Laughter by the gigglebyte

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There is a lot of so-called comedy on the web. Weve all been sent amusing clips by technically savvy friends and colleagues, a fair few of which do actually amuse: I laughed as much as I ever do at a club when I first saw the hapless Belgian chat-show host suffer an uncontrollable bout of giggles when attempting to interview a man with an unfeasibly high voice (www.tencomments.com/extras-2minutes).

But where do these office wits mine their internet comedy gold? There are no glossy computer equivalents of TV Quick or Radio Times featuring a minor celebritys Five Favourite Virals. There isnt even an onscreen guide that you can flick through for hours in a semi-focused attempt to find something good to watch. Instead you are faced with an infinite and nightmarish set of unintelligible signposts, each of which will probably lead to a rude, crude or, worst of all, unfunny place.

Luckily a number of sites have now been created for people like me who enjoy procrastinating with a quick fix of something entertaining, interesting or just plain odd when I should be writing jokes. Set www.boreme.com, www.ebaumsworld.com or www.killsometime.com as your homepage and each day youll be distracted by at least a couple of fairly funny clips just long enough to make that deadline loom so large that you actually have to do some work.

And when you do find a clip that really tickles you, its an hypnotic if slightly lonely experience. For despite the 30-second format, low-quality image and 3x4in frame, the intimacy of your PC has a power sometimes stronger than a TV sitcom or sketch show. For that brief period of time you can escape to somewhere absurd or unreal, flouting the fact that youre still trapped in your routine working environment.

I particularly love the moments of raw, idiosyncratic talent captured by amateur film-makers from all over the world. They may not be laugh-out-loud funny, but when I see high-level beat-boxing, body-popping or banjo-playing, filmed by the artist himself and performed with utter conviction, I cant help but smile.

You can also unearth clips of comics whom youd never otherwise get the chance to see. Type Mitch Hedburg, Andy Kaufman or Peter Cook into www.youtube.coms search engine and you will find rare footage of some true comedy heroes without having to spend any of your hard-earned honk.

Unfortunately, most of the funniest clips (according to the democratic but flawed public rating system) are either grabs from obscure foreign programmes à la Tarrant on TV, or the hilarious mishaps, car crashes and people falling over celebrated for ever on Youve Been Framed. Yes, I was pleased to know Id be able to find a clip of Peter Crouchs robotic dancing within minutes of the end of the England v Hungary match, but that doesnt really count as comedy. Where are todays comedians?

Well, were coming. Slowly. And as always, were following the Americans. The 2003 Perrier Award winner Demetri Martin is probably the best example of a comedian who has successfully harnessed the internet and now rides around on its back, getting to places quicker and being seen by more people. Having championed his MySpace site (www.myspace.com/demetrimartin) on TV, the brilliant Martins already large popularity started to swell exponentially. He wrote a song called I got 9000 friends in response, but this only increased the number of people knocking at his virtual door. At the time of writing he has 41,617 MySpace friends. Thats a guaranteed audience wherever he goes.

The only problem for Demetri is that hes now famous enough for people to start impersonating him on MySpace: there are at least two Demetri Martin cyber tribute acts and this isnt unusual. There are five people on MySpace pretending to be Bill Oddie. Five people! Who all thought it would be a good use of their time to create a bona fide internet site under the guise of Bill Oddie and send messages to other people pretending to be the bearded birder! Amazing. But that just demonstrates how easy it is to set up your own webspace.

MySpace itself has recently spotted this growth in comedys internet potential, creating its very own comedians wing and launching a $50,000 Comedy Competition that cleverly cross-promotes the FX Channel and its sitcom Its Always Funny in Philadelphia while attracting thousands of new televisual ideas free. I dont want to accuse the owners of anything sneaky or untoward, after all MySpace is now part of Rupert Murdochs great News Corporation empire, of which The Times is a part, but this does seem like a canny use of resources that British companies such as the BBC and Channel 4 could learn from.

Over the past few months the British stand-up circuit has finally started to run with this MySpace baton. If you look up Robin Inces page, for example, youll discover at least 20 other comedians among the wry commentators friends. You can then play comedian tag and spend a happy afternoon discovering exactly what interests, movies and books each comedian likes. Some have written blogs. Some have included audio clips. Some have even added comic video shorts.

And thats why Tim and I went all the way to Woolley Edge to film me having a disappointing shower. We had an idea, shot it, and thanks to MySpace well soon be broadcasting it to a potential audience of 82,341,981 and rising (although I currently have just 56 friends).

Its very hard to convince television commissioners that a show about motorway service stations is a good thing. And now, in theory, we dont have to. If television is a stepping stone to bigger live audiences, why not cut out the frustratingly money-orientated middle-man and find that audience ourselves. If the Arctic Monkeys managed it and comedy is the new rocknroll, surely its a good idea to be ready when the internet-comedy time-bomb explodes? Well, maybe.

The more entrepreneurial players are already using sites such as MySpace to promote this years Edinburgh Fringe in a way never really seen before. Instead of creating hype by spreading positive rumours about shows on comedy forums, sketch shows such as Grow Up and individuals such as Russell Kane are now posting links and clips from fully fledged websites where you can see excerpts from their acts at the touch of a button, enabling the performers to show off their wares and the public to try before they buy everyone's a winner.

So could the web be the future home of comedy? Certainly not. Comedy clubs are the future home of comedy. But the net could well catch people and bring them into that home. And if Im out there making comedy clips instead of watching them, at least I feel as if Im working. Did I get that haircut in Toddington? Just how disappointing was the shower in Woolley Edge? Youll have to make your way to www.myspace.com/alhorne in a couple of weeks to find out.

An avatar walks into a pub . . . where to find jokes on the web

www.boreme.com one  of the easiest and best places to find funny clips www.youtube.com where you can upload your own hilarious packages www.chortle.com the definitive comedy industry website www.bbc.com/sport occasional host of amusing sporting films www.icebox.com  watch quality cartoons whenever you want www.luckykazoo.com the legendary Cillit Bang remix and a JCB ballet www.channel101.com comedy-on-demand: the future of TV?