This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with Jeff Mead.

Jeff Mead was a Press Association's Europe editor for 35 years in Brussels, but is also very well known in Brussels as a humorist.

So Jeff, we're going to talk about humour and being funny. And let's

start with that old cliche which says that it's a serious business being funny. Is it difficult

for you? Is it a serious business trying to be funny? Well, in abstract, I would say it might be

quite difficult, but since I came to Brussels, I found it relatively easy. That's not to

denigrate Brussels as in any way, but sometimes,

I don't know if humour or being funny is a serious business, but I know that sometimes the best

humour comes from ostensibly serious issues, and Brussels, should we say, provides a lot of material.

And where does your inspiration come from? I know you write sketches, you write songs, you write this, you do most of the heavy lifting on this very now

famous annual press review that you put together. So where does your inspiration come from?

That is so difficult. I used to do a little bit of this sort of thing before I came to Brussels, but it's...

I well remember in my first week's here as a journalist trying to learn the ropes, as you know as well as I do, if not better, that you can have entire EU-centric conversations in this town, in which every other word is an acronym.

And, okay, there's a serious side to that, and a lot of people love their acronyms,

but I just, sometimes some conversations, which is so hysterically funny to me.

And remember, there's nothing novel about this, because we Brits well remember and love the programme

Yes Minister.

Right.

And Yes Minister was, I would say, a fairly affectionate, humorous look at the oddities

and idiosyncrasies of ministers versus their secretaries and their betters in Whitehall.

And basically Brussels is a big version.

So I don't think there's anything sort of unique at all about finding this kind of bureaucratic,

...