As a small boy I wanted to be a circus clown. I dreamed of joining a circus troupe abroad and traveling the world. My parents and teachers were less enthusiastic about such ideas. In their view, having fun was something you kept to a minimum, not made a career out of. Comedy was at best the icing on the cake, but never the main thing in life.
My teacher said, “Jón, with all this silliness you’ll never amount to anything.” Since then, I’ve probably proved the contrary.
Without a robust sense of humor, I’d probably be in an asylum right now. Right from the start I had an insatiable appetite for any kind of comedy—on records, in television shows, and in films. In comedy I saw an opportunity, a future that no one else seemed to have noticed. I was crazy about Fawlty Towers and Monty Python, and saw every comedy I could catch at the cinema. When I was eight, I made my first joke. At school events, I was always the center of attention and seized on every opportunity to fool around. I loved puns, malapropisms, and corny witticisms. I ascertained very early on that I could go into a regular trance and really take off into flights of fancy. I was frequently told off for this by adults. It was as if they found this kind of thing unpleasant. Is happiness something embarrassing, something we should be ashamed of? Anyway, I was always being told to stop fooling around.
As I got older, I realized that if I was going to get into comedy, I first had to be an actor. But to get to drama school, I was reminded by my teachers, I’d need to graduate from high school. And as I thought it unlikely that I’d ever have enough staying power to get as far as my high school diploma, this dream too burst like a bubble. The alternatives looked depressing: I’d struggle through life on poorly paid jobs and do the Sideshow Bob bit at weekend parties. And so it proved. When I was eighteen, at one such party I met a guy in the same situation. He was gifted, imaginative, and original, he had impressive artistic abilities, but at school he stuck out like a sore thumb. His name was Sigurjón Kjartansson. Sigurjón was a founding member of the group HAM, with Óttarr Proppé (who was later elected to the city council, standing for the Best Party) and Sigurður Björn Blöndal (now my assistant and policy adviser).
Sigurjón and I liked chilling out together and cooking up mischief. Óskar Jónasson, a good friend of Sigurjón, had just started his studies as a film director and had already shot a few short films. When he was commissioned to make a TV comedy show, he brought in Sigurjón to play a small supporting role. Together we worked out a few sketches.
I had just taken the exam to be a cab driver and started a career working nights in Reykjavík. So comedy was just meant to be a nice little side job, a hobby, a source of relaxation in my leisure hours. But it suddenly developed its own momentum.
The year was 1993, and while I was gradually making a name for myself in comedy, Davíð Oddsson, then prime minister and a former mayor of Reykjavík, was chomping on his first Big Mac in the first McDonald’s on Icelandic soil.
The live hijinx in which Sigurjón and I indulged had now done the rounds, and since good comedy was in short supply, we were invited to a gig at the summer festival of the Icelandic Toyota representatives. We were even paid for it. For the same money, I’d have had to drive my cab for a whole weekend. I soon realized that I could fill a gap in the Icelandic market with a new kind of comedy. The passengers in my cab patted me on the shoulder and said, “Keep it up!”
Thanks to the summer festival we had made a name for ourselves in certain circles, and it didn’t take long before we were booked every weekend. We tried to build up the most versatile repertoire possible: a bit of stand-up, a few sketches, and musical spots in between. However, Sigurjón was also playing in his band, so it sometimes happened that he was double-booked. Then I had two choices—either kiss my act goodbye just because Sigurjón couldn’t be there, or do the act without him and pocket the full fee alone. A no-brainer—apart from the fact that I didn’t have the guts. Just the thought of standing alone onstage made me dizzy. The sketches we did together would have to be dropped completely, and the musical numbers too—I’m about as musical as a bottle of semi-skimmed milk—so stand-up was my only choice. Standing alone on stage and telling jokes.
At first I had a pretty bumpy ride. I was inexperienced and nervous, and response from the audience was limited. Some things worked, others just didn’t. So I gradually threw out the bits that had flopped and focused on the successful numbers until I’d cobbled together a twenty-minute program. Suddenly people started listening—and started laughing. I even got used to heckling, and developed a special technique to counter it. The stage was no longer a place of horror, and in the meantime I was having a load of fun. My confidence was given an enormous boost, and suddenly I felt at home—which was in turn communicated to the audience.
I am convinced that humor will soon be recognized as a key skill for all areas of life. In my view, if you don’t have a sense of humor, then you’ve got problems. It’s a perfectly natural development. In the future it won’t be enough that you’re good at your job and get along with other people—you’ll have to be entertaining too. But, like emotional intelligence and what is often derided as “feminine intuition,” humor is still often viewed with skepticism, and the more screwed-up a society, the more likely it will develop such prejudices. All this will change in the future. If you can’t raise a smile and never have a quip on your lips, you’ll be viewed askance and, perhaps, ignored.
Only when humor has been universally recognized as a crucial character trait will the inhabitants of this world get along. They will realize that life is too short to get mad and fight among themselves; instead they will try to wrest as much pleasure and fulfillment from life as possible. Already the word humor itself is starting to appear with new meanings and in new contexts: a humorous government, humorous methods, humorous finances, humor during sex, humor in art and culture. Many people will dismiss these visions of a society based on laughter, comedy, and humor as childish and absurd. But I simply see it as the logical development of human thought. In other words, if you want to be one step ahead in the future, you’re going to need humor.