Getting the

Joke
2nd Edition
Getting the
Joke
2nd Edition
The inner workings of
stand-up comedy

OLIVER DOUBLE
 Bloomsbury Methuen Drama
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway

London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10018
UK USA

www.bloomsbury.com

Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First edition published 2005

Second edition first published 2014

© Oliver Double, 2005, 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Oliver Double has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organisation acting on

or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can
be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-4081-7770-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

 CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vii
Foreword ix

1 Born not made 1

2 What’s the definition of stand-up comedy? 17

3 Stand-up USA 23
4 Stand-up UK 35
5 What’s new in stand-up? 49
6 Stand-up on stage 65
7 The outer limits of stand-up 77
8 Affection 97
9 The personality spectrum 121
10 Onstage, offstage 141
11 Truth 159
12 Working the audience 187
13 Sharing 203
14 References 221
15 Insiders and outsiders 243
16 Licence 261
17 Politics 287
vi Contents

18 Recorded live 309

19 The present tense 325
20 Conversation 339
21 Improvisation 351
22 Timing 365
23 Delivery 383
24 Instant character 393
25 Magic 409
26 Material 415
27 Performance 429
28 Why bother? 449

Appendix: Exercises for teaching stand-up comedy 459

Glossary of comedians 469
Bibliography 495
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’d like to thank everybody who has helped me in the writing

of this book – this version and the original edition – even if
you’ve only been one of those people who I’ve tried to explain
some bit I’ve been working on to, to the point where your
eyes glaze over.
A particularly enormous thank you to those comedians
who were kind enough to give interviews, for the first edition
or this revised version. Those who let me interview them the
first time around were: Shelley Berman; Adam Bloom; Jo
Brand; Rhona Cameron; James Campbell; Rhys Darby; Omid
Djalili; Dave Gorman; Jeremy Hardy; Harry Hill; Alex Horne;
Milton Jones; Phill Jupitus; Mark Lamarr; Shazia Mirza; Ross
Noble; Alexei Sayle; Mark Thomas; and Andre Vincent. For
this edition I interviewed: Stephen K. Amos; Margaret Cho
(twice!); Tiernan Douieb; Richard Herring; Wil Hodgson;
Milton Jones; Stewart Lee; Josie Long; Jimmy McGhie; Sarah
Millican; Al Murray; Ross Noble; Pappy’s (Ben Clark, Matthew
Crosby and Tom Parry); Howard Read; Mark Thomas; and
Mark Watson. Conducting these interviews was fantastic fun
and an invaluable source of information, much of which was
unavailable elsewhere. I was hugely impressed by how willing
and open these comedians were to discuss the way they work,
and found them genuinely friendly and nice to talk to. Thanks
are also due to the agents who helped to set up the interviews
(especially Brett Vincent at Bound and Gagged who actively
suggested people to me), and also Ian Baird, Matthew Crosby,
Colin Anderson and especially Tiernan Douieb, who all put
me in touch with people I wanted to talk to. And more thanks
go out to those comedians who said they’d do an interview,
but I didn’t get time to actually follow it up.
viii Acknowledgements

I’m very grateful to the University of Kent for giving me

study leave so that I had time to write the book (both times
around), and to the SDFVA Research Committee for funding
some of the cost of seeing shows and doing interviews for the
first edition. I’d like to thank Jimmy, Katie, Charlie and Gav
for letting me talk about your work on the course – keep in
touch. Also, thanks to all of the students I’ve taught on any of
my stand-up courses, for drawing my attention to things and
making me think so long and hard about all of this stuff – and
particularly those like Jimmy and Tiernan who have gone on
to become successful comedians. Professor Chris Baugh gave
me moral support and good advice on the general tone of
my research for the first edition, and Tony Allen has been an
important influence on my writing, through his own work and
the many conversations we’ve had over the years.
Thanks are due to Alan Story from the Kent Law School
for detailed and helpful advice on copyright law. I’m indebted
to Louise Arnold for the comedy videos, and to Mark Lamarr
for kindly giving me some of his old comedy albums.
Huge thanks to Ross Noble for writing the new foreword
to this edition, and for the many times you’ve got me tickets
for your shows – particularly Laughs in the Park in 2011.
Thank you to all the people at Methuen, especially Anna
Brewer, my editor.
Finally, a great big thank you to my wife Jacqui, who read
through various drafts despite having better things to do,
pointed out typos, made helpful suggestions and vehemently
encouraged me to make my prose zippy, not stodgy. And a
final, final thank you to my sons Joe and Tom, who make me
howl with laughter and are generally lovely to have around.
 FOREWORD

To the casual observer I as a stand-up comic spend my time

on stage just dicking about and showing off. And those people
might be surprised to see me writing the foreword to a serious
book by Britain’s foremost comedy academic. Well I first met
Oliver Double over 20 years ago when he ran and hosted a
comedy club. Unlike a lot of comics and promoters he had a
genuine passion for understanding and discussing the inner
working of comedy. These conversations I find endlessly
fascinating and I take great delight in watching people with
little interest in the workings of comedy backing away after
a prolonged dissection of a routine of a long forgotten music
hall comic. It always amazes me when people think that a
group of comics sitting around talking about comedy would
be hilarious. Although it can be, especially if one of their
number has suffered a terrible on-stage death, but for the
most part I would liken it to bunch of chefs talking about
creating recipes*. At the time we first met I was a tiny child
(some would say the Shirley Temple of the British stand-up
circuit) with an obsession with stand-up comedy. Little did I
realise back then, when we would discuss the topic at great
length, that he would go on to write one of the most in-depth
books studying the art of stand-up comedy and that I would
be deemed worthy to introduce it as a leading exponent of the
art form. It may seem a tad pretentious to describe stand-up
in artistic terms, but as you will see from these pages it very
much is.
It is however rarely treated as such, and for many reasons,
not least as it is so populist and often those who archive a
reasonable degree of success in the field are more than happy
to sidestep into other less challenging yet lucrative areas of the
x Foreword

entertainment world. Another reason stand-up is not taken

as seriously as an art form is the simple reason that when it
is done well it looks so effortless and natural, that it appears
as if the performer is not doing anything, merely joining the
audience in a moment that would have naturally happened.
The conceit of watching a show is forgotten and the audience
member feels like the comic is talking to them in a one-to-one
conversation yet at the same time being swept away with the
energy of those around them. The crowd and the performer are
lost in the moment and the experience becomes an emotional
rather than a cerebral one. Laughs are seemingly triggered by
nothing more than tiny movements of the face or a pause that
contains no words or sounds. It is this emotional response to
stand-up that makes it so different from other art forms and in
a live setting there is no way to fake it. The success of a comic
is judged instantly – if they laugh you’re a hit, if they don’t
you’re not. Also a fledgling stand-up must often learn their
craft in pubs and clubs where their art is being judged, often
by drunks and often leading to fairly lowbrow topics and a
lack of imagination and risk taking. But it is this harsh critical
environment that a truly brilliant stand-up must go through
to equip them with the skills to develop and form them into
a seasoned performer. Ironically, the raw and spontaneous
development process that forms the comic and their act can,
when a performer has found their audience and taken their
act to television or DVD, leave an end result which has been
tailored more for the home viewer, honed, edited and give a
slight sense of losing the magic.
All of this aside, this book explores stand-up as it should
be, as a true art, and uncovers the mechanics and mysteries in
creating it. Stand-up as an art form is unique in that there is no
way to rehearse it. It can only be done in front of an audience,
and can only be mastered by doing it live there and then in
front of people. For every rule you create, a laugh can be
gained by breaking that rule. And even though stand-up has
its roots in theatre poetry and literature at its most primitive,
it is just one person with funny bones in front of a group of
 Foreword xi

people being funny. Holding the audience and being totally in

the moment. There is something thrilling and magical about
that moment, and it is for that reason that it is so intriguing.
The joy and the secret of it is in that moment. It is not a
passive medium – all the elements must come together, the
ideas, the performance and the environment must perfectly
align and the comic must merge all of these elements perfectly,
controlling and timing everything just right while the audience
gets lost in the moment. And it is that moment that makes
stand-up so special. That moment that lives for a second
and then is gone, never to be repeated. That moment where
hundreds of people all feel the same joy and release of
laugher at the same time, and that makes it the most direct
form of expression with the comic being the writer, director
and performer all at the same time. Those are the moments
that make comedians appear like strange aliens, alchemists
of the imagination who create delight and wonder from the
mundane and make connections that most people would
miss. This book is a chance to look behind the curtain and
lift the lid and get an insight into the how those moments are
achieved.
I am not quite sure why there is a lid behind the curtains,
so if you want to know about that I suggest you buy a book
about home furnishing
Far from being cerebral alchemy, stand-up is in many
ways like playing music, with a comedian’s on-stage persona
the instrument, and the gags and physical performance like
musical notes: how they are arranged and played have very
different effects on the audience. A comic can bang out a
familiar crowd-pleasing tune or experiment with a concept
album. They can tightly prepare the jokes and deliver them
with amazing precision as if performing a classical movement
or go on stage and wing it like a free-form jazz performer.
Anyone can be funny in the same way that anyone can very
quickly bang out a bit of a tune, but it is only through getting
up on stage every night for years that a comic can attempt
to master the medium and begin to understand how to live
xii Foreword

in those moments and play those notes and beats. However,

in this book Oliver has taken this vast, complex and never-
ending topic and managed to give an insight into what goes
into getting there. He has managed to get to the heart of what
is behind what we see in that moment. How it all fits together,
the history of the medium and how different movements and
individuals have shaped the comedy landscape to create the
modern form we know today. He explores where and how
ideas are created and how those ideas are executed, the essence
of who is telling the gag and how the character or persona of
the person on stage is absolutely integral to whether a joke
gets a laugh or not. And shows how a person goes from being
a funny bloke in the pub to a fully-fledged performer able to
perform a comedic symphony, conducting the audience and
riding the energy of their laughter, taking their input and using
it to take the whole performance to another level. This book
is for anyone who wants to be a comic or wants to know why
anyone would want to be one. In essence a cookbook for the
comical and in many ways a manual on how to show off and
dick about.

Ross Noble

Note
* Currently both chefs and comics infest the TV schedules,
and at some point a TV commissioner will create a TV chef–
stand-up hybrid which will signal the end of television, and the
beginning of the end of days
 CHAPTER ONE

Born not made

Let’s start with the fact that I’ve got a bit of a weird job. Since
the late 1990s, I’ve been teaching university students how to
do stand-up comedy. When I tell people that, the first thing
they ask tends to be, ‘How on earth do you do that?’ Lurking
behind the question is either genuine fascination or plain
cynicism.
That’s something I’ve got used to. When I first started at
the University of Kent, where I now work, there was a flurry
of press interest in the fact that they’d appointed a comedian
to teach students how to do stand-up. Most of them went for
the ‘hey-you’ll-never-believe-what-these-crazy-academics-are-
up-to-now’ angle. The Sun named my teaching among their
examples of ‘odd offerings from the wacky world of education’,
and argued that some of the courses students choose to study
‘are worthless and will do nothing to help them get jobs.’1
Comedians themselves have also been somewhat sceptical
about the idea of teaching comedy. Rhona Cameron, for
example, says:

I don’t feel you can study stand-up, and learn stand-up

from a situation like that. I’ve got quite strong views on
that. I feel like stand-up has to be … a thing you have to
kind of drift into. I think it’s an organic thing, and I think it
comes from a kind of crossroads of life, or a feeling that …
you’ve never fitted in or you haven’t got along with others.2
2 GETTING THE JOKE

I understand the cynicism about teaching stand-up, and if I

wasn’t involved in it I might feel that way myself. However,
while a formal comedy course might sound like a dreadful idea,
clearly there is a learning process involved when somebody
starts out as a stand-up – unless you subscribe to the notion
that the comedian’s magical powers are fully manifested the
first time they perform to an audience. There are certain
technical skills which need to be acquired through experience,
and Jeremy Hardy points out that ‘the tricks in stand-up are
something you can learn’.3 Stephen K. Amos agrees:

If someone told me when I first started that, you know,

there’s techniques you can learn, I’d have said, ‘Don’t be
ridiculous.’ But there is … you know, a look, a pause … the
timing of taking a sip of water or beer or whatever. Or the
callback to a certain member of the audience or something
you said earlier. There’s all those things you learn…4

This learning process usually takes place in front of a live

audience. Most comedians begin by being bad at their job.
Their early performances are marred by nerves. They are
clumsy and awkward onstage. They fail to get laughs. The
bad experiences are usually leavened by the occasional show
where the new comic clicks with an audience and goes down
well. With experience, the act improves. The comedian learns
the job simply by doing it, as Alexei Sayle describes: ‘I did as
many as seven appearances a night, sometimes – one audience
would be cold, the next warm, then one lukewarm, then
another cold, then a really hot one … In a technical sense it’s
fantastic training.’5

Advice
The long, demoralising slog of hard experience isn’t the
only way of learning, though. Comedians may be sceptical
 Born not made 3

about teaching stand-up, but in many cases they are teachers

themselves. There’s a long tradition of older comedians
giving advice and informal tuition to less experienced acts.
Groucho Marx acted as a father figure to many younger
comedians, and was an early admirer of Woody Allen’s
stand-up act. Milton Berle was an established act when he
first met Henny Youngman, who was doing weekend shows
in the Catskills, and Berle gave him advice about timing and
delivery.
In 1949, Bob Monkhouse was appearing low down on
the bill of a concert at the London Coliseum in aid of war
refugees. Max Miller was topping the bill, and Monkhouse
asked him for advice. Though feeling unwell, Miller made
the effort to watch the younger comedian’s act. Afterwards,
Miller gave him what Monkhouse describes as ‘a master class
in patter comedy by its greatest living exponent’. There was
advice on delivery, vocal projection, energy, comic authority,
timing and using gesture to create a mental picture. Miller
even gave Monkhouse detailed advice on how to improve the
structure of particular jokes.6
Speaking on Radio 4, John Sessions says that the thought
of comedy courses ‘really chills me’, but goes on to describe
how John Cleese saw one of his early performances and
phoned him the next day to discuss it in detail. Cleese advised
him to give the jokes more space, and to try not to lump too
many ideas together in one gag. Sessions found the advice
‘fantastic’.7 Omid Djalili had a more sustained relationship
with his informal comedy mentor:

It was really Ivor Dembina who then came to see me

and took me under his wing and said, ‘Look, you’ve
obviously got something, and you’re not quite there yet,
you need someone to help you write some material.’…
And I think he taught me a hell of a lot actually, he
taught me how to write jokes … to be honest, he taught
me how to do it.8
4 GETTING THE JOKE

In other cases, comedians share knowledge among themselves

on a more equal basis. Alexei Sayle remembers:

In the early days, I think we used to stay up all night, I

can remember me and Tony Allen and Andy de la Tour,
for instance, round Tony’s flat, staying up all night talking
about comedy, and the nature of it … we talked about
the kind of ethical aspects of it, and … I can certainly
remember talking about the technical [aspects].9

Younger comics can learn from older acts simply by watching

them and observing their technique. Bob Monkhouse wrote
about how he absorbed technique from comedians like Max
Miller, Arthur Askey and Max Wall ‘by osmosis’.10 Chris Rock
talks of the need to ‘study comedy’, and recalls how listening
to albums by acts like Woody Allen and Richard Pryor helped
him develop.11 Adam Bloom describes how watching other
comics at the Bearcat Club helped him prepare for his first
appearance:

I used to go every single Monday without fail, and just

watch, and learn, and suss it out. I kind of learnt by other
people’s mistakes, in a way. Just, you know, worked out
what open spots were doing wrong. And I could see there
was a command that the established acts had that the open
spots didn’t have.12

There’s a long tradition of agents and managers helping to

nurture and develop the acts they represent, particularly in
America. Woody Allen was helped through the sometimes
painful transition from successful comedy writer to stand-up
act by his managers Jack Rollins and Charles Joffe. They
found him bookings in small venues to allow him to develop
his performance skills, talked with him about comedy until
4am, and helped him to edit his material. Allen looks back on
Rollins as ‘a great coach, a great teacher, a great manager’.13
Later, Joffe and Rollins helped to develop Robin Williams, for
 Born not made 5

example advising him to end a character piece about an old

man looking back at the time before World War Three with a
moment of pathos.14
Comedians can sometimes get similar help from the people
who run the venues in which they perform. At the original
Comedy Store in Los Angeles, Mitzi Shore would critique
each of the new young acts she put on. When George Black
ran the London Palladium, he would sometimes offer advice
to the acts he booked. He might, for example, criticise a weak
routine, telling the comic, ‘It’s dull … You’d better lose your
pants or something.’15
When fledgling comics progress to appearances on radio
or TV, they may find themselves working with people
who can help them adjust their acts to the new medium.
Hughie Green would advise and help to shape the acts
that appeared on his TV talent show Opportunity Knocks.
Later, when Bob Monkhouse hosted the same show, he
would offer detailed advice to comedians, helping them
with delivery, joke construction and the structure of the
overall act.
Working on the regional BBC Radio show Wotcheor
Geordie, Bobby Thompson received detailed coaching from
his producer, Richard Kelly, who remembers: ‘[O]f course,
we spent quite a lot of time instructing him, giving him hints
and tips on how to handle an audience, on pauses, on timing,
… particularly on emphasis.’16 When Thompson used up his
existing material, Kelly found a writer called Lisle Willis to
provide him with more. Thompson found learning the new
material difficult, as he had a poor memory. Kelly would
spend long hours rehearsing with him, teaching him different
ways of working with punchlines and ensuring he got the
emphasis right in particular sentences. One joke had a pay-off
line which went, ‘And leave me outside the way you’ve always
done,’ and Thompson kept insisting on placing the emphasis
on the word ‘done’ instead of where it should have been, on
‘always’. It could take a whole afternoon’s work to iron out
such problems.17
6 GETTING THE JOKE

Advice can also be found in the range of ‘how to’ guides to

stand-up comedy published over the years.18 In 1945, Lupino
Lane wrote a book called How to Become a Comedian. Lane
came from a line of comic performers which stretched back
to the seventeenth century, and worked in silent comedies,
stage musicals and variety. Some of the chapters in his book
– ‘How to Use an Old Gag’, ‘Patter’ and ‘Timing’ – might
have been useful to fledgling front cloth comics in variety
theatres. Others – ‘Female Impersonation’, ‘Crazy, Acrobatic,
Knockabout and Slapstick Comedy’ and ‘Ventriloquism’ – are
clearly aimed at other types of comedian.
In the last 20 years, the number of ‘how to’ guides has
proliferated, but the problem with many of these is that they
tend to oversimplify the subtle techniques of stand-up and
offer dogmatic advice which is sometimes simply wrong. In
Stand-Up Comedy: The Book, Judy Carter defines modern
stand-up as a form of self-expression: ‘People confuse stand-up
comedy with telling jokes … Joke-telling is the old Catskill
school of comedy… The new school of comedy is personal
comedy. Your act is about you: your gut issues, your body,
your marriage, your divorce, your drug habit …’ However,
having argued against simply ‘telling jokes’ – thus implying
a freer, more creative approach – she goes on to stipulate
‘specific stand-up formulas’ and argues: ‘All stand-up material
must be organised into the setup/punch format. If your
material isn’t organised like this, you’re not doing stand-up.’19
It defies belief that the free-flowing routines of geniuses
like Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Billy Connolly or Eddie
Izzard were produced with this rigid, formulaic set-up/
punch approach. Carter specifically warns against personal
anecdotes, saying ‘stories don’t work’.20 In the unlikely event
that, say, Pryor or Connolly had followed this advice, they
would have had to shed some of their strongest material.
 Born not made 7

Acting schools and comedy classes

Some comedians have had a more formal training, albeit not
specifically aimed at preparing them for stand-up. Shelley
Berman trained as an actor at the Goodman Theatre School
in Chicago, and feels that this contributed to the development
of his unique and extraordinary vocal style:

The study of speech, for example, I felt contributed to my

work … as a comedian. The placement of my voice – I don’t
know why, but somehow I know I can perform in a theatre
without a microphone …Yes, certainly the education is a
contributing factor there. Whatever is natural is natural,
but there was considerable vocal development and speech
development in my schooling …21

Then there are stand-up comedy classes. My stand-up course

was by no means the first attempt at offering some kind of
formal training specifically geared for comedy, and the idea
probably originates in the training which took place within
theatrical families for hundreds of years. Lupino Lane writes
about the knowledge which was passed down within his own
family, with tuition in such areas as acrobatic tricks, juggling
and ‘The art of miming or expressing the emotions, in “dumb
show”’. He also remembers his father, who he describes as ‘a
most patient tutor’, teaching him comedy skills and specific
routines.22
Classes aimed at the general public – as opposed to training
within families – have existed for at least 100 years. In 1907,
the young Marx Brothers spent some time in the newly estab-
lished Ned Wayburn’s College of Vaudeville, and appeared
in a showcase performance featuring some of those that had
studied there.
Like the ‘how to’ guides, comedy classes have proliferated
more recently. In 1972, Pete Crofts set up his Humourversity,
which describes itself as ‘Australia’s foremost training
8 GETTING THE JOKE

institution in the art of humour, comedy and laughter’. It

offers courses and workshops on stand-up as well as related
topics like comedy writing, and public speaking with humour.
In America, comedy workshops are offered by comedians like
Judy Carter, or by venues like the Comic Strip in New York,
which offers an eight-week programme and private tutoring.
Jamie Masada, who runs the Laugh Factory on Sunset
Boulevard, has even established a Comedy Camp for Kids,
where students from inner-city schools can learn stand-up
skills.
In the UK, the idea of teaching comedy has been floating
around since the 1970s, when Trevor Griffiths set his play
Comedians in a nightschool class for stand-ups.23 It’s only
more recently that classes like this have become well estab-
lished outside the world of theatrical fiction. In the late 1980s,
when he was just starting out as a comic, Frank Skinner ran
stand-up workshops at the college where he was working.
Although he looks back at the experience as ‘the near sighted
leading the blind’, he received media coverage for the course,
and this attracted the attention of Jasper Carrott, who turned
up to one of the classes and offered advice and encouragement
to the participants.24 Later, Skinner ran workshops as part of a
Red Stripe-sponsored tour for Amnesty International, and the
class at the Wythenshawe Forum in Manchester was attended
by future comics Caroline Aherne and Dave Gorman, who
was just 19 years old. Gorman remembers:

It was … 20-odd people sitting around, and Frank sort

of talked through what he thought about stand-up and
showed a little video, and then that was discussed and
analysed, and then anyone who wanted to was able to get
up and do … five minutes in front of everyone else. A few
of us did, and I did.25

The experience proved to be crucial, because on the strength

of this five-minute performance in the class, Gorman was
booked for a benefit gig by Henry Normal, then a stand-up
 Born not made 9

poet on the Manchester circuit. Skinner was headlining that

show, and he went on to offer Gorman a paid booking at the
4X Cabaret in Birmingham which he was compèring at the
time. This was the beginning of Gorman’s professional career.
At around the same time, the Jacksons Lane Community
Centre in Highgate ran comedy workshops taught by comics
from the London circuit, covering such subjects as improvi-
sation, writing and compèring, in 11 two-hour sessions.
Often, the tutors would be performers who had previously
been students, like Ivor Dembina, Patrick Marber and Jim
Tavaré.
Jacksons Lane no longer runs comedy workshops, but there
are still plenty of places to find them. The Comedy School,
founded in 1998, offers classes taught by comics like Paul
Merton, Arnold Brown and Adam Bloom. Logan Murray has
been teaching his Stand Up and Deliver courses since 2000
in association with the Amused Moose comedy club, and
has an impressive list of alumni.26 Tony Allen runs what is
described as ‘a crash course in stand-up comedy’ made up of
six two-hour sessions, and some of the exercises they use are
described in Allen’s book Attitude: Wanna Make Something
of It?27

Stand-up goes to university

Mine is certainly not the first university comedy course.
Middlesex University has been running one as part of its
drama degree since the mid-1980s; and Salford University
started a stand-up course in 1993, with Peter Kay as its most
illustrious alumnus. More have followed in recent years,
notably Southampton Solent University’s three-year BA in
Comedy Writing and Performance.
I had started teaching stand-up at Liverpool John Moores
University even before I moved to Kent, as a result of the
peculiar way my life was turning out. I’d started working as a
10 GETTING THE JOKE

stand-up about ten years before I got the job at John Moores,
making a living from the regular paid bookings I was getting
as well as the comedy club I compèred and co-managed. I’d
also written my first book on stand-up.28
In 1997, personal circumstances meant I had to get a
proper job, so I started applying for drama lectureships. It
was only after my first term at John Moores that I was asked
to develop a stand-up course. Initially, the course was quite
modest – one three-hour workshop per week for one term,
leading to a single performance in a local pub. When I moved
to Kent, I was asked to develop something similar. This time
it was bigger – two sessions per week for a whole year, with
three performances at regular intervals.
Learning to teach students how to perform stand-up
comedy wasn’t easy. I’d been taught in the traditional way
– by experience. Now I had to find ways of passing on this
knowledge to students. My first task was to break down what
I knew, to try and untangle and identify the skills so they
were no longer merely automatic. I started to do this purely
by reacting to what the students were doing in class, and at
first, my only way of passing on what I had learnt was simply
by telling it to the students. Gradually, I found better ways
of approaching the problem, developing a series of simple
exercises which help the students to make discoveries for
themselves.29
The Kent drama degree is a four-year course, and students
specialise in just one practical subject for the whole of their
final year. In 2001, I developed stand-up comedy as a fourth
year option. It was a chance to teach more intensively, and
I had the freedom to shape the course exactly as I wanted
it. Taking advantage of this, I decided that the best way
forward was to make the idea of learning by doing much
more central. I would ask the students to do their first show
ten days into the course, and then perform every week for the
rest of the term. In each of the 11 shows, the students would
be expected to come up with new material. That way, by the
end of the term, they would have had a fair amount of stage
 Born not made 11

experience, and a repertoire of tried and tested routines to

choose from.
I knew this would be throwing them in at the deep end, so I
had to find a sympathetic venue. I chose Mungo’s, a bar in one
of the university’s colleges. It wasn’t perfect. The walls were
slatted not solid, so that the corridor outside would act as a
natural echo chamber, and people walking past could disrupt
the show by shouting. It was too small for a raised stage, so we
would have to just perform in one corner of the room. Worst
of all, the doors stayed permanently open, and we wouldn’t be
able to charge people to come in.30 Normally, this is the kiss of
death for a comedy night. On the other hand, it was a regular
haunt of other drama students, so it felt like home territory, and
by working hard at publicity, we thought we would be able to
only attract people who were interested in seeing the stand-up.
In the second term, the students would put together a
20-minute set from the best bits they had done in Mungo’s,
and take it out into away territory, doing a show in a
Canterbury pub. They would also carry out a research project,
and arrange for themselves a series of open mike performances
in real comedy clubs. Again, the idea was for them to perform
as much as possible, and even the research project would
involve putting on a show.
On 25 September, it was time for the first workshop, and
the four students who had opted for stand-up arrived, looking
distinctly nervous. Jimmy, a good-looking middle-class chap,
had spent most of the previous three years underachieving
by being cheekily lazy. Katie – the polar opposite of Jimmy –
was a self-confessed swot, who was convinced that everyone
thought she was too boring to do be a comedian. Gav was
a gentle skinhead anarchist with a penchant for the surreal.
Charlie had a kind of post-punk chic, and liked to take risks.
Although they were a very mixed bunch, they all had the same
ashen expression on their faces. I asked what the matter was,
and they told me they’d all been in the bar together, drinking
to calm their nerves. Apparently, even the workshop was a
scary prospect.
12 GETTING THE JOKE

As it turned out, they quickly relaxed into the exercises,

laughing and messing about. The atmosphere of the workshops
is important. When I was a drama student, the emphasis
tended to be on discipline. We wore standard black clothes,
worked barefoot, had to arrive strictly on time and were
sometimes forbidden from talking about life in the outside
world. Casual chatting and laughter were frowned on.
This is a productive atmosphere for learning physical
theatre skills or the techniques of Jerzy Grotowski, but not
for stand-up. Although it’s still important to arrive on time,
students wear their own clothes, and talking about the outside
world is a positive requirement. As long as it is focused, casual
chatting can be very productive. There’s a feeling of just
playing about, and people gently make fun of each other – and
me. Maintaining the balance between this casual atmosphere
and the task in hand is a delicate matter. Then, after five
sessions like this, the students had to face a live audience for
the first time.

The first night

It’s Thursday, 4 October 2001, 8 p.m. Mungo’s is teeming
with people, but I’m not sure they’re here to see the comedy.
There’s a big party of students here as part of a fancy dress
pub-crawl, and I really hope they’ll be gone by the time we
start. I’m already thinking about other venues we might try if
tonight’s a disaster. I’m going to compère the show myself, to
try and make sure the atmosphere is warm and the audience is
focused – and I know I’ll have a job on my hands.
It’s still chaotic at 8.30 when I walk on to start the show.
The drunken fancy dressers have moved on, but there are
still 80 people or more packed into the bar. There’s a lot
of background chatter, and I’m distracted by the echoey
acoustics. I work hard to bring the room together, taking
the crowd through a silly audience participation thing, and
 Born not made 13

playing them Lipps Inc.’s 1980 disco classic ‘Funkytown’

on the mandolin. After ten minutes, it feels like an audience
rather than a random collection of people who happen to
be in the same room together. I introduce Charlie, who’s on
first, and there’s a huge burst of cheering and applause, with
the kind of excitable edge you’d expect from an audience
dominated by drama students.
Charlie does well with the story of a one-night stand, and
Katie follows by talking about her family. She plays on her
swottiness, apologising after she says ‘shit’ – ‘I’m sorry, I
didn’t mean to say the brown word.’ The audience like her.
Gav is next, and he suddenly shows a control he’s lacked in
the workshops, where he’s tended to veer off all over the place.
He gets a big laugh for his opening gag (Gav: ‘Anyone here
from Chester?’ Punter: ‘Yeah!’ Gav: ‘My dad died there.’),
then lights himself a cigarette, taking his time over it. It’s a
high-status gesture – he’s quite happy to keep a room full of
people waiting until he’s ready.
Jimmy goes on last, and it’s clear from the beginning that
he’s a natural. He has the kind of casualness which shows a
deep confidence, and he’s prepared to play about on stage.
He starts by taking the piss out of me, saying I’ve only set the
course up as a kind of revenge for all the times I died on stage
when I was a working comic. Then he tells the tale of when
he recently ‘shit himself’ while backpacking around Thailand.
It’s well-structured and beautifully performed. After a Thai
curry and some Chang beers, he’s in a sleeping bag under a
mosquito net. ‘And then it came,’ he says. There’s a laugh of
anticipation. ‘Blup!’ he says, impersonating the noise of his
stomach. ‘Blululup!’ There’s another laugh, and he continues,
in a genuinely cheerful voice:

My guts were trying to tell me something! [laughter] They

were! They were telling me I was about to shit myself!
[laughter and applause] There’s a red Thai curry in there
that wants to leave! [laughter] It wants to explore the world
via my anus! [laughter] So yeah, so I just, I thought, ‘No,
14 GETTING THE JOKE

bollocks,’ you know, ‘I’m tucked away, I’ve got all my stuff,
I’m in my Action Millets Bearproof fucking Sleeping Bag,
I’m not going anywhere, ‘cos it’s – it’s bound to just be a
fart. [laughter] I’ll stand up, I’ll get out of the bedroom and
I’ll just go thhhppp! [laughter] Then I’ll have to go back to
bed.’ So I took the gamble. [laughter] So I did the Jimmy, I
took the fucking gamble. I decided that I was going to take
it on. So I stayed in bed. [pause] Silly Jimmy. [laughter and
some clapping]

The first night is a big success but it isn’t always this easy. The
crowd fluctuates. Sometimes it’s big and noisy, but sometimes
the students find themselves playing to 30-odd quiet punters.
One week, the PA system starts to emit blue smoke while
we’re soundchecking, then refuses to work – we have to
perform acoustic. By halfway through the term, the students
are starting to feel the strain of having to come up with new
material every week.
The process of teaching them, of helping them through
the stresses and strains, starts to raise certain questions for
me. I can draw on my previous research to answer the easier
questions – like where stand-up comedy came from – but
there are fundamental aspects of the art form that rarely
get addressed in books: Who do comedians become when
they’re on stage? What do they do to establish a relationship
with their audience? How much do they improvise? Which
different techniques do they use to perfect their delivery? And
perhaps most crucial and most mysterious of all, how do
comedians actually go about their job?

