Andy Stanton
- Name: Andy Stanton
- Lives:London
- Likes: Football, cricket, biscuits, music and drawing
- Favourite Pudding: His mum's trifle
- Favourite Expressions: 'Good Evening'
- Featured Title: Mr Gum and the Power Crystals
- See all titles from Andy
Good evening, children, parents and pancakes of all ages. This is Andy Stanton, the children's author of little renown. I've been asked to write a few words about making people laugh, which is a pretty difficult thing to explain. I mean, how exactly do you write something that's funny? Are there any rules? Are you still reading this rubbish or did you give up after the phrase 'pancakes of all ages' and turn over to see if there's any good deals on Philip Pullman this month?
Well, let's see. If you wanted to write something funny I suppose you could always marmalade put words in at unexpected helicopter places in your sentences, that's pretty amusing, although it would probably get a bit saxophone annoying after a while. Another good tactic is to mention fruit as much as possible. Loganberries, pineapples, mangoes ? all of these are extremely ticklish-sounding words and you should try to use them wherever you can. The easiest way to do this is to make all your stories about a man who runs a loganberry, pineapple and mango orchard, but it's even better if you can somehow work them into your writing even more subtly than that.
And animals are even funnier than fruit. I mean, how funny is the word 'otter'? It's absolutely hilarious. Say it ten times to yourself really fast and you'll see what I mean. Now take off all your clothes, run naked into the street and shout it out as loudly as you can at the top of your nude voice: "Otter! Otter! Otter!" See? Completely side-splitting and you'll get a free night in a prison cell into the bargain.
What else can I tell you? However hard you try, you can't make everybody laugh all the time, so don't even worry about it. Just write what you think's funny, and the chances are it might make someone else giggle too. And that's pretty much all I've got to say on the subject. Oh, and for those of you who didn't find anything in this article even a teensy-weensy tiny bit funny: that's because you smell!
Andy Stanton lives in North London where he doesn't have loads of fairies locked up in a shed being forced to make tiny pairs of boots to sell to dormice so that he can get really rich (anyone who says that is especially lying). He read English at Oxford (which shouldn't have been too hard cos he's English) but they kicked him out. He's had a few jobs from film script reader (he got a bit better at reading) to NHS lackey. He likes books (more reading) and music (even jazz). His favourite expression is "Good evening" and his favourite word is "Captain". He doesn't like the words "trousers", "Robbie Williams", "wagglemuffin" or "broccoli". To his amazement Andy won two awards in 2007 for You're A Bad Man, Mr Gum! - the Blue Peter Book Award and the Red House Children's Book Award which he said brought a tear to his eye. When he's not writing Andy treads the boards on the children's literary events circuit providing a hilarious act which is much in demand in schools and book events across the country. P.S. if anyone knows any dormice who want to buy some really nice boots (hand-crafted by fairies), then do get in touch with Andy, OK!
