Horizon

Tonight on Horizon, as part of BBC's sitcom season,

the science of laughter.

What is it? Why do we love it so much?

And what has it got to do with comedy?

But seeing as how the Horizon team aren't that funny

in and of themselves, they've decided to hire a studio...

...round up an audience...

...and asked me to take charge.

Horizon on laughter, like you've never seen it before.

Hello, everyone, I'm Jimmy Carr.

In case you were wondering, this is still Horizon,

the proper grown-up BBC science documentary series.

Don't worry, I'll be on my best behaviour.

There'll be none of my usual innuendo, because if this works out,

I might get to meet Professor Brian Cox,

and I can't tell you how much I love Cox.

Come on!

So, I've got some great news -

science has taken time out from giving your job to a robot,

designing GM crops and cloning designer babies

to investigate laughter.

Rest assured, I'm not in charge.

When it comes to the science stuff, we've called in the experts.

We've got a group of eminent laughter scientists -

yes, that is a real thing -

and they're here, poised to enlighten.

It's like Laboratoires Garnier back there.

Hello, the scientists. ALL: Hi.

We've also visited scientists who make people laugh

and others who make animals laugh.

We've caused pain, scanned brains

and visited some of the least funny places on the planet,

all in a bid to get to the bottom of laughter.

And we've got a room full of unsuspecting volunteers,

who think they're just an audience.

And that was nervous laughter.

EB White once said analysing comedy is like dissecting a frog -

few people are interested and the frog dies.

But what did he know?

This is going to be the most fun science show

since the one where they let Stephen Hawking use

the Large Hadron Collider as a water slide.

Right, let's crack on.

Probably a good idea to start with some classic jokes.

Two monkeys in a bath.

One says to the other, "Ooh-ooh-ooh, ah-ah-ah."

The other says, "Well, put the cold tap on, then."

How do you make a cat go woof?

Pour petrol on it and light it.

These are the clean ones.

I was walking with my wife when I saw six men kicking and punching

my mother-in-law. My wife said, "Aren't you going to help?"

I said, "No, six should be enough."

A policeman came to my front door and said,

"I'm sorry, sir, but it looks like your wife's been in an accident."

I said, "I know, but she's got a cracking personality."

Now, here's a question you never hear a stand-up comedian ask.

Why did you laugh at those jokes?

Does anyone have any ideas on why they laughed?

I hate cats.

"I hate cats" is a very good answer.

I'm sure that's not the case, though,

that's just another joke on top of that one, so...

Any ideas on why you laughed? Nostalgia. Because it's funny.

Nostalgia is a very good one, yeah,

cos they're old classic school jokes,

and the familiarity of that.

That is kind of a... that's a reason sometimes. Any other...

thoughts? Breaking the ice?

Well, I suppose it is, yeah, that social activity.

I think we're going to talk about that later on - that idea that

laughter as a kind of group activity.

Don't panic, we're going to explain all this.

This is Horizon, so let's throw some science at the problem.

University College London...

...boasting impressive neoclassical architecture

and a solid academic heritage.

And, more recently, it's gained a reputation as somewhere

where laughter is taken very seriously indeed.

Today, Professor Sophie Scott...

...is gathering raw material for her research.

What we're just going to do is go through some videos

and just really find some stuff that makes you laugh, OK? OK.

Cos the point of this is, I don't really care what it is,

I'd just like to collect some really nice laughter from you.

And to ensure a perfect recording...

...she's using UCL's anechoic chamber.

It just means no echo.

What we're doing here is we're recording somebody

laughing spontaneously.

Get nice and comfortable.

So, I'm playing her something, which we're both fairly confident

is going to make her laugh.

I just got really interested that everything done on emotions

is negative, and it turned out that the psychologist Paul Ekman

had suggested that there might well be positive emotions,

which might actually be basic emotions.

And in fact he'd said they may well be primarily conveyed

with the voice, so I thought, "Brilliant, that's what I do".