Notes
1 Tim Spanton, ‘I’ve got a degree in Beckhamology’, The Sun, 14
August 2000
2 Interview with Rhona Cameron, by telephone, 19 March 2004
 Born not made 15

3 Interview with Jeremy Hardy, Streatham, 1 April 2004

4 Interview with Stephen K. Amos, by telephone, 18 September
2012
5 John Hind, The Comic Inquisition: Conversations with Great
Comedians, London: Virgin, 1991, p. 32
6 See Bob Monkhouse, Crying with Laughter, London: Arrow
Books, 1993, pp. 56–9 for a lovely, detailed account of this.
7 Pillories of the State, Radio 4, 28 January 2001
8 Interview with Omid Djalili, by telephone, 28 June 2004
9 Interview with Alexei Sayle, University of Kent, Canterbury, 21
November 2003
10 See Bob Monkhouse, Over the Limit: My Secret Diaries
1993–8, London: Century, 1998, p. 184
11 See Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: A History of African
American Comedy from Slavery to Chris Rock, Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 1999, p. 581 and Kings of Black
Comedy, Channel 4, 9 March 2002
12 Interview with Adam Bloom, by telephone, 29 June 2004
13 Quoted in Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel
Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s, New York: Pantheon
Books, 2003, p. 548
14 The routine in question is ‘Grandpa Funk’, which can be heard
on Robin Williams, Reality…What a Concept, Laugh.com,
2002, LGH 1104
15 Quoted in Ian Bevan, Top of the Bill: The Story of the London
Palladium, London: Frederick Muller, 1952, p. 81
16 Bobby Thompson … The Little Waster, a documentary
originally screened on Channel 4 in 1982, available on
the video: Bobby Thompson, The Little Waster, Tyne Tees
Television/Mawson & Wareham Music, 1986, MWMV1003
17 See Dave Nicolson, Bobby Thompson: A Private Audience,
Newcastle Upon Tyne: TUPS Books, 1996, pp. 104–8
18 A number of comedians have told me that they found the first
edition of Getting the Joke useful as a source of information
when they were first getting started, even though it wasn’t
written as a ‘how to’ guide. I felt immensely flattered when
16 GETTING THE JOKE

Sarah Millican, for example, told me, ‘[Y]our book was very,
very helpful to me’, not least because I’m a fan of her comedy.
Modesty prevented me from including this information in the
main text, but clearly I’m vain enough to include it as a footnote
19 See Judy Carter, Stand-Up Comedy: The Book, New York: Dell
Publishing, 1989, pp. 3, 45, 46
20 Judy Carter, Stand-Up Comedy: The Book, New York: Dell
Publishing, 1989, p. 5
21 Interview with Shelley Berman, by telephone, 5 August 2004
22 See Lupino Lane, How to Become a Comedian, London:
Frederick Muller, 1945, pp. 55–6, 61
23 Trevor Griffiths, Comedians, London: Faber, 1976. Tony Allen
offers a commentary on the play in Tony Allen, Attitude:
Wanna Make Something of it? The Secret of Stand-Up
Comedy, Glastonbury: Gothic Image Publications, 2002, pp.
123–6, and makes some insightful criticisms of Eddie Waters’s
deficiencies as a teacher of stand-up.
24 Frank Skinner, Frank Skinner, London: Century, 2001,
pp. 254–8
25 Interview with Dave Gorman, by telephone, 29 June 2004
26 Logan Murray has also written what is for my money probably
the best ‘how to’ guide on stand-up comedy (Logan Murray,
Be a Great Stand-Up: Teach Yourself, London: 2010). It’s full
of detailed advice without being too dogmatic, and it draws on
interviews with some very good comedians. Murray is also an
interesting comic in his own right
27 For an example of one of their exercises, see Tony Allen,
Attitude: Wanna Make Something of it? The Secret of
Stand-Up Comedy, Glastonbury: Gothic Image Publications,
2002, p. 37
28 Oliver Double, Stand-Up! On Being a Comedian, London:
Methuen, 1997
29 See Appendix 1 for a full description of some of the exercises I
have developed
30 A few years ago, Mungo’s was completely remodelled, making
it a better performance space and significantly increasing
its audience capacity. My students now regularly play to
audiences of 100–50, and have been known to attract crowds
of up to 250
 CHAPTER TWO

What’s the definition of

stand-up comedy?

Back in 2000, I happened across a fact that shocked me.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term
‘stand-up comic’ was first used in an article in The Listener,
published on 11 August 1966.1
Maybe shock is a bit of a strong reaction, perhaps even a
little sad, but at the time I’d had a keen – not to say obsessive –
interest in stand-up comedy for well over a decade. In all that
time, I had never actually bothered to look into the origin of
the term. My first reaction – after kicking myself for not being
obsessive enough – was disbelief.
Surely the term must have been in use before 1966? After
all, by that point the style of performance it describes had
been in existence for at least 60 years, and some of its most
famous practitioners were already dead and gone. Indeed,
the article hit the news-stands exactly eight days after Lenny
Bruce was found dead on his toilet. I felt that the Oxford
English Dictionary had thrown down the gauntlet, and I was
determined to pick it up.
I went straight to the Listener article which the OED says
is the earliest recorded usage, to look for clues. It’s a piece
reporting the ideas of the marvellously named Miss Ethel
Strainchamps about the effect of television on spoken English,
and it contains two references to ‘stand-up comics’.2 However,
18 GETTING THE JOKE

it couldn’t possibly be the actual first usage of the term, not

least because it’s actually a description of an earlier article,
from an American journal called Television Quarterly, in
which Miss Strainchamps wrote:

Stand-up comics, the only kind of professional performers

who have ever attempted to talk solo before a TV camera
for more than two minutes at a time, must use the device
of the studio audience or the laugh-track. Their purpose
is to convert their total audience to the preliterate type by
inducing a ‘crowd’ response.3

Having tracked down a copy of the Television Quarterly article,

I started to look for other earlier usages. Amazingly, I found
one in the OED’s rival: Webster’s Third New International
Dictionary, published in 1961. It gives a definition of the
adjective ‘stand-up’ as: ‘[P]erformed in or requiring a standing
erect position <stand-up lunch> <stand-up bar> <stand-up
comedy act> <stand-up boxing stance>’.4
Great! So the term ‘stand-up comedy’ was definitely in use
in Lenny Bruce’s time. In fact, an even earlier usage crops up
in a radio interview with Bruce from 1959, in which the inter-
viewer, Studs Terkel, asks: ‘Where does this leave the stand-up
comics, quote unquote, who have stables of writers?’5 It’s
unlikely that Terkel coined the term there and then, or Bruce
would have probably asked him what he meant by it, but the
chances are its exact origins are impossible to track down.
An article in The Guardian claims it was first used on Johnny
Carson’s Tonight Show, but Carson only started on that show
in 1962, three years after the Lenny Bruce interview. This
claim kicked off an internet discussion, in which someone
suggests that Milton Berle did the coining in 1942, but this
seems unlikely given that he disliked the phrase.6
But if finding the origin of the term ‘stand-up comedy’
is hard, it’s nothing compared with the difficulty of actually
trying to define it. It’s an instantly recognisable form of enter-
tainment, but putting a finger on what makes it so easy to
 What ’s the definition of stand-up comedy? 19

recognise is not so simple. You can start with the obvious fact
that it’s funny, but that doesn’t narrow it down far enough. I’ve
fallen into this trap myself. In my first book, I define stand-up
as: ‘[A] single performer standing in front of an audience,
talking to them with the specific intention of making them
laugh.’7 Now I find myself having to nitpick this to pieces. I
say ‘a single performer’, but couldn’t what Morecambe and
Wise did in their routines in front of the velvet curtains be
described as stand-up? And aren’t there other performers who
fit this description, who are not stand-up comedians? What
about comic poets? Circus clowns? Storytellers? Performers of
character monologues, like Joyce Grenfell?
Other definitions fall short for similar reasons. The OED
defines the stand-up comic as ‘a comedian whose act consists
of standing before an audience and telling a succession of
jokes.’8 This description more or less fits the work of acts
like Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Billy Connolly, Ross Noble,
Stewart Lee and Josie Long, but doesn’t even touch on the
extra things they do that make them so extraordinary.
Having thought long and hard about it, I’ve come up with a
list of the three things which define stand-up comedy, besides
the fact of it being funny:

Personality
It puts a person on display in front of an audience, whether
that person is an exaggerated comic character or a version
of the performer’s own self.

Direct communication
It involves direct communication between performer and
audience. It’s an intense relationship, with energy flowing
back and forth between stage and auditorium. It’s like a
conversation made up of jokes, laughter and sometimes less
pleasant responses.

Present tense
It happens in the present tense, in the here and now. It
20 GETTING THE JOKE

acknowledges the performance situation. The stand-up

comedian is duty bound to incorporate events in the venue
into the act. Failure to respond to a heckler, a dropped
glass or the ringing of a mobile phone is a sign of weakness
which will result in the audience losing faith in the
performer’s ability.

If this definition of stand-up comedy is any good, then the form

has been around a lot longer than the term which describes
it. There’s been much speculation about the roots of the
form, and it’s been suggested that its ancestors might include
the shaman, jesters, Commedia dell’Arte, Shakespearean
clowns like Richard Tarleton, English pantomime clowns like
Joseph Grimaldi, circus clowns, British music hall comedians,
American vaudeville entertainers, the stump speeches of
American minstrelsy, nineteenth century humorous lecturers
like Mark Twain and medicine shows.
It’s been said that stand-up comedy itself is an American
invention. US comedian Richard Belzer, for example, describes
it as, ‘[O]ne of the few art forms indigenous to this country:
jazz, abstract painting, and stand-up comedy.’9 British comedy
critic William Cook agrees, adding: ‘British comics have
adapted American stand-up to their own ends, but … our
parochial version is still way off the pace.’10
As somebody who’s resented American cultural imperi-
alism ever since I first heard the Clash’s ‘I’m So Bored with
the USA’, I feel duty bound to challenge the idea that stand-up
originated on the other side of the Atlantic. The easiest way
to do this is by looking at the evidence, tracing the history of
stand-up first in the US, then in Britain.

Notes
1 ‘Television and English’, The Listener, vol. LXXVI, no. 1950,
11 August 1966, p. 194. To be honest, I didn’t make the
 What ’s the definition of stand-up comedy? 21

discovery by going to the OED myself. It came up in a student

essay, and even then, the student hadn’t got the information
direct from the OED, but via another book: John Limon,
Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America,
Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000, p. 7, 126
2 The two sentences read, ‘People, she points out, who appear
before television cameras (apart from “stand-up comics”) never
attempt to talk for more than two minutes at a time’; and ‘In
television complex sentences need to be eschewed, especially
by stand-up comics’. Oddly, it is the second of these sentences
which the OED quotes
3 Ethel Strainchamps, ‘Television and the English Language’,
Television Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1966, p. 61
4 Philip Babcock Gove, Webster’s Third New International
Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged, London:
G. Bell & Sons and Springfield, MA: G&C Merriam, 1961,
p. 2225
5 Kitty Bruce (ed.), The Unpublished Lenny Bruce, Philadelphia:
Running Press, 1984, p. 16. Interview broadcast 26 February
1959, WFMT, Chicago
6 The claim about the term being coined on Carson’s show is
made in William Cook, ‘Rising to the Joke’, The Guardian
(The Guide section), 22–28 February 2003, p. 5, However,
the following website reveals that although The Tonight Show
actually started in 1954, Carson didn’t follow Steve Allen
and Jack Paar as host until 1962: http://www.johnnycarson.
com/carson/did_you_know/history/index.jsp [accessed 27
September 2004]. The web discussion that followed can be
found at http://pub122.ezboard.com/fwordoriginsorgfrm8.
showMessage?topicID=464.topic [accessed 27 September
2004]. The person who posted the message says that Berle
claimed to have originated the term in 1942, although the
claim was actually made in 1991. Sadly, the 1991 source of
the supposed claim is not actually cited. That’s the internet for
you, isn’t it?
7 Oliver Double, Stand-Up! On being a Comedian, London:
Methuen, 1997, p. 4. Other examples of laughter-based
definitions include: Lenny Bruce, ‘A comedian is one who
22 GETTING THE JOKE

performs words or actions of his own original creation,

usually before a group of people in a place of assembly, and
these words or actions should cause the people assembled to
laugh at a minimum of … one laugh every 25 seconds for a
period of not less than 45 minutes, and accomplish this feat
with consistency 18 out of 20 shows.’ (Kitty Bruce (ed.), The
Unpublished Lenny Bruce, Philadelphia: Running Press, 1984,
pp. 41–2); John Limon, ‘Your laughter is the single end of
stand-up … Stand-up comedy does not require plot, closure,
or point, and there need not be anything but jokes. Constant,
unanimous laughter is the limit case.’ (John Limon, Stand-Up
Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America, Durham and
London: Duke University Press, 2000, pp. 12–13); Mark
Lamarr, ‘…defining stand-up in itself is very simple: a
solo performer, usually a man, performing verbal comedy’
(Stand-Up America, BBC Two, 22 February 2003)
8 J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner (eds), The Oxford English
Dictionary (Second Edition, Volume XVI soot-Styx), Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1989, p. 515
9 Quoted in Franklin Ajaye, Comic Insights: the Art of Stand-Up
Comedy, Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2002, p. 65.
Belzer’s view is supported by an entry on ‘Hispanic Humor’ in
Alleen Pace Nilsen and Don L. F. Nilsen (eds) Encyclopedia of
20th Century American Humor, Pheonix, Arizona: Oryx Press,
2000, which refers to ‘the American tradition of professional
stand-up comedy’ (p. 145) and ‘the American custom of
stand-up comedy’ (p. 147)
10 William Cook, ‘Rising to the Joke’, The Guardian (The Guide
section), 22–28 February 2003, p. 5
 CHAPTER THREE

Stand-up USA

Vaudeville
In America, the story of stand-up starts in vaudeville, a form
of popular theatre which began in the late nineteenth century.
Growing out of earlier forms of popular entertainment like
dime museums and Yiddish theatre, the first proper vaudeville
venue was probably Tony Pastor’s New Fourteenth Street
Theatre, which opened in New York in October 1881. Pastor
was the first to take this type of popular entertainment out
of saloons and present it to a respectable audience. Over
a decade later, in March 1894, B. F. Keith opened his first
theatre in Boston, and this was the first to actually use the
word ‘vaudeville’ to describe what it offered its customers.
The entertainment on offer took the form of a mixed bill of
acts, which might include singers, dancers, speciality acts and
comedy quartets. To give a specific example, if you were at
the Palace Theatre in New York in the week beginning 2 May
1921, you could have enjoyed the following acts:

1 Fink’s Mules, animal act

2 Miller and Capman, singers and dancers
3 Georgia Campbell and Co., in ‘Gone Are the Days’
4 Toney and Norman, songs and talk
5 Dorothy Jardon, prima donna
24 GETTING THE JOKE

INTERMISSION

6 Kennedy and Berle, youthful entertainers

7 Ford Sisters, dancers
8 Watson Sisters, singing comediennes
9 Robbie Gordon, posing act1

There were different grades of theatre, and the organisation

of the entertainment in the major theatres differed from that
in the smaller venues. Big-time vaudeville changed the bill
weekly and ran the show twice nightly. Small-time vaudeville
changed the bill twice a week, ran three to six performances
per day, had fewer acts per show and lacked headliners.
Small-time vaudeville included the venues run by the Theatre
Owners Booking Association (TOBA), which booked black
acts and attracted black audiences. The need for its existence
is an indication of the segregation which afflicted America,
although some black acts, notably Bert Williams, did manage
to break into the big-time circuits.
Williams was just one of the many legendary comedians
that vaudeville produced. Others included Buster Keaton,
Charlie Chaplin, The Marx Brothers, Mae West, W. C.
Fields, Eddie Cantor, Fred Allen, Bob Hope, Jack Benny
and Milton Berle. Some of these were comic singers or
sketch comedians, but others did something which we would
recognise as a form of stand-up comedy. First, there were
MCs, like Frank Fay, who introduced the other acts. By
definition, they had to address the audience directly, and
they would also make comic ad libs.2 Then there were the
monologists, like Jack Benny, Bob Hope and Milton Berle.
These are now thought of as classic stand-up comics in the
traditional style, but in a 1991 interview, Berle rejects this
idea: ‘We were monologists. Not stand-up comedians. That’s
a new term. You know why they’re called stand-up comics
today? Because all they do is stand there and take the micro-
phone off the stand.’3
 Stand-up USA 25

Berle was contemptuous of acts who just stand there and

tell gags, because he and his contemporaries did more than just
that. His first solo act, in 1924, was 12 minutes long. As well
as gags, it also featured two songs, a card trick, a soft-shoe
dance and an impersonation of Eddie Cantor. Similarly, Jack
Benny’s act contained elements which aren’t normally found
in modern stand-up, like a female stooge, described in a 1927
review as ‘a nice-looking girl, who plays the role of a self-
conscious “Dumb Dora”.’4
The monologists were like modern stand-ups because
they addressed the audience directly and told jokes, but they
probably only started doing this towards the end of the vaude-
ville era. A 1921 review of Fred Allen’s act notes that as well
as singing a song and using what is intriguingly described as ‘a
wabbly umbrella’, he also told a series of gags: ‘His chatter is
unrelated and aimed for laughs, which he secured.’ This leads
the reviewer to conclude that, ‘Allen is not a monologist.’5
Clearly, in the early 1920s this proto stand-up element was
new to the art of monologism.
Vaudeville was a very popular form of entertainment. In
its heyday, there were at least 1,000 vaudeville theatres in the
US, playing host to 25,000 performers. It quickly became big
business, with huge theatre chains being formed by entrepre-
neurs like B. F. Keith, Edward F. Albee and Martin Beck. By
1927, the huge chains had merged into one enormous one,
which combined the Keith & Albee circuit with the Orpheum.
This meant that all major vaudeville theatres and many
smaller ones came under the control of one organisation.
At this point, vaudeville was facing competition from silent
cinema, with some theatres responding by including movies
between the other acts. The pressure increased when sound
cinema arrived in the late 1920s, particularly as big vaude-
ville stars like Jack Benny, Fred Allen and Bert Lahr started
to appear in ‘talkies’. Such stars also appeared on the radio,
another new medium competing for audiences.
What made vaudeville fatally vulnerable to such compe-
tition was the fact that so many of its theatres had been
26 GETTING THE JOKE

amalgamated into one circuit. When Joseph P. Kennedy – the

father of JFK – took control of the Keith-Albee-Orpheum
circuit by buying up 200,000 shares in it, vaudeville’s fate was
sealed. Kennedy had a background in the movie business, and
wasn’t interested in live theatre. In 1930, he sold his stock
to the Radio Corporation of America, which became RKO
(Radio-Keith-Orpheum). With virtually all the theatres in the
hands of a film company, live vaudeville was over. By 1935, it
had virtually disappeared, living on for a while in the form of
live acts performing between the films in cinemas.

Borscht and Chitlins

When vaudeville died, it might have taken the embryonic
stand-up of the monologists with it. In 1938, Groucho Marx
was worried that vaudeville’s demise would make comedians
‘a vanishing species’.6 In fact, it lived on in a variety of venues,
like the hotels and resorts in the Catskill Mountains, known
as the ‘Borscht Belt’. From the 1930s, the Borscht Belt was
a favourite holiday destination for New York Jews. There
were more than 500 hotels, including Brown’s, the Concord,
Grossinger’s, Kutsher’s and the Tamarack, and the shows they
put on led to them being dubbed ‘the new vaudeville’.
Comedians who started out in the Borscht Belt include Red
Buttons, Danny Kaye and Joey Bishop. In addition to headline
comics, newer acts were booked as ‘toomlers’. Like the
redcoats of British holiday camps, as well as doing a stage act
the toomlers had to mingle with the guests – telling them gags
and entertaining them as they did so, performing card tricks
or jumping into the swimming pool fully clothed. This must
have encouraged key elements of stand-up like an intensely
direct relationship with the audience, improvisation and a firm
emphasis on the here and now.
Another arena where stand-up survived was the Chitlin
Circuit, a series of cabarets, nightclubs and small theatres
 Stand-up USA 27

catering to black audiences in cities like Chicago, Detroit,

Cincinnati, Baltimore, Washington DC and Philadelphia.
The pinnacle of the circuit was Harlem’s Apollo Theater,
which still thrives today. On the Chitlin Circuit, great black
comedians like Pigmeat Markham, Moms Mabley and Redd
Foxx appeared alongside jazz bands, bluesmen, tap dancers
and doo-wop groups. Then there were the white stand-up
comedians like Minnie Pearl, who emerged from the country
music scene. The casinos of Las Vegas provided a stage for
the big names of comedy, paying them big money. Beyond all
of these, would-be stand-ups could try to find work in cafés,
bars or strip clubs.

The sick comics

Then in 1953, a young comic called Mort Sahl made his debut
at a venue called the hungry i in San Francisco. Run by a
beret-topped bohemian called Enrico Banducci, it was a small
cellar club that played host to folksingers and beatnik poets.
Behind the stage was just a brick wall, and this was the origin
of the classic image of the American stand-up comedian telling
gags in front of a bare brick backdrop. Sahl’s act at the hungry
i was revolutionary. He eschewed smart suits in favour of
slacks and a casual sweater, worn over an open-necked shirt.
His delivery was just as informal, and his subject matter was
relevant to a young, hip, beatnicky audience. Emerging in the
context of McCarthyism, he was unafraid of controversy. He
joked that he had bought a McCarthy jacket which is ‘like an
Eisenhower jacket only it’s got an extra flap that fits over the
mouth.’7
Others followed in Sahl’s wake, like Lenny Bruce, Shelley
Berman, Dick Gregory, Mike Nichols & Elaine May, Jonathan
Winters, Phyllis Diller, Bob Newhart and Woody Allen. They
played at the hungry i and other hip venues in other American
cities, places like Bon Soir, Le Ruban Bleu, Mocambo, the
28 GETTING THE JOKE

Purple Onion, the Bitter End, Mr Kelly’s and the Blue Angel.
Hugh Hefner was an enthusiastic fan of the new comedians,
and booked them in to his Playboy clubs. They were labelled
the ‘sick comics’, and Time Magazine described their style:

They joked about father and Freud; about mother and

masochism; about sister and sadism. They delightedly told
of airline pilots throwing out a few passengers to lighten
the load, of a graduate school for dope addicts, of parents
so loving they always ‘got upset if anyone else made me
cry’.8

All of these acts were exciting and inventive, but Lenny Bruce
stands out for the sheer daring of his act and the frenzied
controversy he managed to whip up. Bruce had started out as
a Borscht Belt impressionist, doing Peter Lorre, James Cagney
and Maurice Chevalier. In the late 1940s, he had what might
have been a big break, performing a bit called The Bavarian
Mimic on the Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts, but his career
failed to take off.9 At this point, he was still a rather conven-
tional comic, but during the 1950s his style started to change.
He began hanging out with a bunch of young comics at a
luncheonette called Hanson’s in New York. They would try
out material on each other, and Bruce was particularly influ-
enced by Joe Ancis, who never really worked as a professional
comedian, particularly his ability to improvise outrageous
comedy routines across the lunch table.
When Bruce started working as an MC in strip clubs like
Duffy’s Gaieties and Strip City, he began to try a riskier
approach to stand-up. He would improvise, do very obscene
stuff, insult the waitresses and wind up the customers. He
would talk about jazz, and loved making the band laugh.
Famously, one night he came on after one of the strippers,
having taken all of his own clothes off. The audience was
outraged, but Bruce was unrepentant: ‘What are you all
staring at? You see nudity on this stage every night. What’s
the big deal if I get naked?’10 When he broke out into more
 Stand-up USA 29

respectable venues, he took with him his improvisational flair,

and his willingness to confront taboos with routines about
sex, race and illegal drugs.
Another stand-out act was Dick Gregory. Gregory started
off on the Chitlin Circuit, and got his big break with a
booking at the Playboy Club in Chicago on 13 January 1960.
Replacing a white comedian who’d had to cancel, and playing
to a white audience including a big party of Southern white
businessmen, he stormed the gig, presenting an unashamedly
black perspective and satirising racism. Gregory’s success
opened the door for many more black comedians. Phyllis
Diller – who started out in venues like the Purple Onion and
the hungry i in the mid-1950s – made a similar breakthrough
for women. There had been other female stand-ups before her,
notably Moms Mabley and Minnie Pearl, but Diller was the
first American comedienne to become a big star.
The sick comics massively expanded the possibilities of
stand-up, in terms of both presentation and subject matter.
They paved the way for comedians to become less formal,
wear casual clothes and adopt a natural, conversational
delivery. They made room for comedy to be literate and intel-
lectual, as well as letting it into taboo areas. Just one example
of how they drew the blueprint for modern stand-up is the
observational style of Shelley Berman who, among other
things, was the first to talk about the anxieties of flying, a
subject which comedians still harp on about today.11
Perhaps understandably, older comics viewed these
newcomers with suspicion. As Albert Goldman put it, Mort
Sahl ‘so revolutionised the role of the comic that professional
comedians viewed him with the same mixture of alarm and
envy with which professional singers regarded Elvis Presley.’12
With the taste of sour grapes in his mouth, older comic Joey
Bishop dismissed the new generation: ‘Those guys … tried
their hardest to make it our way; when they couldn’t, they
switched.’13
30 GETTING THE JOKE

Comedy clubs
The world’s first comedy club opened in 1962, in Sheepshead
Bay, New York. A comedian called George Schultz capitalised
on the new hipness and popularity which the likes of Sahl,
Bruce and Gregory had brought to stand-up, and opened
up a new venue called Pips, which was exclusively devoted
to comedy. Here, stand-ups could perform without having
to share the bill with dancers, posing acts, performing
mules, beatnik poets or folksingers. Stand-up luminaries like
Rodney Dangerfield, Joan Rivers and Jerry Seinfeld played
there early in their careers before moving on to bigger and
better things. Pips enjoyed a long life, soldiering on until
around 2007, when it closed down to be replaced by a
sushi bar.
The Improv – or the Improvisation Café as it was originally
known – enjoys a much more legendary position in the history
of American stand-up than Pips. Even though it didn’t open
until the following year, it has a strong claim on being the
originator of the modern idea of a comedy club. In previous
incarnations, it had been a luncheonette and a Vietnamese
restaurant, but in 1963, Budd Friedman reopened it as a
late night café aimed at theatre people. Like the hungry i, it
boasted the kind of bare brick backdrop which has become
symbolic of American stand-up.
In spite of the fact that Friedman could be, in his own
words, ‘a son of a bitch’, it became the central location for
new comics to cut their teeth, because as Richard Zoglin puts
it, ‘[I]f you were a beginning stand-up who wanted to work
on your craft every night, the choice was pretty much the
Improv or your bathroom mirror.’14 Comics who played the
Improv include Robert Klein, Richard Lewis, Jimmie Walker,
Freddie Prinze, Elayne Boosler, Robin Williams, Jay Leno and
Gilbert Gottfried. Although the original New York Improv
has gone the same way as Pips, it spawned a whole chain of
clubs across North America, in cities like Chicago, Cleveland,
 Stand-up USA 31

Hollywood, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Ontario, Pittsburgh

and Washington DC.15
Gradually, more comedy clubs emerged. By the mid-1970s,
New York had two more showcase venues, The Comic Strip
and Catch a Rising Star, both of which would thrive and
become famous. Then there was The Comedy Store on Sunset
Boulevard in Los Angeles, which opened on 10 April 1972.
It was set up by an ex-comic called Sammy Shore, who had
worked in Vegas and opened for Elvis prior to becoming a
comedy promoter. Control passed to his wife Mitzi on their
divorce in 1974, and she became infamous for putting the fear
of God into the new comedians she nurtured there.
Unlike the venues which had preceded them, from vaude-
ville to the hungry i, the early comedy clubs didn’t actually
pay the stand-ups who worked in them. The logic was that
they offered comedians valuable exposure and the chance to
be spotted by TV producers, so paying them in cab fares and
free meals was perfectly acceptable. In 1979, Mitzi Shore’s
refusal to pay the acts at the Comedy Store led to the extraor-
dinary phenomenon of a strike by stand-up comedians. This
was no laughing matter. Once the dispute had been settled
and Shore had started paying the acts, a comic who believed
he was not being booked because of his involvement in the
strike committed suicide by jumping off the roof of a nearby
building, holding a note which read, ‘My name is Steve
Lubetkin. I used to work at The Comedy Store.’16
In the 1980s, there was an extraordinary explosion of
comedy clubs in America. At the beginning of the decade,
there were only ten of them that actually paid their acts, but
by 1992 there were over 300, playing host to about 2,000
comedians. As in vaudeville, chains of venues were formed,
with branches of the Improv and Catch a Rising Star opening
all over the country. Small comedy clubs sprung up in every
corner of the US, like (to pick three at random): The Looney
Bin in Walled Lake, Florida; Uncle Funny’s in Miami, Florida;
and Filly’s Comedy Shoppe in Rapid City, South Dakota. The
success of stand-up comedy led to the coining of the cliché that
32 GETTING THE JOKE

it had become ‘the new rock and roll’.17 Perhaps inevitably, by

the early 1990s the expansion in the stand-up scene slowed
down, and some venues were forced to close – but in spite of
the fallback, there are still comedy clubs all over the US.
Stand-up grew big not just in the mushrooming growth of
comedy clubs, but also in the scale of popularity of comedy’s
biggest stars. Steve Martin started performing as a teenager,
doing a comedy magic act before building a stand-up career
not in comedy clubs, but in nightclubs like the Boarding
House in San Francisco and the Troubadour in Los Angeles.
Appearances on Saturday Night Live and sales of his comedy
albums exponentially boosted demand for his live shows,
and he became the first stand-up to play arenas. In 1977, he
grossed over $1 million for a tour in which he played to a total
audience of 500,000 in enormous venues in 50 cities. A single
engagement at the Coliseum in Richfield, Ohio, saw him play
to an audience of 18,695 people.
However reluctant I am to accept the idea that America
invented stand-up comedy, I have to admit it has an intimi-
datingly good claim. The MCs and monologists of vaudeville
were doing something rather like it as early as the 1920s, the
form continued to develop in the Borscht Belt and the Chitlin
Circuit, the blueprint for modern stand-up was drawn up
by the sick comedians, the comedy club was born in New
York, and it even gave the world the arena comedy gig. As if
that wasn’t enough, the chances are that the term ‘stand-up
comedy’ was coined in America.

