You Don't Have to Be Mad to Work Here: A Psychiatrist’s Life

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In February 1941 engineering students at the University of Michigan published a joke about English professors in the “The Michigan Technic” magazine:¹² Jul: Mr. Allison also admits that one doesn’t have to be crazy to write columns, but that it helps. (Attributed to Albert Allison) Not to mention the already overly discussed government tax on migratory bird hunting licenses. Oh well, you don’t have to be a nut to go hunting and fishing, but it helps. Sep: You don’t have to be a nut to go hunting and fishing, but it helps. (Columnist Hank in Springfield, Illinois newspaper) In July 1921 an article in “The Phonograph” of St. Paul, Nebraska credited an unnamed local business man with an instance referring to golf:³

He said: “Comedy writers weren’t just creating jokes, they had lives, they had problems and they died. When you start it’s a great giggle. They were good days, but there was unhappiness to come. Ray [Galton] and Alan [Simpson] seemed more steady,” Antrobus says now. “They were wonderful writers who did a great job week after week. But even they would sit in silence for days until they had an idea In September 1921 The Omaha Daily Bee of Omaha, Nebraska printed a short article which credited a local person with an instance referring to golf:⁴ It turned our mind to what we believe really helps employees when it comes to their workplace. Many spend over eight hours a day, five days a week in this environment, trying to generate income for the company, hopefully trying to be the best that they can be.

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Jun: You don’t have to be crazy to play this on a saxophone, but it helps a lot. (Crossword clue in “Judge” magazine) This remark fits the following template: “You don’t have to be crazy to X, but it helps” A family of expressions of this type is sometimes called a snowclone. Here is an overview with dates which depicts the evolution of the joke: It is, we suppose, one of those slightly quaint British phrases that in some way tries to infer that the office in question is a frantic, fast and terribly exciting place to work, fuelled by crazy (as in fun) people and exacting deadlines. The general rule however seems to be the more mundane and sedate the office, the more likely you are to see the sign. Go figure, as the Americans say. Additional details and citations are available in the article on the Medium platform which is located here.

Reply from Quote Investigator: This joke has been employed by famous individuals. For example, in 1933 the entertainment entrepreneur Walt Disney received credit for the jest from his secretary:¹ Nov: You don’t have to be crazy to dance the Charleston, but it helps. (Attributed to Ralph Spence) In November 1933 “The Evansville Press” of Indiana published an article about Mrs. Frank Churchill (formerly Carolyn Kay Shafer) who was the personal secretary of Walt Disney. She credited Disney with a comical instance about the workplace:¹⁰It was an inauspicious, and unlikely, birthplace for some of the finest comedies this country has ever produced. They were young, they were talented, they were idealistic, they were at the vanguard of a new, socially satirical movement in comedy. It was bound to go wrong. Hopefully rather than having to be mad to work for you they’ll be keen to work for you and increase productivity along the way. When Alan blew the whistle on his writing career, Ray wrote with Johnny Speight, who had a different approach. Johnny would never examine his work, he would never rewrite. But Spike did so obsessively.” In the dull light of austerity, the freedom we were promised from the forty-year Fordist drudge of previous generations begins to look a lot like the personal chaos of precarious work. Depression, anxiety, and suicides are on the rise throughout the global economic north – a trend consistently linked to the global economic downturn. So in the spirit of all that’s bleak, let’s take a look at the madness of work in a time of austerity; how it makes us mad, how it depends upon our madness. The Price of Precarity.

Relaxation at appropriate times is also beneficial, whether at lunchtime or breaks – quiet areas where you can read a paper or catch up on social media or simply enjoy a much needed cup of tea. For the slightly more energetic, table tennis tables, pool tables and the like are often used as a simple and effective distraction. Slowly, though, things changed, in society and in comedy alike. “To get rid of censorship was great,” Antrobus recalls. “I worked on That Was The Week That Was, which was radical at the time.” But he’s not quite so keen on how attitudes have ended up. Question for Quote Investigator: I first encountered the following quip many years ago. Here are two versions: instantly memorable and spread through offices and workshops like wildfire. The sort of thing one can buy a printed sign of in a joke shop.’ Since c. 1960.One of the captions, written by Ralph Spence, reads: “You don’t have to be crazy to dance the Charleston, but it helps.” Humane, hilarious and heart-breaking, You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here is an enlightening and darkly comic window into the world of psychiatry In April 1940 the jest was still circulating at the Walt Disney Studio according to a report in a Vancouver, Canada newspaper:¹³ Spike’s manic depression is well-documented, and me, I escaped alcoholism 35 years ago. I spent time in a drying-out clinic – at least that’s what you would call it today. They were mental hospitals in those days. But I saw myself as a political refugee in there.

And that’s what Antrobus is making up for now. He has already written memoirs of his time with the tormented Milligan, called Surviving Spike Milligan, in which he touched on his drink problem. It perhaps wasn’t the best time to be on the radical left. As Antrobus explains: “The war had only been over ten years and the BBC was full of bomb-happy ex-Army types who thought they were still in Burma The combination of creative pressures, personality flaws and the gallons of alcohol consumed during the legendary lunchtime sessions in the haunts around Shepherds Bush all took their toll on the team. Feb: It is not necessary to go crazy over the work, but it helps. (Engineering student at University of Michigan) He wrote: “Do not believe the reports of the glamorous life of an alcoholic. I would not trade my best day drinking for my worst day sober.The company roared with laughter when he quoted a motto he had seen over a laboratory In America: “You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it does help.” Now you have this insidious political correctness. Johnny Speight’s work is hardly shown these days, and that’s why this play is dedicated to him In 1983 Douglas Adams and John Lloyd published “The Meaning of Liff”. The authors invented definitions for words such as “snitterfield”:¹⁶ We have extensive experience in developing employee environments for business benefit – why not give us a call today. I spent two months sending scripts to Galton and Simpson and their new agency Associated London Scripts They partnered me with Speight, this gruff man from the East End.