Column 9 - 18.8.04

David Savvides makes a serious appeal

As you will recall, the European Divertissement Directive passed into UK law in 1996, as part of the social charter.

A Department of Humour was set up to "grease the wheels of government and lighten public life with jokes and stories".

This has shuffled out its quota of one-liners, innuendoes, puns, shaggy dog stories and occasional slapstick ever since, which have found their way into official visits, speeches, press releases and even, once, an opening of Parliament.

Under New Labour, the department's workforce has trebled, staff being recruited from the Oxbridge revue teams and the Edinburgh Fringe, but even so they have struggled to meet their targets.

Productivity was supposed to be up by 450% on 1998 levels, by 2003, but opinions are divided over whether this should be measured in the number of jokes output - or decibels of laughter produced.

In fact, most performance indicators showed a proportional decline in 2003/4. APSE has complained about working conditions, arguing that genuine humour cannot be produced to order, and certainly not to meet predefined benchmark indicators.

This is true, but the fact is Brussels can take nations to the European Court if they don't meet their targets, and fines have been imposed - for example on Greece (1999), Spain (2000) and Germany (1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003). Germany has also been accused of plagiarizing jokes from the UK and Netherlands. In its defense it claimed that other nations just didn't understand their sense of humour.

The Department has had its fair share of leaks, as when punchlines have been released in advance of the official timing, or, memorably, when a joke intended for a senior civil servant's speech was run as a cartoon in the Times the day before, thus spoiling its effect.

Spoof pronouncements have been taken for the real thing by gullible journalists, for example when a Home Office spokesperson spoke of "The tattered remnants of an ideology hanging in the windless lull of electoral disinterest like a pair of half-cleaned underpants on the washing line of politics," meant that it was considering reintroducing "the stocks, placed outside supermarkets, for repeated anti-social miscreants, as a popular vote-winner". Certain newspapers published editorials the following day strongly supporting such a move.

This led observers to conclude that the Humour Department had been co-opted by the Cabinet Office to sneakily trail possible policies just to smoke out reactions.

If the response was negative, they could always say it was "just a joke"; if positive, they would launch it officially. Which led some wag to comment that "this means nothing the Government says can ever be taken seriously again".

So, if the entire Government is now seen to be putting out jokes, and with civil service cuts looming, it's not surprising that the Department's workforce is now living, terrified, in fear of the axe.

So, dear readers, if you don't want this essential Government service to discontinue, please, add your name to the email petition appearing in an inbox near you soon.