This book is based on the general premise that comedy or the comic requires a vital adjustment to the reading process, through which we elect to take the world playfully. It also advances the idea that knowing something more about the workings of humour, plot and performance can help enhance the mental process of reading comedy. Although I will have cause to discuss some historical contexts and theory along the way, this book is not meant to provide a comprehensive account of either. For those interested in further reading in those areas I have included some suggestions at the end of the book.

One contention of this book is that performance plays an undeniable role in any comic construction – as, arguably, it does in any artistic creation – and such is the case even in a political cartoon, comic novel or email, where the competent performance is crafted for the specific relationship between the author's output on the page and the mind's eye of the reader. A comic text is intended toward an audience, consciously fashioned according to the interactive process between a medium's ‘writers’ and ‘readers’. And so, for example, a comic anecdote written to be read in the morning newspaper is likely to be worded at least slightly differently from the same story delivered as part of a late-night television host's opening routine.