What is a joke? What makes us laugh? Laura Lexx explores...
Brighton-based Laura Lexx isn’t just a comedian. She’s also a student of comedy.
And she puts all her knowledge to good use with the launch of a new factual YouTube series – with her former university tutor Oliver Double – called The Comedy Bureau.
Launching with three episodes at the end of September, the first season will have ten episodes running until mid-November with already plans for the second season next year.
It tackles various aspects of the comedy industry including the basics like What is a joke? and Why do we laugh at others? through to Is ‘woke’ killing comedy? and What's the deal with stand-up and brick walls?
“The idea of the series is a deep dive into all things comedy from the history to the sociology to the science, really exploring where it comes from and how it has developed. Episodes range from about 30 minutes to 60 minutes.
“I'm a stand-up comedian but I studied stand-up comedy for my degree back in 2005 at the University of Kent. I have always been fascinated by the nuts and bolts of comedy and its history. I feel hugely passionate about it and I wanted to explore that and get back into that study. I shied away from being open about the fact that I studied comedy because the fashionable thing as a stand-up comedian is to appear effortless. But it really is so interesting. “With Oliver we wanted to do something that was really accessible and felt like something halfway between a history and two comedians just shooting the breeze. We came up the idea of calling it The Comedy Bureau with us in an office space being nerdy about what we do. The idea is that we are the department of niche interest in a university.”
Some people would argue that comedy evaporates as soon as you attempt to understand it. Laura would argue that she and Oliver are testament to the fact that it doesn't.”
She cites the joke: “A man walks into a bar… ouch!”
“There are a number of theories of comedy. The superiority theory is that you laugh at a joke because you feel good about yourself and clever because you understood it, and that seems like a reasonable explanation to me. But there is also something about the incongruity theory that is interesting, the fact that the joke takes us from one plain of existence to another. You say a man walks into a bar and we have an image of a pub and of a bar in a pub and then with the word Ouch we go to another plain of existence as we realise that the pub was never there and that the pub bar was never there. It was an iron bar all along!”