The good Dr Peter Thraft

An alert reader emerged from the white-capped rapids of twitter, thrusting a hand out of the roiling flood of tweets to attract my attention to this twitter account, before being hauled back under and carried away, quite possibly to a pool of ecstatic aphorisms, although that might be more hopeful than realistic: I caught sight of his face and he had # for eyes.

In any case, I hope you go to that account, wherein Dr Peter Thraft, a relationship expert and sex therapist, offers invaluable advice about sex and relationships for men and women in the sensitive but clinically-unembarrassed manner befitting a true professional. I would highly recommend that you spend some time at the site. You can work your way forwards or backwards through time, because it's not the narrative that counts as much as the truths dispensed by the good doctor.

Now, of course, the question has been raised: is Dr Peter Thraft real? Is Dr Peter Thraft for real? Is it, as the alert reader suspects, the great Peter Serafinowicz? The tone would be just right for Serafinowicz, exquisitely attuned to just the right whiffs of innocence, ingratiation, and indignation while revelling in the corporeal and indulgent.

But what if, what if Dr Peter Thraft is real? The tweets are funny because Dr Peter Thraft is so fully alive and so realistic he almost could be real, and yet if he were real, he would only become funny, if at all, in very different way? (And if it were discovered that he is real, then much of the amusement one derives from those people getting rebuffed and blocked by the kind, offended doctor for tweettacking (tweet-attacking?) his misogyny and his advice would double-back: instead of being the gulls, they would be the ones who were perceptive; instead of being rigid moralists who can't get a joke, they'd have been true to a moral universe we thought we inhabited.)

More later, I hope, on the question of reality in comedy. But in the meantime, spend some time with Dr Peter Thraft and you might pick up a tip or two.