Hadn't seen this before a friend forwarded the link - a video clip of John Cage performing Water Walk on the American TV programme I've Got a Secret in 1960.

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/04/john_cage_on_a_.html

That w as so funny. Thank you Ian for posting. It is good to see him life.

Actually Tim, I think it was 'I consider laughter preferable to tears', which is even better!

I looked at the clip again and I think that presenter is very good. He prepares his listeners and he has a sense of humour. Cage of course also has a sense of humour. Both of them have a good business sense of how to promote music. It was really well done. Thank you for the clip again.
Everything musicians do sometimes are so serious, too serious and what Cage does is really good.

By which I mean how music-as-performance-art should be done, not how half-baked etc.

Watching it again, it struck me that if Cage had been English he might have been a comedian instead of a composer... this isn't intended as a slight on Cage, or comedians, or composers, or the English, or Americans (is that enough?), or indeed as a fully-formed thought, it just drifted into my head (especially reading tonybob's reference to Tommy Cooper).