Show Notes
Last week’s episode made the business case for humour - but how do we start to find our funny? This week Adam Morgan meets standup comedy writing and speaking coach Chris Head for a comedy masterclass.
Chris shares practical experience and techniques he uses when working with comedians, how he helped stand-up Stepfania Licari push her personal stories for the biggest payoff and coached Richard Lindesay to become a headliner (and TikTok star), all while punching up Adam’s jokes along the way,
They discuss: The power of comedy to help engage people with serious and challenging subjects Simple techniques to build humour and surprise into anything from a story to an internal announcement The importance of making an immediate connection with the audience to break the tension The craft involved to go from a joke-shaped thought into a bigger, funnier routine The power of misdirection (but not the magic kind)
_____
Contact Chris (or sign up to a course): https://www.chrishead.com/
Chris’s books: Creating Comedy Narratives for Stage and Screen A Director's Guide to the Art of Stand-up The Complete Comedy Script Toolkit
_____
Connect with Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish. Thanks to our editor Ruth, our producer Travis, and to Tiny Podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Let's Make This More Interesting
In this episode Adam explores what it takes to use surprise effectively as an integral part of a challenger’s strategy. His guest is Kyrsten Halley, the former Marketing Director of Aldi UK, part of a team that for years has been putting the purposefully unexpected into the drudgery of the weekly grocery shop. One of the key ways Aldi has grown to become one of the Big Four in the UK.
In this episode of Let’s Make This More Interesting from eatbigfish, Adam explores what it takes to be more interesting in a very different medium: stop frame animation. Madga Osinska, today’s guest, is a director of short films and commercials for the world-famous Aardman Animations, besides her own projects, and a winner of jury prizes throughout Europe for her work.
What does it take to be interesting enough for people to brave the New York City subway to come and join you on a cold, wet, Tuesday night? Every Tuesday night? For two years?
How engaging do you have to be, really, to break inertia? To disrupt beliefs? And what does that take in your communication and in your culture?
In this second part of the conversation with Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy and behavioural science evangelist, we discuss why Rory feels we are thinking in entirely the wrong way about the payback for marketing, and the different way we need to go about finding those big, engaging ideas that will disproportionately impact the success of our business.