So this bloke came up to me and said, "Describe Tim Vine here," and I said, "Tim Vine is a British stand-up comedian who has gained considerable renown for his mastery of the pun. His entire act consists almost entirely of him standing up and delivering a stream of groan-worthy yet somehow amusing plays on words, with the occasional comedy song or another strange interlude, often featuring cheap-looking stage props that he plausibly claims to have made himself."
Timothy Mark Vine (born 4 March 1967) is also known for starring alongside Lee Mack in the sitcom Not Going Out, and for hosting the ITV Game Show Don't Blow the Inheritance. He was also a part of the five-person comedian cast of The Sketch Show, made a pilot and a Christmas episode of Tim Vine Travels in Time, and was one of the contestants of Series Six of Taskmaster. He is also the younger brother of journalist, Radio 2 presenter and Eggheads host Jeremy Vine.
This performer provides examples of:
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: "Alarm Bells". The song also demonstrates Rule of Three.
- Cannot Tell a Joke: Tim has featured a section in his act where he asks the audience for subjects and then attempts to improvise a joke around them. These inevitably become desperate, rambling monologues, the punchline being when he gives up entirely and asks for some different subjects.
- Catchphrase: Arguably, "so..." which is how many of his jokes start. He likely uses it because so few of his jokes relate to the others. If you wanted to extend it, you could argue that "so (person X) came up to me", "so I said to this bloke" (which was actually the title of one of his DVDs) and "so I went to the doctor's/airport/watch shop/wherever" are also catchphrases.
- Also possibly "Come on!" when he wants the audience to react.
- Escalating Punchline: "Ventriloquism". He's been practising ventriloquism and has a puppet who practises ventriloquism who has a puppet that practises ventriloquism who has a puppet that practises ventriloquism... And so on until the last one says it practises juggling.
- Genre Throwback: It's unclear whether this is intentional, but he comes off as though he's stepped out of vaudeville.
- Hurricane of Puns: Songs aside, virtually his entire act.
- Hypocritical Humour: The Importance of Rehearsal
. - Incredibly Lame Pun: His primary source of amusement; many of his jokes consist of a series of rapid-fire puns, with some of his best ones tending to be those with a reasonably solid internal logic.
- Literal-Minded: The source of a lot of his puns. "I had to sell my vacuum cleaner - well, it was just gathering dust."
- Luck-Based Mission: Fluke, the Channel 4 game show he devised and presented. It tested the contestants' luck and absolutely nothing else.
- Overly Long Gag: Pen Behind the Ear.
- Pungeon Master: Perhaps the finest example of this trope in modern times.
- Rapid-Fire Comedy: Vine used to hold the Guinness World Record for Most Jokes Told in an Hour.
- He appeared on a celebrity edition of Fort Boyard and won his team's charity a big bonus by telling 20 jokes in one minute.
- Self-Deprecation: Some jokes:I went into a mirror shop and I said to the bloke behind the counter, "I want to buy a mirror, you tall blond idiot." He said "I'm over here, sir."
- Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: Probably the silliest it's possible for anything to ever get.
- Small Reference Pools: Tim Vine is a victim of this. Many of his jokes have been wrongly attributed to Tommy Cooper.
- So Unfunny, It's Funny: The "funny" anecdotes in "Family Holidays".
- Surreal Humour: The setups of some of his puns are strange enough to turn the jokes into this. For example:I was in a restaurant and a duck came up to me and said, "Your eyes sparkle like the morning dew." I said, "Waiter, I asked for aromatic duck."
- Tick Tock Tune: "My Marvellous Metronome" is a parody of this. Tim's electronic metronome keeps speeding up until his singing can't keep up with the beat.
