Robin Ince is quite possibly the UK’s best-read comedian and is certainly one of the most criminally undercelebrated. If I had my way, he’d have his own show on primetime television at least twice a week, with the impressive array of guests from the worlds of science and entertainment that he lines up for his live variety shows. For more than a decade, this becardiganed polymath has been expanding the universe of standup, his interest in cosmology and neuroscience leading to collaborations with eminent scientists.
Now Ince has turned his voracious curiosity to the subject of consciousness, in his first book. He wants to understand why we humans struggle so much with our sense of who we are: impostor syndrome, masks, daydreaming, anxiety. More specifically, he wants to understand these things as they relate to his own specific subset of humans, comedians, who often seem to embody our frailties and vanities writ large.
“I decided that I wanted to see whether the world could learn anything from comedians – their lives, their performances – by looking at why they do what they do,” he explains, “but also by asking whether all the cliches about comedians are just that, cliches, and whether science and psychology can prove that comedians are, in the end, just like anybody else.”
While he concludes that there is no unifying childhood experience or brain chemistry that accounts for the desire or the ability to be funny in public, the process of testing his hypotheses is a joyfully entertaining ride. Ince subjects himself to fMRI scans and has magnetic pulses applied to his brain to stop his speech. He interviews psychologists, neuroscientists and a variety of comedy colleagues to gather anecdotal and statistical data, and shares his own stories of childhood bullying and early trauma in a spirit of inquiry. “I think scrutinising your life to find the punchlines is quite healthy,” he observes.
As always, Ince is interested in the bigger picture. There’s a fascinating chapter on the subject of taboos and offence, one of comedy’s current hot-button issues. As he shows, offence is both an individual and a cultural response, and he considers the ways in which social media has magnified our reactions. With contributions from Ricky Gervais and Tim Minchin, he argues that comedy has always walked a tightrope in this regard, and that performers have a responsibility to consider the effect of their material, because comedy has a power beyond diversion: “If jokes are so unimportant, why do people get so exercised by them, and why do certain dictatorships ban them and imprison the tellers?” he asks.
But it’s the final chapter that gives the book its substance. Ince looks at the ways we use humour to deal with death – our fear of our own and that of our loved ones. He writes with painful honesty of rushing from a performance to his mother’s deathbed, and the anxiety of talking about his loss on stage. He also recounts moments of connection, where audience members have told him that his show briefly lifted them out of their own grief. “I think the best moment of being a standup – or being a human of any hue – is when someone tells you that you made life a little easier,” he concludes.
Though he may delight in showing us pictures of his brain, this is really a book about the heart; full of warmth, wisdom and affectionate delight in the wonder and absurdity of being human.
• I’m a Joke and So Are You: A Comedian’s Take on What Makes Us Human by Robin Ince is published by Atlantic Books (£16.99). To order a copy for £14.61 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
