Some time back, I tried to relive the tedium of the day by writing a fake news column. Among many other items, I wrote that the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) was proposing to change the membership grades.

I received a very swift unfunny response from ECSA saying that it was not true. I explained that the article was supposed to be satirical, as was seen in another part of the article, where I wrote that power utility Eskom was going to give a subsidy to all householders who switched off their electric fences during peak- demand hours.

The ECSA person was slightly mollified but still asked that Engineering News publish a correction. This happened and life moved on. But I try, I do try. This set me thinking about the fact that humour is not taught as subject or given as a course anywhere, as far as I can tell. I have just finished reading the autobio- graphy of Charlie Chaplin (look it up if you’re too young) and in it he slices and dices what makes us laugh and distinguishes slapstick (such as pie thrown into a person’s face) from comedy (for an example, just after accidentally tripping the main supply breaker to the factory, the electrician recloses it and then walks around the plant, asking: “Did your power also go off? Ah, must be the city council . . . ).”

It seems to me that too many people are now so influenced by society that laughing at life, rather than just laughing at people on stage, no longer happens. The endless use of Facebook might be causing people to believe that humour only exists in certain forms and that these are all firmly not work related.

We should teach humour, for the simple reason that it gives us a sense of the wildly ridiculous and, while this might just bring a smile, it may also bring a light bulb moment. For example, if one considers the possibility of two loudspeakers, spaced 100 m apart, with each fed by a microphone, you can see that, if you speak into one microphone, the noise will be picked up by the distant microphone. It will be amplified and will return the speech to the original microphone . . . and so on. Thus, you can imagine a system which ‘speaks to itself’ (which is ridiculous) but, more importantly, a system which allows the slow transit (of the order of tenths of a seconds) of speech frequency pulses (less ridiculous), which is how original radar klystrons worked.

There is a great deal of strength in humour. One of my engineers asked if a report he had written would offend the people for whom we had written it. I said no, they would not take offence, since nobody would read it. He looked downcast. I explained that we had written the report for monetary reward. On the other hand, the client had requested it because his boss had requested it. I explained that true bureaucracy is when you double your effort when your aim is forgotten. Laughing about it is so much better than lying about it. We still write reports for the same client. We take trouble to get them absolutely perfect, safe in the knowledge that they will usually end up as scrap paper for children to draw on.

Humour is also useful in avoiding disaster. Speculating about the ridiculous things that can happen can lead to the realisation of some ridiculous thing that could happen. But how does one teach humour? I try, at least, to inject some humour into things at work and encourage people to laugh. But there is a fine line – people think I am not taking things seriously. I know what is deadly serious (deadlines, no grammatical errors in reports, no design miscalculations) and what is not very serious (what you wear to work, work meetings and so on, project meetings with 20 people bored to tears or asleep). I do not know how to teach humour. But perhaps it will come with experience. And experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognise a mistake when you make it again.