Can you really learn to be funny?

It’s the question that academics have wrestled with for centuries. Okay, maybe that’s not strictly true and we're lucky they didn't.

Many people think that you’re either funny or you’re not and I think that’s true… but only to an extent.

Here’s what I mean, I know many naturally funny people who try their hand at stand-up comedy, or giving a humorous presentation, and they fail miserably. I don’t mean that they have a few bad gigs and then get better. I mean gig after gig is just bad.

Really bad.

What happens is exactly what happened to me, you’re funny you can easily make people laugh. So you don’t need to learn how to be funny, right?

But what tends to happen is that we write something down, do our first open mike and get a couple of laughs, but ultimately our act, or speech, bombs.

Then another comedian, or speaker who uses humour, suggests we read a book on writing comedy. So we pick up a book (or four) and read about how to write our “hilarious” material.

Only, it doesn’t end up being hilarious, it ends up being an unfunny mess. We try again... and again it fails. Your friends say that you’re much funnier in person.

Most comedy writing books (and I know this because I have most of them), only briefly cover stand-up comedy. The rest of the time they spend talking about sketch comedy, writing for television and writing for radio and so on.

On average the information on stand-up comedy is restricted to a two chapters at best. In that chapter, and the majority of the rest of the book, the focus is on comedy writing techniques.

If you’ve read anything about comedy writing before you know what I’m talking about; the rule of three, the reverse, the double entendre, etc, etc.

On and on these books go about these techniques and what’s the end result for us? We seem to lose sight of what made us funny in the first place. We lose our ability to use our built-in sense of humour and get stuck with these concepts.

We try to force jokes into these formulas and become fixated by what appears on the page. That’s why it takes comedians so long to master joke writing.

Here’s what you have to do.... Throw away the comedy books and learn to find a way to capture your own sense of humour. You’re able to make your friends and work colleagues laugh, right?

Well, the mechanics of laughter are exactly the same when you make your friends laugh as when you are making a room full of people laugh.

So this seems to me the reason why many new comedians struggle when they try to learn to be funny. Why should you have to learn it if you can already do it? If you are giving a speech or presentation it's much easier to harness your natural sense of humour.

If you already have a speech that you give then, presumably, you're interested in the subject already. By having an interest, and maybe even enthusiasm, for the subject it becomes easier to use your sense of humour.

Here's what I would do:

1. Go through your speech or presentation and read it out loud.

2. Allow your own remarks and thoughts to come up based on what you've already written.

3. Find lines or ideas that you want to comment on. Your comments will either be sarcastic, off-the-wall, wordplay... whatever your natural sense of humour is.

4. Make sure that you capture exactly what it is that you're saying and exactly how you're using emphasis.

5. Grab a friend, or colleague, that you are able to be yourself with and try out your additional comments, or punchlines, on them.

6. Edit out the ones which don't get any laughs. Keep the ones that do. Rinse and repeat.

Note: This method works the same for stand-up comedy material too. Find a topic that you're enthusiastic about and talk about this topic out loud and write down what you say word for word.

The ultimate litmus test is to try out your humorous material in front of a live audience. That way you can really tell what works, and what doesn't. There you have it. A quick six-step process to really learning how to be funny.