Why do you like surreal humour? Page 4

Quote: Agnes Guano @ October 4 2011, 9:27 PM GMT

"Real Madrid 1 ... Surreal Madrid Fish".

My new favouritist joke! Surreal is so hit and miss I find. A lot of Monty Python was not very good. But perhaps you have to have the dodgy stuff to get to the 'Yorkshireman' sketch. Plus I really liked Vic Reeves 'Big Night Out'. But again some dross as well in that! Perhaps that's what you have to allow for as it's so subjective a subject!

The word "fish" appears on every page of this thread so far. Six times in total (seven if you include this one).

What's that all about then?

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Quote: Kevin Murphy @ November 2 2011, 8:39 PM GMT

The word "fish" appears on every page of this thread so far. Six times in total (seven if you include this one).

What's that all about then?

Cod knows.

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Quote: Kevin Murphy @ November 2 2011, 8:39 PM GMT

The word "fish" appears on every page of this thread so far. Six times in total (seven if you include this one).

What's that all about then?

Fish and surrealism seem to go together-there is a surrealistic novel The Soluble Fish and Douglas Adams' The Salmon of Doubt. A famous Python sketch involves fish-slapping and they pretended to be fish in Meaning of Life and there is John Cleese's A Fish Called Wanda, where goldfish is consumed. Spike Milligan had various poems about fish.

There's an old joke "how many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb? Fish!", and since then , what was once an unpredictable non-sequitur, has become the predictable standard reply to surreal questions.

If "Fish" is the standard reply to surreal questions, it's time to change it now or continue using it until it becomes surreal again because it has gone past the cliche into surreal territory again due to the amount of overuse. So...Armadillo

What recommendations do people have for surreal comedy. So far I have:

Mitch Hedberg
Steve Martin
Emo Philips

but they're all American, so from the UK

Noel Fielding
Eddie Izzard
Monty Python
The Young ones
Alexei Sayle

Any more recommendations ? Which are you favourites ?

For me it has to be Monty Python, Steve Martin and Mitch but I like all surreal comedy. Oh and a honorary mention to the talking objects in the Young ones, especially the sandwich.

Vic and Bob?

Gotta have some Spike in there. Hitler Sings, Irish Mission To The Moon......

All the surreal stuff in Father Ted was always brilliantly done.

whatabout Steven Toast.

Quote: Tim Azure @ 5th December 2011, 7:31 PM

Fish and surrealism seem to go together

This freaked me out when I was a kid, partly cos I'd just gone veggie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-K2DZojWi0

Thanks for the tips, all good ones. Spike and Vic are favourites and I'd forgotten about Father Ted and Steve Toast. Can anyone think of a good surreal comedy movie ? I loved the Naked gun/Aireplain ones, if they qualify. The Monty Python movies were great but there has to be more.

I don't really go for the surreal stuff these days. There's only so much fish and jam and badgers and cheese that you can get away with.

If it's in the context of improv, then I can usually appreciate it more. But some stuff seems to call itself surreal in order for the writer to avoid writing actual jokes.