A barrister, a football player and a bureaucrat walk into a bar. Who buys the first round?

Once, a long time ago, when the offence industry was yet to be funded by the Australian taxpayer, Lou Richards made Melbourne laugh.

Yesterday his Flinders Street journey ended at St Paul's Cathedral after long sojourns at the Herald Sun HSV7 building and the Phoenix Hotel. Patrick Carlyon tries to define Richards' appeal:

Part insecurity, part vanity, part truth, part mockery.

Mockery? Isn't mockery a crime now? Ron Joseph delivered some choice Richards scorn on the late clown's behalf at his funeral, including barbs such as "Rhodes scolar, my bum" for ex-AFL bureaucrat Mike Fitzpatrick, who hasn't cracked a smile since he lost a game for Carlton in 1981 when an umpire pinged him for wasting time. Carlyon continues:

It was always impossible to read Richards' deepest motivations for his lighthearted grandiosity, except that we knew Richards was always looking for a laugh.

Speaking of looking for a laugh, in the same newspaper, letter-writing barrister Geoffrey Steward, under the heading 'Our humourless malaise', mourns the death of humour:

Not a day passes when we do not hear about someone being offended ... The cause of this indulgent malaise is the diminishing possession of any sense of humour by so many.

One of the examples Steward cites was an ad for SportsBet featuring 1988 Olympic drug cheat Ben Johnson. That is, repeat, 1988. A twenty-nine year old incident. The infantile bureaucrat class was beside itself, aided and abetted by its social media security blanket. Drug cheats! Gambling! Whatever!

Stephen Brook, 'media writer': "This disgraceful ad for Sportsbet ... celebrates cheating in sport." No, it doesn't, Stephen, it celebrates being able to have a bet, which is legal. Federal sports minister and nanny state bully Greg Hunt: " ... utterly inappropriate ...". Acting ASADA chief executive Judy Lind said she "could not condone the message sent in the advertisement". You can hear the ice in these comments.

Nevertheless, humour still exists. In pockets. Last weekend, a sledge of Lions player Nick Robertson by Hawthorn's Isaac Smith had the umpire laughing (The Score, Scott Gullan, Herald Sun 18 May). Smith believes what is said on the field stays on the field, and is not a fan of a suggested 'code of conduct' for sledging.

"Give me a spell," he said. "Fair dinkum, I don't know what we're going to if we have a players' code of conduct on sledging. ... With sledging everyone has a moral compass and you know where you sit on that."