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Ken Dodd once drafted a book which outlined regional variations in what makes people laugh. He called it The Giggle Map of Britain. If something is intrinsically funny where its hearer comes from should not affect their response to it as Buster Keaton demonstrated. Nevertheless there are cultural quirks which define whether something is always funny or only funny some of the time. What is funny to a Northerner may not be funny to a Midlander. In fact very little is funny to a Midlander as some of us have found to our cost.

Ken Dodd's book is an important cultural study but it does not go far enough. In order to profit from it you have to tell jokes to people. But before you get to that stage you have to rehearse. This means telling jokes to dummies, walls, plants etcetera. It would be more useful if the tastes of these objects were defined and then related to human tastes. If we know how to make inanimate objects laugh we can apply the same techniques to humans to produce the same response.

Dummies are often considered funny in themselves which is one reason why ventriloquists have them. I would be sued for libel if I told you the other one. Dummies however regard their condition as the norm and the human condition as absurd. One source of amusement for them is how humans move their necks. Whereas a dummy can detach its head or turn it through 180 degrees humans have certain limits in both vertical and lateral movement. It must be very funny for a dummy to watch humans trying to point themselves in impossible directions to look at things and how easy it is for someone to come up behind them unawares. Similarly human speech must be highly amusing to a dummy. Dummies cannot talk on their own despite the best attempts of George W. Bush to persuade us otherwise. To hear humans coming out with the sounds of dummies on their own without hands up their backsides must tickle their fancies greatly. Humans also sleep. Most people seem to find fun in other people farting. Dummies must respond the same way to the sound of humans snoring. If would-be humorists did all these things deliberately they would learn how to create the best response in dummies and how therefore to apply the same techniques to human taste.

As we were told during the Second World War walls have ears. They absorb everything around them to create the culture of that building and several together create the culture of a street or town. That is why we respond differently to different places. But if walls could also talk all this accumulated experience would come out of their mouths and be lost forever. It must therefore be a great amusement to walls to see people trying to convey information by talking. Such futile gestures would be their version of the alternative oblivion comedy of the 1980's. Similarly they must be shaking themselves silly when humans forget things. How the allegedly superior human can fail to learn from their experience is beyond those whose mortar structure prevents them forgetting anything. Not for nothing is the structure of mortar the basis of computer memory systems whose own impish humour we have come to take for granted. Walls will also be amused by people standing still and saying nothing. Babies always smile if you imitate their every move. Walls must be cheered by the sight of humans pretending to be them.

Plants always respond to being spoken to. We are told this is due to the beneficial effect of the carbon dioxide we emit whilst speaking. Actually they grow more when they feel better about themselves as they do when they laugh. The growth rate of humans must amuse them. Why does it take eighteen years for humans to reach their optimum height when it takes a plant a few weeks? Similarly our faces must be funny. All the same colour unless it is particularly hot or cold. No stripes or speckles or differential responses to light. Nor does light make them grow. A plant magician would stick a miniature human in a cardboard box with a lamp in it and pull them out the other side exactly the same size to howls of laughter from their plant audience. Once again there are ample opportunities for humans to maximise their condition for comic effect and thus learn how to create the laughter they seek.

We have all seen embarrassing atttempts at humour. People who are being payed good money to appear on TV programmes fail miserably to connect with their audience. This is because they have never learned their trade. It is all very well making humans laugh. But if you have no idea how to make other things laugh you will not have the tools of your job and everything will be hit or miss. We have an alternative we have disregarded for so long. But there is a reason that funny ha ha and funny peculiar are the same thing with two different interpretations. Humans gave those interpretations to cover their lack of humour. To inanimate objects they are fundamentally the same and this fundamental of truth is ultimately what all of us will spend our lives trying to see by our widely differing pathways.