Comedy and intelligence

I remember at a school I was working in, there was a drive to identify the gifted and talented. One of the tasks involved was for each subject area's teaching staff to draw up a list of characteristics that might indicate high intelligence or giftedness. One colleague raised an eyebrow at the inclusion, by the RE department, of humour as a potential marker of gifted ness. For me there was no raised eyebrow, in fact I was a little concerned that the person concerned hadn't realised what goes on in good comedy. So it is to that unknown teacher I dedicate this quote from Scott Brown on Stand-Up Comedy, Lingua Franca of the Wired World And here's the quote: "... a successful joke implies insight, and insight, especially if it's pithy and self-explanatory, is the basic currency of a high-speed information economy. Second, the fundamental tools and techniques of that economy—memory, annotation, contrast, collage—are also the fundamental tools of comedy. They facilitate ironic linkages, unexpected resonances across genres and media, and anarchic twists on established, institutional forms."