By Ian Mulville
Author: Full Circle (Crime/Fiction, Launch date July 2013)
I was once at an International HR Conference in Dublin. (That’s Human Resources, or ‘Human Remains’ as some people refer to it). The main speaker was the HR Director of a greenfield, billion- Dollar biopharmaceutical facility which was just about to open after four years development. It was on-time, within budget and with all specifications met. A remarkable achievement.
The HR guy talked passionately about the challenges he faced in attracting the highly-skilled scientists and technicians required to run such a sophisticated operation, plus all the many hundreds of support staff, contractors and consultants, and here it was all finally coming together. It was an incredible story, full of changing priorities, obstacles overcome, stress and pressure, but – as a team and despite the odds – they’d done it, and exceeded all expectations.
After all the stats, facts and figures, he paused and, with a glint in his eye, delivered the final line of his presentation, his punchline:
“But of course, we couldn’t have achieved any of this without a healthy dose of (the) Craic”.
As anticipated, this drew a very mixed response from the assembled audience:
The Irish, and some of the British, laughed and some even applauded. The Europeans smiled politely, not quite sure what had just been said, and why people were laughing. But best of all, the Americans present all froze with a “did he really just say that?” look on their faces.
He then went on to explain that ‘the Craic’ in Gaelic, is a generic term for banter, jokes or storytelling, usually in a social context; a good sense of humour. So they had used humour to keep their spirits up in the face of adversity. The Americans breathed a sigh of relief, and the Germans nodded. Humour. Ja.
The Craic is deeply ingrained in the Irish culture, and if there’s one thing I inherited from my father, it was his sense of humour (although watching my YouTube clips, you wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell that!). In my new book, Full Circle, I’ve tried to let that ‘sense of humour in the face of adversity’ come through, though there are plenty of stand-alone stories and incidents which will also make you smile. Or wince. (A ‘final draft’ version of Chapter One is available to read on my website http://www.ianmulville.com and might give you a little flavour of what follows…).
Humour is very subjective. What some people will find amusing, others may find upsetting or disgusting, or may simply not ‘get’ at all, especially when different languages or cultures are involved, as evidenced by the example above. Eddie Izzard is especially inspirational in this regard, and has managed to successfully perform a stand-up comedy routine in France, in French, to rave reviews. Not content with that, I recently read that he’s determined to now do the same in German, Spanish, Russian and Arabic. How’s that for a challenge?
I cannot claim to be the inventor of the following joke, but I was fortunate enough to be able to try it out first-hand, and still laugh about it now. I met two Austrians in a bar (in Sumatra) and asked them.
“Who was that famous Austrian racing driver who nearly died in a crash, back in the eighties?”.
“Lauda”, they responded.
So I raised my voice a little and said “you know, the one who got badly burned. Lost his eyebrows and his ears”.
“Lauda”, they again responded, in unison.
I pushed on, raising my voice still further “I think it was Nikki something-or-other”.
By now they were both wondering who this dumb guy was in front of them. “Lauda!”, they said.
So I really shouted to them “I think he started his own airline”.
“It’s Lauda. Nikki Lauda!”, they roared, exasperated.
Then they saw that I was nearly peeing myself with laughter, and the penny dropped. Could have gone either way, but at the time it was perfect.
Anyway, enough of this humour stuff, and let me leave you with a quote by Winston Churchill, who apparently offended a lady with a badly-timed joke and, after having been accused of being drunk, reportedly said:
“I may be drunk madam, but you are ugly. At least in the morning I shall be sober”.
Thanks for reading. Be back soon.
Cheers
Ian
ianmulville | author 