REVIEW: Humour cuts through to the truth

Abstract

The Funniest Pages: International Perspectives on Humor in Journalism, edited by David Swick and Richard Lance Keeble. New York: Peter Lang. 2017. 288 pages. ISBN 978-1-4331-3099-1 (hardcover); ISBN 978-1-4539-1781-7 (e-book)

SOME of my most treasured moments in journalism have come, not through some painstaking excoriation of the powerful and corrupt, but thumbing the pages of Private Eye, or watching John Clarke take down the vanity of politicians across the ditch. Satire, humour and the cartoon page are as much journalism as investigative exposés; they’re the foam on the beer of journalism, the froth that stops us gagging on the otherwise relentless wholesomeness.