In one room, 400-plus people packed a noisy debate between the artist Antony Gormley and other cultural figures — laughing, applauding and jostling to ask questions.
Set the target, write a budget, write the figure, laugh, cry and just do it!
Milt, more an older brother than father figure, laughs along.
Portraying evil in games is hard: it's more than a shadowy figure laughing maniacally in a tower.
For a conductor who used to be characterised as intense and, as one observer put it, was "acquiring a reputation as a young man who knew best", at rehearsals in Stockholm he now cuts a relaxed figure, laughing with the orchestra when requesting quieter playing to allow a woodwind line to emerge: "If this poor guy is going to spend his life figuring out this music, we need to hear the melody".
The figured laughed even harder.
Other figures will laugh, swing from a rope or smoke a pipe.
"It should not be the topic of banter and the fact that public figures are laughing about, it is vile," she said.
The west, he says, colludes, "as though they need an absurd figure to laugh at while making sure he meets their needs; after the cold war, they became disposable".
It taps into our love of fairy tale and memory of music-hall; and when McKellen tells us, when appearing in some outlandish rig, that "I got that for a ridiculous figure" we laugh in merry recognition of a familiar gag.
