The setting is a school room near Manchester where an evening class of budding comics congregate for a final briefing from their tutor before facing an agent's man from London. Telling jokes for money offers an escape from the building site or the milk round. But the humour is a deadly serious business that also involves anger, pain and truth. How and why are laughter engineered? What dark secrets within us trigger mirthful responses to shaped remarks about sex, ethnic groups and physical disabilites?

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