Sophie discovered that laughter is something all humans understand,

regardless of location, culture or language.

I think it's really important to study laughter because first of all,

it's a basic expression of emotion.

It's a non-verbal expression of emotion,

but it's one we drop into all the time.

We drop into this old mammal vocal behaviour,

to do a lot of the emotional work of an interaction.

Right, I found a really nice bit of laughter and then I lost it again,

so that's what I'm trying to do.

There we go. Wasn't that lovely?

I realise that being delighted by a spectrogram

is sort of niche interest.

Well, fascinating stuff. And she's here to talk about her research.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the studio

Professor Sophie Scott.

Hello. Proper science. Proper science.

Hello, Professor Sophie Scott, how are you? I'm fine, thank you.

OK, so, you're saying everyone laughs?

As far as we can tell,

when we have done some cross-cultural work on this,

wherever you go in the world, people recognise laughter.

Even if you go to a culture where people might not laugh in public,

cos maybe it's rude, they still recognise laughter,

and they will still do it in some places.

Even like Inverness on a bank holiday Monday? Potentially!

Technically, I should be able to get laughs out of those people,

even if, in reality, not the case.

They might know it when they saw it happening,

if you made someone else laugh, they might know what's going on.

You're saying it's a universal across humanity?

We don't have the same sense of humour,

but we all recognise laughter? Exactly.

Humour can be very, very widely varying

across different times and places.

Laughter, as a behaviour, stayed pretty constant.

OK, can we demonstrate this? Yes. We've got an example of somebody

producing some positive expressions of emotion from...

He's from the Himba tribe in Namibia.

Hi, hi-hi!

Hi-hi!

Hi, hi, hi...

Any guesses?

Obviously, if you're watching in Namibia... I mean...

Couldn't be more bloody obvious, could it?

Any idea what emotion that was?

It looked to me like he was clapping backwards.

Cos it was kind of... It was a weird kind of...

So, what he was doing is expressing triumph.

So, the sort of... Imagine that you all really like football

and the football team that you like has just scored a goal.

Make the sound.

So, that's what you tend to find in the UK,

people making a triumphant noise sensibly, so like a whoo sound.

And that's not the noise the Himba make,

and it's not cross-culturally recognised.

Let's have another look at this guy.

Hi, hi-hi!

OK, so at the end there, did we all get what was he doing?

Yeah.

So, that's uni...

That's in every culture around the world, the laugh is...

You'd be able to tell someone was laughing?

Yes, you would know what was happening.

The idea with basic expressions of emotion is that they reflect

something about our evolutionary history, we share them

with other mammals. Things like fear, anger, disgust, sadness.

You find those in other mammals.

So, anger in a dog's face isn't that different from anger

in a human face.

It's possible that we need to add laughter

to this set of basic emotions.

Right. So, not everyone laughs at the same things, obviously,

we all have a different sense of humour. Take a look.

Americans don't tend to really know that much about the world,

so they don't get other people so much.

At the moment, the in-thing is about quail birds.

Just someone that's a grown man, maybe acting like a child.

Excuse me. Too much gas.

Armenians are famous for having a good sense of humour, and...

Yeah.

Got a new car. They say she's probably got a quail farm.

What makes me laugh is cheeky banter.

Squirrels, cats, ravens eating chips.

I think the British humour is so sharp and so cutting.

Do you want to hear a joke about helium? Hee-hee-hee.

Our satire is more like a gentle satire.

In the Philippines, we make fun of dumb people.

It's like trying to explain what makes a man's heart beat

when he sees a blue-eyed blonde with amazing jugs.

If you're looking good, you've probably...

Got a few quail birds... in your purse!

British people are famous for self-laughing.

Jimmy Carr's one-liners.

He's my favourite comedian I know of.

"We in America, we wash hands."

And the attendant guy turns to him and says,

"You know we in Lithuania, we don't pee on our hands."

What do you do with a dead chemist?

You barium.

And you end up wanting to look like a quail