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Here’s a post about the 3rd project in the Humorously Speaking manual. The first video in this series is viewable here Humorously Speaking 1. and the 2nd post is here. There’s more to creating humour than just comedy writing techniques; this video goes “beyond the rule of three”.

As I’ve said before, if you want to learn to be humorous, this video is can help you add humour to your presentations whether you’re a member of Toastmasters International or not. This clip is 18 mins long, so you may want to set aside some time to watch it. Read the rest of this entry

Sisterhood Gets a DVD release!

If you are a regular reader you would have read about an appearance that I made in a low budget movie called Sisterhood.

I blogged about this Brit-Kiwi comedy here, it’s been slowly building up momentum and has appeared at a few film festivals, been nominated for a few awards and even won one!

It had its world premiere at The Feelgood Film Festival in Hollywood in August 2008, where it was part of The Official Selection. It was also part of The Official Selection at LA Femme Film Festival the same year.

This year Sisterhood appeared at in The Official Selection at The British Film Festival in L.A., U.S.A. where it was nominated for 3 awards including Best Comedy, Best Actress and Best First Film. It ended up winning Best First Film! Read the rest of this entry

John Cleese recently reunited with the cast of Fawlty Towers in order to promote two documentaries about the sitcom which is now 30 years old. But he said that people wanting to learn to be a comedian or comedy writer didn’t put in as much hard work as they did back in the 1970s. He criticised the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a wealth of talent any more. Read the rest of this entry

So this past Sunday was World Laughter Day. It it connected to laughter yoga, which you can read more about over at my post about the Science of Laughter. It’s the first Sunday of every May. Their website says: 

“Laughter may be the best medicine, but how can we laugh at a time like this? Some people think that the tensions and conflicts in the world make it no laughing matter, but psychologist and author Steve Wilson, president of the World Laughter Tour, Inc., headquartered in Columbus, Ohio,  and those in the new laughter movement disagree”.

The idea is to get “the world to lighten up and laugh more”

Unfortunately I didn’t realise it was World Laughter Day until after the event. But luckily I managed to watch a comedy DVD on Sunday and have a good ol’ laugh anyway.

World Laughter Day seems mainly connected to laughter yoga, but I think that it might be worth expanding to include other disciplines and forms of generating laughter.

What do you think? Is World Laughter Day something that we should all embrace once a year?

Check out the World Laughter Day site.

I was surprised to hear of the passing of musical impressionist Danny Gans who was 52. While you may not have heard of Danny Gans his story is certainly fascinating. A former minor league Baseball player Gans tried his hand at stand-up comedy performing in comedy clubs at the beginning of his career, but he didn’t like doing them.

He discovered that he could sing as well and spent the next 15 years travelling around America making his money on the corporate circuit, performing 125 nights a year. He said he polished his act in front of “middle America, people who read People magazine… They loved clean comics. They loved music. It was Elvis’ audience”. However, it was only after he realised that his kids missed him that he decided to try a different tact. Read the rest of this entry