Andrew Watts

Sick jokes: why medics need gallows humour

[BBC]

Most jobs have their own joke books. If you’re outside the job, you don’t get the joke — and if you do get the joke, you’re on the inside; which is what the jokes are for. (It’s the same with all comedy: some, if not most, of the appeal of Stewart Lee is in being the sort of person who finds Stewart Lee funny.) But some jobs have joke books which, from the outside, are not just unfunny but actually offensive. Usually the most stressful jobs, those that involve the rawest emotions, have a gallows humour that is thought to relieve that stress. If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry. Or have to go to therapy.

It’s been a mixed week for this sort of gallows humour. On the one hand, the final controversy that brought Dame Cressida Dick’s resignation was a report of jokes between officers at Charing Cross police station. The ‘banter’ may well have reduced stress, and been fantastic for morale, but that’s beside the point — it destroyed what confidence Sadiq Khan had in the commissioner. On the other hand, the first episode of Adam Kay’s This Is Going to Hurt, based on his experiences as a junior doctor, aired. The show was disgusting, objectifying, and it destroyed confidence in the profession — and it had more viewers than the Brit awards.

Why do we accept offensive or pitch-black humour from medics in a way we don’t from other equally stressful and important jobs? Partly it’s because there’s a strong tradition of medical comedy in this country. Doctor in the House was the biggest film in Britain in 1954 — it was seen by a third of the population — and four Carry On films were set in a hospital.

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