Any­one who didn't find co­me­di­an John Oliv­er's rou­tine on Jack Warn­er fun­ny is ei­ther racist, or dumb, or lacks a sense of hu­mour. And I'm be­ing tact­ful in say­ing that, since they're prob­a­bly all three.

But why do Tri­ni men make pass­es at women by say­ing "fam­i­ly"? Do they want to have sex with their cousins?

If you haven't seen Oliv­er's bit, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDT­Mg77oY_s

Peo­ple with be­low-av­er­age IQs are more like­ly to be racist and to think knock-knock jokes are the height of hu­mour.

It is not co­in­ci­den­tal that, with the sole ex­cep­tion of Rachel Price and Den­nis 'Spran­galang' Hall, Trinidad's com­e­dy shows fea­ture peo­ple who tell jokes, rather than do­ing stand-up rou­tines. As Amer­i­can co­me­di­an Lisa Lam­pan­el­li not­ed in the doc­u­men­tary The Aris­to­crats about the world's dirt­i­est joke: "You don't do joke jokes on stage, ever, that's the to­tal kiss of death, be­cause you're viewed as a big old hack."

And why do Tri­nis on Face­book think oth­er peo­ple want to know what they had for break­fast? What does it say about you that you take pho­tos of your food? Es­pe­cial­ly when your food looks bet­ter than your self­ie?

In her how-to book Stand-Up Com­e­dy, co­me­di­an Judy Carter, who spe­cialis­es in cor­po­rate gigs, writes: "Be­ing fun­ny has noth­ing to do with be­ing weird or out­ra­geous...Act­ing stu­pid might be fun­ny if you're per­form­ing for five year olds, but kinder­garten gigs don't come along too of­ten and the pay is lousy."

In Trinidad, how­ev­er, laugh fes­ti­vals fea­tur­ing men dressed in drag and midgets play for weeks at sold-out venues: so maybe this in­di­cates the ma­tu­ri­ty lev­el of the av­er­age Tri­ni.

You know why they call it a Won­der Bra? Be­cause it makes you won­der if those are re­al. Sim­i­lar­ly, we now have the Pon­der Panty.

Peo­ple who didn't find Oliv­er fun­ny dis­missed him as mock­ing us, ar­gu­ing that he was a colo­nial­ist racist. But, chal­lenged to say where in Oliv­er's rou­tine he in­sult­ed Trinidad, they ei­ther had no an­swer or point­ed to him try­ing to use Tri­ni slang when he said: "I have ac­tu­al­ly Googled some Trinida­di­an slangs to help me get my mes­sage across so um, um. 'Fam­i­ly watch me for a minute nah!' 'What's the scene?' 'I know you get­ting ta­ban­ca right now.' I'll just pause for a sec­ond to al­low the peo­ple of Trinidad to laugh at the whitest per­son who ever lived at­tempt­ing to speak Tri­ni, and in­stead sound­ing re­al dotish, ent?"

My favourite co­me­di­an, Stew­art Lee, in his tran­script/book How I Es­caped my Cer­tain Fate ex­plains why he us­es Scots terms when per­form­ing for Scot­tish au­di­ences. In a bit about the film Brave­heart di­rect­ed by "the re­ac­tionary Catholic big­ot Mel Gib­son," as he puts it, Stew­art riffs about love let­ters be­tween Brave­heart and Robert the Bruce be­ing found in a nook at Glamis Cas­tle by a broch in the Orkneys. And, in his note on this bit, Stew­art ex­plains: "One way of avoid­ing the ire of the peo­ple you are mock­ing is to refuse them the easy op­tion of as­sum­ing you are ig­no­rant by in­clud­ing with­in the abuse some de­tail or turn of phrase that shows you are in fact ful­ly ac­quaint­ed with their cul­ture, na­tion, faith or city and so pre­sum­ably have made a pos­i­tive choice to den­i­grate it from a po­si­tion of strength, rather than by dint of just not know­ing any­thing about it in the first place."

Which re­minds me: if you buy Scotch tape, ap­point a des­ig­nat­ed wrap­per.

This is what Oliv­er did by in­cor­po­rat­ing Tri­ni slang in­to his bit. But com­men­ta­tors, feel­ing com­fort­able enough to de­con­struct his act with­out ac­tu­al­ly know­ing any­thing about how com­e­dy works, missed this point. More­over, to ar­gue that his in­sult was an in­sult could on­ly be true if the in­sult wasn't true. (Read the sen­tence again, it's re­al­ly pro­found.)

And, since it's Eid Mubarak, I'd like to know why Mus­lims find it nec­es­sary to dis­turb en­tire neigh­bour­hoods at 5 am with am­pli­fied prayers. Did the Prophet Muham­mad have a mi­cro­phone in 643 AD? Does the Qu'ran say Thou shalt call all the faith­ful to prayer with Bose hi­fi speak­ers?

In the book In­side Jokes, philoso­pher Daniel Den­nett and two oth­er guys make the point that "putting some­one down by hu­mor­ous­ly demon­strat­ing an in­fir­mi­ty in their cog­ni­tive ca­pac­i­ties ef­fi­cient­ly makes the hu­morist and the ad­dressed au­di­ence look su­pe­ri­or in com­par­i­son." So those Tri­nis who were of­fend­ed by Oliv­er mock­ing Jack were tac­it­ly ad­mit­ting that they have the same eth­i­cal stan­dards as Jack.

James Cov­ey's Sev­en Se­crets of High­ly Suc­cess­ful Peo­ple has sold mil­lions of copies. Maybe it's time to change the ti­tle.

Den­nett and the oth­er two guys note that jokes are "so­phis­ti­cat­ed log­i­cal mech­a­nisms that some­how cause a con­cealed false be­lief to be­come ap­par­ent...Since hu­mour is hard to fake, both in the cre­at­ing and the (sup­pres­sion of) ap­pre­ci­a­tion, it is par­tic­u­lar­ly valu­able as a lit­mus test not just for in­tel­li­gence but for en­dur­ing per­son­al­i­ty traits, hid­den loy­al­ties, and so­cial­ly cru­cial at­ti­tudes and be­liefs."

And fi­nal­ly, stud­ies show that, com­pared to het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples and gay men, les­bians have the least amount of sex. That seems a re­al waste of les­bian­ism.

Kevin Baldeosingh in a pro­fes­sion­al writer, au­thor of three nov­els, and co-au­thor of a his­to­ry text­book.