Why I Use Humour in Difficult Conversations

Growing Up With “Integration”

Humour has always fascinated me because it often reveals truths people are otherwise uncomfortable saying aloud.

As a third-generation immigrant raised in the United Kingdom, much of what people describe as “integration” simply felt like ordinary life to me. Queueing properly. Dry sarcasm. Self-deprecating humour. Complaining about the weather. Awkward politeness. Learning the unspoken social rules everyone somehow understands without explanation.

I grew up around British humour, and like many people raised here, I naturally absorbed it. It became part of how I communicated, how I understood people and how I related to everyday life.

For a long time, I believed that was integration: living normally alongside one another, sharing routines, language, humour and everyday experiences.

Realising Things Were More Complicated

But as I grew older, I began noticing something more complicated beneath the surface.

Political rhetoric became sharper. Public conversations around identity became more tense. Social media amplified fear, suspicion and division. Increasingly, it felt as though many people who lived side by side no longer viewed each other through ordinary human experience, but through headlines, narratives and political anxieties.

That contradiction stayed with me.

How can people share the same streets, humour, habits and routines, yet still feel emotionally distant from one another?

What does integration actually mean if people can still feel permanently viewed as outsiders despite being raised within the same culture?

The Irony Behind The Empty Kingdom

Those questions became part of the foundation behind The Empty Kingdom.

The humour within the book is intentional. Much of it is built on irony. If integration means queueing properly, understanding sarcasm and using humour to navigate uncomfortable situations, then in many ways I already belonged long before society began debating the word itself.

That irony interested me deeply as a writer.

Why Humour Matters

Humour became a way to approach subjects that often become immediately hostile the moment they are discussed. It allows difficult ideas to breathe. People lower their guard when they laugh. Conversations become more human.

A joke about supermarket shelves or national habits can sometimes reveal more about dependency, identity and modern society than hours of political argument.

The Problem With Modern Discourse

Modern public conversations often feel theatrical. Every issue becomes a battlefield. Every disagreement becomes moral warfare. The pressure to immediately choose sides leaves little room for reflection.

Yet some of the most important questions in society require reflection.

What keeps modern life functioning? Why are people increasingly disconnected from one another? Why do political slogans often collapse when confronted with practical reality? Why do many societies struggle to discuss identity without falling into fear or outrage?

Humour as Reflection

Throughout history, satire has often exposed truths that formal politics could not. Writers, comedians and storytellers have always acted as mirrors to society — sometimes uncomfortable ones.

Humour does not remove seriousness from difficult conversations.

If anything, it makes serious conversations easier to survive.