ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a typology of four subcultures of political humour: elitist, egalitarian, individualist and fatalist. It presents issues of the subversiveness of these kinds of humour and discusses the extent to which all humour can be seen as ‘political’. The book provides examples of censorship imposed by BBC officials on the makers of comedy programmes to illustrate how learned cultural elites have sought to impose moral limits on popular entertainment and how these limits have varied over time. It analyses verbal humour as a vital and integral component of British culture, with its rich mix of popular cultural forms, including folklore, local dialect, regional proverbs and jokes. The book looks at humour and the relationship between the generations and, specifically, at humour in the social world of the child.
