Five years ago, I was given a magazine assignment to do a fifteen minute stand up comedy routine in New Delhi. The results were not pretty. Because I was at that time, an effective story teller but a stranger to the upstanding comic arts. Years later, I’m still not a good joke teller. I cannot remember jokes, I do not deliver jokes well, and I could not write a good joke if you paid me. So that’s why, I recently began consulting people who are good joke tellers. And from them I learn the following important points:

• Never tell a joke unless you’ve actually heard it being told before. Because this is the only way to know what part of the joke works best, and also this is the only way to pick up the right pauses and intonations.

• Only tell jokes in front of an audience that is already inclined to be on your side. This is the true fact of joke telling. Experts say, “Don’t think of a joke as an ice breaker; the ice already has to be broken and in the glass.” Therefore, you should not force the thing while telling jokes.

• Avoid announcing that the joke is going to be hysterical. And don’t look at people afterwards expecting them to be really amused. Besides that, I think its good idea to back off the punch line, not oversell it. Just kind of throw it away.

• If you’re going to tell a number of jokes, don’t go with your best one first. This is a great piece of advice that actually comes from a gifted amateur. To be funny he believes that you need to hold some material in reserve, because joke telling is a competitive art.

• Match your material to your audience. Jokes help develop kinship and affection with strangers.

• Know the joke by heart. Don’t get halfway through the joke and start to improvise. Like, don’t say, “Oh, I forgot, the guy was six-foot-seven and dressed as a marionette.”

• Don’t overlook the value of a great one liner. They’re easier to remember and can get you just as far as a joke can. For instance: “Did you hear the one about the two Frenchmen trapped on a desert island and one offered the other a government job?”

• Also remember that repeating the punch line only works if you’re an expert in joke telling. In other words, explaining your joke works only if you’re Johnny Carson, who loved to pretend that his material wasn’t working.

• Keep your jokes short, and keep them coming. When you’re telling a joke, you have to build up the energy. You also have to show the people that you’re committed, and that you’re willing to work to make this joke succeed. Beginners often make the classic mistake of telling a joke in a half hearted way, as if it were homework.

• And last but not the least point is that, don’t tell a joke unless you’re actually funny. Even if you’re funny, “legitimize” a joke by saying that somebody famous told it to you. Also if you knew a million jokes, you’d be funny.

Yes, but if I knew a million jokes, I’d have enough money to get out of the humor business.