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History of canned laughter

In an interview, Ben Glenn II, a television historian talks about canned laughter. Fascinating read. I’d heard of the ‘Laff Box’, never read a comprehensive account of it.

How did canned laughter come about?

The concept actually goes back at least five hundred years. History tells us that there were audience “plants” in the crowds at Shakespearean performances in the 16th century. They spurred on audience reactions, including laughter and cheering—as well as jeers.

How about more recently?

Canned laughter was used to a certain degree in radio, but its first TV appearance was in 1950, on a rather obscure NBC situation comedy, The Hank McCune Show. Remarkably, there are a couple of clips from the show on YouTube.

(I’ve previously ranted about canned laughter in comedy shows.)

Categories
Personal Reflections

Multiple identities

Customer support for any company can be notoriously annoying and inept. Now you can add ‘(unintentionally?) humourous’ to the list too. I called up Tata Sky satellite TV‘s helpline today to drop ESPN from our account today, now that the World Cup is over. After a brief wait, I was connected to a customer service representative (CSR in the dialogue below)…

CSR: Good afternoon Mr Ankur Banerjee, how may I help you?

Me: I wanted to drop the ESPN add-on package from my account.

CSR: Sure thing, Mr Chatterjee. Please wait while we check you out. (‘check you out’? Did some wise guy actually write that in the script reps have to follow?)

Me: …

CSR: Thank you, for waiting Mr Mukherjee. The package you requested has been dropped from your account.

Me: (trying to control laughter at this point) …

CSR: Mr Mukherjee?

Me: Erm…right…of course. Thanks.

CSR: Have a good day, Mr Chatterjee.

I can’t help but laugh how within that short span of time with customer information available on-screen someone could get my name wrong so many times. Maybe Tata Sky customer service reps are allowed one-joke-at-the-expense-of-customer per hour, to lighten the mood in the workplace. That, or the guy suffers from ADD.