Notes
1 This bill is reproduced in Milton Berle (with Haskel Frankel),
Milton Berle – An Autobiography, New York: Applause
Theatre & Cinema Books, 1974, p. 86
2 Berle remembers swapping ad libs with the acts he introduced,
admitting that they were actually pre-arranged and rehearsed
 Stand-up USA 33

(Milton Berle with Haskel Frankel, Milton Berle – An

Autobiography, New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema
Books, 1974, p. 121)
3 Vernon Scott, United Press International, 20 August 1991, BC
Cycle
4 See Milton Berle (with Haskel Frankel), Milton Berle – An
Autobiography, New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema
Books, 1974, pp. 114-15; and Anthony Slide (ed.), Selected
Vaudeville Criticism, Metuchen, NJ and London: Scarecrow
Press, 1988, p. 20
5 Anthony Slide (ed.), Selected Vaudeville Criticism, Metuchen,
NJ and London: Scarecrow Press, 1988, p. 1
6 Simon Louvish, Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of
the Marx Brothers, London: Faber, 1999, p. 331
7 See Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians
of the 1950s and 1960s, New York: Pantheon, 2003, pp. 9–13,
58, 61
8 Quoted in Lisa Appignanesi, Cabaret: The First Hundred
Years, London: Methuen, 1984, p. 175
9 Lenny Bruce’s act for Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts can
be heard on various commercially released recordings, for
example Lenny Bruce, Warning: Lenny Bruce Is Out Again,
SicSicSic Inc., 2002, LBSU-666, track 28
10 Albert Goldman (from the journalism of Lawrence Schiller),
Ladies and Gentlemen – Lenny Bruce!!, Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1991, pp. 151–3, 163; Phil Berger, The Last Laugh:
The World of Stand-Up Comics, New York: Cooper Square
Press, 2000, pp. 75–6
11 Berman’s routines ‘Airlines’ and ‘Stewardess’ are available on
Shelley Berman, Inside Shelley Berman, Laugh.Com, 2002,
LGH1111
12 Albert Goldman (from the journalism of Lawrence Schiller),
Ladies and Gentlemen – Lenny Bruce!!, Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1991, p. 226
13 Quoted (or paraphrased?) by Paul Krassner in an interview
with Lenny Bruce, Kitty Bruce (ed.), The Unpublished Lenny
Bruce, Philadelphia: Running Press, 1984, p. 40
34 GETTING THE JOKE

14 Richard Zoglin, Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the

1970s Changed America, New York: Bloomsbury, 2008, pp.
94–5. Friedman’s self-description as a ‘son of a bitch’ is quoted
on p. 89
15 It’s a shameful sign of stand-up comedy’s comparatively low
cultural esteem that the passing of the iconic New York Improv
into history attracted so little attention. Neither Google nor
the Nexis database of newspaper and magazine articles yield
any information about why it closed or even exactly when it
happened
16 Phil Berger, The Last Laugh: The World of Stand-Up Comics,
New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000, p. 384. Also see
Richard Zoglin, Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the
1970s Changed America, New York: Bloomsbury, 2008, pp.
195–202
17 To give one specific example of the ‘new rock and roll’ idea:
‘I read in a much-respected music magazine in America that
over the next 10 years, comedy will replace rock music as the
new form of cult entertainment.’ – Jasper Carrott (Stand-Up
America, BBC Two, 7 July 1987)
 CHAPTER FOUR

Stand-up UK

Music hall
Given all the evidence, how could Britain have any claim as
the birthplace of stand-up comedy? Well, it’s simply that an
embryonic version of stand-up existed in Britain even before
it did in America, evolving in parallel with its American
counterpart and arguably contributing just as much to the
development of the form.
The story of British stand-up starts in music hall, a
slightly older tradition than vaudeville. The generally recog-
nised date of music hall’s birth is 1852, when Charles
Morton opened the Canterbury Hall in London. Music
hall grew out of tavern-based entertainment which had
become increasingly formalised even before Morton opened
his Hall, and the entertainment took the form of a series
of acts – mainly singers – performing to male-dominated,
largely working-class audiences who drank and ate as they
watched.
Like vaudeville, music hall became popular very quickly.
By 1868, there were 200 halls in London and 300 in the
provinces. As new venues were built and old ones adapted
and expanded to cope with bigger audiences, the halls began
to look less like taverns and more like theatres. By the
beginning of the twentieth century, when venues like the
Hackney Empire were built, music halls were pretty much
36 GETTING THE JOKE

indistinguishable in shape from the theatres in which straight

drama was presented.
Meanwhile, significant changes were taking place in the
entertainment which took place in them. A classic music
hall show lasted three or four hours, and customers would
often come and go, not necessarily staying for the whole
show. There would be a huge number of acts on the bill. A
programme from the Canterbury Hall in 1887 shows 53 items
on the bill, including Little Tich, Raffin’s Pigs and Monkeys
and the Sisters du Cane. This is outdone by a bill from the
London Pavilion for 29 May 1899, which shows an extraor-
dinary 85 acts including Florrie Forde, Dan Leno and Marie
Lloyd. By the first decade of the twentieth century, this format
was being abandoned in favour of a shorter show, presented
twice nightly. A bill from the Holborn Empire for the week
commencing 3 March 1913, for example, shows just 13 acts
in a show which started at 6.20 p.m. and 9.10 p.m.1
The actual acts themselves had also begun to change. The
classic music hall style of solo performers singing comic or
serious songs in character was gradually replaced by a more
varied set of acts. For example, if you were at the Leeds
Empire in the week commencing 28 February 1938, you could
see seven individual acts making up the following bill

1 Overture [a musical introduction played by the theatre

orchestra]
2 Toko & Barry, Unique Dancers
3 Russ Carr with Olive Grey and the Boy Friend [a
ventriloquist]
4 Charly Wood, Juggler on the Uni-Cycle
5 Norman Carroll, Comedian
6 The Two Brasellos, Thrills on the Wire
7 Intermission [including more tunes from the orchestra]
8 Toko & Barry, Will Entertain Again [the opening
dance act doing another number]
 Stand-up UK 37

9 Harry Jerome, Comedy Magician

10 Harry Roy and his Band, Conductor – Harry Roy2

To reflect the change in the organisation and nature of enter-

tainment, people began to refer to it as ‘variety’ instead of
‘music hall’.

Why is music hall like stand-up

comedy?
The roots of stand-up comedy are unmistakable in the classic
music hall style. Although a music hall act was largely made
up of songs, these were often comic and were sung directly to
the audience. Through time, they became more like stand-up,
as a patter section was introduced, with the orchestra stopping
and the comedian telling a series of gags, before the music
struck up again for the final chorus. Gradually, the patter
became more important, and the song which bracketed it
became more like an afterthought. Dan Leno, probably the
most popular British comedian of the late nineteenth century,
was acknowledged as the performer who ‘shifted the centre of
gravity from song to “patter”’.3
It seems likely that music hall comedians related to the
audience exactly like modern stand-ups do. It’s difficult to
prove this, because while there are many studio recordings of
acts like Dan Leno, Marie Lloyd and Little Tich, they were
never recorded live. However, some acts did survive long
enough to perform in an era when live theatre recordings
had become possible. Veterans of the music hall era toured
around the variety theatres in shows like Don Ross’s Thanks
for the Memory, which featured Randolph Sutton, Nellie
Wallace, Ella Shields, Talbot O’Farrell, Gertie Gitana, Billy
Danvers and G. H. Elliott. This was recorded for radio
in around 1948, and Nellie Wallace’s act is particularly
interesting.
38 GETTING THE JOKE

Wallace had made her music hall debut in Birmingham in

1888 whilst in her teens, and was in her late 70s by the time
of this recording. She performs just one song, ‘Mother’s Pie
Crust’, but manages to spin it out for over seven minutes.
The act starts with the musical introduction, and she proceeds
to sing the song, getting regular laughs. It finishes, and the
audience applaud. Then she launches into a spoken routine,
which sounds exactly like what we would recognise as
stand-up comedy:

Oh dear, dear! My poor, dear father! I can see ‘im now!

I can see ‘im so plainly! Just before ‘e died, he called me
to his bedside! He said, “Are you there – my pretty one?”
[laughter] He was unconscious! [laughter] Ahh. Ahh, poor
darling, how he suffered, how he suffered! And in silence!
The doctors wanted us to take ‘im – to the seaside. But – we
couldn’t afford it! We hadn’t the money! So what do you
think I did? His noble daughter. I sat by ‘is bedside, and
fanned him with a kipper! [laughter]4

The delivery is more stylised than that of most modern

comedians – her voice high-pitched, melodramatic and
wobbling with age and emotion. She emphasises certain words
or phrases by eeeelongaaaating the syllables, and adopting a
singsong tone. But in spite of this, the energy and rhythm of
her speech are distinctly like stand-up. She is as successful as
a modern comedian in getting laughs, and building them. The
laugh she gets with the third joke lasts for ten seconds, about
twice as long as for the first joke. The ‘oh dear, dear’ which
begins the routine is actually a kind of catchphrase, appearing
in a number of her patter routines.
As in stand-up, much of the humour comes from putting a
personality on display in front of an audience. The audience
laugh when she recalls her father calling her ‘my pretty
one’, because they are familiar with her stage persona: a
clownishly unglamorous ageing spinster with delusions of
attractiveness. She wore outlandish costumes, with funny
 Stand-up UK 39

hats and flea-bitten furs, her face made comically gawky with
exaggerated make-up, and sometimes thick, round-framed
glasses. The gag about fanning her father with a kipper fits in
perfectly with her grotesque image.
Then there is the directness of communication. She acknowl-
edges the audience’s presence, talks directly to them. She goes
on to ask them to join in with the song’s chorus (which closes
the act), getting another laugh by telling them, ‘And when we
come to that part, “The deep blue sea!” don’t mess about with
it!’ Although she is not heckled in this recording, she would
certainly have known how to deal with hostile audiences. T. S.
Eliot remembered seeing her being jeered and heckled: ‘I have
seen her, hardly pausing in her act, make some quick retort
that silenced her tormentors for the rest of the evening.’5
The intense rapport between Wallace and her audience was
essential to her act, and this makes her much more similar
to a stand-up than to revue comedians like Joyce Grenfell.
Wallace and Grenfell once appeared on the same bill in a
wartime concert in a small country cinema. The difference
in their approach becomes clear in Grenfell’s recollection of
the incident, which manages to be affectionate whilst also
portraying Wallace as a rather bad-tempered eccentric.
Grenfell’s approach to the audience was the opposite
of Wallace’s: ‘I felt secure only if I was safely behind the
footlights and couldn’t see the audience.’ Wallace talked to
the people who had come to see her, but Grenfell had others
to converse with: ‘I’m pretending there is someone else on
stage with me and I talk to him. If I pretend clearly enough I
should be able to make you, the audience, accept the invisible
character I’m imagining.’ Wallace found the idea of a solo
comedian ignoring the audience bizarre, to the extent that she
stood backstage making loud comments about it even while
Grenfell was doing her act: ‘[A]ll was going fairly well when
suddenly I heard Nellie Wallace say in a desperate sort of way,
and clearly: “What does she think she’s doing out there on her
own talking to herself?” Somehow I knew she didn’t want an
answer!’6
40 GETTING THE JOKE

Music hall turns into stand-up

It was a short evolutionary leap from the classic music hall
which Nellie Wallace performed to stand-up comedy, and
some performers straddled the two styles. Will Fyffe, for
example, was born in Dundee in 1885, and started as a classic
music hall comedian, singing character songs which played
on his Scottish ethnicity. His trademark song was ‘I Belong
to Glasgow’, sung in the character of a drunken Glaswegian.
It uses the standard format of the late music hall. Halfway
through, the music cuts out, and he goes into a patter routine,
complaining about rich ‘cap-u-tilists’ in slurred tones, before
slipping back into the final chorus.7
Later, he did routines which weren’t bracketed within
songs, like this radio recording in which he talks about being
chatted up by a widow:

But I knew she wanted me, sailors have that instinct. I

knew it because one night, we were sitting on the die-van
together – [quiet laughter] all right, the sofae. [laughter]
This widow and I, we were sittin’ on the sofae. And all of a
sudden, she looked right up into my dial. [laughter] In the
way that widows can. Any o’ you lads ever had a widow
looking at ye? [laughter] Eh? Y’ever noticed that sly, sleekit
look, you know? You’ve, you’ve seen a ferret looking at a
rabbit? [laughter]8

This is distinctly recognisable as stand-up. It’s a conver-

sation with the audience, with the joke-laugh rhythm that’s
distinctive to the form. His connection with his punters is
made more direct by the fact that he asks the ‘lads’ if they’ve
had the same experience of widows as he has.
In the variety era, the song-and-patter format of the music
hall disappeared, except in the acts of veterans like Nellie
Wallace. Instead, comedians like Max Miller, Tommy Trinder,
Ted Ray, Billy Russell, Suzette Tarri, Beryl Reid and Frankie
 Stand-up UK 41

Howerd performed something which was stand-up comedy

in all but name. These performers were known as ‘front cloth
comics’. The name derives from the staging of British variety
theatre, in which acts using the full stage were alternated with
ones which could be performed in front of a painted backdrop
at the front of the stage. This allowed the show to run
smoothly, with no breaks – while one act performed in front
cloth, the stage behind the curtains was set for the following
one. Front cloth comedy existed at least as early as the 1920s –
a 1926 review describes Max Miller as ‘a comedian of the new
school’, presumably referring to this emerging style.9

Variety outlives vaudeville

Front cloth comics had longer to evolve and develop than
their US equivalents, the monologists, because British variety
survived decades longer than American vaudeville. This was
due to a quirk of fate. Whereas control of most vaudeville
theatres had fallen into the hands of somebody who had no
interest in live theatre, variety theatres came under the control
of two people who were passionately committed to keeping
the form alive: George Black and Val Parnell.
In the 1920s, variety was in decline, and many performers
were convinced that it was doomed. As in America, there
was a trend for shows in which variety acts performed
alongside films, and when Walter Gibbons took control of
the London Palladium – the pinnacle of the variety circuit
– he experimented with putting on cine-variety there. It
was so unsuccessful that ownership of the venue changed
hands. It now belonged to Gaumont-British, which also
took possession of the associated GTC circuit of cinemas
and theatres. The company put Black and Parnell in
charge of them. The two men were determined to make
the Palladium work as a world-class variety theatre, and
although Gaumont-British was a film company, unlike RKO
42 GETTING THE JOKE

in America it was happy to keep running theatres as well

as cinemas.
Black realised that in order to make the Palladium work,
he would have to revive the national variety circuit, so that
it could keep him supplied with experienced acts. With
this in mind, he and Parnell made efforts to improve the
quality of entertainment in the theatres they controlled.
The Palladium was reopened as a pure variety theatre in
September 1928, with a bill which included comedians Dick
Henderson, Gracie Fields and Billy Bennett. The posters for
the relaunch bore the slogan: ‘Variety is coming back … to
the Palladium.’10
Later, in 1932, the larger and more prestigious Moss chain
of theatres was rumoured to be about to switch from variety
to cinema, but instead it was sold to Gaumont-British. They
decided to keep the venues as variety theatres so as to avoid
competition with their established cinemas. This meant that
more than 30 more theatres fell into Black’s hands, to add
to the 12 GTC halls he already controlled, and the future of
British variety was secure.11
By July 1938, the entertainment trade paper The Era was
topping its front page with the headline, ‘Biggest Variety
Boom for Years’. It reported that many more cinemas were
booking variety acts, some were converting back into variety
theatres, and there were even fears that bookers would not be
able to find enough ‘star-material’ to put on their bills.12

When Batley ruled British

showbusiness
Variety continued to more or less thrive through World
War II and even into the 1950s, but by the beginning of the
following decade it was giving out its last gasps, killed by the
competition of television. Whereas American stand-up found
a post-vaudeville home in the Borscht Belt and the Chitlin
 Stand-up UK 43

Circuit, its British equivalent survived in the working men’s

clubs, which had existed since the mid-nineteenth century.
When variety died, entertainment in working men’s clubs
boomed, leading entrepreneurs to set up bigger, privately-
owned clubs built around the same model but with the budget
to put on really spectacular shows.
The Batley Variety Club, for example, was opened by James
Corrigan in the small Yorkshire town in 1967. Corrigan had
worked out that there were about two million people living
within a 20-mile radius of Batley, who would be happy to
travel to be entertained. He raised £65,000 from Newcastle
and Scottish Breweries, and built a club that could hold 2,000
people. This allowed a small Yorkshire town to play host to
the kind of glamorous, big name acts that you would never
expect to find there, including Gerry and the Pacemakers,
Engelbert Humperdinck, Lulu, Matt Monro, the Beverley
Sisters, Roy Orbison, Louis Armstrong, Shirley Bassey and
Jayne Mansfield.13
Big clubs like Batley put on established comedians like
Tommy Cooper and Dave Allen, but the stand-ups who
actually started their careers on the club circuit had a distinctive
style. In 1971, a group of them including Bernard Manning,
Frank Carson, Ken Goodwin and Charlie Williams appeared
in Granada Television’s The Comedians. Whereas the front
cloth comics in the variety theatres had used catchphrases,
costumes and comic personas, their acts fleshed out with songs
and even dances, club comics had a more minimal approach
– unoriginal, self-contained gags, told one after another, with
little else going on.
Meanwhile, there were more interesting stand-ups emerging
from Britain’s folk music clubs. Billy Connolly, Jasper Carrott
and Mike Harding started as folksingers, but gradually, the
comic introductions to their songs grew and became the
most important part of their acts, just as stand-up comedy
had originally grown out of the patter section on music hall
song. In folk clubs, stand-up became more conversational,
and comics like Connolly and Carrott built a very personal
44 GETTING THE JOKE

relationship with their audience, putting personal anecdotes

into their acts alongside observational routines.
Victoria Wood was another singer who turned into a
stand-up, although she started her career singing cabaret songs
rather than folk. After an appearance on the TV talent show
New Faces in 1974, she struggled to find suitable audiences.
She appeared in revue and wrote successful plays, and by the
early 1980s, her act had evolved into stand-up. Successful
television shows like Victoria Wood – As Seen on TV helped
build her audience to the point where she had become one of
the most successful stars of British stand-up, having twice sold
out a 15-night run in the 5,000-capacity Royal Albert Hall.
Wood was not Britain’s first female stand-up, but – like Phyllis
Diller in America – was the first to become a really big star.

Alternative comedy and beyond

America reinvented stand-up in the 1950s with the rise of
the sick comedians, and it started to spawn comedy clubs as
early as the 1960s. In this respect, Britain seriously lagged
behind. The Comedy Store, the UK’s first dedicated stand-up
club, didn’t open until May 1979, 17 years after Pips had
made its first customers laugh. The Store was directly inspired
by the American model. An insurance salesman called Peter
Rosengard had visited the LA Comedy Store in the summer of
1978 and had been extremely impressed. He copied the idea
and the name, setting up his own version in a room above a
strip club at 69 Dean Street, Soho.
Acts who found a platform there included Alexei Sayle,
Tony Allen, Rik Mayall and French & Saunders. They were
the first British comedians to seriously rival the likes of Mort
Sahl and Lenny Bruce, because they directly challenged the
crusty conventions of traditional stand-up and expanded the
possibilities of the form. Despite the argument that British
comedians are ‘way off the pace’ set by the Americans, the
 Stand-up UK 45

first alternative comedians were genuinely groundbreaking. In

a 1987 interview, Mark Breslin, who founded the Canadian
comedy club chain Yuk Yuk’s, said that whereas American
comedians like Jay Leno avoided controversial topics like the
then-recent Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the same could not be
said of ‘that guy out of England’, Alexei Sayle, who would ‘do
a Chernobyl joke and have no problem with it.’14
As in America, once the idea of comedy clubs was estab-
lished, there was a boom. Initially, alternative comedy was a
semi-amateur affair – when the Comedy Store first opened, the
only act to actually get paid was the compère. A group called
Alternative Cabaret (founded by Tony Allen) toured around
pubs, arts centres, students unions and other small venues,
thus sowing the seeds for the pub-based comedy clubs that
began to flourish initially in London, and then in most large
provincial towns and cities.
This is where my own tiny part of the story comes in.
From the late 1980s, I worked in small clubs in London
and the provinces, and in 1992 I helped to set up Sheffield’s
longest-running comedy club, the Last Laugh, in the Lescar
pub, Hunters Bar. I co-managed and compèred it until 1997
when I had to give it up to start my first university job, but it
still thrives today in the hands of Toby Foster, who played the
drummer in Phoenix Nights.15
By the end of the twentieth century, the stand-up scene
was big business. In 1999, the Comedy Store (now run by
Don Ward, who had been part of it from the beginning) had
an annual turnover of about £2.5 million in a purpose-built,
400-seat venue in Oxendon Street. In 2000, the Jongleurs
chain of venues was sold to Regent Inns in a deal reported to
be worth as much as £8.5 million. In 2001, the turnover of
the Avalon agency had grown from £250,000 in 1988 to £30
million.
As the new comedy scene thrived, it became absolutely
central to British stand-up. Just about every major British
stand-up comedian in the last 25 years has started his or her
career in what would once have been called alternative comedy
46 GETTING THE JOKE

clubs, including Ben Elton, Jo Brand, Jack Dee, Lee Evans,

Eddie Izzard, Harry Hill, Peter Kay, Ross Noble, Jimmy Carr,
Sarah Millican, John Bishop and Michael McIntyre.
Then there were the offshoots, like the black comedy scene,
which started with a series of shows in Ladbroke Grove,
Deptford and Brixton; and the opening of the 291 Club in
the Hackney Empire, which took its inspiration from the
Live at the Apollo shows at Harlem’s famous theatre. These
roots grew into a healthy circuit. One of its most important
promoters, John Simmit, ran shows all over the UK under the
banner Upfront Comedy, as well as playing Dipsy in the cult
children’s TV show Teletubbies. There’s also the Irish comedy
scene, which got going when the Comedy Cellar in Dublin’s
International Bar opened in 1988. A core of performers played
there regularly, learning their trade, and constantly trying
new material. Some, like Ardal O’Hanlon and Dylan Moran,
moved to the UK and quickly became very successful.
Comparing the history of stand-up in Britain and America,
it becomes obvious that rather than British comedians
adopting and adapting an American invention, the form
has actually undergone a parallel evolution on either side
of the Atlantic. What’s striking is how similarly this played
out in the two countries. In both cases, it started in theatres
which presented a variety of acts, continued in other types
of venues when the theatres shut down, underwent a major
reinvention, and finally found its home in dedicated comedy
clubs. While America may have been significantly ahead at
certain points, there’s no evidence that stand-up actually
sprang to life there. In fact, if you accept music hall as a form
of embryonic stand-up, then Britain was probably the first to
come up with it. To throw the question even further up into
the air, there may be other countries which could claim to
have originated the form. Australia, for example, had its own
music hall tradition dating back to the nineteenth Century,
and an alternative comedy scene which started in the early
1980s.
 Stand-up UK 47

Ultimately it’s probably impossible to say with absolute

certainty exactly where stand-up came from, but whatever
the case, its success as a performance genre is undeniable.
It has become an international phenomenon, spreading its
tentacles across Britain, the US, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and further afield into countries all over the world,
from Scandinavia to the Middle East, from India to Indonesia.
Although it is still primarily an Anglophone form, the extent
to which is has thrived in other languages is demonstrated
by the fact that the largest ever stand-up comedy show was
performed not in English but in German. This took place on
12 July 2008, at the Olympiastadion in Berlin, where Mario
Barth played to an implausibly massive audience made up of
67,733 individual comedy fans.16

Notes
1 This bill is reproduced in Roger Wilmut, Kindly Leave the
Stage: The Story of Variety, 1919–1960, London: Methuen,
1985, p. 12
2 This bill is reproduced from a theatre programme in my own
collection of variety materials
3 Max Beerbohm, The Bodley Head Max Beerbohm (ed. David
Cecil), London, Sydney and Toronto: The Bodley Head, 1970,
p. 375
4 Various artists, Music Hall Alive: Edwardian Stars Recorded on
Stage 1938 & 1948, Music Hall Masters, 2003, MHM022/3
5 T. S. Eliot, ‘Marie Lloyd’, in John Gross (ed.), The Oxford
Book of Essays, Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992, p. 428
6 See Joyce Grenfell, Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure,
London: Macmillan, 1976, pp. 262, 247
7 Various artists, The Golden Years of the Music Hall, Saydisc,
1990, CSDL380
48 GETTING THE JOKE

8 Various artists, Fifty Years of Radio Comedy, BBC Records,

1972, REC 138M
9 See Valantyne Napier, Glossary of Terms Used in Variety,
Vaudeville, Revue & Pantomime, Westbury, Wiltshire: Badger
Press, 1996, pp. 7, 27; and John M. East, Max Miller: The
Cheeky Chappie, London: Robson Books, 1993, p. 66
10 Ian Bevan, Top of the Bill: The Story of the London Palladium,
London: Frederick Muller, 1952, p. 74
11 There’s a more detailed account of Black’s and Parnell’s
contribution to the history of variety in my book Britain Had
Talent: A History of Variety Theatre, Houndmills, Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012 (esp. see chapter 4, ‘The Golden
Age of Variety, 1928–52’, pp. 51–68)
12 ‘Biggest Variety Boom for Years’, The Era, vol. 101 no. 5207,
21 July 1938, p. 1
13 See Barry Salmon, ‘Building the Dream’, The Dewsbury
Reporter, 16 October 1998, p. 8; and Barry Salmon, ‘Amazing
First Week Silenced the Doubters’, The Dewsbury Reporter, 2
October 1998, pp. 10–11
14 Eve Drobot, ‘No Laughing Matter, Yuk Yuk’s Mark Breslin:
Better a Microphone than a Gun’, Descant, vol. 18, Spring-
Summer 1987, pp. 162–3
15 The Last Laugh at the Lescar has now become the Little Last
Laugh, to distinguish it from bigger shows under the Last
Laugh banner staged at the Sheffield City Memorial Hall. Toby
also runs a chain of other gigs in the South Yorkshire area. See
http://www.lastlaughcomedy.com/ for more details
16 And yet still the xenophobic clichés about Germans lacking a
sense of humour persist
 CHAPTER FIVE

What’s new in stand-up?

Stand-up online
I finished the first edition of Getting the Joke in 2005, having
done most of the work the previous year. That’s comparatively
recent. Given that stand-up comedy has been around for at
least a hundred years, it would be easy to imagine that not
much could have happened to significantly advance the form
in the last seven.
In fact, there have been some pretty significant changes.
First, there’s the increasing importance of the internet. Comedy
already had an online presence, with websites like Chortle
tirelessly documenting the British stand-up scene with news,
reviews and listings; and the American-based Laugh.com
selling a wallet-draining range of comedy CDs and DVDs,
including vintage albums reissued on their own label.
What’s changed is the rise of social media sites and user-
generated content. YouTube, for example – officially launched
in November 2005 – has made recordings of stand-up comedy
infinitely more accessible. Where I once had to scour the TV
and radio listings, or search the racks of record shops for
vinyl, cassettes, VHS tapes, CDs or DVDs, I can now go to
YouTube and access uncountable hours of stand-up material
with little more than a few keystrokes. Some of this may be
official content, but much more of it will pay scant regard to
50 GETTING THE JOKE

copyright – segments ripped from TV shows or DVDs, fans’

bootlegs of live shows filmed on mobile phones, even stuff
from comedians’ own recordings. Because anyone can post
content on YouTube, even the lowliest open spot can try to
kick start their career by posting a film of their latest gig.
Then there is Twitter, the site which allows people to
document their every thought as long as they can squeeze
it into 140 characters. Twitter has been hailed by many
comedians and comedy writers as a fantastic medium in which
to hone joke-writing skills. As Tiernan Douieb puts it, ‘I’ve
found if you can put a joke into 140 characters … you’ve
already edited it to its most edited point …’1 Similarly, Sarah
Millican uses the responses she’s had to tweets when looking
for material for her stage act:

Sometimes I go through my Twitter account, I go through

and see, ‘Have I posted up anything funny …?’ Also
there’s a website called Favstar where you can actually
look at how many retweets you got on Twitter. So if I’ve
put something up that I think is quite funny and it gets
retweeted over a hundred times I think, ‘Maybe there’ll be
material in that …’2

Matthew Crosby – a solo comic who also comprises a third

of the sketch team Pappy’s – has a different view of Twitter’s
usefulness as a source of material, admitting that ‘some of the
worst moments of doing stand-up have been when I’ve tried to
put Twitter jokes onstage. You realise they pretty much only
work written down.’ However, he still finds it useful as ‘a way
of generating … a feeling of communion with the people who
come and see you live …’:

[O]n the way to a gig we can be tweeting the funny things

that are happening along the way to the gig … so people
can be looking forward to you coming and you can have an
interaction with your audience before and after a gig in a
way that you never used to … Normally … when you leave
 What ’s new in stand-up? 51

a gig, that’s pretty much the end of your relationship with

that audience, but with Tweeting, it’s almost like they can
text you afterwards.

Pappy’s have also used their Flatshare Slamdown and Bangers

& Mash podcasts to build the audience for their live shows:
‘We didn’t do Edinburgh last year for the first time in five years
… but we ended up … somewhere in the region of … 30,000
downloads for the podcast. Whereas we would’ve played to
[about] 7,000 people if we’d gone up to Edinburgh.’3
The American stand-up Dane Cook has taken this kind of
online audience cultivation to its logical extreme. In 2003, he
started to build his following on the newly-launched social
media site MySpace, accepting every friend request until he
had enough virtual followers to populate a decent-sized city.
By November 2007, he had gone from being what Newsweek
described as a ‘fairly obscure comic’, to the kind of act that
could fill Madison Square Garden twice in the same night.4 He
is one of a small number of American stand-ups big enough to
tour arenas, has released a series of bestselling comedy albums,
and as of 11 October 2012 he currently boasts 2,685,184
MySpace friends and 4.2 million subscribers on Facebook.

