I, Robot - Starmer's Sense of Humour Failure

 

Sir Keir suffered a major sense of humour failure over the studio audience laughing at his reference to his father being a toolmaker.

He of course knows full well that the audience was not laughing at his father, or his profession, but at the fact that Starmer uses the phrase "my father was a toolmaker" at every opportunity he gets. Nonetheless Starmer jumped at the chance to feign wounded pride.

It is also somewhat disingenuous, as Rodney Starmer (Keir's father) in reality, operated the Oxted Tool Company. His own independent toolmaking enterprise until the 1990s. By all accounts, he was a proficient self-employed tradesman, devoid of superiors or overseers, operating from a rented workshop on an industrial estate rather than a conventional factory setting.