Sharpwitted Shooters

Like any good reader of the The Times, I like a titter from time to time. As a result, my heart rose while going through the letters in Monday's edition. There were not one, but two letters under the title "Camouflaged Humour". The first was a sensible letter from Roger M. Flett in Munxar:

"While I often reel at their side-splitting joke of adding "and Conservationists" to the name of the hunters' federation, I seem to have suffered a complete sense-of-humour failure over the federation secretary Lino Farrugia's "tongue in cheek" quip, that hunters might want to use gloves to pick up shot birds. I am sorry, Aldo Azzopardi (March 29), but try as I may, I just can't see anything funny in a shot bird - with or without gloves."

Pretty straightforward really; a letter to complain about someone complaining that a newspaper had unfairly represented a facetious remark. With one letter in, one would imagine that the editor would be satisfied, but of course that would mean foregoing the words George Debono, of Sliema:

"Surely The Times should have realised that the mere mention of picking up a blood-spattered dead bird, with or without gloves on, is a seriously funny matter which causes hilarious laughter in hunting circles - as pointed out Aldo E. Azzopardi!
Where indeed is The Times' sense of humour?"

Now, I fear that this correspondent's grasp of wit may be too subtle or too crude for me to fully understand what it is that he intends with his remarks. The answer may be divined by means of inductive intuition. The original joke about picking up dead birds with gloves is not one of the funniest I've heard. There was quite a good one I knew once about a swearing parrot, but I'm quite sure that it didn't die. Meanwhile, the prospect of a Maltese hunter contracting a possibly fatal disease is not particularly amusing, though I admit it is slightly heartwarming.
Of course, anyone who has taken even a cursory interest in the humour of Maltese hunters will be familiar with what passes for bon mots amidst their circles. The usual sort of thing about blowing birds to bits, and so on.
So, if we accept that nobody could rationally believe that the original quip was actually funny, subsequent reaction of Times journalists notwithstanding, it is far from clear what George Debono is trying to say. It is likely that in the mould of so many that have gone before him, he has deployed the withering power of sarcasm in his cause. However, what that says for his ability to pass judgement on humour is another matter. So, perhaps before he asks people to locate their senses of humour, he should in fact establish that he has one himself.