.

Tries to think of some more contemporary examples:

Manuel getting poked in the eye, hit with a spoon etc in Fawlty Towers...

Steve Coogan having hot chestnuts dropped down his trousers in A Cock And Bull Story...

Del Boy falling through the bar in Only Fools And Horses

oh there must be more - anyone else think of any ?

Pretty much everything that happens in the [I]Scary Movie[/I] films?

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Stupid tags.

Thing is - I never saw any of these shows! What do I find funny? Well, The Importance of Being Earnest, for example. I laughed till I cried at the film.

No argument there from me. From the opening lines onwards ("So what did you think of my piano playing ?" "I did not think it polite to listen, Sir") that's one of the funniest plays in the English language, despite the emphasis placed on the "Ernest/Earnest" pun throughout striking a slightly jarring note for me. (An Ideal Husband is my favourite of Wilde's plays.) And yes, the film adaptation with Rupert Everett was very good indeed.

(NB I've just discovered on Wikipedia that the name "Earnest" was a homosexual in-joke at the time, so maybe that's why it seems rather laboured nowadays.)

the name "Earnest" was a homosexual in-joke at the time,

So was 'muffin' apparently - often shortened to 'muff' - and slews of others in the plays. Tho' I think 'muff' came to mean generally wet or wimpy without the sexual connotation.

And I think one of the problems with 'Ernest/Earnest' is simply that it's such a rare name now, but it's very common at that date, and the double-meaning joke would have operated more smoothly.'

Emma

Muff Diving is still a well worn phrase among those expecting 'a bit of skirt'.

LOL "muff diving" or "carpet munching" is a lot more than a bit of skirt !!!!

Yes, I thought of that, and of course it's obvious why 'muff' fits well with that context. But it's interesting that hard-core meaning transferred to heterosexual goings-on. Or is it a separate etymology, I wonder.

My grandmother, though, used it quite cheerfully, to mean a rather wimpy kind of young man, as in 'He's the kind of young man that when I was young we would have called a...'. I wouldn't put it past her to have meant the innuendo too, but it was obviously not considered too crude for mixed company or teenaged grand daughters.

Emma

Well if we are on the subject of "muff" as a rude word I have a distant recollection of my English teacher completely failing to discipline a classroom of sniggering schoolchildren when we were reading from (possibly) Jane Eyre and the line "It was so cold that Jane put her hands in her muff" came up.

Stop sniggering! I and all my sisters actually had muffs - stop sniggering at the back - mine was rabbit fur. I remember it very well, and it was extremely practical in a New York winter.

Emma

Muffs were back in fashion not long ago, after Carrie Bradshaw was seen with a muff in the last episode of Sex and the City. When I was in New York not long afterwards, I saw dozens of muffs, most of them bright fake fur. It was winter and snowing, so they were all a bit limp and flaky. Best kept for cold dry days, I think. So there you go, the muff is back with a vengeance...

I was going to write a lewd comment about obtaining muff myself, but I can't bring myself to do it.

Hee hee, reminds me of last winter when we went with two neighbours and friends to a Christmas festival. I had a long scarf with hand holes or muffs on the ends, and we were walking along, when I put my cold hands in the ends and it was all warm and lovely. My male neighbour was complaining that his hands were cold so I said very loudly - not meaning to be that loud I hasten to add - 'Tony, come here and put your hands in my muff.'

Him and his wife just cracked up, but we did get some funny looks.

Katerina