Ain't No Punshine

Does clever wordplay deserve more spotlight?

It may sound overly simple but there are really only two types of comedian in the UK today: those who do puns, and those who don't. Basing your career on proper wordplay-related jokes is often perceived as a lesser style of wit, curiously, despite those comics often having to work a lot harder than their anecdote-telling peers. Coming up with enough new jokes to fill a show is quite a challenge.

Perhaps that's just down to familiarity, as gags are a regular part of our lives, when you think about it. Hairdressers seem particularly potent pun merchants, when naming their shops. In London alone there are (or certainly were) - Barber Streisand, Curl Up and Dye, Scissors Palace, Headonizm, Hair We Go and - for the classic comedy fans - Beyond the Fringe.

Chip shops too. In Hertford, Oh My Cod is right opposite a church, while two Welsh chippies go for film gags: Frying Nemo and A Fish Called Rhonnda. Elsewhere in the principality there's a punky florist called Dark Side of the Bloom, in Scotland you can groom your pup at Captain Dugwash, and there are lots of online puns too, like gaming site Casinova. So is it a gamble, going with a punning title? Actually these are probably wise moves, as a clever name is more likely to be noticed, remembered and talked about.

As a nation we love puns then, but any comedian who relies on them is unlikely to ever win, say, the Edinburgh Fringe Best Show award. Ironically, puns just aren't taken seriously, even though those shows take more work than most. Life as a punsmith essentially involves keeping your brain open for promising phrases at all times, then working back from each punchline to create the set-up, knowing full well that most of these jokes will end up on the cutting room floor. Or the floor of a new material night.

These slightly unsung gagsters - punsung? - do have an award aimed at them, Edinburgh's annual Joke of the Fringe poll. And actually there is one element of other Fringe shows that often encourages puns, even from acts whose material goes in a whole different direction: the title. And particularly puns around the comics' own name.

That became very popular a few years back when Joe Lycett began shoehorning his name into song titles, then went on to enjoy the sort of career most comics would envy. Look back over the Edinburgh Award nominees for the last decade or so though - Best Show and Newcomer - and punning titles are very sparse, just The Delightful Sausage's Ginster's Paradise, Lucy Beaumont's We Can Twerk it Out, and Romesh Ranganathan's Rom Wasn't Built in a Day. And the latter two were way back in 2014.

It's the punsmiths that really go for it, title-wise (albeit not always). Milton Jones went down the name route with Milton Impossible and Ha! Milton, with its spot-on Hamilton pastiche poster. Adele Cliff got Cliff Notes out of the way early doors, then changed tack. Stewart Frances kept it punsome but descriptive, with Pun Gent and his retirement show, Into the Punset.

And then there's Tim Vine, who - like those hairdresser and fish-and-chip signs - has been all over the shop. Punslinger, Current Puns, The Jokeamotive, and in the big name/song year of 2014, the slightly tortuous Tim Timinee Tim Timinee Tim Tim To You.

Let's face it, if you don't like that title, you probably won't like the show. It does exactly what it says on the Tim.

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