‘I keep randomly shouting out ‘broccoli’ and ‘cauliflower’ – I think I might have Florets.” This one-liner from the Swedish comedian Olaf Falafel was voted the funniest joke of the Edinburgh fringe. It is also the only joke about Tourette syndrome that has ever made me laugh.
I’ve had Tourette’s since I was eight. I’m also a sucker for awful puns, so Falafel’s slightly dubious rhyme tickled me.
Not everyone found it funny. The comedian and activist Jess Thom, who also has Tourette’s, called Falafel’s joke “deeply unhelpful”, while Suzanne Dobson of the UK charity Tourettes Action called on anyone who laughed “to walk in the shoes of somebody with Tourette’s for a day”.
I have felt burning rage at such jokes in the past, for promoting often harmful stereotypes about what the disorder is like. In 2012, David Cameron mocked Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor at the time, by saying facing him in parliament was “like having someone with Tourette’s sitting opposite you”. Cameron apologised, but he had already made clear his blatant disrespect of Tourette’s as a serious disability.
By contrast, I don’t believe Falafel’s punchline made people with Tourette’s the butt of the joke. Although it did oversimplify the difficulties of living with it, as a play on words and vegetables, it was immediately better than most other “jokes” that came before.
Far more upsetting than the joke was the public intolerance it revealed. People with Tourette’s deal with a lot of extra hurdles in life: tics can lead to injury, unwanted attention in public and even awkward or aggressive confrontations. The calls on social media – and even in major news sources – for people with Tourette’s to “get a grip” over their criticism of Falafel’s joke suggests an inability or a refusal to be compassionate of this.
Thom has published a guide for comedians looking to include Tourette’s in their routine, including instructions to avoid tired, swearing-related punchlines and to chat to someone with Tourette’s if there is any uncertainty. So it is possible to make jokes about Tourette’s that people with Tourette’s find funny – but the public needs to be better educated to get them, too.