The British stand-up explosion

Meanwhile, Britain has seen an unprecedented explosion in
the popularity of stand-up comedy, precipitated not by the
newfangled internet, but by an older and cosier technology
– television. It used to be received wisdom among both
comedians and TV executives that stand-up doesn’t really
work on television, and there hadn’t been much of it on the
airwaves since the late 1990s with programmes like BBC One’s
The Stand Up Show and the numerous cheaply-produced
stand-up showcases that peppered the early schedules of
Channel 5.
52 GETTING THE JOKE

Whilst researching the first edition of Getting the Joke, I

became aware of a new show that was about to launch on
BBC One, called Jack Dee Live at the Apollo. I saw Dee and
Jo Brand doing warm-up gigs, sharpening up to prepare for
filming, and I interviewed Ross Noble around the time he did
his act for the cameras. He was enthusiastic about the format,
which involved Dee introducing exciting stand-ups who were
used to playing big venues, and crucially being given enough
screen time to properly give a flavour of what they did live.
His words were surprisingly prescient:

I think we’re entering sort of a new era of TV stand-up …

it’s done at the Hammersmith Apollo … you know, it’s a
3,000 seat rock venue which is brilliant for comedy … it’s
basically like a stand-up show … and it’s done on a big
scale and they’ve spent the money and it’s not some dingy
little club … I think that’s the way that stand-up on TV’s
going to have to go.5

After two series, the show began to use different comedians

to compère the acts and became simply Live at the Apollo.
Already successful, its popularity was boosted when it was
brought in as a hasty substitute for Jonathan Ross’s chat show
in 2009, when Ross was suspended by the BBC for making
prank calls to the actor Andrew Sachs on Russell Brand’s
radio show. This meant a shift to a peak time Friday night
slot, where it attracted almost as big an audience as Ross had
been getting.6
The basic format of Live at the Apollo – pure stand-up, no
bands or other acts, filmed in a big venue, smattering of minor
celebrities on the front rows – has provided the blueprint for
a number of other shows, like Michael McIntyre’s Comedy
Roadshow (BBC One, prime Saturday night slots) and Dave’s
One Night Stand (on the comparatively humble Dave channel).
This approach to filming stand-up seems to have become fairly
orthodox on British television. Even ITV’s Comedy Rocks
with Jason Manford varied the format only slightly, by filming
 What ’s new in stand-up? 53

in a studio rather than a theatre, and throwing a band into

the mix. All of these shows give stand-up acts enough space
to breathe, and use a large live audience to create a rather
frenetic enthusiasm, their gales of laughter clearly signalling
to the viewer at home that they should be finding this funny.
Whatever the drawbacks of the formula, their success has
finally persuaded TV executives that stand-up can work on
television, even in primetime slots. Indeed, in 2011 BBC One
aired an episode of Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow at
10.35 p.m. on Christmas Day.
Panel shows provided stand-ups with another way on
to TV, with Mock the Week (first aired in 2005) enjoying
particularly conspicuous success. The quiz element – with
host Dara Ó Briain asking questions and awarding points – is
actually just a platform for comedians to deliver topical gags
loosely inspired by the week’s news stories. It’s a competitive
environment. Deadpan surrealist Milton Jones – who has
made frequent appearances in recent series – likens it to
‘filming dogs fighting’, and describes why it’s a difficult show
to do:

The hardest thing about Mock the Week … is, in the

general banter, getting a word in. Because the whole thing is
set up as seven people trying to get through a door for two.
And inevitably five won’t make it on every single thing, and
so many good things I’ve had either I didn’t get a chance to
say or someone else has said it roughly already.7

However difficult they may be, the value of appearing on

these shows is that they can hugely increase the profile of
an act. Frankie Boyle was a permanent fixture in the early
series of Mock the Week, and became infamous for his
willingness to comically stamp around on sensitive issues.
The introduction to his first live DVD includes vox pop
interviews with his fans going into the Hackney Empire,
and for many of them it was his TV appearances that drew
them to the theatre:
54 GETTING THE JOKE

Basically, I think he’s the best thing on the BBC at the

moment, so I’m really looking forward to seeing him
tonight.
I love him on Mock the Week, I think he’s brilliant.
I thought if he’s good on Mock the Week, he has to be
good live.8

Comedians are very aware of how useful these shows are

to them. Milton Jones – who has also appeared on Michael
McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, Live at the Apollo and Dave’s
One Night Stand – acknowledges that ‘of course it has
benefited me enormously … the last tour I did started off
in three- or four hundred seaters … and ended up at the
Hammersmith Apollo … We sold out very quickly the first
40-odd dates, and just then trebled the venue size.’9 Sarah
Millican – who has been given her own series as well as
appearing in the same set of shows as Jones – makes a similar
point, seeing television as a means to an end, rather than the
other way around:

I think it makes people go out, like I’ve had people say I

was the first stand-up comedy they saw, and the only reason
they came out was because they saw me on telly. I’m not
stupid, I know how it works, and it’s a really good way
of sort of advancing your profile really quickly … Telly’s
great and I love doing the telly, and I know it’s the telly
that fills the theatre … but I also know that it’s the theatre
that I love, and whether the theatre is the theatre or a
comedy club … Stand-up shouldn’t be a way to get on the
telly. Stand-up should be the thing that you love more than
anything. And sometimes when people say, ‘Oh, you know
I just want to be a TV presenter,’ you think, ‘Oh! It’s like
you’re punching my child!’10

As Millican suggests, the newfound popularity of stand-up

on television has whetted the British public’s appetite for live
comedy, and the peak of stand-up success is no longer filling
 What ’s new in stand-up? 55

big theatres, but the ability to stalk the immense stages of

arenas and stadiums. As we have seen, Steve Martin pioneered
this particular manifestation of stand-up in the 1970s, and
others have followed in his footsteps either side of the
Atlantic. In 1998, for example, four comedians from the black
comedy TV showcase Def Comedy Jam toured the US as The
Original Kings of Comedy, playing to a total audience of one
million people. In December 1993, Rob Newman and David
Baddiel became the first British arena comics, playing to the
11,500-seat Wembley Arena.11
Comics like Lee Evans and Eddie Izzard followed them
with occasional forays into arenas, but the recent explosion
in British stand-up has meant that this type of gig is no
longer an oddity or a symptom of a freakish explosion of
a particular comedian’s popularity. The first significant shift
was in 2003, when Izzard played a whole tour of arena
dates instead of a single engagement. Mick Perrin – who
promoted the Sexie tour – has recalled how he had to fight
to get these huge venues to take the idea of booking a
stand-up comedian seriously: ‘They thought it was ludicrous
to expect that Eddie would sell … I had venue managers
laughing at me when I rang them up.’12 Another change was
in the sheer scale of the venues comics can play. Visiting
American comic Chris Rock managed to fill London’s
titanic O2 Arena – which has a maximum capacity of
20,000 – for two nights in May 2008, paving the way for
British stand-ups like Al Murray, Dylan Moran and Russell
Howard to appear there, and stand-up is now an important
part of the venue’s programme. The result of all of this is
that annual ticket sales for arena stand-up gigs in London
increased tenfold between 2004 and 2009, by which point
they had risen to over a million.
Sales of tickets and DVDs have made the most successful
stand-ups extremely wealthy. The Sunday Times published a
list of the top earners, naming six comics whose takings from
stand-up in 2011 could be counted in the millions. At the top
was Peter Kay with an estimated £20.34 million.13
56 GETTING THE JOKE

At the epicentre of the British stand-up explosion is Michael

McIntyre, whose rise has been meteoric. Back in February
2004, when I was doing the spadework for the first edition of
Getting the Joke, I saw him at the Comedy Store in London,
where he had been booked for the Thursday night only rather
than the whole weekend.14 He was first on in the second half
of the show, and I remember him being an able and engaging
performer, well-liked by the audience. In the notes I made
on the train on the way back from the show, I wrote that he
looked a bit like Bill Hicks, that he was posh but with a less
defined persona than Jimmy Carr (who had been on earlier
in the show), and that he was good at characterization, one
routine contrasting an incongruously posh rugby player with
an inarticulate footballer. Nothing suggests that I had any
inkling that he was destined for greatness.
His autobiography, Life & Laughing, recalls the frustra-
tions of an early career as a jobbing comic, unable to break
out of filling the grim opening slot for the Jongleurs chain,
despite being nominated for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh
Comedy Awards in 2003. His fortunes improved when he
moved to the powerful Off the Kerb agency in 2005, and
appeared in the Royal Variety Performance the following year,
then built his reputation with appearances on key TV shows
like Mock the Week and Live at the Apollo. After hosting an
episode of the latter, he was given his own series, Michael
McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, compèring acts that were
slightly newer to television.
He is now so popular as a live act that in 2012 he embarked
on a record-breaking arena tour with dates in Cardiff,
Nottingham, Birmingham, Sheffield, Belfast, Manchester,
Aberdeen, Glasgow, Newcastle, Dublin, Liverpool and at
two different London venues.15 He played each of these
gargantuan venues for several nights, including a 10-night
stint at London’s O2 Arena. One newspaper estimated that
the tour would earn around £40 million.16
 What ’s new in stand-up? 57

DIY comedy and American

alternative comedy
Inevitably, not every stand-up working aspires to the kind of
career trajectory that will see them reach such dizzying heights
of commercial success. Mick Perrin has likened the current
popularity to 1970s glam rock and predicted ‘there’s a punk
revolution brewing.’17 Similarly, Stewart Lee has argued that
the ‘ubiquity’ of comics like McIntyre ‘means “alternative”
comics do, for the first time since the 1970s, have a clearly
visible mainstream to define themselves in opposition to’.18
This new breed of alternative comedy is already firmly
established, having been identified by an article in The
Guardian as long ago as 2007. It names acts like Robin Ince,
Terry Saunders and Pappy’s Fun Club as part of what it dubs
‘the DIY comedy scene’, and picks out Josie Long as the
‘leader’ of the movement.19 In February 2012, Long explained
to me what marks out this new comedy:

What I think’s been a really big change has been like me

and Robin and people like that keeping doing tours around
certain venues, and building up more of a touring circuit
…. so for me there’s like a real shift between the circuit, the
big clubs, the weekend clubs and the clubs that I do and my
friends do and the gigs that I get to do … It’s really trying
to like grow your own audience. I suppose in that way it is
smaller and it is more real …

It’s not just about playing different venues, though. It’s also
a different kind of approach: ‘I suppose like temperamentally
if you’re slightly like awkward or something, it means that
it’s harder for you to become like a mainstream-propelled
success person.’20 She wears this slight ‘awkwardness’ on her
sleeve, bringing it right into her stage act: ‘Like I’ve never been
the sort of comedian that comes out and goes, “I’m gonna
entertain the shit out of you, you’re a dick, bang, jokes!” No.
58 GETTING THE JOKE

[laughter] Like, if anything, I think I am: unreliable at best.

[laughter]’21 She has also been known to tell audiences that
she definitely is a comedian because it says so on her passport
– then produce a homemade passport on which she’s crayoned
the word ‘comedian’.22
The DIY comedians have taken a conscious influence
from an older generation of comedians like Demetri Martin,
Daniel Kitson and Stewart Lee, but interestingly, Lee has also
written about how the DIY scene influenced him. Having
started on what was still the ‘alternative comedy’ circuit
in the late 1980s, he had been a successful comedian and
starred in various radio and TV shows, before drifting away
from stand-up to concentrate on other projects, notably
the musical Jerry Springer: The Opera. In 2004, he started
moving back into stand-up, and in his book How I Escaped
My Certain Fate, he writes about the split in the circuit he
was returning to, between the big clubs like the Comedy Store
and Jongleurs, and a ‘new underground scene’: ‘[Y]ou could
almost say we were witnessing the birth of a new Alternative
Comedy, in opposition to the crowd-pleasing composite that
the Alternative Comedy of old had become.’23 Lee was drawn
towards this new model of stand-up, and started to tour
around smaller venues, choosing Josie Long as the support act
for his 2005 tour.
If the original wave of British alternative comedy was
one influence on the DIY scene, another was the American
alternative comedy scene from which Demetri Martin had
emerged. This started in the 1990s with the arrival of
comedians like David Cross, Marc Maron, Margaret Cho
and Janeane Garofalo (who, according to Cho, was ‘really
the founder of it’).24 Comedy venues like the Upright Citizens
Brigade Theatre in New York (and later LA) also played an
important role.25 Like DIY comedy, American altcom is partly
about performing outside of established comedy clubs and
taking stand-up into new venues. One of the key figures is
Patton Oswalt, who set up the Comedians of Comedy tour,
in which he performed alongside fellow comics Brian Posehn,
 What ’s new in stand-up? 59

Maria Bamford and Zach Galifianakis.26 As Oswalt has

explained, the tour was consciously set up to try and connect
with a younger, hipper audience:

[A] lot of younger people, 18 to 24, they can’t afford to go

to a comedy club. There’s a two-drink minimum, there’s
parking, there’s an admission fee. These are the kind of
people that will support indie rock bands for 20 years,
they’ll follow a band … I hope that they will start doing
that the way that comedy is, because very few people follow
comedians and how they develop … I thought there’s got
to be a way to book smaller rock clubs that don’t cost a lot
of money to rent, and that way you can lower the prices.27

Stylistically, American alternative comedy is, as one journalist

wrote, ‘hard to define and frequently in flux’,28 but like its UK
equivalent, it tends to be loose, quirky, folksy, homemade,
autobiographical, politically liberal and full of geeky pop
culture references, with gags about comic books or cultish
punk bands. As W. Kamau Bell puts it, ‘If you think of comedy
as a high school, Dane Cook would be one of the jocks and
cool kids, and alt comedians would be the geeks.’29
It would be tempting to argue that on both sides of the
Atlantic there has been a simple bifurcation in stand-up
comedy – on one side of the divide the Dane Cooks and
Michael McIntyres reaping incredible financial rewards by
touring the enormodomes, on the other the plucky indie kids
of comedy touring their Edinburgh shows or taking stand-up
to rock and roll clubs. In fact, the truth is more complex.
In the UK, some see a different kind of division in comedy.
Milton Jones, for example, points out ‘a gulf opening up
between those who’ve done telly and those who haven’t’, with
comedy clubs struggling to gain an audience ‘if they haven’t
got anyone who’s on telly’, and a split between the club circuit
and the touring circuit for comics who have enough recog-
nition from TV to tour under their own name.30 There’s also
the fact that the neat, journalist tag of ‘DIY comedy’ describes
60 GETTING THE JOKE

something much looser than the homogenous scene that such

a label implies. Wil Hodgson, for example – one of the acts
named in the Guardian article – points out:

I don’t fit in with the mainstream faction, but I’ve never

been particularly comfortable with this DIY-LoFi thing,
even though I like a lot of the comedians that are involved in
it. The initial article that coined that phrase DIY revolution
for some reason seemed to think I was something to do
with it, which I never was.31

What has happened since the first edition of Getting the Joke
is that stand-up comedy has continued to evolve, splinter and
diversify, thus furthering the possibilities of the form. As a
result, the experience of going to watch stand-up can differ
enormously, depending on the type of venue hosting it, and
the particular flavour of comedian standing on its stage.

Notes
1 Interview with Tiernan Douieb, Gulbenkian Café, Canterbury,
17 March 2012
2 Interview with Sarah Millican, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury,
23 April 2012
3 Interview with Pappy’s, Patisserie Valerie, Canterbury, 29
February 2012
4 See Steven Levy and Brad Stone, ‘The New Wisdom of the
Web; Why is everyone so happy in Silicon Valley again? A
new wave of start-ups are cashing in on the next stage of the
Internet. And this time, it’s all about … you’, Newsweek, 3
April 2006, p. 47; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dane_Cook
[accessed 11 October 2012]
5 Interview with Ross Noble, 24 June 2004, Orchard Theatre,
Dartford
6 3.5 million as opposed to 3.7 million, according to the
 What ’s new in stand-up? 61

Independent (Gerard Gilbert, ‘So, did anyone miss him?; Three

months after “Sachsgate”, Jonathan Ross makes his comeback
next week – and already he’s receiving a frosty welcome.
Gerard Gilbert on why he’s got his work cut out’, Independent
Extra, 14 January 2009, p. 6)
7 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 August 2012
8 Frankie Boyle, Live, 4DVD, 2008, C4DVD10161
9 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 August 2012
10 Interview with Sarah Millican, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury,
23 April 2012
11 The show was filmed and issued as a video: Newman and
Baddiel, Live and in Pieces, VVL, 1993, 088 4763
12 Quoted in Brian Logan, ‘Boom, boom: They’ve taken over
TV, they top the book charts, they appear on Question Time
– and now they’re filling entire arenas night after night. Brian
Logan on the standup comedy explosion’, the Guardian, 11
November 2010, p. 19
13 The others were Lee Evans – £12.9 million; Alan Carr – £5.99
million; John Bishop – £4.98 million; Russell Howard – £3.26
million; and Sarah Millican – £1.46 million (Nicholas Hellen
and Cal Flyn, ‘Rock on – comics rake in millions; Peter Kay
Heads A New Breed Of Comedian With Tour Earnings That
Match The Giants Of Pop’, Sunday Times, 12 February 2012,
p. 3)
14 The show took place on 26 February 2004. Interestingly, this
doesn’t chime with the official version of McIntyre’s career, as
documented in his autobiography. According to McIntyre’s
own account, he didn’t play the Comedy Store until 2005. He’s
slightly vague about the dates, but he says he played an early
open spot there, and messed up a subsequent 10-minute spot,
then didn’t appear there again for another six years. He claims
he didn’t get another booking there until he had been signed
by the Off the Kerb agency, which happened shortly after the
birth of his first child, Lucas, on 29 June 2005. (See Michael
McIntyre, Life & Laughing, London: Penguin, 2010, pp.
259–60, 264, 334, 342)
15 To be specific, the tour saw McIntyre playing: Motorpoint
62 GETTING THE JOKE

Arena, Cardiff (9 nights); Capital FM Arena, Nottingham

(6 nights); NIA, Birmingham (8 nights); O2 Arena, London
(10 nights); Motorpoint Arena, Sheffield (4 nights); Odyssey
Arena, Belfast (4 nights); Manchester Arena (6 nights); EEC,
Aberdeen (2 nights); Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle (4 nights);
O2 Arena, Dublin (4 nights); Echo Arena, Liverpool (3 nights);
and the Wembley Arena, London (6 nights)
16 Stephen Armstrong, ‘Can You Hear Me At The Back? The
main players in comedy now perform to huge crowds of all
ages. What if your material doesn’t travel to these vast arenas?
Stephen Armstrong talks to the next wave of comics aiming
for the big time’, Sunday Times (Culture section), 19 February
2012, pp. 12–13
17 Quoted in Brian Logan, ‘Boom, boom: They’ve taken over
TV, they top the book charts, they appear on Question Time
– and now they’re filling entire arenas night after night. Brian
Logan on the standup comedy explosion’, the Guardian, 11
November 2010, p. 19
18 Stewart Lee, ‘Stewart Lee: What I really think
about McIntyre…and the Daily Mail, too’, Chortle,
http://www.chortle.co.uk/features/2011/07/19/13653/
stewart_lee%3A_what_i_really_think_about_michael_
mcintyre [accessed 15 October 2012]
19 Tim Jonze, ‘Laugh? I nearly DIY’d: There’s a new breed of
quipsters rescuing the comedy scene from stale one liners.
Tom Jonze meets their leader, Josie Long’, the Guardian (The
Guide section), 4 August 2007, p. 4. Pappy’s Fun Club was the
original name of the sketch group Pappy’s.
20 Interview with Josie Long, Horsebridge Centre, Whitstable, 18
February 2012
21 Josie Long, Trying is Good, Real Talent/PIAS UK, 2008,
RTDVD001
22 From Kindness and Exuberance, included as an extra feature
on Trying is Good, Real Talent/PIAS UK, 2008, RTDVD001
23 Stewart Lee, How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and
Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian, London: Faber and Faber,
2010, p. 36
 What ’s new in stand-up? 63

24 Interview with Margaret Cho, Leicester Square Theatre, 29

October 2012
25 Significantly, Josie Long wears a T-shirt with the Upright
Citizens Brigade logo in her Trying is Good DVD
26 A lovely bit of trivia – Oswalt provided the voice of Remy, the
gastronomic rat, in Disney Pixar’s 2007 movie Ratatouille
27 The Comedians of Comedy, Anchor Bay Entertainment, 2005,
DV1510
28 Reyhan Harmanci, ‘Funny Places To Laugh’, San Francisco
Chronicle (Sunday Datebook section), 21 October 2007,
p. N18
29 Quoted in Reyhan Harmanci, ‘Funny Places To Laugh’, San
Francisco Chronicle (Sunday Datebook section), 21 October
2007, p. N18
30 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 August 2012
31 Interview with Wil Hodgson, by telephone, 12 September 2012
 CHAPTER SIX

Stand-up on stage

Where does stand-up happen?

Throughout the twists and turns of its history, stand-up
comedy has taken place in a whole range of venues, from the
tiny to the implausibly large. Today, a typical location would
be the comedy club, but even these vary from one to the next.
Some are purpose-built, others take place in a bar or a pub
function room. Normally, the audience will sit around tables
drinking alcohol, but they might be as small as 30 and as big
as 400. The stage might be a corner of the room with a mike
stand, or it could be a raised platform with a backdrop and
theatre lights. The show might start as early as 8pm or as late
as midnight. Generally, it will be introduced by a compère,
and there will be three or four acts; but sometimes the format
varies.
Stand-up works well in small, intimate clubs, but it started
its life in the big theatres of vaudeville and variety. Here the
comic would perform on a large raised stage, framed by a
proscenium, projecting the gags over the orchestra pit to an
audience in raked seating, arranged into stalls and balconies,
the wealthier patrons in boxes either side of the stage. The
typical variety theatre accommodated far more punters than
a modern comedy club. The Holborn Empire, for example –
where Max Miller made his first live theatre recording – could
66 GETTING THE JOKE

seat a grand total of 2,000 people.1 As we have seen, since the

1970s audiences for the biggest stand-up shows have grown
to sizes that would dwarf this, in the arena gigs which are
becoming increasingly common for the biggest comedians.
From the monstrously huge to the ridiculously small,
Mark Thomas once did a stand-up show in somebody’s living
room. In the last episode of his first TV series, he gambled
the entire budget for the show on a horse race, which he had
also sponsored, naming it ‘The Mark Thomas Chum Special
Handicap’. His horse lost, giving him no money to make the
episode, so he filmed a stand-up show in ‘Andy’s living room’.
It was lit in green and red, with the show’s logo projected
on to the walls, but it was clearly a real living room, with
coving, a picture rail, plants on a shelf and slatted cupboard
doors. At one point, Thomas pauses mid-routine to draw
attention to the sound of a train going past, getting a laugh
by commenting, ‘I just want the folks back home to get a bit
of social realism.’2
At the fringes, stand-up finds its way into all kinds of quirky
venues. In the 1970s, Steve Martin found himself playing to an
audience seated in their own cars in a drive-in movie theatre,
listening to his gags via speakers hooked up to their windows.
In his autobiography, he recalls that, ‘If the drive-in patrons
thought a joke was funny, they honked.’3 James Campbell
is building a career by performing stand-up to children, and
he started doing this in primary schools, doing up to four of
them in a day. Milton Jones is a Christian, and he regularly
performs to audiences of fellow believers, sometimes even in
church. Understandably, it’s not an easy place to do comedy,
as he points out: ‘[O]ften, if it’s literally in a church … people
aren’t quite sure how to react. Because they have this thing of,
“Do we laugh or do we not? Is it appropriate?”’4
Some comics have gone so far as to deliberately seek out
unlikely venues within which to put on stand-up gigs. Terry
Saunders used to run Laughter in Odd Places – which he
described as ‘an attempt to demonstrate that comedy doesn’t
have to happen in a pub’ – putting on free Sunday afternoon
 Stand-up on stage 67

shows in such improbable venues as a record shop, an art

gallery, a vegan café, the children’s section of a local library
and next to a bandstand on Hampstead Heath.5
Similarly, in 2011 Josie Long mounted the Alternative
Reality tour, in which she assembled a bunch of comedians
and musicians – including Simon Munnery, Tiernan Douieb,
Tom Parry and Grace Petrie – and drove to such unglamorous
show business locations as Margate, Sheppey, Milton Keynes,
Bedford, Hull and Leicester. Once there, they would stage and
promote the kind of homemade impromptu show that epito-
mises the DIY ethos. Long explains how it worked:

I rented a minibus, and I paid for, like, the petrol and the
bus and other than that everyone else was, like, really
happy to take no money from it because there was no
money to be taken, and we would like go to places that
people slag off … we just thought we’d find places that we
could turn into theatre spaces, and then put up a backdrop
with scaffolding, used the lights of the van and just do it,
and it was brilliant. Like we’d show up at 3pm, we’d flyer
loads of kids, we’d tweet it, we’d set the location up, we’d
do it, and then we’d go off and, like, have dinner …6

Standing behind microphones

The classic image of stand-up is that it’s a low-tech format. All
you need is a microphone, somebody to stand behind it, and
perhaps a spotlight. Even more than the bare brick backdrop,
the hand mike has become a symbol of stand-up. Go to a
show at the London Comedy Store, and one minute before
the show starts, red backlights come on, and the microphone
is picked out in white, forming a dramatic theatrical image of
stand-up with the iconic mike at its centre.
This may be the classic image, but it’s not always accurate.
For a start, there isn’t always a microphone. The earliest
68 GETTING THE JOKE

stand-ups, in vaudeville and variety, wouldn’t have used them.

They weren’t introduced into British theatres until the 1930s,
and even then, some of the older performers shunned them,
seeing them as the hallmark of an inferior performer. Before
the mike, performers would have had to develop powerful
vocal projection, something which must have involved
great physical effort. Microphones allowed for more subtle
performance, but also restricted physical movement, as the
technology of the time meant they couldn’t be removed from
the stand, so comedians were forced to do their act standing
in one particular spot.7
Even today, when hand mikes are standard in most comedy
clubs, comedians don’t always use them. In the big theatres,
comics often prefer small, wireless clip mikes, attached to their
clothes or worn as a headset. Ross Noble, whose act involves
a lot of high-energy physical work, wears a headset mike
because although it ‘cuts down the amount of sound effects
you can do’, it also allows him to ‘be as physical as I possibly
can’ and ‘demonstrate things with my hands … right down to
[my] fingertips’.8 Al Murray positively dislikes the traditional
hand mike, arguing it restricts the creative possibilities of
stand-up:

I hate the paradigm of the microphone, of the SM58 on a

stand … I can’t bear that. And whenever I see a picture of
a comic with a microphone I think, ‘Oh for God’s sake!’
You know, because that, for me, falls into the idea that …
it’s not a show, that it’s just talking, the idea that there’s no
true performance in the whole thing …Which is why I’ve
not used a microphone on a cable since ’97. I’ve put it away
… I have a mike in a piece of Blu-Tack in my tie, and I’ve
done that because you can’t perform if you’re tethered … I
often feel that the microphone, as well, is symbolic of sort
of a tethering of the imagination of stand-up.9

Then there’s the fact that, paradoxically, stand-ups don’t

always stand up. Shelley Berman was probably the first to
 Stand-up on stage 69

work sitting down, performing his routines perched on a

barstool. A little later, Dick Gregory also worked sitting
down, because it helped with his relaxed style: ‘The stool
was where you sit and you talk and you had a drink.’10 In the
1970s, Irish comedian Dave Allen became famous on British
TV for performing in a chair. By 1990, he had abandoned
this and reverted to performing standing up, but the chair
was still there on stage with him as a reminder of his former
trademark style. Daniel Kitson – who won the Perrier Award
at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2002 – has been known to have a
scruffy armchair on stage during his show, performing some of
his act whilst lolling in it, impressively unaffected by the fact
that he is onstage being watched by paying punters.

