SPINAL TAP'S MANAGER: `BEING A MONK IS GREAT TRAINING FOR

SPINAL TAP'S MANAGER: `BEING A MONK IS GREAT TRAINING FOR COMEDY'

NEW YORK (Wireless Flash) -- Aspiring comedians may want to try a little "monking around" if they want to improve their senses of humor. That's the advice of satirist Tony Hendra, the former "National Lampoon" editor who played the manager of Spinal Tap in the 1984 "mockumentary." Before Hendra started his comedy career, he spent a few years in seminary training to be a monk. Although taking a vow of silence may not seem conducive to laughter, Hendra claims it did his "`...humor muscles good to see men in skirts." These days, Hendra has started an internet publishing company called Gigawit that is completely devoted to humor. The first book is "The Gigawit Dictionary Of The E-nglish Language" (Gigawit).