Today, I launched my first website —half a century after my first attempts at humour. I know, the pace doesn’t quite indicate entrepreneurial zeal, but I have sharpened my humorist’s pencil many times since then, as all writers do.
My breakthrough moment came when I created a humorous soup-tin label, for a hangover cure in soup form. It was legal then, and there’s no law against it now. The label sported a cartoon whirlwind of feathers intended to create the impression that a hen had just stepped on a land mine. Ingredients included scrumpy, tequila, Pinot Grigio, a dash of tabasco, and a Jamie-Oliver-sized fist of chicken knees. My workmates chuckled. Even my granny smiled — and she hadn’t been able to put her slippers on the right feet since the Blitz.
A prominent health and safety warning boldly flagged the typical side effects of the soup as projectile vomiting and explosive diarrhoea (or was it explosive vomiting and projectile diarrhoea — I forget, though sufferers might see little merit in the distinction).
Why am I telling you this? Because, to this day, and to my continued delight, clients the world over still set me tasks as unhinged as designing a promo label for a fantasy potage with a pseudo-medical purpose.
Which is just as well really, because the list of things I do poorly is as long as Moses’ beard. I couldn’t reverse park on an abandoned airfield without denting someone’s fender, for example. I am as proficient a piano player as Mozart was a spin bowler. Whereas merely glancing at a spreadsheet has been known to turn me to stone.
However, all is not lost. Judging by the positive feedback from hundreds of clients from Canada to Japan, Australia to the USA, it appears I can make people laugh by putting the right words in the right order — in any specific way they need.
I like doing that. I like doing that a lot. In fact, I make a living out of it.
Why have I waited so long to build my website? I haven’t really. The high-speed technology needed to run a decent online business is relatively new. In the early days of dial-up routers, when the tech was clunkier than a clown car, in the time taken to connect to his provider’s server, an entrepreneur’s newly-born inspiration could expire like a moth under a bell jar. Nowadays you could plot a course to Neptune from your iPhone.
Through humour, I want to help clients add value to their market offerings. Having a modern website like this one helps me do that.
So, whenever you feel the need for humour, please contact me to discuss how best we can collaborate to meet your goals. Any topic is grist for the humour mill — scripts, blogs, articles for example. I could even rustle up soup-tin labels if that’s what paddles your kayak.
George
Heedrum Hodrum