Staging stand-up
Increasingly stand-up is moving beyond the simple, low-tech
set-up of a bare stage, a spotlight and microphone. In Britain,
Eddie Izzard was one of the comics who pioneered a more
sophisticated approach to staging. The programme for his
Sexie tour, for example, credits 21 people with the running of
the show, covering such areas as ‘Scenic & Lighting Design’,
‘Sound Design’, ‘Music’, ‘Personal Trainer’ and ‘Master
Carpenter’. The costume alone required the work of three
people.
In the enormous stadium gigs projection screens are a
necessity, compensating for how tiny the performer looks to
the people in the back rows. Al Murray – who has played the
O2 Arena – points out how performing in arenas affected his
performing style in a surprising way:

I found there was a counterintuitive difference which is

we had a big screen … you’d think, ‘Oh I’m going to have
to make this all bigger. I might have to go, like, crazy to
make my point and things, and they’re a long way away
70 GETTING THE JOKE

at the back.’ But if they’re watching you on a big screen,

and you’re in a medium close-up or closer, they can see
what your eyebrows are doing and so it actually, it weirdly
flipped it and turned it round into a completely different …
performing place.11

Projection screens are also becoming a fixture in shows

which tour around theatres, although here their use is less
functional and more creative. Instead of simply showing a
live feed of the comedian, they are part of the overall visual
design of the show. Jimmy Carr projects his tour logo – as
seen on publicity materials – and also builds routines around
a series of images shown on the screen. In the Monster II
tour, Dylan Moran performs in front of a screen on to which
his scratchy, Spike Milliganesque cartoons are projected.
Every few minutes, the image changes, and sometimes it
connects with what he’s talking about. A skull-like picture
flashes up during a routine about death, for example. The
drawings also crop up in the merchandising. They’re printed
in the tour programme, on mugs and T-shirts on sale in the
foyer, and on the sleeve of the subsequent audio CD of the
show.12
Often the projection is accompanied by other staging
elements, providing a physical context which fits the character
of the comedian’s act. Al Murray performs as the Pub
Landlord, a working class pontificator whose ridiculous patri-
otism is matched with a hatred of Europe in general and
France in particular. In his 2003–4 tour, the backdrop is the
character’s coat of arms, and Murray shares the stage with
a bar. Occasionally, he takes drinks or packets of crisps out
from behind it, and gives them to members of the audience.
Ross Noble is enthusiastic about the creative possibilities
of staging stand-up:

If you’re gonna play big theatres then you might as

well do a show that they couldn’t see in a comedy club.
Because otherwise, you’re just playing to more people,
 Stand-up on stage 71

doing something that you could be doing in an intimate

room where everyone could be right on top on you.13

The set for his 2012 Mindblender tour is a good example of

the approach he prefers. Before the show, the stage is flanked
by two inflatable objects – mechanical spheres, one of which is
a robotic eyeball – and hung between them is a big, billowing
cloth on to which a version of the tour poster is projected.
The show starts with a film spoofing the old Green Cross
Code road safety campaigns of the 1970s, then the cloth drops
down and is quickly whisked off into the wings. It reveals
that the spheres are part of a huge set, which fills the entire
stage. It’s a kind of steampunk factory, with a pressure gauge,
pipework, mechanical body parts and even a fake brick wall
backdrop, and the entire thing is inflatable. I’m reminded
of the transformation scene in Victorian pantomime, and I
almost gasp when it’s revealed.14
Even Jim Davidson – whose working men’s clubs origins
might suggest a very basic approach to stand-up – is not
averse to sophisticated staging. His 2003 Vote for Jim tour
involves the concept of him running for Prime Minister, the
show being his attempt to unveil his policies. He performs in
front of a projected ‘Vote for Jim’ logo, and rather than his
usual casual stage clothes, he wears an expensive pinstripe
suit, decorated with a purple rosette.
In some cases, the set does more than set the aesthetic
tone for the show. In Carpet Remnant World, for example,
Stewart Lee performs in front of a row of rolled-up carpets.
The show uses the kind of out-of-town discount warehouses
that provided its title as a kind of comic metaphor for Lee’s
inability to make sense of the alienating consumerism of
modern Britain. He has numerous jokes suggesting that, for
example, a Carpet Remnant World would be an entire world
where everything and all the inhabitants are made of carpet
remnants. At a deeper level, the show is also about the middle-
aged comedian’s failure to comically deal with the world he
finds himself in.
72 GETTING THE JOKE

In the first half of the show, he tells us that he can’t write

material because his life consists of nothing more than
childcare and driving to gigs, where he sees outlets like Carpet
Remnant World. He says that he will create the illusion of
coherence and depth by using certain structural devices, and
one of these will be something at the end of the show that
plays on the phrase ‘Carpet Remnant World’. He assures us
that we will know it’s significant, because it will be obvious.
At the end of the show, he makes good his promise. Tiny
rows of lights appear in the rolled-up carpets at the back of
the stage, transforming them into carpet remnant skyscrapers
from the literal carpet remnant world. Even though he’s
already exposed this as a cynical structural device, it’s a lovely
moment which is as strangely moving as it is funny.15 Thus
the set plays a central role in the show. Given its importance,
great care was taken in its design. As Stewart Lee explains, it
had to avoid giving away the big reveal at the end, and also
help to suggest the idea that he was some kind of comic loser:

[T]he designer was given a really clear brief to not give any
indication that anything would happen with the carpet.
And actually you just think, like … “Is that the best they
could do? Just bring some carpets – boring idea.” And I
like it that they just look really drab. Also they look incon-
venient, like it must be really hard to carry them around
the country and you don’t even do anything with them …16

Creating the right expectation

The particular circumstances within which stand-up takes
place are important, because they can profoundly affect what
the audience expects of the comedian. A show in a small
comedy club will have a radically different dynamic from one
that takes place in an arena. Some of the variables – venue,
start time, ticket price, etc. – will probably be pragmatic
 Stand-up on stage 73

business decisions. On other aspects, the comedian can often

make more aesthetic choices. Not just the stage set, but every-
thing that is put into the venue can make an impact on how
the show plays out, including the range of products on the
merchandise stall and the music playing as the audience walk
into the auditorium. Stewart Lee is fully aware of this:

Since 2004, I’ve always thought very carefully about

pre-show music. It’s all part of set and setting. A show
begins the moment the audience walk into a venue … I
don’t want the pre-show music to seem like I am eager to
please. I want to start wrong-footing the audience before
they’ve even sat down.17

Going against the grain of expectation, instead of the cheery,

high-energy pop music that often precedes a stand-up show,
Lee favours more esoteric and sometimes unsettling tunes,
by artists like free jazz saxophonist Evan Parker, Krautrock
pioneers Amon Düül and Japanese retro rock and roll
band the 5-6-7-8’s. Thus he sets the scene for the inventive
awkwardness of the stand-up he is about to perform.
Similarly, Mark Thomas makes sure that the circumstances
surrounding the gig create the right set of expectations for his
passionate, opinionated, well-informed political satire:

[T]he details of everything … as they go in, are important

… What I want is when people come to gigs there’ll be
stalls outside, and there’ll be people talking about ideas and
issues and what have you … we did some gigs and we had
Banksy art works up as people came in and stuff like that
… [I]t sets the mood that there is a debate going on, that
there is a factual content.18
74 GETTING THE JOKE

Notes
1 See Diane Howard, London Theatres and Music Halls
1850–1950, London: Library Association, 1970, pp. 113–14
2 The Mark Thomas Comedy Product, Channel 4, 29 March
1996
3 Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, London:
Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, 2008, p. 96
4 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 June 2004
5 Malcolm Hay, ‘Anytime, any place, anywhere? Terry Saunders
tells Malcolm Hay why charity shops, cafés, museums and
launderettes are the best venues for his comic vision’, Time
Out, 27 June 2007, p. 54
6 Interview with Josie Long, Horsebridge Centre, Whitstable,
18 February 2012
7 See Roger Wilmut, Kindly Leave the Stage: The Story of
Variety, 1919–1960, London: Methuen, 1985, pp. 68–9 for
more on this.
8 Interview with Ross Noble, Orchard Theatre, Dartford,
24 June 2004
9 Interview with Al Murray, by telephone, 2 April 2012
10 Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the
1950s and 1960s, New York: Pantheon Books, 2003, p. 486
11 Interview with Al Murray, by telephone, 2 April 2012
12 Dylan Moran, Monster – Live, Sound Entertainment, 2004,
TLCD 53
13 Interview with Ross Noble, Orchard Theatre, Dartford,
24 June 2004
14 Ross Noble, Mindblender, Assembly Hall, Tunbridge Wells,
1 October 2012
15 Stewart Lee, Carpet Remnant World, Leicester Square Theatre,
10 December 2011; and Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury,
24 February 2012
16 Interview with Stewart Lee, Patisserie Valerie, Canterbury,
25 February 2012
 Stand-up on stage 75

17 Stewart Lee, How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and

Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian, London: Faber and Faber,
2010, p. 43
18 Interview with Mark Thomas, Clapham, 27 February 2004.
‘Banksy’ is the cult graffiti artist whose work is featured on the
cover of the Blur album Think Tank
 CHAPTER SEVEN

The outer limits of

stand-up

One of the things that makes stand-up comedy so difficult

to define is the fact that its boundaries are fluid and fuzzy.
Many of the qualities that seem to be central to it – person-
ality, rapport, immediacy, even funniness – are not unique to
stand-up. They can be found in a whole range of other types
of performance, including straight acting, political oratory
and live music. There are stand-up comedians who have
pushed so hard at the boundaries that what they do seems to
hardly fit their own category, and other performance styles
have emerged that seem so close to stand-up as to differ in
name only.

Spoken Word
Spoken Word is a very good example. It’s a relatively young
performance genre, growing out of the American punk
and underground music scene of the early 1980s. Harvey
Kubernik, an LA-based journalist who had been involved in
the music business, started encouraging musicians and singers
to perform in venues like the Llasa Club in Hollywood: ‘I
didn’t want to put on poetry readings, so I coined this term
78 GETTING THE JOKE

Spoken Word, and I wanted it to be diary-rants, improv,

fragments of song-lyrics, some traditional poetry, excerpts
from in-progress books – I wanted it to be narratives, but I
took off the strait-jacket …’1
Henry Rollins – then the lead singer of seminal Californian
hardcore punk band Black Flag – was one of the performers
that Kubernik recruited, and Rollins now only performs as a
Spoken Word artist, his musical career with the Rollins Band
having fallen into disuse.
Later, Kubernik persuaded the Dead Kennedys’ lead singer
Jello Biafra to take the same path, and Biafra is now as much
a Spoken Word artist as a musician.2
Not all of the performers drawn into the genre come from
music. In 1998, Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha
set up the Spitfire tour, described on its website as ‘Musicians,
Actors & Activists Speaking Out on Global Affairs’. Its
roster of acts included musicians like Lydia Lunch, Exene
Cervenka and Angelo Moore, rappers like Ice T and Michael
Franti, actors like Rosie Perez and Woody Harrelson, and
campaigners like Ralph Nader.3
The main distinction between Spoken Word and stand-up
seems to be the title: performers like Rollins and Biafra do
not refer to themselves as stand-ups. A 1998 Time Out article
brings Rollins together with Eddie Izzard to discuss their
performance, and Izzard asks Rollins how stand-up differs
from Spoken Word. Rollins gives no clear answer, hesitating
to define what he does, simply describing it as ‘the talking
shows, or whatever it is I do up there’. Izzard – a passionate
advocate for the art of stand-up – seems slightly put out by not
having Rollins in the stand-up camp: ‘In a competitive way,
it’s annoying that you’re good, having come from music.’4
Outside of the terminology, the similarities between the
two forms are striking: both involve a single performer,
talking directly to an audience, with personality, rapport and
immediacy. As with stand-up, Spoken Word exists in live
shows and in the recorded form – both Rollins and Biafra
have released numerous albums of their performances.
 The outer limits of stand-up 79

There seem to be three main differences between the two

forms. Firstly, Spoken Word performers start out with an
established reputation and image forged in another discipline.
When Biafra did his first talking show, he was already well
known as a punk singer, and it is inevitable that his perfor-
mances will be seen in that light. Secondly, Spoken Word
performances tend to be longer than the average stand-up act.
Both Rollins and Biafra have regularly done shows of three
hours or more. Finally, stand-up comedy is defined by the fact
it is funny, but while Spoken Word performers do get laughs,
they are not obliged by definition to do so.
Rollins’s early Spoken Word performances were clearly
different from stand-up. He was often as confrontational as he
is in his music, and there’s an account of a performance at the
Llasa Club where he punched a member of the audience. In his
earliest recordings, he only plays for laughs intermittently, and
there is material that is far more extreme than most stand-up.
On Sweatbox, recorded in 1987–8, he recalls an encounter
with a cop which finishes with him fantasizing about ‘an
uptight white pig getting wasted by a Mexican’.5
In the 1990s, his performance became lighter, less confron-
tational, and started to contrast strongly with the darkness of
his music, although there was still some serious content. I saw
a show at the Octagon, Sheffield in the early 1990s, where
he talked about his abusive upbringing in a way that was by
turns funny, touching and insightful.
More recently, the shows tend to be heavily weighted
towards humour, and are distinguishable from stand-up only
in that many of the anecdotes relate to his being an alternative
rock star. A 1999 routine sees him reading out a letter from a
Czech fan, and marvelling at the use of language in it, particu-
larly a sentence which reads, ‘On two concert, I’m should
collective photo, but small, fat, bald-headed technologist be
insane.’ Taking care not to simply ridicule the fan, who is
after all struggling with a second language, Rollins goes on to
imagine a feature-length movie with this kind of language. He
has an air stewardess making an emergency announcement:
80 GETTING THE JOKE

‘For making landing immediate time, incredibly! [laughter]

Broken, moving, not now, stupid motor on flaming! [laughter]
I declaration: emergency! [laughter and applause]’6 The piece
has a classic stand-up structure, setting up the basic premise,
then applying the same logic to an imaginary situation.
Rollins’s rhythm and delivery are absolutely like those of a
stand-up.
Biafra’s Spoken Word is different, closer to performance
art and political oratory, with a style of delivery that owes
more to the cadences and inflections of his punk singing than
stand-up comedy. In a show in Sheffield in 2001, he enters
the stage in a large overcoat, his eyes obscured by round,
reflective sunglasses, reading out an imaginary declaration of
martial law in sinister tones. It’s less than a month after the
aircraft flew into the Twin Towers, and much of the show
deals with this new world situation. While there are plenty of
jokes and satirical barbs about this in distinctly stand-up-like
passages, there is also much political invective as he weaves
complex conspiracy theories. Unlike most comedians, he often
reads from notes, regaling the audience with what he sees as
‘suppressed information’.
Like Rollins’ early work, Biafra’s Spoken Word bears the
hallmark of his punk origins, sometimes delving into shocking
material. On his first album No More Cocoons, he imagines a
theme park called ‘Vietnam Never Happened’, which includes
such attractions as a petting zoo ‘where you can feed over-priced
McDonaldland cookies to our pen full of children deformed by
Agent Orange’. Some of this gets laughs from the audience, but
as he cranks up the horror, the response sounds more uneasy,
and at one point he asks, ‘Is that getting a bit much?’7

Pappy’s – where sketch meets stand-up

Another example is sketch comedy. Any major comedy circuit
is likely to encompass not just stand-up but also improv and
 The outer limits of stand-up 81

sketch comedy. Pappy’s is a sketch team that started out in

2004, initially as a quartet with the slightly longer name of
Pappy’s Fun Club. Since 2009, they have been a trio, made up
of Matthew Crosby, Ben Clark and Tom Parry – all of whom
have also worked as solo stand-ups – and their work muddies
the distinction between stand-up and sketch.
When they started out, they felt much more at home in
stand-up clubs than at sketch nights. As Crosby explains, ‘We
had lots of fun at stand-up nights because we’d try and be live.
Sketch nights, you’d see a lot of people who had spent a lot of
time on the costume and learning their lines, which for us were
the two least important things.’ What they found particularly
odd was that the other sketch groups tended to avoid inter-
action with the audience or playing with the liveness of the
situation. As Crosby puts it, ‘If you have an audience in front
of you it seems crazy not to acknowledge the fact.’ Pappy’s
approach is much more interactive, as Parry explains:

We always talk about that in rehearsals – like, the direction

of a sketch … as soon as we realise that the direction of a
sketch is too like horizontal to each other, it’s got to have
some kind of way of it being to the audience, and with the
audience, as much as it is with each other.

Another quality they share with stand-up is that they play

on the personalities of the performers involved, breaking
out of their sketches to comment on the scrappiness of a
prop or costume, or the way one of them has just performed
something. Crosby argues that in 2012’s Pappy’s Last Show
Ever, the line separating them from full-blown stand-up has
become even fuzzier:

[W]e go out at the start to say hello to the audience, and we

know what our first thing is we’re going to do, but there’ll
often be five or six minutes of us just messing around
together onstage with the audience. And it’s the closest
we’ve ever got to three-man stand-up …
82 GETTING THE JOKE

The main difference is that the nature of sketch – with props,

costumes and an element of scripting that is still visible –
cannot ever be as off-the-cuff and impromptu as stand-up
pretends to be. As Crosby puts it, ‘[T]he key difference still
remains between stand-up and sketch is that once you get into
the actual sketches, people can’t suspend their disbelief that
it’s prepared.’8

Pushing at the boundaries

If the definition of stand-up is challenged from the outside,
by other forms which bear strong similarities with it, it is also
tested from the inside by comedians who push at the perimeter
of the form, fearlessly exploring the outer limits of its creative
possibilities.
Keith Allen had a very short stand-up career in the early
days of alternative comedy, and has left little evidence behind
of his act except a few video clips and a collection of legendary
word of mouth stories. Some of these relate to what he did
onstage, like smashing plates over his head; or performing
a naked ventriloquism act, in the course of which he kept
adjusting his penis, eventually pointing out to the audience
that while he did this, nobody noticed that his lips were
moving. In other anecdotes, he didn’t even reach the stage,
perhaps announcing from the side that he was too famous to
actually make an entrance, or replacing himself with a tape
recorder which played the beginning of his act. Sometimes, he
broke the most fundamental rule of all, by being deliberately
unfunny.9
Andy Kaufman was also deliberately unfunny at times,
although he enjoyed greater success than Allen. He was a
big name in America from the mid-1970s until his death
in 1984.10 One of Kaufman’s celebrated stunts was to go
on at the Improv and start reading The Great Gatsby to
the audience. Initially, they would laugh, but as it became
 The outer limits of stand-up 83

clear that he really did intend to read the entire novel, they
would start to leave. A more tasteless episode saw him make
audience members line up and pay him a dollar per person to
touch a cyst on his neck.11
Sometimes it’s not the comedian but the show’s organ-
isers who test the possibilities of stand-up. A good example
is Geoff Rowe, who has been running Comedy in the Dark
since 2009, when the show first ran at the Leicester Comedy
Festival. The idea is simple – a stand-up show that takes place
in pitch darkness. Blind comic Chris McCausland explains the
advantage of this: ‘Light makes people more self-conscious
about laughing. So the darker the room gets, the better it is,
really.’12

Space
Some comics have expanded the possibilities by pushing
through the spatial boundaries of stand-up. There’s normally
a clear division between performer and audience. In a theatre,
the comedian stands on a stage, and the audience sit in the
auditorium. Even where there is no literal stage and no formal
auditorium, a stage area is almost always marked out, and
people are seated in such a way as to give the sense of being an
audience. This creates a clear spatial boundary for the act, and
in many gigs this is not crossed by the performer except at the
beginning when they come on, and at the end when they leave.
In his 1978 TV series, Jasper Carrott defies this convention.
Towards the end of the third episode, Carrott goes into an
extended rant about Monty Python. He’s pretending he hates
it, but the gag is that he’s clearly obsessed and watches it all
the time, and a lot of the comedy arises from his mock anger
and hyperbolic imagery. As he continues to rave, he starts
pushing at the boundaries of the stage area, which is simply
the section of the studio floor between the set and the seating
blocks housing the audience. He goes right up to the front row
84 GETTING THE JOKE

and shouts into people’s faces. The audience is clearly excited

by the transgression, and their laughter becomes almost
continuous. We see him wandering up the steps of the seating
block, still ranting away, occasionally addressing something
to particular punters seated either side of him. Now he’s back
on the stage, and he gets laughter and applause simply by
awkwardly dodging around one of the TV cameras. Finally he
wanders off, still chuntering away.13
In recent years, Stewart Lee has made this kind of border
incursion a central feature of his act, taking his inspiration
from the gloriously unhinged northern character comic Johnny
Vegas. He has acknowledged that, ‘Since 90’s Comedian I
always aim to try and spend as much time during the show
offstage as possible.’14 There’s a lovely example of this towards
the end of his show If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please
Ask for One, as filmed at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow.
Again, this starts with an absurdist rant, in this case about an
advertising slogan for Magners pear cider. At a certain point,
he lets the microphone drop to the stage, as if carried away by
his own anger. The audience laugh, and he holds the pause,
leading to further laughter.
He starts to shout off mike, and when he jumps off the
front of the stage to continue his invective, the audience
acknowledge the thrill of the boundary infringement with
another laugh. Then he passes through a door and now
he’s not even in the auditorium, but walking quickly down
corridors and up stairs, relentlessly continuing to rant. As he
reappears on the first balcony, the audience laugh and applaud
his audacity. The houselights come on so that he can be seen,
causing him to yell, ‘Don’t light this up! [laughter] This isn’t
an entertainment! [laughter]’
On and on he goes, shouting about imaginary wrongs as
he works his way along the front of the balcony. He spots
somebody filming him on his phone, and gets laughs by
manically remonstrating with the copyright infringer, leaning
right over the woman in front of him to shout in his face. We
see the people in the stalls craning their necks round to follow
 The outer limits of stand-up 85

the action, as Lee leans over the balcony to shout down at

them. Eventually, he disappears through a door and runs back
down to the stage, where he reappears, only to get another big
laugh by jumping off the front of the stage again. Finally, he
gets back up on to the stage and picks the mike up. By this
point, he has spent around ten minutes outside of the normal
spatial boundaries of stand-up.

Time
In other cases, it’s the temporal boundaries that are breached.
In most cases, there’s a clear indication of when a stand-up
show starts and ends, but in the 1970s Andy Kaufman and
Steve Martin found ways of challenging this. At the end of
a show at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Martin was
faced with an audience that refused to accept that the act
was over. Even when he packed away his props and told
them he’d finished, they thought he was just kidding and
that it was simply part of the act. In the end, he took them
with him out on to the campus, eventually persuading them
all to get into an empty swimming pool and pretending to
swim over the top of them. In his autobiography, he recalls,
‘That night I went to bed feeling I had entered new comic
territory.’15
After that he found a number of ways of throwing into
question exactly when his act had ended. At the Troubadour
in LA, he kept talking into a backstage mike after leaving
the stage, adopting the role of a nasty prima donna with a
monstrous ego: ‘They can’t hear me out there, can they? …
What a bunch of assholes. Where can I get some pot?’16 At
Bubba’s in Coconut Grove, Florida, he finished by taking
the audience with him out on to the street, hailing a taxi,
and driving off. He got the cab driver to go round the block
and waved as he passed them by, then drove off and simply
left them there. Presumably they stood there in the street
86 GETTING THE JOKE

wondering what was going to happen next, eventually drifting

away wondering at what point the show had actually finished.
One of Andy Kaufman’s most boundary-stretching moments
came at the end of his Carnegie Hall concert in April 1979,
when he invited the entire audience to come with him for milk
and cookies. The video of the event shows Kaufman, wrapped
in a dressing gown, joining audience members as they file
out of the theatre and start getting on to 20 buses. ‘Come
on everybody!’ shouts Kaufman, and you can hear punters
shout ‘We’re with ya!’ and, ‘Let’s do it!’ It cuts to shots of a
canteen, with rows of milk cartons, and Kaufman surrounded
by punters. ‘Tomorrow the show will be continuing … at one
o’clock at the Staten Island ferry,’ he announces.17 According
to Kaufman’s collaborator Bob Zmuda, they turned up at the
ferry the next day and were joined by about 300 audience
members from the night before, treating them all to ferry
tickets and ice creams.18
More recently, Mark Watson has challenged the temporal
boundaries in a different way – by occasionally putting
on shows that are unconventionally long. Historically, the
amount of time stand-ups have spent on stage has varied
from a few minutes to three hours or more, but in the 2004
Edinburgh Fringe, Watson gave these time limits a big stretch
in a show called Mark Watson’s Overambitious 24-Hour
Show, which really was as long as advertised. Since then he
has done two similar shows in Melbourne, and five more in
Edinburgh, the final one in 2009. Most of them have lasted
for 24 hours, but the longest went on for 36. Incredibly this
is not the longest stand-up show that has ever happened. That
honour belongs to the American comic Bob Marley, who
performed for 40 hours between the 22 and 23 September
2010, at a club in Portland, Maine.
Nonetheless, Watson doesn’t mind about not holding the
record for the longest ever stand-up show, as he ‘was never
interested in doing like slightly longer just for the sake of a
record or something. 24 [hours] is about as long as you’d ever
want to be onstage.’ He argues that these absurdly long shows
 The outer limits of stand-up 87

were not a mere publicity stunt, more a way of venturing into

the unknown:

If you want to sort of dignify it with a more complicated

description than ‘stunt’, it is basically for me an opportunity
to explore what you can do once you’ve got an audience
there, because obviously over 24 hours, the audience goes
through a psychological journey of its own. And the atmos-
phere at the end is unlike anything that you’d ever find
really. Each time, the climaxes of those shows have been
among my most memorable moments … There’s a real
sense of excitement at the start, then there’s a lot of hard
work for about 18 hours, and then when you finally get
to the end, it’s elation, the sort of slightly drunken atmos-
phere that you get when people have been awake for too
long. It feels like the end of a really crazy all-night party.
There’s a mixture of sort of gratitude that it’s over, but
also people are just basically emotionally shredded by the
experience. So you do have an immense control over the
audience by that point. All at the same time, they’re blank
like zombies.19

Conceptual shows
Stand-up comedy often tends towards bittiness. A stand-up
act or even a full-length solo show tends to be made up of a
series of smaller units, and these gags and routines can easily
be re-edited and put together in a different order. In comedy
jargon, these smaller units of comedy are even called ‘bits’.
However, an increasing number of British comedians –
including Daniel Kitson, Mark Thomas, Richard Herring,
Dave Gorman, Stewart Lee and Josie Long – are creating
longer shows in which a theme, a concept or a narrative is
explored in a much more sustained fashion. This kind of work
can offer greater artistic possibilities than a 20-minute club set
88 GETTING THE JOKE

or even a full-length stand-up show made up of unrelated bits.

The comic takes the audience on a journey, which can allow
tonal shifts, quieter passages, raw emotion, exploration of
ideas and a sense of building to a satisfying ending.
In Dave Gorman’s shows, he relates the stories of outlandish
challenges he’s set himself, like travelling the world to find
a given number of people called Dave Gorman, or using
the internet to find ten Googlewhacks in a row.20 Gorman
describes his work as ‘documentary comedy’ so as to change
audience expectations: ‘Everyone thinks they know what
stand-up is. And people will come up and go, “You don’t
wanna bother with any of that fucking clever-clever nonsense,
you want some fucking knob jokes.” And they think they’re
right.’ He has used staging to change this kind of expectation,
deliberately avoiding the typical stand-up setting:

When they walk into the show, there’s two screens, two
projectors, no microphone. And just the fact that they don’t
recognise it means they don’t think they know what it is.
And they give me a little bit of leeway … The minute there’s
a microphone in the stand and a spotlight, and it’s a format
they think they know best about, they have a different …
set of demands.21

Gorman explains why it’s important to differentiate what he

does: ‘The only reason that I don’t think what I do is stand-up
is that I can’t go to a club and do 20 minutes. There’s no such
thing as 20 minutes of what I do … You can’t do an excerpt
from them.’22
Similarly, Jimmy McGhie, who has created three themed
shows for the Edinburgh Fringe, identifies the problem with
this approach: ‘[W]hat I always did was write a brand new
show from scratch for Edinburgh … But then go back to the
circuit afterwards and have to basically scrap it all, because
none of it worked individually. There were no actual bits in
it, it was all too linked together.’23
Richard Herring has been touring themed shows since the
 The outer limits of stand-up 89

1990s, basing them on autobiography (like explaining what

it was like growing up as the headmaster’s son), or off-kilter
social experiments (like seeing how people would react if he
grew a Hitler moustache).24 He compares these shows with a
straight stand-up set, as performed in a comedy club:

They’re sort of different and they’re the same … you could

take bits out that will work in a stand-up club, but it’s
much more about the whole experience, so even if there’s
a good routine, it all feeds into everything at the end … I
want to create a show that makes people think, that has
an overarching theme that has stuff that all comes together
and makes sense …25

Stewart Lee makes similar points about being unable to split

his full-length shows into individual bits, but argues, ‘I think
it is stand-up. And I think we should call it that.’26 He likens
straight stand-up to comic books and conceptual shows to
graphic novels, pointing out that the great comics writer Alan
Moore rejects the distinction between the two, arguing that
both should simply be called ‘comics’. Lee goes on to argue
that the reason conceptual shows have flourished is because
Britain has an appropriate circuit of venues around which they
can tour, thus making them economically viable:

[T]he conceptual show thing is also unique to this country,

and it’s about the fact that even now, there’s still enough
midscale arts centres with funding … to have created a
sustainable middle ground where … people can make 30
grand a year doing their 70 minute Edinburgh think-show
in those places, when in fact they can’t chop it up to play
the Comedy Store – because it’s not that kind of show.27
90 GETTING THE JOKE

Music
Stand-up comedy has musical roots – with connections to
music hall, vaudeville, folk, country, even punk – and for
much of the twentieth century it was normal for comedians
to finish their act with a song. In spite of this, the modern
conception of stand-up is that it’s primarily a spoken form,
lacking musical accompaniment.
Having said this, it’s not especially unusual for find
comedians whose acts are based on comic songs, good
examples being Tim Minchin and Bill Bailey – whose staging
suggests a rock gig more than a stand-up show. There are also
comics who have experimented with adding music to what
would otherwise be conventional spoken routines.
Zach Galifianakis – huge bush of beard, crazy thatch of
hair – tells gags sitting at the piano and playing a plaintive,
ringing melody. This completely changes the texture of the
performance. He comes across as a bar-room pianist with
pretentions to being a great artist, tipping his head back
and closing his eyes as if absorbed by his own music as
the audience guffaw at his one-liners – which, as a result,
seem like a mere afterthought. The music makes sense of
the big pauses between laughs, and its wistfulness offers an
intriguing tonal contrast with the silliness of jokes like: ‘I
hate to be gross, but the only time it’s good to yell out, “I
have diarrhoea” [laughter] – is when you’re playing Scrabble.
[laughter] Because it’s worth a shitload of points. [laughter]’28
Demetri Martin’s one-liners have the blend of silliness,
cleverness and absurdity that could put him in the same
bracket as deadpan surrealists like Steven Wright and Milton
Jones. Typical examples include:

I find that – at most theme parks, the theme is – ‘Wait in

line, fatty.’ [laughter]
Every fight is a food fight – when you’re a cannibal.
[laughter]
 The outer limits of stand-up 91

There’s a store in my neighbourhood called Futon

World. Love that name, Futon World. Makes me think of
a magical place – that becomes less comfortable over time.
[laughter]29

However, Martin manages to create a completely different feel

to his act, partly by setting strings of gags to music. He might,
for example, underscore a 13-minute sequence of short jokes
by busily picking melancholy arpeggios on an acoustic guitar.
He starts another routine by telling the audience: ‘I’d like to
try something for you guys. I’d like to remix some of my jokes
for you. [quiet, anticipatory laughter] By playing this glock-
enspiel and this keyboard. [laughter] While I tell them.’ The
clunky mechanical rhythm of a cheap electric keyboard starts
up, and this is incongruous enough in itself to get a laugh.
The music he plays treads a fine line between cutesy and avant
garde – a repetitive two-note glockenspiel riff, sporadically
sprinkled with electronic notes.
The music meshes with his manner, which makes him come
across like a talented bedroom composer, sharing some things
he’s been working on with a few friends. He calls the audience
‘you guys’ – instead of the more traditional ‘ladies and
gentlemen’ – and says he’s going to ‘try something’ for them.
The overall effect is charmingly whimsical and homemade, as
if a modern urban folk musician like Jeffrey Lewis or Sufjan
Stevens had taken up comedy.

