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

Whenever you hear the Bible performed properly, verbatim, word for word, if you hear it done really well, one of the most striking things about it is how funny it is. You see all these strange things going on and you paint the picture much more powerfully, of that persistent widow and lots of other imagery.

I try to show in the book what I mean by that and how we can do a little bit better, so that maybe Christians could lead the way in being the peacemakers in society, which seems to be very much at each other's throats.

Jonathan: It's very serious all around the world in many different ways. The sub-heading of your book is 'Why Jokes so Often go Horribly Wrong'. What's the worst story you've got of seeing a joke go horribly wrong?

James: The one I feel sorry for is the Nobel Prize winning scientist, Professor Hunt, who was at that conference and made a joke about how working with women in his lab was difficult, because they cry and fall in love with you. Everyone absolutely lost their minds about that.

If you read the context for that joke, it was pretty obvious that the joke was told against himself and he was saying what an old dinosaur he was, and that he was out of touch and struggling to adapt to stuff. He was very much on the side of the angels. But the joke was ripped out of context and he was publicly humiliated.

You just think "Oh, my goodness! Is no one safe?" I really felt for him because he had his honorary professorship from some university taken away and all this kind of stuff for some off the cuff remark.

It is factually true; women do cry more often than men and they do fall in love with people so he wasn't lying. But everyone decided to have a sense of humour failure and piled in. It's getting very common now, which is a bit of a shame.

Jonathan: I vaguely remember that story, but I never realised there was even a joke or humour behind it. It was almost like it was presented as he had made this terrible faux pas in what he was saying. The fact that there was humour behind it was lost.

James: He was speaking off the cuff, and I'm sure the people in the room laughed at that. Even if they didn't, even if they winced or thought it was inappropriate, it didn't require the backlash.

This guy had discovered some really interesting stuff about proteins; this is really advanced work and he's been thrown under the bus for making a mildly sexist joke at a conference in the Far East, and the joke was really against himself. If people decide to take offence there's not an awful lot you can do about it.

Jonathan: And your book is out now?

James: Yes, you can order it from all the usual outlets. If you're in the UK you can get it from me personally via my website, jamescary.co.uk and I'll sign it for you if you want.

Jonathan: At the risk of a social media backlash, do you want to end with a joke?

James: I'll tell you one of my favourite jokes in the Bible and it is a joke that God does.

It's in 1 Samuel 5. When the Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant they take it into their temple and put it next to their god, Dagon, and go to bed. The next morning the statue of Dagon has mysteriously, completely on its own, fallen face down in front of the Ark of the Covenant and is now appearing to worship the Lord of hosts. They put it back again and the next day the same thing happens, but this time his arms fall off.

I just love that mental picture of the Lord of hosts saying, "I am the King of kings and the Lord of lords." That seems pretty funny to me.