Simon Munnery on The Wreath

No comedian wants their jokes to die, but Simon Munnery is at least giving one of his a decent send-off.

At only eleven words, his joke about a wreath led a modest life: 'I went to a funeral the other day. Caught the wreath...'

Yet, those eleven words capture something otherworldly: "I see it as being in a semi-alternate universe," says Munnery, "where it is perfectly normal to go to a funeral and somebody has to catch the wreath."

The eulogy he's performing at The Stand Comedy Club will be a moving tribute to everything the joke has meant to him: "There is a lot about the joke, what it led to, how I got this job at a chicken factory, and translated it into Romanian. Then there is a history of the joke, how it came to me, how I sold it to somebody else, changed my mind, and then tried to rent it to them."

Munnery always enjoyed the joke's visual aspect and wanted to capture this without words: "I always thought the joke would make a great painting, and I didn't want anyone else to do it. Sometimes I can be a slave to ideas: you think of something, and then you think 'either someone else will do it, or I've got to do this myself'."

There was one drawback though, as he tells us: "I had to teach myself to paint. But, that's no bad thing. Painting sky is hard, though, so hard."

Painting the sky wasn't the only difficulty: "In order to make the painting, I had to stage a fake funeral. We dug a grave, made a coffin and had a rope to suspend the wreath from. I invited friends, neighbours and a couple of comedians. And then photographed it... It was a cold day in March and the snow had just gone. Which was a shame because I thought it would look better with snow – and easier to paint of course!"

The gathering attracted some illustrious guests wishing to pay tribute; the comedians in attendance were Tony Allen, the pioneer of alternative comedy, and Balham's great ambassador Arthur Smith. "It is pretty odd," says Munnery on the invitations. "'Please come to my funeral,' I said, 'if you come to this you don't have to come to the real one.' It was in my garden: we had sandwiches."

Are Allen and Smith recognisable in the painting?

"Not the way I paint it!" he says. "It is more about the gist of it rather than the identities of the people there. Tony Allen is wearing a hat, I'll tell you that much."

Most of all though, the funeral has acted as a resurrection for the joke: "The photograph is brilliant, it's really beautiful. It is good to put things concretely because it forces you to think about it." And this has led to more than one painting: "I've done five of them, so far, and there's going to be a series of reveals."

All this circles him back to the original idea: the alternate world the joke creates. "I like the idea that it's totally normal – just like at a wedding – where at a funeral you throw the wreath for someone to catch it: 'Sorry mate, bad luck!'"

Simon Munnery: The Wreath, The Stand Comedy Club, 3-26 Aug (not 13), 3.20pm, £10-12
Simon Munnery also appears at Show And Tell, Queen’s Hall, 9pm, 11 Aug, £16