Technology
However low-tech stand-up comedy has traditionally been, in
the last few years there have been some interesting attempts to
coax it into the virtual world. In February 2007, Jimmy Carr
became one of the first comedians to perform a show in the
online virtual world Second Life. A basement bar in central
London was rigged to allow him to play simultaneously to a
92 GETTING THE JOKE

small live audience – made up of fans chosen from MySpace

– right in front of him, and a virtual audience in Second Life.
The live audience could see the virtual version of the show
projected on a screen, and most of the impromptu laughs
came from Carr making fun of the technical inadequacies
of the set-up. He comments on the fact that initially the live
audience’s laughter is being played back to them with a big
delay (‘Literally retarded’), how his avatar looks (‘I’m wearing
– sort of a grey leotard’) and its unconvincing movements. It
staggers forward, and he gets laughter and applause simply by
saying, ‘What the fuck is that?’ It flails around on the ground,
and he says, ‘Well now it looks as if I’m sucking off the floor.
[laughter and applause]’30
Shortly afterwards, another attempt at virtual stand-up
was made not by a comedian but by designers at the Magic
Kingdom® in Florida’s Walt Disney World® Resort. In April
2007, they launched the Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor® – an
attraction which purports to be a comedy club in the world
of the Pixar film. The show is compèred by Mike Wazowski,
one of the main characters from the movie, who introduces
a series of bizarre monster comedians. Given that all of this
is computer animated and projected on to a screen, it might
seem to lack the essential interactivity and spontaneity of real
stand-up.
However, while some of the soundtrack is pre-recorded –
assuming Billy Crystal’s career hasn’t nosedived to the point
where he’s prepared to spend his every waking hour backstage
in a theme park – some of the characters are voiced live. This
allows them to talk to individual punters and improvise gags
based on the information they get from them. When I see the
‘show’ in July 2011, a two-headed monster talks to a woman
from Austin, Texas who has her son Darius with her. The
monster then sings a new national anthem for Austin, which
rhymes its ‘attractions various’ with ‘Darius’.
Setting up an attraction like this must have been expensive
enough to put it out of reach of the average working comic,
but in 2009 Tiernan Douieb staged a virtual stand-up show
 The outer limits of stand-up 93

that only required access to a computer and a decent internet

connection. After playing to a small audience in a comedy
club, he tweeted about how disappointed he was:

I complained on Twitter … it was meant to be a big gig

and seven in, this is terrible. And they all said, ‘There’s
thousands of us on here – why don’t you do a gig for us?’
And I was like, ‘Oo, this is actually very interesting.’ And
then also realised I could potentially do a show in my
pyjamas.

He recruited fellow comics like Mark Watson, Mitch Benn,

Matt Kirshen and Pappy’s, who all tweeted a set of gags,
compèred by Douieb’s tweeting between the sets. The ‘show’
was ‘watched’ by around 17,000 people on the night of 8
June, which as Douieb points out is a stadium-sized audience.
Two months later, they staged a similar show at the Edinburgh
Fringe, this time playing simultaneously to a live audience in
the venue and a virtual one on Twitter.
It’s a moot point whether a series of 140-character sentences
on a computer screen could really qualify as stand-up comedy,
and it certainly lacked the vital raft of information that an
actual performer can convey with face, voice and body.
However, what it did do was to destroy any of the physical
or geographical boundaries that might have prevented some
of the punters who watched it from attending a real show, as
Douieb points out:

I had a paraplegic guy contact me on Twitter and just

say, ‘I haven’t been able to go to a live comedy gig
since it’s happened. You brought it to me. This is …
amazing.’ … When I was gigging in Estonia earlier this
year, somebody twittered afterwards just going, ‘Oh I’ve
just seen Tiernan Douieb, really enjoyed it. Wondered
where I’d seen him before. Of course, he hosted Twitter
Comedy Club.’ I thought, ‘God, there are people in
Estonia watching it!’31
94 GETTING THE JOKE

Trying to understand stand-up comedy is a bit like trying to

keep hold of a wet bar of soap. Just when you think you’ve
got to grips with it, it slips out of your hands. You can trace its
history, but establishing exactly when and where it first sprang
into life is very difficult. The origin of the term ‘stand-up’ is
just as hard to hold down, or even to define. At its heart, it’s
a very simple form, and what makes it exciting is that the
boundaries which give it definition are fuzzy and easy to break
through. This makes it extremely malleable, allowing it to be
tweaked, twisted or turned on its head at the whim of the
individual comedian. In order to explore stand-up’s enormous
creative potential, the following chapters will explore how
some of its defining features work in performance.

Notes
1 James Parker, Turned On: A Biography of Henry Rollins,
London: Phoenix House, 1998, p. 131
2 Jeffrey Drake, ‘Point Man against Censorship’, http://reocities.
com/SunsetStrip/palms/1845/DK-html/jello-interview.html
[accessed September 2004]
3 http://www.spitfiretour.org/zack.html [accessed 7 September
2004]
4 Garry Mulholland, ‘When Eddie Met Henry’, Time Out, 2–9
December 1998, p. 24
5 ‘Santa Cruz Pig’ on Henry Rollins, Sweatbox, Quarterstick
Records/Touch and Go Records, 1992, QS10CD
6 ‘Language’ on Henry Rollins, A Rollins in the Wry,
Quarterstick Records, 2000, QS63CD
7 ‘Vietnam Never Happened’ on Jello Biafra, No More Cocoons,
Alternative Tentacles Records, 1987, VIRUS 59
8 Interview with Pappy’s, Patisserie Valerie, Canterbury, 29
February 2012
9 For more on this, see William Cook, The Comedy Store: The
Club that Changed British Comedy, London: Little, Brown
 The outer limits of stand-up 95

and Company, 2001, p. 63; and Roger Wilmut and Peter

Rosengard, Didn’t You Kill My Mother-in-Law? The Story
of Alternative Comedy in Britain from The Comedy Store to
Saturday Live, London: Methuen, 1989, p. 34
10 Even Kaufman’s death is not 100 per cent certain. Although
he died from a rare form of lung cancer in 1984, in May
2004, exactly 20 years after his death, somebody posted a
website (http://andykaufmanreturns.blogspot.co.uk/2004/05/
im-back.html [accessed 6 June 2013]) claiming to be Kaufman,
and it was announced that he would perform a show at Los
Angeles’ House of Blues (see Allan Wigley, ‘Pulling Fast One
on Death Never Works’, Ottawa Sun, 22 May 2004, Showbiz
p. 21). Needless to say, he didn’t turn up for the show, but the
fact that he successfully pulled off a number of hoaxes in his
lifetime, and had told others of his intention to fake his own
death gives a certain limited credibility to the comeback claims
11 For more on this, see Bob Zmuda (with Matthew Scott
Hansen), Andy Kaufman Revealed!, London: Ebury Press,
1999, pp. 88–9, 185
12 Quoted in Tom Meltzer, ‘Comedy show puts new slant on dark
humour’, the Guardian (G2 section), 8 October 2012, p. 2
13 An Audience with Jasper Carrott, originally broadcast ITV, 22
January 1978. Available on the DVD An Audience with Jasper
Carrott, Network, 2011, 7953436
14 Stewart Lee, How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and
Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian, London: Faber and Faber,
2010, p. 215
15 Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, London:
Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, 2008, p. 140
16 Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, London:
Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, 2008, p. 143
17 Andy Kaufman, Andy Kaufman Plays Carnegie Hall,
Paramount, 2000, 839693
18 Bob Zmuda (with Matthew Scott Hansen), Andy Kaufman
Revealed!, London: Ebury Press, 1999, pp. 148–9
19 Interview with Mark Watson, Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury,
31 October 2012
96 GETTING THE JOKE

20 Googlewhacking is a game which involves putting two search

terms into the search engine Google, and getting just one
website in the search results, subject to certain specific rules.
21 Interview with Dave Gorman, by telephone, 29 June 2004
22 Interview with Dave Gorman, by telephone, 29 June 2004
23 Interview with Jimmy McGhie, Whitstable, 30 August 2012
24 Or a ‘toothbrush moustache’ as he prefers to call it – in spite
of the show being titled Hitler Moustache
25 Interview with Richard Herring, Gulbenkian Theatre,
Canterbury, 14 February 2012
26 Interview with Stewart Lee, Patisserie Valerie, Canterbury, 25
February 2012
27 Interview with Stewart Lee, Patisserie Valerie, Canterbury, 25
February 2012
28 The Comedians of Comedy, Anchor Bay Entertainment, 2005,
DV1510
29 See ‘The Remix’ and ‘The Jokes with Guitar’, Demetri Martin,
These Are Jokes, Comedy Central Records, 2006, CCR0044
[CD]
30 See ‘Second Life’, extra feature on Jimmy Carr, Comedian, 4
DVD, 2007, C4DVD10160
31 Interview with Tiernan Douieb, Gulbenkian Café, Canterbury,
17 March 2012
 CHAPTER EIGHT

Affection

Personality theft
You may have noticed that I feature quite heavily in this story.
I talk about my own experiences of stand-up – as both punter
and performer – and I throw in little anecdotes to illustrate
certain points. When I have an opinion, I make it quite clear
that it’s my point of view, and I don’t try and hide behind
some kind of pseudo objectivity. You’ve probably realised that
what I’m trying to do is to simulate the tone of stand-up in my
prose style – direct, conversational, and above all personal.
The point is that a stand-up’s personality is absolutely
crucial to his or her act. It provides a context for the material,
it gives the audience something to identify with, and it’s
what distinguishes one comic from the next. Popular enter-
tainers instinctively understand how crucial personality is,
and nothing illustrates this point better than the lengths they
will go to protect it. For example, here’s an amazing fact: in
1938, the Variety Artistes’ Federation tried to bring person-
ality under the protection of copyright law. An international
conference on copyright was held in Brussels, and the VAF,
the British trade union for light entertainers, put their case
to the Board of Trade in a letter which said: ‘[W]e would
comment that our particular anxiety is to endeavour to protect
entertainers … against unauthorised reproduction of their
personalities constituted as self-expression and mannerisms,
98 GETTING THE JOKE

which entertaining value of personality is the greatest asset an

entertainer possesses and is the basis of the goodwill on which
he earns his livelihood.’1
This might seem a bit paranoid, but there have been real
cases of comedians having their personalities stolen. In the
1980s, Woody Allen sued National Video and Men’s World
Outlet for using lookalikes in adverts. By making it look as if
Allen endorsed their products, the advertisers were exploiting
his personality for commercial gain.
More creatively, some comedians have employed lookalikes
to use in their act for comic effect. At the start of David Cross’s
show at the Wilbur Theater in Boston in 2009, an offstage
voice announces the comedian on to the stage. A small boy
bounces on to the stage, dressed up as Cross – baggy jeans and
T-shirt, spectacles, rubber bald wig. The normal applause and
whistling that would welcome a famous comedian on to the
stage is mixed with laughter, as the audience take in the gag.
The kid then goes into a faux-Cross spiel. After a few minutes
he pretends to spot somebody illicitly filming the show and
acts an egotistical hissy fit.
Hearing a child parroting Cross’s style of no-holds-barred
cynicism then roundly abusing the audience – all in a high-
pitched, unbroken voice – is as odd and unsettling as it is
funny. ‘Everything I say tonight will be the truth,’ the boy
says, which it clearly isn’t.2 This is exactly the sort of thing
the real Cross would say, leaving us to wonder how much
artifice there is in the way he presents himself, and how
truthful the personalities we see in stand-up comedy really are.
It’s precisely this kind of question that I’ll be exploring in the
following chapters.

We like comedians
In 1999, I go to see Lenny Henry at the Philharmonic Hall
in Liverpool. For me, the best part of the show is when he
 Affection 99

walks on to the stage at the beginning. I’m not making a

cheap jibe – it’s just that I find his entrance an extraordinary
moment. I’ve followed Henry’s career since I was a child. I’ve
seen him in a sitcom called The Fosters. I’ve been a huge fan
of the anarchic children’s television programme Tiswas, which
saw him invent a crazy, Rastafarian, condensed-milk-obsessed
character called Algernon Razzmatazz and engage in all kinds
of custard pie related mayhem. I’ve seen him compère the pilot
episode of the alternative comedy showcase Saturday Live,
and star in various shows of his own.
As he walks on to the stage, a huge wave of affection
surges through me, no doubt powered by the memories of
all the Lenny Henry things I’ve enjoyed over the years. My
excitement is strengthened by the fact that he walks across the
stage like a star, aware of the powerful applause that greeted
him but making no big show of it. His stride is loose, relaxed
and unhurried as he makes his way to the mike. His charisma
is very tangible.
At the Brighton Dome Concert Hall in 2004, Dylan Moran
radiates a different kind of charisma. He comes across as
melancholy and shambolic, his hair rather unkempt and his
speech slurred as if by alcohol. He is misanthropic, yet philo-
sophical and poetic, capable of producing tender moments.
He wanders on at the beginning, and straight away, without
any kind of introduction, he starts talking about the town he’s
performing in. After a few minutes of this, gruffly and almost
as an afterthought, he says, ‘Hello, by the way.’ It gets a big
laugh.
The joke is all about his personality. His terse ‘hello’ comes
across like a glimmer of affection peeping out through the
crack in his habitually grumpy façade. It’s as if he’s too shy
or awkward to be more openly friendly. The effect is not only
funny, it’s also curiously charming. It makes me like him more.
Both of these examples illustrate an important truth about
comedians: we like them. As well as making us laugh, most
stand-ups inspire huge affection. This is something which
comedians, critics and others have known about for decades.
100 GETTING THE JOKE

Milton Berle, for example, said: ‘The first thing is that an

audience, I believe, have to like you, before they laugh at
you.’3 Jack Rollins – who represented Woody Allen when he
did stand-up – makes a similar point: ‘In a cabaret … if an
audience can sense the personality underlying the comic – if
they can make contact with that personality, they’ll enjoy him
more.’4 It’s a view shared by Allen himself: ‘[W]hat audiences
want is intimacy with the person. They want to like the person
and find the person funny as a funny human being. The biggest
trap that comedians fall into is trying to get by on material.’5
Sometimes the affection the audience feel for the comedian
is very obvious. Victoria Wood had hardcore fans who liked
her so much that they would follow her around dressed up
as her characters. A South Bank Show documentary shows
a bunch of middle-aged women dressed in yellow berets, like
the Lancashire girl in Wood’s act who is always looking for
her friend Kimberly. They meet Wood at the stage door, where
she signs autographs and poses for a photo with them. Wood
comments: ‘They think I’m nice and friendly. My husband
says they think I’m their best friend, you know. And that’s fine
– on the stage, I’m happy to be their best friend.’6
Audiences can also show affection in a more subtle way, in
their reactions to a live show. Sarah Millican tells her audience
about being in Australia, and Skyping her boyfriend because
she’s missing home. She recalls that she was feeling so flat and
sad that the first thing she said to him was, ‘You’re too far
away.’ The audience give an ‘ahh’ of sympathy, which is much
more genuine than a ritualised pantomime response. This
sets things up perfectly for the punchline: ‘So he moved the
webcam.’ There’s a big laugh and a smattering of applause.7
She’s expertly squashed the sentiment, but the fact that it was
there in the first place shows how much they like her.
In some cases, there’s a sexual element to the affection.
When Dylan Moran used to play my comedy club, the Last
Laugh, female punters would often come up to me after the
show and tell me how attractive they thought he was – even
offering to put him up for the night. In spite of his shabby
 Affection 101

appearance, he was the comic who seemed to inspire the most

female lust.
In a TV documentary, Alan Davies is onstage doing his act,
when a woman shouts: ‘Get your kit off!’ He tries to explain
the phenomenon:

I think that’s why it’s attractive to audiences. Because

they’re seeing somebody really expressing themself and
being very, very vividly alive in a way that many people
haven’t found a way to be, you know. So those performers
become … most amazingly attractive. But it isn’t really
them, it’s what they’re doing, they’re just flying, they’re
doing the thing that everyone wishes they could do.8

There’s also a sexual edge to Eddie Izzard’s appeal. Ken

Campbell notes that ‘all sexes fall in love with him’,9 and
this is borne out by the intensity of feeling to be found in fan
forums on the internet. Back in 2004, I spent no more than two
minutes looking through these before I happened across the
following, posted by ‘comic-iris’: ‘Last night I had a dream with
Eddie in it. Strangely enough, I was dating him. It wasn’t all hot
and bothering type of dream, just a really nice, content feeling
dream with the feelings that I usually have with my boyfriend
(who I have introduced to Eddie, and he is a fan now).’10
While it’s unlikely that comic-iris will ever actually become
Izzard’s girlfriend, the affection audiences feel for comedians
can be reciprocated. Bill Cosby, for example, says that he
wants his act to get the same response as when he is talking to
a table full of people at the dinner table, and Victoria Wood
describes playing to the Royal Albert Hall as being, ‘like
having two and a half thousand friends round and you’re the
funniest one in the room.’11 For some comics, the relationship
is even more personal. Sean Hughes says the beginning of
a stand-up gig is ‘much like a first date’, and Eddie Izzard
reveals that the audience offers him a ‘surrogate affection
thing’, compensating for the death of his mother when he was
a child.12
102 GETTING THE JOKE

All of this makes the audience-performer rapport in stand-up

seem very much like the kind of relationship which grows up
between people in everyday life. However irrational it may
seem, at one level, we think of the comedian as somebody we
actually know, whether a casual acquaintance, a friend or a
lover. Establishing a career means forming a seemingly close
relationship with the public, and the pressure to do this well
is one of the things that makes doing stand-up so terrifying.
Victoria Wood puts it this way: ‘If they don’t laugh, I feel they
don’t like you. The dangerous path you tread, I think, as a
comic, is that it is you. You know, they’re not saying, “Oh
well, she was very good but the play was terrible,” they say,
“We didn’t like her.”’13

Physical appeal
If the relationships we have with comedians are akin to those
we have with real acquaintances, then we must like them for
the same kind of reasons. Part of the appeal must be physical.
We can find ourselves irrationally drawn to a stand-up’s voice,
face, body, mannerisms or posture. I remember first seeing
Eddie Izzard on the London comedy circuit when I was doing
open mike spots at the end of the 1980s. Our paths crossed
a number of times, and I was blown away by his ability to
generate silly, surreal material, much of it seemingly on the
spur of the moment.
On a less rational level though, I loved the fact that
his voice was so posh. This was tied up with my personal
history. I’d gone through my teens as a middle-class kid in a
comprehensive school where any trace of middle-classness in
the voice, a vowel sound here or a slightly ostentatious word
there, would provoke all the kids around you to turn the end
of their noses up with their finger and emit a ridiculous aristo-
cratic squawk. I was never terribly well spoken, but fear of the
squawk had made me careful about how I talked. Izzard had
 Affection 103

a gloriously and unashamedly posh voice without sounding

remotely like an upper-class twit. Hearing him talk was like
listening to freedom, unfettered and unselfconscious.
I’m not the only one who finds the sound of Izzard’s voice
appealing. Alan Davies has said that as with Ken Dodd,
Izzard’s voice is just funny in itself. The sonic properties of
comedians’ voices clearly have a powerful effect, inspiring
colourful prose from critics. Ben Thompson, for example, says
Jo Brand’s voice ‘rustles with the beguiling timbre of a freshly
opened tobacco pouch’ and that Jenny Éclair’s ‘fag-addled
voice rasps like sandpaper on a velvet cushion.’14
Faces can be just as potent. Dan Leno, the music hall
comedian whose work paved the way for fully-fledged
stand-up comedy, had an extraordinary face, as many of his
contemporaries commented. Archibald Haddon, for example,
says, ‘Look at his picture now. That mouth, those eyes, those
eyebrows, the knobbly bit on the top! Do you feel an inward
chuckle – an inclination to smile?’15 Marie Lloyd, another
great music hall comic, says that he had ‘the saddest eyes in
the whole world’, adding, ‘if we hadn’t laughed we should
have cried ourselves sick’.16 Max Beerbohm makes a similar
observation in his obituary of Leno: ‘[T]hat face so tragic,
with the tragedy that is writ on the face of a baby-monkey, yet
ever liable to relax its mouth into a sudden wide grin and to
screw up its eyes to vanishing point over some little triumph
wrested from Fate, the tyrant.’17
Sometimes, it’s the whole physical package that appeals.
In the variety era, Max Miller’s physicality inspired this
almost embarrassingly rapturous description from the critic
A. Crooks Ripley:

Max has physical charm equivalent to that of an attractive

woman, or, in vulgar terms, sex-appeal … Radio is not
able to convey to the listener a picture of the finely shaped
hands, idle, still, falling their full length as he stands, rarely
seeking to aid the voice; most, most satisfying in gesture
… or the walking movement, strong and limber, elegant,
104 GETTING THE JOKE

authoritative, overwhelming the incongruity of attire.

Television in a close-up shot would show the scrump-
tious expression Max wears in particularly big moments,
pinching his teeth with his cheeks as if he were sucking a
pungent acid-drop, the yolks of the eyes looking towards
heaven through his panama … but it would miss-out the
way the expanse of the whites match the collar and white
and black shoes.18

Sometimes the aspect of a comedian’s physicality that appeals

to the audience becomes very obvious, like when Billy
Connolly shaved his beard off at the beginning of the 1990s.
Throughout his rise to fame, he sported a long, hippy-style,
goatee beard, and when he decided to get rid of it for a
while, the event received much media attention. A newspaper
critic confided, ‘I’m worried about the beard … It isn’t there
any more, and it makes Connolly look younger, saner and
unpleasantly professional.’19 Television interviewer Michael
Parkinson, an old friend of Connolly’s agreed, saying, ‘I feel
it took away that wonderful sort of lunatic aspect of him.’20
Connolly was defiant towards his critics:

When I whipped the beard off, a lot of people were quite

distressed. People would ask, ‘Aren’t you concerned about
your image?’ I gave it a lot of thought, and came to the
conclusion that your image is nothing at all to do with
you. It’s none of your damn business. People who try to
get an image are usually astrologers and other fuckwits on
breakfast television with funny pullovers.21

Whether it was any of his audience’s damn business or not, it

was an issue he had to address in his act. Footage from the
time shows him coming on to the stage beardless, in a shirt
tie-dyed in multicoloured stripes. While taking the applause,
there are visible signs of embarrassment. After saying, ‘Hello,’
he touches his face, looks to one side, and grunts with
good-humoured self-consciousness. Having created a certain
 Affection 105

expectation, perhaps even a little tension, he says, ‘What do

you mean, “Who the fuck are you?” it’s me!”’ The audience
laugh, and he laughs with them, but he’s still slightly hesitant.
He runs his fingers over his chin where his beard used to
be, then buries his face in his hands. ‘Whaddya think, isn’t
it fucking awful?’22 There’s a big laugh. Showing masterful
control, Connolly has brought any tension that might have
been generated by his change of appearance out into the open,
defusing it so that he can move on.
He’s not the only comedian who is aware of the importance
of physicality. Ken Dodd is said to have taken out insurance
on his teeth, which protrude as a result of a childhood cycling
accident. Phill Jupitus is large both in height and breadth.
This contrasts nicely with the surprising delicacy of some of
his comedy, and he’s aware of how effective this can be: ‘[I]t’s
odd to have the juxtaposition of a very large, prepossessing
person appearing delicate and subtle, and I suddenly realised
that had more visual power to it than me coming on as a big
bloke, being a big bloke.’23 Mark Lamarr gives a different kind
of testament to the power of physicality. Laughing at his own
misanthropy, he explains his preference for comedy albums
over videos by saying, ‘I think the things that are annoying
about humans are just lessened on tape. You’ve only got their
voice to be annoyed by.’24

We hate comedians
Lamarr’s comment reveals an interesting point – if we can
like comedians for the same kind of reasons as we like people
we meet in everyday life, then we can also dislike them for
similar reasons. The voice, the face, the body, the attitude,
the onstage manner might make us hate the person behind the
microphone. It’s certainly true that some comedians, whilst
inspiring affection and admiration from their fans, provoke
loathing in others. AA Gill writes scathingly about Bob
106 GETTING THE JOKE

Monkhouse, in terms so luxuriously vicious as to suggest a

genuine, personal hatred:

A deep and fundamental loathing of every syllable and

nuance of Monkhouse is one of the cornerstones of my
critical edifice. If I ever found I liked Bob Monkhouse, my
world would collapse; I’d have to question civilisation as
we know it … It’s not that his material is bad; they are
jokes as dumb and pointless as contextless jokes invar-
iably are. It’s his delivery that’s like being touched up by
a Moonie encyclopaedia salesman. Every mannerism drips
insincerity and smarm. No, it’s like having margarine
massaged into your hair. No, it’s like wearing marzipan
socks.25

Understandably, Monkhouse was unhappy about such

attacks. A sympathetic interview written shortly after the Gill
diatribe notes that Monkhouse has spent ‘a lifetime irritating
people in the name of light entertainment’, with critics using
words like ‘despicable’, ‘slimy’ and ‘chilling’ to describe him.
Confronted with this, Monkhouse says, ‘What I hate is people
like AA Gill who attack me personally and who are blister-
ingly unpleasant. I inhabit that persona he rejects – and it
hurts. In the same way that someone refusing to shake your
hand is hurtful.’26
More recently, Jimmy Carr has attracted a similar kind of
personal attack. A review of the candidates on the shortlist
for the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2002 sees
Veronica Lee describe him as an ‘inhabitant of the Planet
Twat’, saying:

Jimmy Carr divides critical and fellow comics’ opinion –

you either love him or loathe him – and I am firmly in the
latter camp. I’m not a violent person and am fully aware of
comics assuming a stage persona, but whenever I see Carr
I have to be physically restrained from smacking his smug
face.27
 Affection 107

Being disliked isn’t always a sign of comic failure though, and

for Alexei Sayle, being dislikeable was a positive choice, which
marked him out from the rest:

What was unique about me as a comic was that what all

comics possibly apart from me are seeking is … affection
and love from an audience. I didn’t care about that. I didn’t
want their affection. I didn’t wanna be their mate. But I
wanted their approval … I had a desperate desire for their
approval as evinced in their laughter. But I didn’t care if
they liked me. In fact, I liked it if they didn’t like me – but
they had to laugh anyway.28

Mark Lamarr – a big fan of Sayle – is scathing about comics

who want to be liked:

It’s very easy to just charm some strangers, and I think a

lot of comedy is merely that … When I watch comics, and
they say, ‘All I wanna do is connect with the audience,’
[I think,] ‘Well what’s the fucking point of that? You can
connect with people in a cake shop!’ Anyone can connect
with people, you just agree with what they say.

Lamarr would sometimes make himself deliberately dislikeable

as an exercise to test his own ability:

[O]ccasionally (and it was probably a little foolish),

sometimes when I was really bored, in like an Edinburgh
run or something, I would go on and just be as hateful as
possible for the first ten [or] fifteen [minutes], as unfunny,
and just spiteful and egregious, like till they just couldn’t
fucking stand the sight of me, and then I’d go, ‘I’ll make
you laugh now.’ And I would do it. And I generally could
pull it off. And there was a real sense of accomplishment …
‘Yeah, they fucking hated me … and it must’ve killed them
to have laughed at me so hard throughout that.’ And … I
don’t know what that is, and I can’t explain it and I can’t
108 GETTING THE JOKE

even justify it ‘cos it sounds really horrible, but it was the

case.29

It may be that the gags Sayle and Lamarr told were funny
enough to override the audience’s antipathy, but there’s
probably more to it than that. If the performer-audience
relationship in stand-up is like any other interpersonal
relationship, then it must be capable of being just as varied
and complex. Hostages can form emotional bonds with their
kidnappers. The crazy kid at school who questions the teacher
and doles out devastating insults to classmates, or the rebel
who bucks the system at work, can be fun to watch from a
distance. The people we admire are not necessarily always
people we like.

When audiences love too much

Two of the most popular stand-ups working today – one
British, one American – are also disliked by a significant
number of critics and fellow comedians. There’s a curious
symmetry to the kind of criticism that’s been levelled at
Michael McIntyre and Dane Cook. McIntyre is held to be
bland, cosy or even rather conservative. One critic described
him as a ‘nice, safe, middle-England comedian’ while another
has dubbed him ‘a comic for the [David] Cameron age’.30
Stewart Lee – who has been fingered as McIntyre’s chief
critic – argues that, ‘McIntyre’s massively popular and super-
evolved brand of observational schtick is regarded with
baffled ambivalence by many comedians’.31
Onstage, a number of comedians have subjected McIntyre
to comic invective. The most widely-quoted example is Lee’s
memorable line, in which he accused part of his own audience
of sitting at home watching McIntyre on television ‘spoon
feeding you his warm diarrhoea’32 – although we’ll come
back to this gag later on. Asked by Kirsty Young on Desert
 Affection 109

Island Discs about ‘the envy that is heaped upon you … and
sometimes derision’, McIntyre admitted that he was ‘getting
used to it, but it did come as a shock at the beginning’.
He had been subjected to an ‘amazing amount of hostility’
and was particularly upset by being ridiculed at the British
Comedy Awards: ‘[T]he overriding experience was that of, of
nastiness.’33
On the other side of the Atlantic there’s Dane Cook, who
one journalist described as ‘the contemporary American comic
for whom there is the greatest disparity between mass appeal
and peer respect’. Again, the criticism centres on blandness.
Paul Provenza acknowledges Cook’s ‘talent and gifts’ but
feels he has ‘no artistry’. For Doug Stanhope, ‘He acts like
there’s substance, but there’s none.’34 Like McIntyre, Cook has
spoken about being hurt by the barrage of criticism, building
a whole stage routine out of it.
He tells his audience what happened when he looked
himself up on Google and found, ‘like, 87 “Dane Cook
Sucks” pages and four videos about why I should die and all
these countless blogs’. By this point, people in the audience are
starting to boo and jeer the online abuse which he’s describing.
Cook then breaks the feeling he’s built up with a gag, saying, ‘I
read for four and a half hours and I finally said out loud, “You
know what, this Dane Cook is a douchebag!” [laughter]’35
So why should these comics have attracted such conspicuous
opprobrium? It’s been suggested that it all springs from
jealousy of their success, but other popular comics haven’t
attracted the same level of scorn. Cook has been accused of
plagiarizing material from Louis C. K., but close investigation
of the routines in question suggest that such allegations are
essentially groundless. Even the accusations of blandness
and lack of substance don’t really hold water. It’s true that
McIntyre has openly admitted he isn’t interested in ‘props,
gimmicks and depth’, only being funny36 – tellingly putting
‘depth’ on the same level of worthlessness as props and
gimmicks. Nonetheless, McIntyre bases much of his material
on acute observations of everyday experiences, taking an
110 GETTING THE JOKE

approach not dissimilar from, say, Jerry Seinfeld – who is

revered by fellow comics on both sides of the Atlantic.
I’d argue that what McIntyre and Cook have in common
is the intensity of their relationship with their fans. The
problem is not so much the size of their respective crowds,
but more how these crowds behave during the shows. In
addition to welcoming them on to the stage with applause,
whistling and excitable yelling, these audiences show unusual
signs of devotion to their comic heroes. At the O2 Arena,
McIntyre goes into a routine about his children, Lucas and
Oscar, and the mere mention of their names brings whistles
of approval from a surprisingly large number of punters.37
This is a comedian who is so popular that even his children
have fans. True, some of the whistling might have been in
recognition of previous routines he’s done about them, but
my take is that it’s also a sign of the level of affection the
audience feel for McIntyre. Through his act, they feel like they
know him personally in a kind of pseudo friendship, and as
they’re friends he has introduced them to his children – via the
medium of stand-up routines.
Cook also inspires unusual noises of affection, but in his
case from punters who seem to want to be more than just
friends. In one of his concert recordings, he tells the audience,
‘I had a one – night – stand recently.’ This unleashes ecstatic
whooping and applause from a fair number of female fans,
presumably excited at the idea that he’s about to share
intimate secrets of a sexual situation. He picks up on their
reaction: ‘– with all those chicks you just heard, it was nuts!
[laughter]’ Even though he’s joking, the fact he’s suggesting
that he might have had carnal knowledge of these women
makes them applaud and yell with approval, leading him to
comment on what a ‘very sexual crowd’ it is.38
Both comics work to win their audience’s affection. At the
beginning of his first live DVD, McIntyre bounds on at the
beginning with his trademark skip, apparently bursting with
happiness at being with his crowd: ‘Come on! Whoo hoo!
We’re here! It’s the Hammersmith Apollo! It’s my show! How
 Affection 111

exciting!’39 At the O2 Arena, he finishes the show by shouting,

‘What fun we’ve had!’ It seems like a spontaneous effusion of
mutual joy – celebrating the intensity of what has been shared
between performer and audience – although the effect is
slightly blunted when he says it again at the end of the encore.
He also avoids saying things that might alienate sections of
his audience. In an episode of his Comedy Roadshow, he tells
the audience in Belfast that he’s a football fan, adding, ‘I don’t
want to name my team because it makes people not like me.’40
Cook brazenly plays on the sexual element in his audience’s
attraction to him, starting by telling them, ‘We are going to
have a relationship tonight.’ There’s some laughter, a bit of
applause, and some excitable yelling. ‘I’m gonna go out with
you,’ he goes on, ‘we’re gonna date for a while. We’re gonna
make sweet, sweet comedy love with each other.’ Some more
female whooping. ‘And then suddenly without warning, I’m
not even gonna call you guys any more. [laughter]’41 The gag
might suggest that he’d be an unreliable lover for his audience,
but in fact he faithfully cultivates his audience’s affection
offstage, not only through social networking websites, but
also, as one journalist noted, he ‘will sign every last autograph
after a show and treats his fans with gracious, even unprec-
edented respect.’42
This respect comes out onstage in a routine in which he
tells the audience how being with them helped him deal with
the death of both his parents from cancer: ‘I found myself
almost every single night after they both passed away onstage
because nothing made me feel better than making other people
feel good and having a good time with you guys.’43 This
statement unleashes a tidal wave of frenzied applause cheering
and whistling from the crowd at the Halifax Metro Center in
Novia Scotia.
There are critics of both comics who have focused more on
their fans than the performers themselves. Doug Stanhope has
stated, ‘I’m aghast at part of this species. I don’t hate Dane
Cook. I hate the people that laugh at Dane Cook.’44 Stewart
Lee’s ‘warm diarrhoea’ joke is, in fact, much more complex
112 GETTING THE JOKE

than the simple savage jibe that it suggests when quoted

out of context. It’s delivered during a routine in which Lee
is deliberately trying to suggest that he’s struggling to get a
laugh, and that only part of his audience are going with him.
At least part of the joke is that his own core audience – who
are clever enough to get what he’s trying to do – have been
thinned out by the kind of people who would sit at home and
watch McIntyre on TV. In fact, Lee’s audience is likely to be
made up of people who consider themselves to be discerning
comedy punters, and as such rather above watching the hit
comedian of the day.
This means the joke works on several levels. It’s partly
about Lee pretending his comedy is failing – for comic effect
– and it’s partly about his feigned arrogance in blaming the
audience for his failure. As discerning punters, the audience
can feel safe in the knowledge that he’s only kidding when he
lays into them, and also enjoy the jibe at face value – as a gag
at the expense of both McIntyre and the kind of people who
watch him on television.
A later joke from the same show is even more specific
in targeting McIntyre’s audience. After accusing his own
crowd – who he describes as the ‘fucking liberal intel-
ligentsia of Glasgow’ – of being the kind of people who
would harm his DVD sales by illegally downloading
material from the internet, he shouts: ‘That’s not a problem
Michael McIntyre has with his audience. [laughter] 1.3
million of them queuing up at Christmas to buy his DVD.
Like captured partisans digging their own mass grave.
[laughter and applause]’45
For comics and critics who look for artistry in comedy, the
problem with the ‘part of this species’ that laughs at Cook,
or the ‘captured partisans’ that follow McIntyre, is that they
love these comedians too much. People who don’t share this
love find nothing in the work of Cook or McIntyre to justify
it, but perhaps their real talent – perhaps even their artistry –
is simply to be able to inspire this affection in the first place.
What frustrates their critics is that such affection is essentially
 Affection 113

irrational, but this irrational pseudo friendship is actually a

central part of how most stand-up works.

