Brief 6: Commuter Comedy

I wrote a poem a couple of years ago which was, kind of, about the success one could have as a right-wing comedian in this country. It’s a funny thing.

Comic Timing

Years ago, I went, with two school friends, to the Comedy Store – I think we were 17. It was a school night, very exciting. Had a beer, wore a baseball cap. The compere was Fred MacAuley, there was a guy called Nick Wilty, the Tracy Brothers, who were the guards Gary and Graeme from ‘Maid Marian’ (one of whom is now the crime novelist Mark Billingham), a nervous unknown guy given a try-out slot, which was endearing and awkward (I do think most comedy audiences aim to be generous). And the headliner was Lee Hurst, who was famous and well-liked for a while in the 90s but is now a “right-wing comedian” and object of online bile.

Hurst was fairly good – a man in front of us laughed so much he fell off his chair, which certainly made it memorable.

He persists, bete noire that he is – he plays places like Sevenoaks and Ashford and one assumes still knows how to make people laugh.

There are clearly interesting and unhealthy dynamics in comedy. It is evidently horribly sexist, and probably a lot of the folk who present as right-on are anything but. There are a lot of pretty mediocre comedians, who just know how to do the job. I had an interesting conversation with one once, a TV guy – he admitted he wasn’t brilliant, but he was just working hard and making a career out of it. Fair enough.

The thing is, there are a lot of places like Sevenoaks, Ashford and Tunbridge Wells where people go to see comedy, and the crowd is not likely to be wild and revolutionary.

We’d go quite regularly to the comedy night in Sevenoaks – the guy who ran it slagged off his opener, who’d driven 200 miles and had a shocking cold, and was consequently a bit apologetic and off-form. That was deeply unpleasant of him. He (the host) also “tried out” new material which included old-fashioned racist stuff, then had the get-out clause that he was just “testing the line” and saw that these jokes weren’t quite right yet. That was also deeply unpleasant of him.

But, yeah, the point is, in places like the Noaks, I’ve seen comedians meet a brick wall when they’ve been too right-on. There remains a massive space for old-fashioned right-wing comedy. No one’s being silenced.

There’s also always a space for terrible comedy. When a friend was having a go at comedy a few years ago, including running his own night, and we went to see him a few times, he was very good, and there were a lot who were very not good. I did my best to laugh heartily at anything which was the germ of a good joke, which sometimes happened about 4 times in a 3 hour period. When things started to go bad, the jokes would get more offensive. It was all pretty fascinating.

All of the above might suggest I’m a bit sniffy about comedy and comedians – whereas, anything but – I think great, or even good, comedy, is powerful alchemy, which deserves to be treated as an art form like novel-writing or poetry, or even, dare I say it, hosting quizzes.