‘The Sacred Art of Joking’, by James Cary

‘There’s a good reason why it’s called a punchline: sometimes the impact hurts.’

by Rosie Carnall 8th February 2019

At the Greenbelt Festival last year, I wrote and performed ‘Spot the Quaker’. Billed as ‘a cross between stand-up comedy and a history lecture’, I was commissioned to make people laugh while informing them about who Quakers really are. The thinking was that a Quaker doing stand-up is a good challenge to the stereotypes people have of us, at odds with that persistent puritan image on cereal boxes.