Humor & Life Quote by Norman Wisdom

Norman Wisdom is slipping a banana peel under the very machinery that made him famous: the idea that comedy is “just” the performer’s charm, not a battlefield of egos, committees, and competing instincts. On its face, the line is mild, almost chatty - a working comic musing about trying his hand at a sitcom. Underneath, it’s a compact grievance about authorship: getting heard is hard not because the idea is bad, but because everyone in the room is auditioning for ownership.

Wisdom’s phrasing matters. “I’ve an idea” is modest, nearly old-fashioned, a soft knock on the door. The mood changes with “but”: suddenly we’re not in the land of inspiration, we’re in the land of meetings. “They like to put their own ideas forward” lands with the weary politeness of someone who’s spent decades watching creativity get processed into compromise. He doesn’t accuse anyone of malice; he diagnoses a habit. That restraint is its own punchline: the conflict is so normalized he can only describe it like a social tic.

Context sharpens it. Wisdom came up in an era when British comedy was tightly choreographed between performers, writers, producers, and the BBC’s institutional taste - a system that could elevate a persona while sanding down anything that felt too singular. The “situation comedy” he imagines isn’t just a genre; it’s a factory line. The subtext is clear: the hardest part of making people laugh isn’t the joke, it’s getting permission to tell it your way.