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Pete Crofts is a corporate humour consultant, public speaker and Australia’s foremost authority on humour, comedy and laughter. He is the founder of the World’s first Humourversity as well as being a published author. He is based in Melbourne, Australia.

Early Comedy Career
Pete was born a natural tragic little fellow, coming from a Catholic, Protestant, Communist, capitalist family background. As a young man, he understood politics and religion in the same way that Custer understood Indians, and he still does. At 18, he packed his swag of Aussie jokes and began a 15-year career touring Australia as a stand-up comedian. "“I’ve dreamed of making people laugh most of my life. After being kicked out of three schools by age 13, I found myself in a butcher shop, chopping up lambs and acting the goat, hating every minute of it. One morning I was on a train from Chelsea to Mentone and something funny happened when people argued over a seat. I got to work, told the story to the butchers and the ladies in the shop and they all laughed. I was pumped. That was the beginning of me living for a living. If I heard a joke or a funny story, I’d write it down, rehearse it and tell people. They would pay me to tell them about my life. I combined this with my love of Australian humour. I studied every stand-up comedian I could find on TV. As an ex-class clown and loud mouth lair, my goal was to become Australia’s Lenny Bruce. I wanted to draw attention to the hypocrisy, greed and dishonesty I observed in an uncivilised society that claimed to be civilised. I shaved off half my moustache and became known as ‘Half a Mo – The Comedy Hero’. It was my way of sticking it up society. The ‘goer’ of stage, screen and street, I was the bloke who said what he saw but didn’t claim to have 20/20 vision!”" By 1963 Pete became popular as a stand-up comic under disguises such as ‘Pete Pan the Funny Man’ in Surfers Paradise, ‘The Larrikin of Laughter’ in Melbourne and ‘Half a Mo the Comedy Hero’ at Kings Cross, Sydney.

The Humourversity
In 1974, Pete opened the first book shop in the world specialising in humour, comedy and laughter - called ‘the Humour, Comedy and Laughter centre’. He trained aspiring comedians who went onto find fame, like Russell Gilbert, Jack Levi (and his character Elliot Goblet), Rachael Berger, Tim Smith, Dave Grant, and Tracey Bartram. The HC&L centre was acknowledged by Oliver Double in his book ‘Getting the Joke’ as the first in the world to train stand-up comedians. Other graduates include some of Australians leading business professionals, sales professionals, journalists, speakers, health professionals, lawyers, psychologists, media personalities, actors, entertainers, mum’s and dads and business people. It remains the only educational facility to run a diverse program of humour, comedy and laughter studies.

In 1980 the Humour, Comedy and Laughter centre became the Pete Crofts Humourversity, focusing on training, researching and collecting. On the 14th of September 1980 Pete organised Australia’s first humour festival at Melbourne University and ran this for three years. This went on to become the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

Pete says global warming is important, but global consciousness is more important. Dogmatic leaders taught in over-serious institutions are the enemy of freedom, happiness and peace in our planet. This is why Pete has a goal and a vision, to see a Humourversity in every city in the World with more than one million people.

‘Laughter or Slaughter’
In 1987 Pete was the first Australian to represent the nation at the 6th International Humour Conference at Arizona State University. He was the key note speaker at the conference, headlining with the top humour academics of the world. In his paper titled ‘Laughter or Slaughter’, Pete pointed out that these two words are identical once you take the ‘S’ of ‘Slaughter’ and make it stand for a Sense of Humour you have a chance to make world peace not world war.

Around this time, Pete also started a political organisation called Comedyism. The policy of this ideology was not based on morality, nationalisation, hierarchy, economics or racial or sexual discrimination but the survival of the species - the human being with a sense of humour.

"'Comedyism is aligned with Marx – Groucho not Karl. Their campaign funds consist of over 400,000 jokes. The Minister for Defence is a coward and the Minister of Education is calling for a study of a sense of humour in schools. They believe that we could all learn a sense of humour the way we learn a sense of religion or a sense of politics. Then we would all have a comedy common sense”."

At the Arizona State University Conference, Pete was given the right the run the first International Humour Conference in Australia which, after a couple of failed attempts, was held in 1996 at the University of New South Wales by Dr Jessica Davies, who was given the rights to do so by Pete.

Business Show
Pete has developed the theory of ‘Business Show’ – every person and every business is on show. There’s no business world anymore and there’s no show business world anymore. They’ve married and become Business Show with and humour as their oldest child. People want to do business with people that are fun to do business with. He claims that we live in a time of ‘recognition economics’, when being seen or not being seen makes the difference between whether you win or lose. Pete theory is that most businesses are unconscious businesses. They don’t build conscious business show elements of social value, social inclusion, justice, and enterprise into their business. He encourages everyone to become entrepreneurs of global consciousness and make the 21st century a sanity century.

The Great Southern Philosophy
He believes humour is of intrinsic value for most Australians, which works to our national competitive advantage, and is one of Australia’s biggest and most misunderstood selling points. He would like to see us become a nation of ‘egalitarian tall poppies’. Pete’s other theory about Australia he calls ‘The Great Southern Philosophy’. He says when people from the western world arrived on the southern continent inhabited by indigenous people we brought a way of living with the land that was no longer relevant to where we were. Over the past 224 years however, the Australian landscape, climate, flora and fauna have trained us how to best survive and thrive in this, our new home.

"'The Kookaburra, known to the indigenous Australians as the ‘Ha Ha Pigeon’ helped educate us about the subconscious philosophy which is now our culture namely ‘You’ve gotta Laugh’ and since then this attitude of humour has been trained into us subconsciously and consciously. Humour that made outsiders laugh was not presented as statement of mirth it was merely a statement of the reality of life in the Australian Bush. The early Australians developed a joking relationship with their environment. We became a southern people and Australia has trained us to be who we are today: a fair, friendly, cheerful and optimistic people who above all like to laugh. As world trade becomes globalised and cultural capitalism fast forwards us into the age of imagination, this creative innovative humorous way of living life is Australia’s international competitive advantage. The Great Southern Philosophy says “you’ve gotta laugh!” The Great Southern Philosophy also says, “Look a whatever it is in as many ways as you can with humor and creativity so you can see the laughter - which means the insight: see the creativity; see the positive decision; see the outcome and live the inspired motivation'."

Published work
From 1980 to 1987, Pete along with Hyran Davies researched and wrote ‘The History of Australian Humour’. Phillip Adams still calls it “the definitive study of the Australian sense of humour”.

In 2004 he published 'How to Use Humour in Business and Life' Crown Content Pty, Limited.