I'm more concerned about my new idea, The Litigious Mr. would like it because he clearly saw himself as a sauce pot. Wells, which is probably the best story in the book. Wells travelled to the present day in his sexy little time machine, how do you think he would react to your somewhat vulgar critique of his sexual memoir? Do you think he'd be a good sport, or would he strike you down like a dog? That's another favourite move: I like it when a story ends abruptly as if we've run out of tape. I also like things that never get started, like Tristram Shandy, and things that feel like a placeholder for something else like 'this is the speech I would be giving if only I'd prepared the speech but I didn't.'ĭespite all this, my book does get started. That way, the voice of the forewords becomes a sort-of character too. And one of them is practically at the back. There should have been more, shouldn't there? One of the forewords appears in the middle of the book, by the way. I wrote two forewords for perfectly good reasons (they had two different jobs to do) but then I decided to demolish my own pretentiousness by having absolutely loads of them. After the book came out I read Sarah Silverman's Bedwetter and she does a similar thing, so at least I'm not alone. Yes, the walls of my hovel are lined with forewords. Stern Plastic Owl has five forewords in it. People don't generally see books, even funny ones, as performance but that's exactly what mine is. Stand-up and funny books come from a similar internal reservoir though. Which is freeing rather than limiting if you look at it the right way instead of trying to look spontaneous, I can show my workings and signpost the graft if I want to. In books, you aren't quite allowed that illusion because the reader knows you're sitting at a desk, pouring literary science and hope into getting things right. Stand-up is often well-crafted but it has a loose vibe that's supposed to sound spontaneous. My page persona wears a suit and looks like an Aubrey Beardsley illustration or maybe a bit like one of those Nagel paintings from the '80s, but I secretly write in my pants and a fez, a crescent of testicle peeking playfully out. Well, you can do live comedy in your pyjamas too, but only if it works with your stage persona.

The highest form of human activity is the shenanigan.Īside from generally being unable to hear the booing, what other benefits does writing prose comedy have over performing live comedy? There are little bridging tendons - recurring characters and phrases - that connect the pieces together. I usually post early drafts to my blog and I sometimes get the finished pieces into magazines, but their natural habitat is really a book. There's just something magical about the format of 800 words about basically anything but trying to make it into something original. It's fun!Īs to why? Well, I've been writing short pieces like these for years. There's usually a single joke at the core of each piece, which I lean into or subvert or just play around with. Short essays and stories with a bit of a cheeky wink to them, like you'd see in old essay collections by S. What is it about? And why have you squeezed out such a thing?

Image shows from L to R: Robert Wringham, Gabriel Featherstone. I am Robert Wringham as you well know, and I have made a book. While David Sedaris is the reigning champ of humour writing today, Wringham's equivalent essays distinguish themselves by being shorter and more savage, and far, far sillier. His latest collection, Stern Plastic Owl, is out now and it includes some wonderful 'nonecdotes' from his self-confessed idle life as well as a side-splitting rumination on the private life of H G Wells. He rubbed shoulders with Simon Munnery and Stewart Lee for a book about Cluub Zarathustra, and lent his humorous tone to a pair of well-received anti-self-help books called Escape Everything! and The Good Life for Wage Slaves. He was shortlisted for Canada's Leacock Medal for Humour and two of his books are published by Go Faster Stripe, that niche producer of rarified and high-minded comedy.

Robert Wringham is a lesser known, off-the-beaten track sort of humourist but his credentials are impressive. Comedian and long-term admirer Gabriel Featherstone talks to humourist Robert Wringham about his latest book, Stern Plastic Owl.

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