Reuben Kaye on why trauma makes you funny

Reuben Kaye is what happens when you tell your children they can be anything.

He is unaplogetically himself, finding humour in dark places in his comedy, singing, and writing.

In this chat with Antoinette Lattouf, Reuben recalls the moment he discovered he was funny, and opens up about finding humour in those dark placee.

“Another great moment is my Mum always used to say, ‘you can’t make jokes about your great Aunt Paula’… I always thought she was a bit unkind as a person, bit harsh as a person,” Reuben recalled.

“And my Mum said, ‘you can’t judge her too harshly- she went to Auschwitz, and that changes a person’, which is true. And then from the other room, my grandmother would say that ‘Paula was a bitch before she went to Auschwitz’.

“Oh, I freaking love that. I mean it is fantastic but also brutal. But this is the thing, this is the way you dispel the boogeyman is you laugh at it, you poke fun at it.

“And that’s where those jokes come into play. And I think every culture has those, every ethnic group has that.”

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