Monthly Archives: March 2010

How to avoid losing your voice

By Andrew | Published: March 16, 2010
Last week I was teaching a four day technical course to a group of software engineers. The biggest challenge when teaching a long course is maintaining your voice. You have to project your voice to fill the room, which means you lose much more moisture through your mouth. After about ten minutes my mouth was [...]
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Writing for stand up part 1: What is a joke?

By Andrew | Published: March 12, 2010
Jokes subvert assumptions. Consider this joke from Jimmy Carr: My girlfriend said she wanted me to tease her. I said “alright, fatty”. Carr creates an assumption (that his girlfriend wants to be teased playfully) then subverts it (by teasing her maliciously). It’s a classic setup/punch joke; the first sentence (setup) leads us in one direction, [...]
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Microphone Technique

By Andrew | Published: March 4, 2010
Last Monday was week five of my stand up comedy course (read about week 1, 3 and 4). For the first time I used a microphone during my set. I’ll be honest, using a microphone is fairly trivial. Just point it towards your mouth and speak. But my instructor, Joe Charles, explained a few finer [...]
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