Buffoon

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The term Buffoon is a (usually) friendly term for someone who provides amusement by his appearance or behaviour or both. Strictly, a buffoon is, "A ridiculous, but nevertheless amusing person" and is often used to upbraid naughty school children, e.g. "Stop that Master Tisshaw - you are a buffoon".

Examples of buffoons in the UK would be such people as Boris Johnson, or Andy Crane - both of whom are held in popular regard but who nevertheless engender amusement with their pronouncements and acts. An example of this type of behaviour is when Johnson memorably admitted publicly that he had forgotten the title of his own book as he was writing it, hence an inconsistency between the wording on the hard cover ("Jottings From The Stump") and the dust jacket ("Jottings On The Stump"). The popular press has also branded John Prescott as a buffoon although he is not held in the same affectionate regard as the above.

A "tired and emotional" Earl of Rochester was involved in an amusing incident in a poem presented to the king, when he said:

Poor Prince

Thy prick, like thy buffoons at Court

Will govern thee because it makes thee sport

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