An interesting snippet surfaces from Andrew Gimson’s ConservativeHome interview with Charles Moore, author of the long-awaited official biography of Margaret Thatcher, the first part of which is published today. In answer to Gimson’s query as to whether the former prime minister had a sense of humour, Moore said:
I’d say these things called jokes, which have punch lines and a set-up and say things like ‘there’s an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman’, are fundamentally male, and she had absolutely no understanding of them whatever. But this does not mean she had no sense of humour. It’s just different. She had a sense of wit because she had a verbal directness which is almost biblical Judaic. Something would come out quickly in riposte, which was sort of funny, yes it was funny really, it was crisp. Another thing was a sense of fun which was about enjoying a situation. There’s a sense of theatre. So one reason why she was such fun to work for I think – not fun to work with, as a Cabinet member, but to work for as say private secretary – is that she’s always terrifically enjoying all this, and there’s a pantomime element in her which is camping herself up, spoofing herself, you know, wanting to go and tap you on the shoulder and wave the handbag. You know, playful. She didn’t understand double entendres at all, of course. That comes into the book.
His suggestion that a traditional joke, exemplified here by his “Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman” example, is a fundamentally male technique for humour seems to me an entirely baseless one. Professional female comedians come in all shapes, sizes and styles, and I’ve never heard it said before that women are any more or less likely to be able to handle the telling of a formulaic joke. His distinction between crisp wit, a sense of fun and a more theatrical humour is a good one, though – if nothing else, Thatcher is sure to emerge from Moore’s Not for Turning as a more, not less, complex figure.
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