Skip to content
Inside Story
About
Donate
Sign up
Search
Search
Menu
About
Donate
Sign up
Search
Search
humour
Books & Arts
Born to laugh
Robert Phiddian
22 March 2024
Is British comedy pervaded by the worldview of the Oxbridge graduate?
Books & Arts
Yes, it is funny
Robert Phiddian
5 September 2023
How the comic genius of John Clarke found its anchor
Essays & Reportage
What did you do in the war, Sandy?
Anne-Marie Condé
13 June 2023
How closely was Barry Humphries’s least domineering character based on ex–second world war servicemen?
Essays & Reportage
Petty’s golden thread
Robert Phiddian
12 April 2023
The brilliant cartoonist illuminated Australia as it is, and as it could be
Books & Arts
Funny things happened on the way to the Forum
Brett Evans
9 July 2021
Even the Romans used jokes to drive home their point, though they tend to lose something in the translation
Books & Arts
The jokes that get away
Richard Johnstone
10 July 2019
Books
| Does incongruity always explain why some things seems funny and others don’t?
Essays & Reportage
John Clarke and the power of satire
Matthew Ricketson
11 April 2017
The satirist inverted conventional journalistic formats to probe politics and power
Books & Arts
The comedy wars
Jane Goodall
7 April 2015
Television
| There’s plenty to enjoy about Stephen Oliver’s survey of TV humour, writes
Jane Goodall
. But how uniquely Australian is the phenomenon…
From the archive
Lucking into the zeitgeist
Iain Topliss
17 February 2011
Jules Feiffer, the cartoonist who made anxiety funny