Tag Archives: death

Joke About the Founder of QVC

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The joke:

The founder of the television shopping network QVC died. He was 88, marked down from his regular age of 152.

How I wrote it:

This news item caught my eye because the QVC network and death each have a lot of potentially useful associations.

But “death jokes,” although they’re a familiar format, can be tricky. When are they acceptable?

The formula “Comedy equals tragedy plus time” means that even somebody’s death can be an acceptable joke topic if enough time has passed. But the founder of QVC died very recently. Does that mean the news item is off-limits?

Not necessarily, because I also consult another formula that I devised: “Comedy equals tragedy minus emotional connection.” Although people close to the QVC founder wouldn’t be amused by a joke about his passing, most people have little emotional connection to him. That means they would probably allow themselves to laugh, especially because the founder died a natural death.

Once I decided that a joke about that news item would probably be acceptable to a mass audience, I turned to my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

One handle of the topic, “died,” has the association “age of the deceased.” The other topic handle, “QVC,” has the association “marked down from regular price.”

My punch line links those two associations by stating that the age of the deceased had been marked down from his unrealistically-high “regular age.”

Joke About Deadly Soft Drinks

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The joke:

A new study says drinking sugar-sweetened beverages increases the risk of death. That’s why they’re renaming those soft drinks Coca-Coma, Mountain Doom, and Dr. Reaper.

How I wrote it:

That news item caught my eye because it has two handles with lots of associations, “sugar-sweetened beverages” and “death.”

To write the rest of the joke I used my Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic.

I started by brainstorming a list of associations for “sugar-sweetened beverages.” What I mean is, in pre-internet days I would have brainstormed those associations. Instead, what I actually did was google “soft drink brands” and run my eyes down the list.

As I did, I simultaneously ran through a mental list of words associated with the other topic handle, “death.” I cross-referenced both lists until I found a pair of associations that I could link with wordplay: “Dr. Pepper” and “Reaper.” Then I substituted “Reaper” for “Pepper” to get one of my laugh triggers.

Both “soft drinks” and “death” are so rich in associations that I felt I could make two more wordplay linkages; I wanted a total of three–no more, no less–because my Joke Maximizer #10 says to “Use the Rule of Three.” And I was able to link “Coca-Cola” to “coma” and “Mountain Dew” to “doom” to fill out my punch line.

Finally, I added the angle “That’s why they’re renaming those soft drinks…” to clearly and logically connect the topic sentence to my punch line.

Seventeenth-century poet and playwright John Dryden called the pun the “lowest and most groveling kind of wit.” But in the context of a well-structured joke, wordplay like a pun can work as well as any laugh trigger.