Trying too hard

Some comedians reject the idea of trying to make audiences
like them. In a 2004 interview, Billy Connolly says: ‘When
you’re a comedian, trying to make yourself likeable cancels
out what you’re trying to do. There’s a fine line between doing
your stuff properly and being liked. I want my audience to
laugh, sure, but I don’t necessarily want to be liked.’46
This is a useful point, because just as people who try too
hard to be liked in their social circle in everyday life often turn
people off them with the slight air of desperation they give
off, stand-ups who are overly concerned with being liked can
make themselves dislikeable. This is probably what lies behind
the hatred Bob Monkhouse inspired in some critics. Words
like ‘insincerity, ‘smarm’ and ‘slimy’ suggest they objected to
what they saw as his attempts to ingratiate himself with them.
Adam Bloom, who delivers clever, offbeat gags in a mildly
hyperactive style, likens performing to his relationships with
women. He says he tries too hard with women he fancies,
whereas he is more relaxed and natural with women he
doesn’t, which, perversely tends to make him more attractive
to them. Different gigs have a similar effect:

Now I think a nice gig is when you drop your guard and
you’re just being completely genuine, and you’re not trying
to impress them … The thing is, when you’re actually doing
a gig where the crowd isn’t sure about you, you try a bit
hard to impress them, and then you’re putting on a bit of a
front, so desperation’s going to come across.47

Interestingly, Michael McIntyre identifies the point where

he started really hitting home with audiences as the moment
114 GETTING THE JOKE

when he lost his ‘air of desperation’ onstage, and stopped

trying too hard to be funny.48

Self-expression
One of the reasons most comics fear being disliked by
an audience is because stand-up is seen as a form of self-
expression. If it is the self that is being expressed, then it is the
self that the audience is rejecting. This is why Bob Monkhouse
found AA Gill’s attack so hurtful, like the personal rejection
of someone who refuses to shake your hand. The more
authentic the self-expression, the more comedians reveal their
true selves on stage, the more painful it will be if they are
rejected.
Stand-up hasn’t always been about self-expression, though.
Older comics, like the phenomenally successful Bob Hope,
did not reveal themselves in this way. Hope paid his writers
to come up with comic ‘poses’ for him, and one of them said
that he was ‘a manufactured personality, constructed out of
jokes’.49 The common view is that Hope never revealed much
of himself either onstage or offstage. In the 1970s, Joan Rivers
said, ‘Audiences nowadays want to know their comedian. Can
you please tell me one thing about Bob Hope? If you only
listened to his material, would you know the man?’50 This
distance might have made it easier for Hope to cope with
hostile audiences.
It was the sick comedians who introduced the idea of
stand-up as self-expression. Part of what made older comics
resent and fear Mort Sahl was that he spoke his mind onstage.
Sahl himself said that most comedians were ‘no more than a
card file’, whereas he ‘acted like a human being rather than
like a nightclub comedian’.51 Some established comedians,
like Alan King, saw the new style, realised its potency and
adopted it themselves, rejecting a gag-based style in favour of
expressing their opinions.
 Affection 115

Today, the idea that the comedian’s act should reflect his
or her real personality is commonplace. Comedian-turned-
playwright Patrick Marber argues that stand-up is based
on the premise: ‘This is my view of the world, this is my
little angle on life.’52 Frank Skinner agrees: ‘I’ve never been
so crazy about character-comics. You know, people who
just play a part on stage. I know it can be really funny but,
personally, I like to know the person who’s up there. I want
their opinions and attitudes … If I want characters, I’ll watch
a play.’53
Similarly, surreal comic Harry Hill dismisses the working
men’s club comedians of the past whose style was based on
unoriginal gags: ‘That’s not art, that’s kind of craft, isn’t
it? But then I think once everyone started doing their own
material, most people are putting over … something about
themselves, no matter how hidden it is.’54

Notes
1 ‘Copyright in Personality; VAF and Brussels Convention’, The
Era, vol.101 no.5207, 21 July 1938, p. 1
2 David Cross, Bigger and Blackerer, Sub Pop Records, 2010,
SP883. Note that this is the DVD version of the show that was
taped over two shows in one night. The CD version presents a
different selection of material, and omits this sequence.
3 Funny Business, BBC Two, 29 November 1992
4 Quoted in Phil Berger, The Last Laugh: The World of
Stand-Up Comics, New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000,
p. 423
5 Quoted in Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel
Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s, New York: Pantheon
Books, 2003, p. 546
6 The South Bank Show, ITV, 15 September 1996
7 Sarah Millican, Chatterbox Live, 4 DVD, 2011, C4DVD10358
8 Stand-Up with Alan Davies, BBC One, 19 June 2000
116 GETTING THE JOKE

9 See David Tushingham (ed.), Live 2: Not What I Am: The

Experience of Performing, London: Methuen, 1995, p.42
10 http://www.livejournal.com/community/eddieizzard/ [accessed
11 October 2004]
11 See Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians
of the 1950s and 1960s, New York: Pantheon Books, 2003, p.
567 (Bill Cosby); and Neil Brandwood, Victoria Wood: The
Biography, London: Virgin Books, 2002, p. viii (Victoria Wood)
12 See Cynthia True, American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story,
London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2002, p. xv (Sean Hughes); and
Garry Mulholland, ‘When Eddie Met Henry’, Time Out, 2–9
December 1998, pp. 22–5 (Eddie Izzard)
13 Quoted in Stand-Up with Alan Davies, BBC One, 3 July 2000
14 See Ben Thompson, Sunshine on Putty: The Golden Age of
British Comedy from Vic Reeves to The Office, London and
New York: Fourth Estate, 2004, p. 137 (Jo Brand), p. 139
(Jenny Éclair)
15 Archibald Haddon, The Story of Music Hall, London:
Fleetway, 1935, p. 91
16 Quoted in Gyles Brandreth, The Funniest Man on Earth: The
Story of Dan Leno, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1977, p. 46
17 Max Beerbohm, The Bodley Head Max Beerbohm (ed. David
Cecil), London, Sydney and Toronto: The Bodley Head, 1970,
p. 376
18 A. Crooks Ripley, Vaudeville Pattern, London: Brownlee,
1942, p. 37
19 Adam Sweeting, ‘It’s the way he tells ‘em – Adam Sweeting on
the contradiction that is Billy Connolly’, the Guardian, 13 June
1991, Arts section
20 Quoted in Adam Sweeting, ‘From Big Yin to Big Yank’, the
Guardian, 2 December 1992, Features p. 4
21 Adam Sweeting, ‘From Big Yin to Big Yank’, the Guardian, 2
December 1992, Features p. 4
22 The South Bank Show, ITV, 4 September 1992
23 Interview with Phill Jupitus, BBC Broadcasting House, London,
6 June 2004
 Affection 117

24 Interview with Mark Lamarr, Chiswick, 14 July 2004

25 A. A. Gill, ‘The Devil’s Work’, the Sunday Times, 9 August
1998, Features section
26 Nigel Farndale, ‘Insincerely Yours: After Five Decades of
Irritating People in the Name of Light Entertainment, Bob
Monkhouse Has Finally Been Recognised as a National Living
Treasure. Nigel Farndale Tries to Work out Why’, the Sunday
Telegraph Magazine, 13 September 1998, p. 26
27 Veronica Lee, ‘All Present and Politically Correct’, the
Observer, 25 August 2002, Review section p. 11
28 Interview with Alexei Sayle, University of Kent, Canterbury, 21
November 2003
29 Interview with Mark Lamarr, Chiswick, 14 July 2004
30 Steve Bennett from the Chortle website, quoted in Brian
Logan, ‘Boom, boom: They’ve taken over TV, they top the
book charts, they appear on Question Time – and now
they’re filling entire arenas night after night. Brian Logan on
the standup comedy explosion’, the Guardian, 11 November
2010, p. 19; and Paul MacInnes, ‘Michael McIntyre: a
comedian for the Cameron age’, Guardian Unlimited, 20
November 2009
31 Stewart Lee, ‘A funny thing happened to comedy … Stand-up
shows are now big business. Floating in the stars’ slipstream,
Stewart Lee wonders if his art-form can survive such success’,
the Independent, 28 November 2010, p. 2
32 Stewart Lee, If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask for
One, Comedy Central/Real Talent, 2010, COMEDY01
33 Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, 22 July 2011
34 Steve Johnson, ‘The hated Dane Cook wins over at least one
fellow comic’, Chicago Tribune, 13 May 2009
35 ‘Haters’ on Dane Cook, ISolated INcident, Comedy Central
Records, 2009, COMC30085.2
36 Michael McIntyre, Life & Laughing, London: Penguin, 2010,
p. 325
37 Michael McIntyre, Showtime, O2 Arena, London, 27
September 2012
118 GETTING THE JOKE

38 ‘One night stand/DJ Diddles’ on Dane Cook, Retaliation,

Comedy Central Records, 2005, 300304, disc two
39 Michael McIntyre, Live & Laughing, Universal, 2008,
8258740
40 McIntyre’s opening routine from this episode is included as
part of an extra feature on the DVD: Michael McIntyre, Hello
Wembley!, Universal, 2008, 8270608
41 ‘Intro/Riot’ on Dane Cook, Retaliation, Comedy Central
Records, 2005, 300304, disc one
42 Associated Press, ‘Is Dane Cook Actually Funny?’, http://
today.msnbc.msn.com/id/15643423/ns/today-entertainment/t/
dane-cook-actually-funny/ [accessed 19 October 2012]
43 ‘Dane Cook – Haters’ available at http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=h-q5tAlPFts [accessed 22 October 2012]
44 Steve Johnson, ‘The hated Dane Cook wins over at least one
fellow comic’, Chicago Tribune, 13 May 2009
45 Stewart Lee, If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask for
One, Comedy Central/Real Talent, 2010, COMEDY01
46 Christopher Middleton, ‘Silly Billy’, Radio Times, 20–6
November 2004, p. 34
47 Interview with Adam Bloom, by telephone, 29 June 2004
48 Michael McIntyre, Life & Laughing, London: Penguin, 2010,
p. 267. Like Bloom, he links this with his personal life, saying
that his future wife started taking more interest in him when he
stopped trying too hard.
49 Sherwood Schwartz, quoted in John Lahr, Show and
Tell, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of
California Press, 2000, p. 203. Also see pp. 210, 213 for
more on this.
50 Quoted in Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel
Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s, New York: Pantheon
Books, 2003, p. 22
51 Quoted in Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel
Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s, New York: Pantheon
Books, 2003, p. 94
 Affection 119

52 Quoted in David Tushingham (ed.), Live 2: Not What I Am:

The Experience of Performing, London: Methuen, 1995, p. 96
53 Frank Skinner, Frank Skinner, London: Century, 2001, p. 80
54 Interview with Harry Hill, by telephone, 26 August 2004
 CHAPTER NINE

The personality spectrum

Who is Omid Djalili?

British Iranian comedian Omid Djalili is on the stage, talking
in a thick Arab accent which separates the word ‘Israel’
into three distinct syllables: Iz-rye-ell. His delivery is rich
with cheerful enthusiasm, which excites the audience. Their
laughter is energetic and frequently breaks out into sponta-
neous applause:

But of course, ahhh – I am circumcised. [laughter] But I’m

having many psychological problem because I’ve had one
third of my doo-dah removed, er – [a few laughs] And
many people say, ‘You are an Arab, all Arab have one third
of doo-dah removed as child,’ I say, ‘Yes, but not the third
in the middle, you know?’ [laughter] ‘S a prime example of
an Arab knob gag, thank you very much, er – [laughter]’

The laughter comes not just from the joke itself, but also
from person telling it, and the fact that he lets the audience
know what he is doing by stoking up their laughter with little
comments like ‘Of course!’ But the Arab is not all he seems to
be: ‘Look, I know I give an impression of being a short, fat,
kebab-shop-owning, ahh – [laughter] I know what you are
thinking. Er – but inside of me,’ – suddenly, in the space of a
122 GETTING THE JOKE

comma, he changes his voice to that of a well-spoken, middle-

class Englishman and continues:

there’s an English ponce, erm, screaming – [laughter]

screaming to get out, because, erm – Yeah, no, I don’t talk
like that at all, ladies and gentlemen, er – And actually, the
reason why I’m here is, er – ‘Cos – I’ll tell you something
– at the office, they said I was really funny. [laughter] You
know what I mean? [laughter continues and erupts into full
applause, cheering and whistles. The response dies down,
and then there’s another surge of laughter]

The audience go mad, because they realise that they’ve

been had. The man talking into the microphone does not
have the Arab accent with which he started the act, he’s
an overenthusiastic middle-class office worker, probably like
some of them. They clearly recognise the type: ‘Thought
I’d give it a go, and ahh – [laughter] Actually, erm – I’ll
be honest, I’m not the funniest bloke at the office, erm –
[laughter] I’m the second funniest bloke, erm – ‘Cos Keith
is nuts! [laughter]’1
This is a practical joke at the audience’s expense. We have
come to expect stand-up to be a form of self-expression, so we
tend to assume that the comedians we see onstage are more or
less playing themselves. We see an olive-skinned person with
the authentically Middle Eastern name of Omid Djalili on
stage, so when he speaks with a thick Arab accent, we assume
it’s genuine.
When the accent switches, the joke is revealed. Our stereo-
types have been challenged as we realise how ordinary this
office nutcase is, without any of the ethnic baggage that’s been
projected on to him. But this is still not the real Djalili. He was
an actor, not an office worker, before he became a comedian.
It’s another fake persona, which Djalili created to get the
maximum comic effect out of the practical joke:

Comedy’s all about putting opposites next to each other,

 The personality spectrum 123

so I thought … ‘Who would be the most surprising person

to do this really loud character?’ and decided [on] the
stupid office bloke, you know … I just thought to play off
the Arab character, you’ve got to find the most diametri-
cally opposed character … that character then becomes
a running gag, because then that’s not me … you merge
yourself into it.2

Stephen K. Amos used to play a very similar trick, playing on

his own background by starting his act in a heavy Nigerian
accent, flirting outrageously with women in the audience:
‘Uhh, look at this pretty lady, don’t fight it, I can tell by your
eyes that you want me. Mm? [laughter]’ Then the accent is
abruptly dropped – replaced by cooler, more cynical Cockney
tones – as he confesses, ‘Oh, fuck it, I can’t keep it up, er –’
Uproarious laughter gives way to applause and cheering, over
which he tells them: ‘It’s all a joke. I’ve never left the country!
[laughter]’3
For Amos, the idea behind this was to ‘play on people’s
perceptions [of] who they think I am.’ He wanted to

come out in a character that was totally believable … And

see what they’d laugh at while talking as that character …
And it was really quite interesting to do that … they buy
into that character and then the minute you flip it and go,
‘Actually, I’m one of you, I’ve never been to Africa in my
life,’ that was very good, for me.

The audience didn’t always see the funny side when he

revealed the practical joke he had played on them:

[I]n fact I could work quite hard at that because in the early
days when I used to do that, some of the audience used to
get really pissed off that I had taken them in, and removed
a rug from under their carpets, so I had to find a way of
doing it that wasn’t so kind of, ‘Yah! See! Got you!’ But
more subtle that that.4
124 GETTING THE JOKE

The prank that Djalili and Amos played on their respective

audiences is very clever, because it exploits the ambiguity of
identity at the centre of stand-up comedy. It’s tempting to see
stand-ups as falling into two categories – character comedians
and those who perform as themselves. In fact there is not so
much of a clear dividing line between the two as a continuous
spectrum of approaches, each example subtly shading into the
next.

Character comedians
At one end of the personality spectrum are character comedians.
There’s a clear division between Steve Coogan and the various
guises he adopts in his stand-up act: Paul Calf, the drunken,
working-class Manchester lad in false moustache and blond
wig styled in a way that would shame even a 1980s footballer;
Pauline Calf, Paul’s sister, telling tales of promiscuity, in
cascading blond curls that reek of trashy glamour; Duncan
Thicket, the impossibly crap new comedian in nasty shell suit
top and woolly hat; and Ernest Moss, the tedious northern
safety officer in boiler suit and hard hat. The separation
between comedian and character is clearly signalled by the
theatrical costumes, the wigs, the make-up, the names he gives
them and the very fact that he appears in multiple identities.
The distance between performer and character can be
shocking. Harry Enfield, who performed characters in his
stand-up act before using them in TV sketch shows, writes
about being approached by a man in the street who says,
‘You’re Harry Enfield, aren’t you? I love your characters!
Stavros cracks me up and as for Loadsamoney – he’s the biz!
But I saw you on Wogan last night – you’re a right prat in real
life, aren’t you?’5 Similarly, Bob Monkhouse recalled his shock
at being introduced to Rex Jameson, the performer behind the
comedy drag act Mrs Shufflewick: ‘[T]he mere idea that this
five-foot twenty-three-year-old with a face like a young Buster
 The personality spectrum 125

Keaton could have been the dirty old woman I’d seen on the
stage of both the Windmill and the Metropolitan, Edgware
Road, seemed incredible.’6
Al Murray has enjoyed a hugely successful stand-up career
in the guise of the Pub Landlord, a character he developed
almost by accident at the 1994 Edinburgh Fringe. He was
working on Harry Hill’s Pub Internationale, and on the
opening night – when they realised they needed somebody
to link the various items – he volunteered to compère the
show. The conceit was that the actual MC hadn’t turned up,
so the manager of the bar where they were performing had
been called on to step in at the last minute. The show was
nominated for the Perrier Award, and went on a long tour. By
the end of it, Murray had a character he could base an act on.
The Pub Landlord is hectoring, boorish and xenophobic,
with a cast iron certainty of his own opinions no matter how
glaringly illogical they may be. Murray explains that ‘the most
obvious thing’ about the character is that:

[H]e really is not me, and he couldn’t be any less like me.
But he’s a good starting point. I mean the thing is if I had to
do me … I literally don’t know where to start. I mean I’m
interested in all sorts of diverse and disparate things that
I know perfectly well no self-respecting audience is ever
going to want me to talk about – and certainly not going
to laugh at … the Pub Landlord is an immediate way of
dealing with that issue.

He goes on to explain how he approaches the role as a

performer:

I don’t disappear into him. It’s not a Stanislavskian thing.

I mean I think a lot of him now has become a tuned reflex
… I’m not thinking, ‘What does he have for breakfast?
What’s his middle name?’ I have a very pragmatic approach
to that which is if his middle name’s funny then I know
what his middle name is. If what he had for breakfast is
126 GETTING THE JOKE

funny then I’ll know what he had for breakfast … rather

than that Stanislavski or that Method idea that you need to
know everything about the character and everything that’s
happened to him.

The character’s invented backstory – a train wreck of a

social life, with a failed marriage and repressed homosexual
desires – all serves to underscore the satire, highlighting the
ridiculousness of his view of the world. Moreover, the clear
distinction between performer and character means that when
the Pub Landlord says something offensive or ignorant, this is
the character’s opinion, not Murray’s: ‘Every now and again I
think, “Oh my God, did I say that?”… And certainly watching
videos back and stuff, when I’m in an edit suite I find the
whole thing really quite appalling … you know, like, “How
am I getting away with this?” But it is the fool’s licence …’7

Exaggerated personas
Further along the spectrum are stand-ups who adopt an
exaggerated persona but leave the dividing line between
performer and persona unclear. Comics like Joan Rivers and
Jenny Éclair might have stage names and wear outlandish
clothes, but they use both names and clothes offstage as well
as on. For the audience, it’s easy to mistake the persona for the
person. For the comedian, the dividing line between the two
is clearer. Rivers acknowledges that her act is partly autobio-
graphical, but sees her persona as ‘like a party dress I put on’.8
Éclair has divided her wardrobe into sections, one end for her
offstage self the other for her stage persona. In her car stereo,
she has tapes for herself and tapes for her onstage character.9
Milton Jones is a mid-spectrum act who is probably closer
to the character comedian end than the performing-as-himself
end. His appearance is plausible but startling. The hair is
gelled into weird, spiky shapes. The garish Hawaiian shirts
 The personality spectrum 127

and charity shop pullovers he wears are exquisitely unfash-

ionable. His delivery suggests somebody who is endearingly
unhinged – the voice slow, rather deep and sonorous, the
face sometimes wrinkling as though disorientated, or perhaps
breaking into an idiot grin. Jones refers to his onstage self in
the third person, calling it ‘the character’. It’s as strange as
his material. Here’s a typical excerpt. I’ve split it into lines to
suggest the pauses he uses, and noted how long each big laugh
is to indicate the efficiency of his comedy:

I was walking along today – [a few laughs]

And on the pavement – I saw a small, dead, baby ghost. [a
few laughs]
Although thinking about it –
It might’ve been a handkerchief. [laughter: 19 seconds]
Before we start – [laughter]
I’d just like to say, er – to the old man –
Who was wearing camouflage gear, and using crutches who
stole my wallet earlier –
You can hide, but you can’t run. [laughter and clapping:
10 seconds]
Tell me – if you’re an earl, and you get an OBE – do you
become an earlobe? [laughter: 9 seconds]
You know – when you’re in a relationship –
What’s that like? [laughter and a few claps: 8 seconds]
Sometimes I think I should settle down and have a mature
relationship, but then I think to myself – it’s the middle of
the conker season! [laughter: 10 seconds]10

It’s comedy that disrupts normal thought processes:

everyday objects are seen in an extraordinary new light; old
sayings are reversed, and words moulded into new shapes;
an introduction to an observational bit about relation-
ships becomes an admission of loneliness; a grown man is
more interested in childhood games than girlfriends. Jones
invented the character to provide a context for his mind-
mashing comedy:
128 GETTING THE JOKE

The character didn’t really evolve for four or five years.

And as I began to do that, I put hair wax in and put on a
silly jumper … that’s provided more of a signpost for the
type of material I was doing. Probably sort of helped me,
especially in the harder clubs, you know, Romford on a
Monday night or something, where some slightly middle-
class bloke coming along and doing slightly wordplay
stuff was somehow a bit threatening. Whereas if you stick
your hair up and put on a jumper, ‘Oh, ‘e’s mad!’ It’s OK
then.11

Exactly as I am
At the far end of the spectrum from character comedians
are acts where the person we see onstage appears to be an
authentic human being, unaffected by the process of perfor-
mance. Jo Brand says that the person she projects onstage
differs from her offstage self ‘hardly at all, to be honest’,
chuckling as she qualifies this, adding, ‘I mean hardly at all in
public anyway.’12 Margaret Cho argues that her very personal
approach separates her from other stand-ups:

I think a lot of people, like, are in a performance and [have]

really separate identities … I don’t have, like, a character
or whatever, to me it’s just kind of the same – what I talk
about … and what makes me laugh in life in general makes
it into my work in some way. So I think I have less of a …
separation between the two.13

For Sarah Millican, ‘the persona is exactly as I am.’ She is

aware of the contrast between how she looks and what she
talks about in her act – looking like ‘a relatively frumpy sort
of woman’ and talking about ‘filth’, to use her own words –
but this is an honest representation of herself, rather than an
artful construction:
 The personality spectrum 129

It was quite organic, it was never: ‘Well I’ll tell you

what I’ll do. If I wear something flowery, they’re never
gonna think I’m gonna talk about filth!’ It was just that
I talked about filth … This is what I’m like in the house.
I’m rude in the house and I swear a lot in the house …
it was never a conscious decision to look like that and
say those things as a contrast. It just so happens that
that sort of juxtaposition was quite natural … there was
quite a nice quote that I looked like a schoolteacher, but
with the mouth of a biker. Almost perfectly sums me up
at the time.14

This kind of approach means laying the self bare. As the

American writer David Marc puts it:

Without the protection of the formal mask of a narrative

drama, without a song, dance, or any other intermediary
composition that creates distance between performer and
performance, without even, necessarily, some remarkable
physical trait or ability to gratuitously display, the
stand-up comedian addresses an audience as a naked self,
eschewing the luxury of a clear cut distinction between
art and life.15

Veteran alternative comedian Tony Allen also uses the analogy

of nakedness: ‘A raconteur comedian walks on stage relatively
naked. He speaks directly to the audience in the first person.’16
Phill Jupitus extends the analogy, likening stand-up to the
commercial exploitation of sex:

I’ve always had this belief that you have to have something
wrong with you to want to do stand-up, because it is
putting yourself (particularly as a performer) in possibly
the most vulnerable position you can be in, aside from the
people that fuck each other in Amsterdam for money, you
know. I think it’s really baring and putting yourself out
there…17
130 GETTING THE JOKE

For some stand-ups, the self they reveal onstage is actually

more naked than their offstage self. Victoria Wood, for
example, has said: ‘I used to feel that the real me was on the
stage and the rest of me was fumbling to catch up … That
when I was on stage it was talking honestly and communi-
cating with people, that I had difficulty doing the rest of the
time.’18

The person in the persona

But even the concept of a continuous spectrum from character
to naked self does not really capture the subtle interweaving
of truth and fiction in the onstage identities of stand-up
comedians, as Milton Jones points out:

I think that…there are two types of comedian in the sense

that there are some who are completely the same offstage
as they are onstage, and then there are those who are more
of an act. And even people who appear to be themselves,
it’s a heightened version… it’s like part of them, it’s them
on showing off mode or whatever it is. And I think that
even my character is a part of me. Feeling slightly outside
things sometimes. And so rather than attempt to join in, I’ll
accentuate the outsider in me.19

He’s not the only performer from near the character end of
the spectrum to feel that the heightened persona presented
onstage is actually derived from an authentic part of the self.
Johnny Vegas – a shambling, self-pitying, apparently drunken
figure who appears onstage wearing an unlikely ensemble of
brown leather jacket and old-fashioned gentleman’s trousers
turned into flares by having shiny yellow triangles sewn into
them – seems to be a creature of pure fiction. This is reinforced
by the name. Professionally, he is Johnny Vegas; in everyday
life, Mike Pennington.
 The personality spectrum 131

The tales of woe with which he wins over audience are

wildly implausible. In a northern voice which sounds as if he
has smoked 40 a day since birth, he shares his delusions about
being a great entertainer and recalls his father sneering at his
attempts to become a potter. As he gets into the act, the stories
get stranger. He tells of a holiday to Wales, where the locals try
to burn him as a witch because his Coco Pops have turned the
milk brown, forcing him to escape dressed as a sheep, only to
be captured, sexually abused and exhibited as a talking animal
oddity.20
It seems cut and dried that Vegas is a purely fictional
character, but the truth is not so simple. Pennington shares
more than just a voice and a body with Vegas. Just as he
says in his act, he really did study pottery at Middlesex, and
he really did get a third-class degree. Offstage, Pennington
sounds like Vegas, his accent originating from a working-class
upbringing in St Helens. Like Vegas, Pennington is not averse
to heavy drinking, and enjoys the ambiguity surrounding the
apparent onstage drunkenness: ‘My character, Johnny Vegas,
drinks on stage, but I think it’s better to maintain some sort of
is-he-isn’t-he mystique, a bit like Dean Martin.’21
Harry Hill presents similar ambiguities. Like Johnny Vegas,
he is towards the character end of the spectrum. It is difficult
to reconcile the well-known fact that offstage he is an
ex-doctor called Matthew Hall with the Dadaesque figure that
scuttles around the stage in a flamboyant costume, dispensing
bizarre non-sequiturs and myriad catchphrases, face and
voice twitching with exaggerated mannerisms. It stretches
credibility that he is like this in everyday life – walking down
the road to post a letter with trademark beetle crushers on
his feet, row of pens protruding from jacket pocket, head
disappearing into a voluminous shirt collar; screwing up his
face and saying ‘mm-mm’ while helping his children with
their homework; kicking up his leg and shouting ‘Goal!’ as he
opens his bank statement.
The gap between onstage and offstage selves starts to yawn
when he is interviewed. Appearing on a documentary in 2000,
132 GETTING THE JOKE

we see him in pretty much the full stage costume talking about
his comedy calmly and rationally, in the guise of the normal
human being that lies behind the persona. There are none
of the usual verbal or physical tics.22 Hill prefers the kind of
interview he does on the Des O’Connor show. Here, he can
fully adopt his stage self because, ‘He asks me a question that
leads directly to a gag.’ Appearing as his offstage self is less
comfortable:

I never wanted to do TV interviews or any of that crap,

to be honest … I’ve got forced into it … I kind of can’t be
bothered to carry it on … I prefer not to do them really,
because I think it spoils it, actually, and I always admired
that about Tommy Cooper … I don’t think you ever saw
him being serious in anything, you know. Even on, like,
Parkinson, he’d just do his act.

