Blog posts

Can Anyone Do Funny?

It’s a great question,  and one I’m often asked.

When I ran comedy workshops, I only met one person who was adamant they couldn’t do funny. He told me, “My wife sent me here because she says I need a sense of humour so we can watch Fawlty Towers together.” In truth, he was actually very funny – even if he didn’t always realise it.

So, can anyone really do funny?

Why Most Presentation Openings Are Dull – And How to Fix Yours

How many of us start a presentation with:

“I’m here today to talk to you about…”

It’s the presentation equivalent of a beige sandwich - brown bread, beef or mushroom pate filling. Safe, polite, and sadly very forgettable.

But what if you started with something that made your audience sit up, lean in, and think, “Ooh, this is different”? And different in a good way.

Rule of 3

Three things that have made a massive difference to my productivity, mental health, and overall effectiveness—so I thought I’d share them:

  1. I don’t need to keep checking my favourite news websites. A quick glance at the TV news is enough.

  2. Avoid social media. It’s designed to eat time.

  3. And Stoke City really don’t need me constantly checking how they’re doing.

I love the rule of 3 - breaking things down into threes. It’s not just a productivity hack, it’s also a comedy staple.

Impostor Syndrome: The Rude Motivational Coach

 

Meet Your Noisy Inner Critic

One of the biggest challenges in presenting is that little chap on your shoulder: Impostor Syndrome. Giving you constructive feedback like, “You’re rubbish, nobody’s listening, you’ve messed it up again. Oh God, you’re so boring, no one’s listening!” Meanwhile, you’re just trying to get through your slides without your laptop or your boss catching fire.

Why Serious People Are Ruining Everything

We all know them. The Serious People™.

They speak in that “business voice” – the one that makes everything sound like it was written by a legal bot with attitude. Sadly they’re convinced that anything less will make them look like a candidate for Love Island. They have to look uber professional and are under the impression this will make them look impressive. It doesn’t. It makes them forgettable. It makes them exhausting.

Why too much Seriousness Fails

The Rogue Monkey. Why We Should All Be Looking for One

 

Ever heard of the rogue monkey effect? No, it's not a new IPA or a yoga move. It’s actually something brilliant from the mind of performance psychologist and world class speaker, Jamil Qureshi (seriously, check him out https://www.jamilqureshi.com/— he’s worked with astronauts, Premier League footballers, and me writing this post, which is clearly the pinnacle of his career).

“You Can’t Say Anything These Days…”

I was running a workshop with some clients last week and, as often happens over lunch, the conversation turned to comedy. Someone asked if I'd worked with any famous comedian, and then someone tossed out the classic line: “Well, you can’t say anything nowadays, can you?”

We didn’t dig into it right then-we had a session to get back to-but I’ve been thinking about it since. Especially because Reginald D. Hunter, one of the most brilliant and fearless comics working today, is currently being dragged through the courts for doing, well… comedy.