Humour: taking things beyond their logical conclusion… by Elizabeth Kay
I’ve just visited the Chip Museum in Bruges. Sounds utterly ludicrous, doesn’t it? How can you have a whole museum devoted entirely to that very Belgian food item, the chip? But you can – and I think this is one of the secrets of humour, when you take something way beyond the obvious. The Chip Museum starts off the way you’d expect, with the history of the potato and a delightful display with potatoes of every shape and size and colour suspended in mid-air. Then there’s the fascinating topic of freeze-drying, the invention of the chip (with crisps as a by-product) and the correct way to cook them; oils or fats? And just when you think the place must run out of steam, there is a whole host of chip-cutting machines. Every sort of fryer you’ve ever thought of, and more besides, and the dinky little stalls that have sold them through the ages with their candy-striped canopies or corrugated iron roofs. Lots of cartoons, with baby...