Kevin arrived dressed for the part in a white shirt covered in blue stars. A definite statement of intent! He gave us a STAR performance and an evening full of fun, learning and laughter.
Using some flip charts he had prepared earlier (I didn’t spot his Blue Peter badge children, did you?) Kevin gave us a quick overview of our evening. For those who needed more detail he had also provided a handout in mind map form for the key parts of our entertainment.
His first Flip was headed “What’s in it for Me?” and he used this to frame ‘comedy’. Laughter produces a chemical reaction in the brain, which makes us feel good. We all experienced that through the evening. Some of the basic principles of NLP apply to humour. ‘Fake it until you make it’ is the ticket to state change leading to behaviour change, or behaviour change leading to state change. No, I’m not confused! If the body feels lethargic, think of something energising and the body will respond. If the mind feels lethargic, do something positive and the mind will become energised. If they are both off duty, pretend one of them isn’t! To be successful as a comic in any situation remember Rapport helps a lot! Apparently its from the Greek meaning ‘conspire’. (Or was it perspire?)
Learning to let your inner comic loose leads to more choices and new resources, and Kevin’s plan was to help us discover our own ‘mischievous‘ state, where we would automatically ask ourselves “What else could that mean?”. In the process he secretly hoped we would come up with some great gags he could share! (Steal).
Enough of the talk and on with the work, this is a ‘practice’ group so let’s get practicing. But just before we do .. Kevin tells us what he wants us to play with, what he calls ‘The joke Jenarator’. (Don’t be so picky, that’s how he spells it!)
There is humour in everyday stuff, the trick is to generate a different perspective. The process begins with a ‘winge’ about stuff that gets on your T**s! For some of you, who are sloppy eaters this could be your dinner. It may be people making silly jokes, your Boss’s inability to make any decision, let alone a good one. The fact that you wait two hours for a bus and then three come along all at once. Whilst deciding which one to catch you take so long that they all leave without you. OR ...

So the next step is to take a winge or two and have a real RANT about them. In my group we were exercised about people who hog the middle lane of the motorway. And those others who will insist on driving so close behind that they block out the view from your rear view mirror! Then we ranted about those poor souls who are always in the wrong lane because they are lost and don’t know any better. But we were really incensed by the impatience of drivers who hoot at us when we are in the wrong lane because we’re lost! I’m sure you’re getting the idea of ranting. Please do it quietly in the privacy of your own home. I think it was mid-rant that we took our comfort / refreshment break. Returning with our glasses Kevin got us to rant some more and then to add a twist to our rant to turn disaster into humour. In NLP terms this is a reframe. In ‘Joke Jinorater’ terms this is using the element of surprise, take the story in an unexpected direction, exposing a hidden part of the story, shock value, or expanding the story beyond its natural logical limits. Or as Kev so succinctly put it using a phonological ambiwhatsit. And ‘Buy Now’ I think we had the general idea. (Don’t worry I’ll think of something to sell you in a minute). After a moment or two of turning our ranting into a gag to amuse at least ourselves if not the rest of the group it was time to set ourselves up for the delivery of said side splitter. So that was the process of using the ‘Joke Jennyrater’.

Kevin gathered us together in a large circle to make sure that when we had finally decided on our GAG for the evening we would be in the ‘right’ state to deliver it. He defined Performance as being Potential minus Interference. Interference being both outside and inside.
Time for a singing lesson! To check our current state Kevin asked us to sing the stirring words “Ford Escort”. (Feel free to join in at home now). It wasn’t a great success so we proceeded to make it worse by thinking of one of those days when we would have been better off staying in bed, except if we had, the ceiling would probably have collapsed on our head as a result of the upstairs bath overflowing. “Ford Escort” we sang durgidly. (made up word, the spell check didn’t know what to do with this). Time to go for the positive and we recalibrated ourselves to one of those days when everything is magical and even the impossible is done exquisitely well. “Ford Escort” we trilled. Now I think it was a bit much of Kevin to expect us to remember lots of lines to a new song, but he carried on regardless and suggested we imagined that we were the St Petersberg Cathedral choir. A choir where you can only be admitted if you belong to a special elite. Standing in the choir stall overlooking the congregation and the ministers we sang lustily “Ford Escort and a Ford Escort, Ford Escort, and a Ford Escort”. Now we was cooking baby! Not content with our great performance Kevin insisted on pushing us even further. We became the Gentlemen and Ladies of the D’Olye Carte Opera company. We imagined ourselves all puffed up and strutting round the stage in our finery. To really test us Kevin added more words to the song. “Ford Escort, and a Ford Escort, Ford Escort, and a Ford Escort, Mini, mini, mini, mini, and a Ford Escort”. (Catchy little number isn’t it). I hope you’re keeping up at the back. We were feeling pretty pleased at the level of our performance but Kevin wanted more!! Now we had to eyeball each other and sing to people on the other side of the circle. He suggested some large hand and arm movements, and smiling, would really lift the performance. And he added yet more words. Off we went again “Ford Escort, and a Ford Escort, Ford Escort, and a Ford Escort, Mini, mini, mini, mini, and a Ford Escort” (Really big movements) “Ferrari, Ferrari, Mini, mini, mini, mini, and a Ford Escort”. (I think this is one of Lloyd Webber’s tunes isn’t it?)
Well!! Were we having fun or what? Quickly back into our groups to finalise our GAG and decide how we would present it. Kevin showed us how to acknowledge the applause with two versions of a bow. Due to time restrictions the Gag finished on the first laugh. We couldn’t hold one group back. They leapt to the front and said “ Why does the Altsheimer society have five choices on its answerphone .. (laughter) THE END. Shame this, ‘cos I’m sure they had a good gag in there, something like “Altsheimer Society, please press one if you are confused. Press two if you are very confused, press three if you no longer remember why you called, press four if you have now given up the will to live and we will transfer you to the Euthanasia society, or hold indefinitely whilst we mount up charges on your phone bill”. Only I expect theirs was much funnier. Other groups also got two or three words out before laughter ‘donged’ them out. Then it was my group who had chosen me to deliver the best gag of the evening. I managed to keep the audience quiet with my delivery until after the punchline. Then my group came to my rescue and laughed. I forgot to bow.
Pardon? Oh you want the gag! OK. Driving on the motorway is a bit like choosing a political party to support. It used to be easy. In the right hand lane you could be sure to find the conservatives. In the left lane were labour with the unions on the hard shoulder. The middle lane was reserved for the Lib Dems. Now its motorway madness as all three main parties are jostling to hog the middle lane whilst the UK Independance Party and The National Front are competing from motorway bridges to throw bombs and the Green Party are tidying up the central reservation and planting wild flowers on the verges. Laugh? NOW! You’d better!
We spent a great deal of time laughing. I’ve had lots of good feedback from those wise people who came along.
As always there are many aspects to an evening like this. On the surface it was a lot of fun, and we got some rants off our chest. A little deeper it used many basic NLP skills. Rapport. Re-framing. State control. Act as if. Deeper still it accessed new and useful resources to add to our growing store.
Thank you Kevin for an evening full of fun and learning.

Return to NLP-South main site