Jonathan Bellamy spoke with sit-com writer James Cary, about his work, when jokes go wrong, and humour in the Church.

James: They're very different actually. If you're a Christian you're doing both in the sight of God. He is in the front row of either, and you're seeking to delight Him and please Him.

In a pulpit you're trying to teach and preach the gospel and you want to get that right. You don't want to be misunderstood. But it's Sunday morning, most people haven't had a drink.

There's an atmosphere in a comedy club, which can be a little bit tricky, but also they can be very happy and joyful places.

That's one of the things I talk about in the book, how people go into church not really expecting to laugh and I think that's a bit of a shame, because the Bible has got lots of funny stuff in it. It feels like we overlook that at our peril.

Jonathan: I mentioned in the introduction you're a sit-com writer. I believe you've done some stuff for BBC 3. Tell us a bit about that, what you've done as a sit-com writer and what's been the response to it.

James: I've written a lot of comedies for Radio 4 and I write Milton Jones' radio show with him.

I did another show called Hut 33 set in Bletchley Park in World War II, and through that I ended up working on Miranda Hart's radio show and that became a situation comedy.

I met a guy writing on that show and together we wrote a show called Bluestone 42, which is a show about bomb disposal in Afghanistan. Although it sounds like an odd and controversial topic, we knew that soldiers find comedy really important and it's kind of how they operate. So we wanted to reflect that. If you're going to do a show about soldiers it's got to be a comedy, really. Some people think that it's in poor taste, but you never quite know how anyone's going to react. I've spoken to lots of soldiers who don't like to give the BBC credit for anything, but they do grudgingly credit me for co-writing a show that does at least reflect a little bit of army life, especially on tour in a dangerous situation. It was nice to get grudging respect from soldiers.

Jonathan: Do you ever feel that you cross a line in your own humour and then you regret having said certain jokes?

James: Yes, I think so.

I'm primarily a writer, so I can normally write something and then think better of it and delete it. But sometimes you know a joke is going to have an effect and you're kind of comfortable with the fact that people are going to be troubled by it or offended by it.

One of the arguments I make in this book, is Christians in particular think if a joke offends someone then it has obviously gone wrong in some way, and they shouldn't have done that. But of course if you look at what Jesus says, He actually goes out of His way to offend people. He calls the Pharisees abusive names and He knew they wouldn't like it.

We want to be a little bit careful about being too worried about causing offence, because that isn't actually the worst thing that could happen.

Jonathan: What do you think, then, is the purpose of humour? Or are there different purposes?