Series 2 Episode 14: Having a Laugh

The medical profession manages to present both the serious and the not so serious faces of the job without losing respect or dignity in the process.

Something similar could be said of some other professions, but not architects and designers. Why is this? 

In this episode Kevin Drayton looks into the conundrum and attempts to come up with some answers.

Transcript

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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Make Life Better by Design with me, Kevin Drayton. This, um, I find somewhat of a surprise. This is already episode 14 of the second series. Um, I'm not sure, I thought we'd get to the end of a first series, but there you go. Just goes to prove that, uh, there's more to this design lark than uh, people give us credit for. Right onto today. I recently had to visit the A and E department of our local hospital. Now without meaning to criticise one of the best healthcare systems in the world, you'll understand when I say I had quite a bit of time to pass sitting in the waiting room. Ordinarily I do, as I always do when entering an unfamiliar building, uh, make a critical sweep of the space, noting everything from its general layout to the type of lighting, to the finishes, to the furniture; not to mention the staff and patients. However, on this occasion, the subdued nay soporific atmosphere got me thinking about the rich comic legacy the medical profession has given us. US television series, MASH and Scrubs came to mind followed by homegrown stuff like Doc Martin, and This Is Going To Hurt. I'm also old enough to remember Doctor in the House and the Carry On films of which no fewer than four featured medical settings. Possibly my most favourite TV comedy of all time, Green Wing is set in an NHS hospital that could easily be the one in which I was daydreaming. My next thought was, why has medicine produced so much comedy? From Graham Garden to Harry Hill, to Phil Hammond, to Paul's Sinha? The British medical profession has gifted us more than its fair share of comic talent. Medicine is a serious and stressful profession. Takes a lot of hard work over many years to qualify, after which you have the opportunity to do great harm just as much as great good, on a daily basis. Having a laugh every so often must be practically compulsory. And there are plenty of dramas about the serious business of healthcare as well. And as far as I'm concerned, showing both sides of the profession, the serious, alongside the silly, shows the practitioners to be just as human as the rest of us. It's a great illustration of the maxim Only Connect that I go on about all the time where being able to reconcile two ostensibly incompatible sides of a coin gives us a better understanding and a more rounded picture. And so of course I come to the question raised by this reflection on how the medical profession is seen. Why are there no comedies about designers in general and architects in particular? Why shouldn't earnest po- faced obsessives, dressed in black, provide as much comic material as doctors? Well, the answer is of course, that they do, but it seems it's only funny to other architects and designers. Is this fair? We ask, is this fair? We, that's designers and architects have just as much impact on people's lives as doctors, so....... As it happens, I do know of designers with a terrific sense of humour, but nobody seems keen to give them a spot on national television. Okay. I accept that history is not entirely void of design-based comedy, but it took quite a bit of digging before I unearthed the programme that ran for two series on BBC radio four between 2013 and 2015. Now walking a a bit of a tightrope between possible audience misunderstanding and total apathy, they plumped for the hilarious title: The Architects. Yes, it still exists in the archives, but I wouldn't waste time seeking it out. It's not bad, but bear in mind, that's an architect's opinion. Design is a serious business, or at least I think it should be. I could quote examples of witty design, even including a few buildings, but I don't want to give them publicity. In the same way that a joke, no matter how hilarious palls after the third or fourth hearing, witty design has a short shelf life in a world where longevity in design is a cardinal virtue. To my mind, if you can afford witty design, you probably have more money than you know what to do with. Where I believe the problem lies is in the near total ignorance of the general public on what designers and architects actually do. The police catch criminals, doctors cure sick people. Barristers use fancy language and fancier outfits to outwit each other. But, but, but architects? Designers, obviously design and equally obviously do a lot of it. You try and find something that isn't designed, but the processes involved are hardly side splitting or even mildly dramatic. To the ordinary man or woman just getting on with life, they're vague and tedious unless you are yourself a designer, in which case you'll probably be happy to watch a three hour documentary about the Bauhaus in German with subtitles and a beatific grin on your face. I'd say Jonathan Ives or James Dyson are probably the closest things we have today to household names in design, but I doubt they were ever invited to dinner parties 'cause they were guaranteed to keep the other guests in stitches. So it is that a handful of us continue to plough the lonely furrow of explaining that design is important because it can make life better. And the more we understand design, the higher our chances of using it, I'm sorry, using it, of using it to improve our lives. I'm being perfectly honest when I say I believe that a comedy series about design and construction could be really successful, but that requires someone to write it, someone skilled enough to understand the job's underlying humour, and to strip away the jargon and technical detail to reveal the common humanity below. And why architects can execute a pratfall as well as any doctor. Now, where do we find a writer like that? Well, I'll leave that one with you. Thanks again for listening. If you have been, I, uh, hope there's something of interest in there and I very much look forward to talking to you again in the very near future. Thanks again, and bye for now.