Is it just me or is April Fools' Day a bit lame this year? When I was a kid I remember the joke news stories being genuinely funny. I remember the Channel tunnel diggers from France and England missing each other in the middle and Viagra for guinea pigs. I would wake up on 1 April excited to check the papers. My parents would recount tales of the Panorama "spaghetti harvest" with all the reverence and nostalgia of spaghetti farmers actually recalling their first crop.
Yes, April Fools' Day is the hoop and stick, the cup-and-ball game, the Michael McIntyre of comedy, if you will. If you enjoy it, it just means nothing better has been invented yet. Back in my day, the main rivals to April Fools' Day were Sesame Street and the Funday Times. I was comedy starved. I savoured every morsel.
But we're spoiled now. We have a vast amount of news-based comedy – almost too much. A thousand times an hour crowd-honed one-liners and amusing videos are swooshed past our eyeballs. For Twitter is the perfect comedy machine. You've got motivation (retweets and followers), endless critical feedback, rivals, and a potential audience of millions. It's democratic, it's a free market – it is an unrivalled creative production line. April Fools' Day jokes? They haven't a chance any more.
Is this a bad thing? Sure, I guess our attention spans are a little lower, and sure, if the internet exploded or we were stuck on a desert island with only a bible and a boxset of Spitting Image we'd be at a bit of a loss to entertain ourselves. (The worst thing to be stranded with, of course, being a podcast of Desert Island Discs). But if there's a choice between appreciating comedy as it used to be and educating our comedy palates, I'd choose the latter every time.
There's really no point in preserving tradition in comedy; there's no room for nostalgia. Comedy is about the unexpected, it has to move forward. And there is nothing more depressing than watching a roomful of people laugh at a line that's five years old. You were the first to come up with a joke format? Well, so what? The way you did it doesn't make anyone laugh any more. A joke has a two-hour expiration date on Twitter, and this is an excellent thing.
But it's not just traditional "comedy days" under threat. I fear for news-pegged Sunday columns and topical panel shows too. Chances are their best jokes were made three days ago on Twitter. Sure, they are generously passing them on to a less digitally informed audience, but I worry that, increasingly, this is all they are doing. And meanwhile, Twitter is forever producing new comedy stars. Democratically, it gives them a platform. Meritocratically, it promotes them if they're good. Brands and "names" can only do so much against the incoming tide.
So happy April Fools' Day, writers and professional comedians. Fear for your lives.
