David Cameron joked about sex positions and having been a hooker in a speech unusually laced with innuendo for a Conservative party conference. We asked Guardian editorial community manager Marc Burrows – who has been known to moonlight on the standup circuit – to assess the quality of the prime minister’s one-liners.
A sex joke
Cameron got his biggest laugh for claiming to have shown his wife a book written by Labour’s economic guru:
There’s an academic called Richard Murphy. He’s the Labour party’s new economics guru. He’s the man behind their plan to print more money … He’s written a book. It’s called The Joy of Tax. I’ve got it. I took it home, to show Samantha. It’s got 64 positions and none of them work.
Marc Burrows’ verdict: This is a classic joke structure, almost textbook in fact: take two disparate ideas (‘The Joy of Sex’, and taxation) and play with the language that links them. I suspect he’s read some books on putting together comedy. It’s very Cameron: smooth, a little self-satisfied, a little smug, quite old fashioned, and a touch after-dinner-speaker. It’s a groaner, but it does work. We’ll give him this one.
An election night joke...
But just for a moment, think back to 7 May.
I don’t know about you, but it only takes two words to make me smile: exit poll.
... and a morning after joke
I will never forget that morning. Getting back to London. Seeing many of you. Then sitting down in the flat at No 10 with Sam and the kids getting ready for school. There we were, surrounded by half-packed boxes and bin bags. Well, you have to be ready for anything.
I was writing my speech and preparing to go and see Her Majesty. And I thought … I’ll just lie down and let it all sink in.
As I shut my eyes, Ed Balls had gone. And when I woke up and I switched on the radio, Nigel Farage had gone too.
MB: Barely a joke. There’s no punchline here, so it’s working on momentum and knowing his audience, pressing their feel-good buttons. No one outside of the room is going to crack a smile. It’s lazy technique, getting the audience on side and getting them to like you without having to use any real effort.
A coalition joke
Cameron introduced another one-liner by referencing the diversity and hard work of Conservative candidates at the election:
Just days before the election, Scott Mann was doing his postal round in Cornwall – delivering not just his own campaign leaflets, but his rivals’ too.
You wouldn’t catch a Lib Dem doing that.
MB: This is what’s known in the trade as “punching down”, picking a common victim the audience will also look down on and making them an easy target in order to get a cheap laugh. Interestingly, Stewart Lee speculated that the tendency to “punch down” is why rightwing comics are less common.
Another sex joke
In a later part of the speech, the prime minister built on a joke made by the London mayor, Boris Johnson, who on Tuesday embarked on a convoluted rugby metaphor to describe his political beliefs:
Boris, the tight head prop. I was a hooker. And by the way that is a factual statement, not a chapter of Michael Ashcroft’s book.
MB: The classic “call back”, always a winner in any gig. It makes the audience feel clever because they’re remembering something from earlier and doing the work themselves. It’s a tried and tested club technique. Here Cameron’s doing a double whammy, partly by calling back to Boris, but also referencing the elephant (well, pig) in the room – Lord Ashcroft’s book – without having to directly take the subject on. It’s a clever move, because it show’s he’s self aware but considers the subject unworthy of further detail, and is implying his audience are clever enough to do the same. It’s the comic equivalent of tapping the side of your nose. What’s more, because Ashcroft’s revelations are inherently funny, especially now the dust has settled and it feels less poisonous, he’s able to leach some comic energy from the existing jokes and comic tension. It’s his smartest gag here.
A cultural joke
Cameron ended with a joke about the economic recovery:
And if we’re to be the global success story of the 21st century, we need to write millions of individual success stories. A country raising its sights, its people reaching new heights.
A Great British take-off – that leaves no-one behind.
MB: He’s ending on a pun. Not a smart move – puns will always get groans, and groans are never as good as laughs. He’s only pulling it off because the audience is already firmly onside, but a less generous crowd would never accept it. You’re supposed to leave a gig on your strongest laugh, by ending on such weak wordplay most audiences would be left unsure of what they’d just seen. You’d never get away with this at the Comedy Store.
- This article was amended on 9 October 2015 to correct the joke about The Joy of Tax to the version actually spoken by Cameron. The article previously quoted the joke as it was given in the written version of the speech issued by the Conservative party.
.png?w=600)