But if the person is clearly distinct from the persona, this

doesn’t mean that there is no point of contact between the
two, and Hill explains that the person he becomes onstage is
actually an element of his real personality:

Normally, I’m quite shy (or I was a shy person,

funnily enough, since doing comedy it’s made me more
confident), but I think the stage persona is … confident,
it’s the kind of show-off … What I love about it is being
able to just show off and, you know, do the sort of silly
things that you can’t get away with in your private life,
basically. It’s a kind of release. It’s like going on stage
and shouting.

The fact that his persona is rooted in part of his person-

ality, and isn’t just a simple fabricated character, gives lie to
the criticism which has been levelled at Hill: that we learn
nothing about him from his act, that it is not an outlet for
self-expression as stand-up should be. Hill defends himself
vigorously from this:
 The personality spectrum 133

I think that’s missing the point, really. ‘Cos I think people

always say that … [Y]ou could criticise my act by saying,
‘It’s not about anything. You know, it’s just silly.’ But I
think it says a lot, actually. Without getting too up-your-
own-arse, just about the kind of human condition, really …
[W]hat I’m saying, I think, is, ‘Everyone’s an idiot … what
is the point? … Everyone’s as bad as everybody else. It’s
ridiculous, it’s stupid.’ Sort of.23

Exaggeration
Just as there are elements of authenticity in exaggerated
personas, so there are elements of exaggeration in comedians
who apparently go onstage as a naked self. Andre Vincent,
who has an irresistible compulsion for sick jokes, describes
his stage self as, ‘Maybe 10 per cent more. There might be a
slight switch where I just kind of go, “Whoop!” and I go up
one. Just a little bit bolder. But … the evil and spite is there
throughout my whole life. It really is.’24 Mark Lamarr also
talks about exaggerating negative traits: ‘I don’t really think
of it as a persona, it’s a sort of louder, slightly more vengeful
version of me. But it is certainly me, and there are very few
lines I’ve ever said that I wouldn’t back up …’25 Mark Thomas
says his stage persona is defined not just by exaggeration, but
also by selection: ‘You edit out the boring bits. You know, and
you highlight the interesting bits, and the significant bits and
that’s what you do. That’s … what it is. It’s a bigger version
of me … a more succinct version of me, without the moaning
and the rambling.’26
For many comedians, going onstage brings out the same
side of themselves as a social occasion. Rhys Darby, for
example, says:

I think the onstage self is like an extreme version of the

offstage self. So, like, when I’m offstage, I’m normally a bit
134 GETTING THE JOKE

more reserved, a bit more shy, especially around people I

don’t know. But if I’m around people I do know, my friends
and people like that, if I’m comfortable, then I’ll be as zany
as possible, you know, and wacky and what have you, so
when I’m onstage, it’s that coming out … I mean, when I’ve
been at parties and had a few drinks, or whatever’s going
down, I’ve noticed that I’ve become that person.27

Shelley Berman explains that in both stand-up comedy and

in social situations, there’s an attempt to impress, but also an
underlying authenticity:

I think we all put our best foot forward, no matter what.

You go to a party, you are your best self, whatever you are.
You’re doing your best self … I do hope that I’m always
honest. I do hope that whatever self is there is shooting
straight and not being affected. But I can’t swear to it. I
think that an audience can smell dishonesty a mile away. I
swear that audiences can see the imperceptible. I know that
they can see it when you’re sweating inside, they can see it
if you have a hole in your sock, they can tell, they know it.
There’s something about when you’re talking about a large
group of people, you’re talking about people who can see
something. And, you know, I don’t believe it’s possible to
act your way out of it.28

Josie Long acknowledges both authenticity and artifice in

her stage persona: ‘It is me and I try to be, like, as earnest as
possible with it. Obviously it’s not at the same time, and it is
really artifice.’ Onstage, she’s ‘a lot more ramped up’ than she
would normally be, and uses the way she jokes around with
friends in her act. Interestingly, she suggests that drawing
on the energy and humour of her social life in the act has
an effect on how she is offstage: ‘[I]t’s funny ‘cos when I’m
not performing, like when I didn’t do Edinburgh, I found at
parties I was like loads more fun … it’s ‘cos I didn’t have, like,
my outlet to calm me down the rest of the time.’29
 The personality spectrum 135

Adapting to the conventions

John Harrop points out that there’s a crucial difference
between the actor who is ‘both present on the stage and
yet at the same time absent, replaced by the illusion he
or she creates’, and musclemen, Miss Universe contestants
and stand-up comedians who are ‘projecting themselves’.
However, he qualifies this point by saying that performers
who project themselves ‘may be making adaptations to the
conventions of the performance’.30
This is a crucial point – however authentic the person
behind the mike may seem, the very fact of being onstage must
affect the way they behave. I become very aware of this in a
gig at Alexander’s Jazz Theatre Bar, Chester, in the late 1990s.
I’ve done their Saturday shows before, where the punters are
packed in so tightly that the place bulges at the seams, but
this is the first time I’ve done their Wednesday night show. I
sit there waiting for the audience to arrive, but it just doesn’t
happen. When I go on, there are literally only about six paying
punters watching the show.
I get down off the stage, gather the tiny audience together
around one table and sit down with them. I’ve never
consciously created a stage persona, and I’m not aware of
undergoing any kind of transformation as I make the long
walk over to the mike stand, but I find myself having to
consciously tone down my delivery so as to avoid alienating
them. My normal performance energy would seem bizarre
when I’m sitting across a pub table from the people I’m
talking to. I force myself into normal conversation mode so
that the prepared material sounds even more spontaneous
than it usually does. It works – they laugh in the right places.
I get to my final routine – a medley of Clash song parodies
played on the mandolin – and realise that it just isn’t going to
work if I’m sitting on a pub stool. I get back on to the stage
and adapt once more to the conventions, cranking myself
back up into performance mode.
136 GETTING THE JOKE

Stand-up gigs come in all shapes and sizes, demanding

different kinds of adaptation. Phill Jupitus describes how
different gigs brought out different sides of him:

I think when I did my early telly, I relished in this very

boisterous Essex Boy image, which … was just born out of
nerves more than anything. The … fear of the crowd, and
fear of something new. I would very often hide behind that
persona. That was Jongleurs Phill. Jongleurs Phill wore
a leather jacket, DMs and told the audience to fuck off.
Whereas Phill that did live stand-up shows, on his own,
[where] people just came to see him, was a delicate little
flower.31

Like Jupitus, Rhona Cameron finds that theatre gigs allow

her to be pretty much herself, but when she performed on
the male-dominated London comedy circuit, she had to adapt
herself because more was demanded of her as a female act:

It’s different for men, ‘cos men can go onstage and mumble
and the audience accepts it a bit more, but as a women you
had to be much better than that. When I was doing it, there
was only about two women that would even get booked at
the [Comedy] Store … you had to just go there, bang-bang-
bang, use your punchiest material, which was always hard
for me because I didn’t have punchy material, I was like a
storyteller. 32

Jeremy Hardy argues that the way comedians change when

they get on to the stage is just like the adaptations we make in
certain social situations:

[T]here’s a persona in as much as we have different

personae that we use in our lives, you know, like talking
to your mum, talking to the doctor, we adopt slightly
different voices … people on stage, usually their accents
become more common and they swear more. We swear
 The personality spectrum 137

more. Because that’s one of the aspects of ourselves that we

project. So it’s not acting in the sense that it’s an observed
and learnt and performed character, but it’s acting in the
sense that it’s a performance, and you’re having to give
the impression that this is what you really want to do at
that moment, even though you might have been crying
in the dressing room a minute earlier … We’re all kind of
performing all the time in a sense, albeit subconsciously,
and [stand-up is] just one of the performances that we give.

He goes on to admit that he hardly bothers to adapt to the

conventions anymore:

The performance has kind of gradually gone from what

I do … and it gets less affected as I go on, which may or
may not be a good thing. It … is pretty much me onstage,
talking. And if I’m in a bad mood then that’s visible …
That’s probably an abuse of the position, it’s not giving
people their value for money, but, you know, I think it’s
quite interesting that you go on with the mood that you’re
in …33

However small the change though, the fact of performing a

stand-up comedy act must require some form of adaptation, if
nothing else to adapt to the fundamental convention of being
funny onstage. As Mark Lamarr puts it: ‘Jack Dee said to me
once that I’m the nearest offstage to what I am on. I mean
obviously I’m a lot less funny offstage, because I’m … not
needed to be.’34

Notes
1 Various artists, Stand-Up Great Britain, Laughing Stock, 2000,
LAFF CD 105, track 9
2 Interview with Omid Djalili, by telephone, 28 June 2004
138 GETTING THE JOKE

3 Live at the Apollo, BBC One, 17 December 2007

4 Interview with Stephen K. Amos, by telephone, 18 September
2012
5 Harry Enfield, Harry Enfield and his Humorous Chums,
Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1997, p. 6
6 Bob Monkhouse, Over the Limit: My Secret Diaries 1993–8,
London: Century, 1998, pp. 38–39
7 Interview with Al Murray, by telephone, 2 April 2012
8 Quoted in Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel
Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s, New York: Pantheon
Books, 2003, p. 602
9 See Ben Thompson, Sunshine on Putty: The Golden Age of
British Comedy from Vic Reeves to The Office, London and
New York: Fourth Estate, 2004, p. 139
10 Various artists, 4 at the Store, BBC Audiobooks Ltd, 2004,
ISBN no. 0563523077
11 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 June 2004
12 Interview with Jo Brand, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1 April 2004
13 Interview with Margaret Cho, by telephone, 19 April 2012
14 Interview with Sarah Millican, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury,
23 April 2012
15 David Marc, Comic Visions: Television Comedy and American
Culture, Boston, London, Sydney and Wellington: Unwin
Hyman, 1989, p. 13
16 Tony Allen, Attitude: Wanna Make Something of it? The Secret
of Stand-Up Comedy, Glastonbury: Gothic Image Publications,
2002, p. 28
17 Interview with Phill Jupitus, BBC Broadcasting House, London,
6 June 2004
18 Quoted in Neil Brandwood, Victoria Wood: The Biography,
London: Virgin Books, 2002, p. 91
19 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 June 2004
20 This is a description of a routine featured in ‘Tough Crowd’,
an extra feature on Johnny Vegas, Who’s Ready for Ice
Cream?, Universal, 2003, 8209129
 The personality spectrum 139

21 Quoted in Judith Woods, ‘“Omega 3 Fatty Acids? Fantastic”;

The Drink is not a Problem, the Weight Needs to Go and the
Smoking is Cher’s Fault. But Johnny Vegas Feels Good, He
Tells Judith Woods’, the Daily Telegraph, 26 November 2003,
p. 24
22 Stand-Up with Alan Davies, BBC One, 3 July 2000
23 Interview with Harry Hill, by telephone, 26 August 2004
24 Interview with Andre Vincent, Central London, 14 July 2004
25 Interview with Mark Lamarr, Chiswick, 14 July 2004
26 Interview with Mark Thomas, Clapham, 27 February 2004
27 Interview with Rhys Darby, by telephone, 30 June 2004
28 Interview with Shelley Berman, by telephone, 5 August 2004
29 Interview with Josie Long, Horsebridge Centre, Whitstable, 18
February 2012
30 John Harrop, Acting, London and New York: Routledge,
1992, p. 5
31 Interview with Phill Jupitus, BBC Broadcasting House, London,
6 June 2004
32 Interview with Rhona Cameron, by telephone, 19 March 2004
33 Interview with Jeremy Hardy, Streatham, 1 April 2004
34 Interview with Mark Lamarr, Chiswick, 14 July 2004
 CHAPTER TEN

Onstage, offstage

The onstage-offstage boundary

The key to understanding the distinction between person and
persona in stand-up comedy is the boundary between the stage
and the rest of the world. Some performers adopt a distinct
identity when they cross the boundary, others make subtler
adjustments. On the moment of crossing it, the boundary is
very visible. Most comedians are visibly nervous before going
on. Their faces look taut, and their speech tends to come in
short bursts. As they walk out on to the stage, they become
the assured, natural person they present to the audience. Their
faces become expressive, their speech fluent.
However stark the boundary may seem to be, it’s not
impermeable. The comedian’s offstage life can easily seep
through it and spill out on to the stage. In an essay about
popular entertainers, actor and academic Clive Barker points
out how a performer’s private life can become incorporated
into his or her persona, like Judy Garland’s troubled private
life giving her performances an added sense of pathos.1
A classic example of this is the sad case of Michael
Barrymore’s attempt at a West End comeback in September
2003. Barrymore, whose act falls somewhere between stand-up
comedy and all-purpose light entertainment, had featured in
tabloid stories about his homosexuality, drunkenness and
142 GETTING THE JOKE

drug habits for years, and in 2001 the public was scandalised
when a 31-year-old man was found dead in his swimming
pool.
He tried to win his audience back with a show at the
Wyndham’s Theatre, but found he was playing to small and
hostile crowds, and the critics showed him no mercy. The
Guardian’s Mark Lawson wrote, ‘The problem is partly the
shadow of that fatal pool party. Legal investigations cleared
Barrymore of the more lurid insinuations, but the revelations
of his alarming hospitality make the slapstick and silliness of
his act harder to take.’2 Barrymore cancelled the show after a
few days, reportedly sitting backstage in tears saying, ‘I can’t
do this anymore. I don’t feel like Michael Barrymore out
there.’3
Barrymore was vainly trying to wish away the audience’s
knowledge of events, but other comedians willingly bring
episodes from their offstage life into their acts, no matter
how scandalous they may be. In June 2012, Jimmy Carr
became a news story when it transpired that he had made use
of a tax avoidance scheme. He was criticised by the Prime
Minister – keen to seem as if he was taking a hard line on
such schemes – and confessed to making a ‘terrible error of
judgement’.4 Appearing in Canterbury that September, Carr
starts the show by addressing the issue, telling the audience
that he’s had a great summer assuming ‘there’s no such thing
as bad publicity.’ He reflects on how odd it was to have David
Cameron breaking off from talks with President Obama just
to say, ‘Jimmy Carr’s a dick.’5
In 1980, the great Richard Pryor set fire to himself whilst
freebasing cocaine, and even such a traumatic event as this
was addressed in his act. Starting a 1981 show by asking for
a light, he comments: ‘Gotta be careful with these mother-
fuckin’ matches! [laughter and applause]’ He goes on to do
extended routines about both freebasing and his experience of
recovering from his injuries in hospital.6
Just as the offstage life can spill into the act, so the act
can spill out into the offstage life. Jack Dee’s comedy springs
 Onstage, offstage 143

from immaculate sullenness and cynicism. His misanthropic

persona is so well established that he can get laughs with
the simplest of sentences. In a 1997 show, he comments
on a minor TV personality of the time. ‘What about the
Gladiators?’ he says, emitting a sneering chuckle – which gets
a laugh. He does the snarl and mimed clawing action which
was the trademark gesture of a Gladiator called Wolf. There’s
a bigger laugh, and Dee smiles along with the audience’s
enjoyment of his fun-poking impression. ‘I’m Wolf,’ he says,
momentarily taking on the voice of his victim.
Then, in his own voice, he replies, ‘Are you?’ It’s beauti-
fully performed. His eyebrows raise themselves but his eyelids
can’t be bothered to follow. His mouth remains sullen and
down-turned. His voice suggests someone making a tiny
effort to be polite, whilst fighting monumental disinterest.
There’s a huge laugh, which breaks out into applause, the
whole response lasting nine seconds. As it builds, Dee smiles
and looks down modestly, as if enjoying the way the audience
share his disdain.7 There’s no obvious joke here, but Dee has
got three laughs, one of them very rich and full-bodied, simply
by inhabiting his persona with skill and subtlety.
Dee’s well-established persona can have a similar effect
in his private life, whether he intends it to do so or not. He
complains that people assume he’s never serious, seeing his
behaviour through the filter of his stand-up act: ‘I uninten-
tionally make them laugh because they think I’m being funny
when I’m not. No one buys “sincere” from me. They always
think I’m taking the piss.’8
Some comedians actively try to live up to the stage image,
though. Eric Morecambe, for example, felt a compulsion
to adopt his stage persona in any public situation. When
he was an up-and-coming comedian, Rowan Atkinson met
Morecambe and witnessed him in action:

The first thing that struck me was how funny he was in the
house … I remember thinking, ‘God, how oppressive to be
expected to be this funny all the time.’ My other thought
144 GETTING THE JOKE

was to wonder what it must be like for the family to live

with this man … Eric’s family had to live with this ‘act’
all the time, which must have been difficult. I then started
thinking about how difficult Eric must have found it to live
with himself … what must it have been like when he didn’t
feel he wanted to be funny and the pressure remained on
him to be so?9

In some cases, living up to the stage image is a conscious form

of marketing. This tendency goes back to the music hall. The
nineteenth century comedian George Leybourne, took on
the persona of a ‘swell’, a well-to-do merrymaker living the
alcoholic high life. His most famous song was ‘Champagne
Charlie’. In 1868, he entered into an exclusive 12-month
contract with William Holland to play the Canterbury Hall
for a fee of £1,500. The contract required him to live out the
role he played on stage in his private life, stating: ‘George
Leybourne shall every day, and at all reasonable times and
places when required to do so, appear in a carriage, drawn
by four horses, driven by two postillions, and attended by
his grooms.’ He was expected to wear his ostentatious stage
costume when he made these appearances, and give out
champagne to members of the public. The alcoholic drinks
which made him a star also contributed to his demise. He died
at the age of 42, from liver damage.10

Finding your voice

The personas which comedians inhabit in their act don’t
necessarily spring into life fully formed the first time they walk
out on to the stage. There’s skill involved in presenting the
self to a live audience, and it’s a skill which can take time to
learn. Comedians tend to call this process ‘finding your voice’.
Richard Pryor said that it can take 15 years for a comedian to
find his or her voice.11 Lenny Henry was still in his teens when
 Onstage, offstage 145

he made a successful appearance on the TV talent show New

Faces, which quickly led to live touring and further television.
He was disorientated by being thrown into showbusiness
quickly, and struggled to find his voice: ‘I was famous without
having achieved anything. The first ten years were really hard
… I didn’t have a personality.’12
For Les Dawson, the process was less gradual. He found his
voice suddenly, in response to adversity. Early in his career, he
had a week’s engagement as a comic pianist and singer at a
grim working men’s club in Hull. After a few days of getting
nothing more than contempt from the audience, he got drunk
and found himself unable to play the piano. Instead, he gave
vent to his feelings: ‘The silence was quite eerie, and suddenly
all the depression I felt pumped out of my mouth.’13 He
glumly told self-deprecating gags and made fun of the place
where he was performing. The audience loved it, giving him
‘a magnificent ovation’. The next night, though more sober, he
tried the same approach ‘to see if [he] had “found” a style that
an audience would appreciate’, and again got big laughs.14 He
had stumbled across the glum persona which would make him
famous.
Tony Allen has a theory about how the process of finding
the voice occurs:

Standing on stage in front of a live audience is a situation

that appears to trigger a sort of strategic identity crisis. In
order merely to survive, various sides of our personality
come to our assistance. However idiosyncratic or inappro-
priate these minority personalities appear to be, they
should all be given an audition.15

There’s certainly some evidence to support this idea. It’s

slightly spooky hearing Alexei Sayle talking about his stage
persona. He talks about it in the third person, and the way
he describes it makes it sound as if it is indeed a minority
personality which he’s not fully in control of. ‘Well I mean,
I always say that, you know, he’s completely different [from
146 GETTING THE JOKE

me] but I write his material,’ he explains. He says that his

transformation into this other person was ‘instantaneous’,
adding, ‘He was there right from the start.’ In the 1990s, Sayle
gave up stand-up comedy, and became a successful author.16
This meant performing at readings in bookshops and literary
festivals, and he had to be careful to avoid slipping back into
the stand-up persona: ‘The reason I have a lectern is to have a
barrier between me and the audience … if I just had a micro-
phone, he would start to reappear, I’m not kidding about that
… if I just have a microphone, he starts to come out.’17
In some cases, the minority personality of the stage persona
seems to be connected with some kind of emotional trauma or
even mental illness. Eddie Izzard has often discussed the effect
his mother’s death had on his life and work, talking about ‘a
childlike thing that I keep locked in after six, which is when
my mother died … There’s a kid there that comes in and
plays onstage.’18 Vaudeville comedian Bert Lahr suffered from
manic depression. The manic side of his personality came
out onstage, the depressive side in his personal life. Roseanne
Barr, who was a biting feminist stand-up before starring in her
own sitcom, has a minority personality she calls Cindy, which
developed in response to a difficult childhood. She once tried
to use Cindy as a character in a sketch on Saturday Night
Live, but found that ‘the other actors were real scared’.19

Costume
Because so much of stand-up comedy is about personality,
the clothes comedians wear onstage are extremely important,
whether these be items from the performer’s offstage wardrobe
or a distinctly theatrical costume. The great variety comedian
Max Miller based much of his comedy on double entendre
and innuendo. Skirting around the prevailing taboos about sex
and marital infidelity was daring, and his cheeky, audacious
persona was reflected in his outrageous costume. This clearly
 Onstage, offstage 147

appealed to his audience. The critic A. Crooks Ripley was just

as enraptured by Miller’s costume as he was by his physique:

He arrives at the crease as though he were a man come

to read the gas-meter, except that he wears a panama
and brown and white shoes with red heels, also, his hulk
is completely hidden in a polar-coat of crushing, exotic
incongruity … this outer envelope removed, he is seen in
the plumage of a rampant carp … then after you’ve had
your laugh, your smile becomes frozen and you feel a little
stupid if you’re honest with yourself, because the raiment is
extraordinarily exciting and most becoming; it is also one
of the several elements Mr Miller’s imitators have not, as
yet, had the temerity to emulate.20

Miller was at the height of his success when wartime rationing

and then post-war austerity restricted the clothing choice
available to most people, and men’s clothing tended to be
particularly drab. In this context, it’s easy to see how coming
on to the stage dressed in yards of colourful cloth could so
inflame A. Crooks Ripley’s passion.
When Eddie Izzard built his audience in the 1990s, his
colourful costumes gained much attention for a different
reason. As he puts it himself in his book Dress to Kill:
‘Probably I am the only transvestite comedian in the world at
this moment …’21 Izzard argues that his transvestism does not
involve imitating a woman so much as exercising the freedom
to wear clothing society normally denies to men.
This is borne out by his stage wear, which sometimes makes
him look more like a glam rocker than a drag act. In Definite
Article, for example, he wears shiny black trousers and high-
heeled boots, and a thigh-length, double-breasted jacket made
of scarlet crushed velvet. Earrings dangle from his ears, his
nails are painted, and his face is prettified with eye make-up,
blusher and dark lipstick. Certainly, this is not normal male
garb, but neither is it any more feminine than the stage-wear
of, say, the lead singer of the Sweet. Indeed, Izzard points out
148 GETTING THE JOKE

that ‘there’s rock stars who’ll put on eyeliner’, giving David

Bowie as an example.22 In more recent shows, the costume has
been more overtly transvestite. In Sexie, for example, he wears
false breasts and a leather miniskirt.
The transvestism affects the act in a number of ways. It
becomes the source of material – he’s performed a number of
routines on the subject. It makes him glamorous and exotic,
slightly separating him from the audience, and providing a
context for his tangential and often surreal humour. It’s also
a good source of publicity. It would be wrong to suggest that
Izzard has cynically exploited his sexual orientation, but it has
made a good talking point in interviews since he came out to
the Observer in 1991, and he looks fantastic on tour posters
and video covers.
But there’s another important effect, which is not to do
with how his audience perceives him, but how being open
about his transvestism in his act affects his performance. He
has said that he decided to wear skirts on stage because, ‘I
should have that freedom.’23 It certainly seemed to free him
up, because having made the choice, one critic noted that he
seemed ‘so much more physically relaxed’, and that previ-
ously, ‘Izzard’s body seemed to be struggling to escape from a
stonewashed denim prison’.24
Some comedians prefer more casual clothes than Miller’s
or Izzard’s, and this connects with the idea that the performer
we see onstage is more or less the same as he or she would be
offstage. The notion of stand-up as authentic self-expression
may have become firmly established by the likes of Mort Sahl
and Lenny Bruce, but the move towards greater naturalness
actually started earlier, when comedians started to wear
ordinary clothes on stage.
In the late 1920s, when Ted Ray was becoming established,
it was normal for front cloth comic comics on the variety
circuit to wear either formal dress or exaggerated theatrical
costumes. Having initially conformed to this, Ray struck upon
a startling innovation. He realised that if he wore ordinary
clothes – the kind of thing the men in the audience would have
 Onstage, offstage 149

been wearing – he would be more like them and so could form

a closer relationship with them:

From the moment I made my entrance I felt a warmth I had

never known before. I was one of them. I told my stories
casually and intimately as though they were in on the joke.
I wore my best lounge suit and, as far as my appearance
went, I might have just climbed up on the stage from the
front row of the stalls … I got laughs and earned them just
by being myself.25

Later, Frankie Howerd took a similar approach to stage wear

for similar reasons:

I wore an ordinary, far from immaculate, brown lounge

suit, since for my act it was vital to attempt to give the
impression that I wasn’t one of the cast, but had just
wandered in from the street – as though into a pub, or just
home from work … Why a brown suit? Because I thought
it was a colour that didn’t intrude. It’s warm and neutral
and man-in-the-street anonymous … When playing seaside
resorts I’d even wear shorts.26

The whole presentation of Howerd’s act was just as informal.

This made him extraordinary, but also attracted criticism. He
was attacked by a provincial critic for being unprofessional:
‘This man wears no make-up, doesn’t dress, doesn’t even take
a bow at the end.’27
When comedians wear everyday clothes on stage, what they
wear will inevitably be influenced by the clothing norms of the
culture within which they work. In the 1950s, the hungry i’s
owner Enrico Banducci advised Mort Sahl to reject a suit in
favour of a pair of casual slacks, an open-necked white shirt,
and a sweater. Sahl explains the reason for this choice: ‘Well,
the hungry i was a cellar. And it cost a quarter to get in, and I
really took the uniform of like a graduate student in Berkeley
so I wouldn’t look like I took myself seriously.’28
150 GETTING THE JOKE

On the current British stand-up scene, many comedians

choose stage clothes which reflect the increasing acceptability
of casual clothing. Jeans and a T-shirt have become a common
choice, and Mark Thomas is probably one of the most
successful comedians to adopt it: ‘It got to the stage where I’d
just wear whatever T-shirts were around, and it was just what
I’d got in the wash, frankly, what was clean. And I quite liked
… the simplicity of just a T-shirt and jeans.’29
Whereas for earlier comedians, dressing casually was an
innovation, for today’s stand-ups it is taken for granted. This
inevitably means an erosion of the onstage-offstage boundary,
as any item of clothing the comedian possesses is a potential
piece of costume. Adam Bloom says of his stage wear:

It’s whatever I’ve got on, but I’d never wear something in
the afternoon of a gig that I wouldn’t wanna wear onstage.
Nearly everything I own is clothes that I would wear
onstage … And my persona’s very honest, and therefore I’d
rather wear just a T-shirt. Ironed T-shirt, because I wanna
pay a little bit of respect for the fact that people have paid
money to see me … I think if somebody’s wearing a T-shirt
that’s creased onstage, what they’re saying is, ‘I didn’t care
enough about this gig.’30

Sometimes, the choice of what to wear onstage is political.

African-American comedian Timmie Rogers was one of
the first black comedians to play to predominantly white
audiences. When he started wearing a tuxedo instead of the
more clownish clothes black comics traditionally wore, he
was making an important point about the dignity of his race.
He met with resistance. The owner of the Los Angeles Clover
Club fired him.
Historically, stand-up comedy has been remarkably male
dominated, and this has led a number of female comedians
to adopt an androgynous look. Early in her career, Victoria
Wood used to wear trousers, a shirt and tie and a blazer.
Originally, Jo Brand’s look owed something to punk. A typical
 Onstage, offstage 151

early costume might have involved a bumper crop of spiked

hair, bright red lipstick, black T-shirt, black leggings and Doc
Marten boots. For her too, the choice was affected by the
sexual politics of comedy clubs, where most of the acts and
most of the hecklers are men:

I must say that I felt all the black stuff, it was easy, it
was kind of slightly androgynous, and I suppose I kind of
always felt that, particularly sort of being a female that
the less you drew attention to what sex you were, if you
were a woman, the easier it would be in some ways, you
know.31

The 1960s and 1970s saw elements of the hippy youth culture
creeping into stand-up in both Britain and the US. In Britain,
the comics who were emerging from the folk circuit tended
to have long hair and wear brightly coloured clothes influ-
enced by hippy fashions. Billy Connolly had wild hair and
an equally wild beard, and would push the fashions of the
time to the extreme, perhaps wearing boots shaped like big
bananas, or a shiny orange jumpsuit, flared in both arms and
legs. For him, this was a way of distinguishing himself from
more conventional comics, and giving him licence: ‘I wanted
to have an image that was a bit more than just the mohair suit
comedian style, the guy with a bow tie or whatever …Wearing
ridiculous clothes you could say what you pleased, because
you didn’t represent anything and so you couldn’t be blamed
for anything.’32
On the other side of the Atlantic, George Carlin was an
established comedian with a clean-cut image when he trans-
formed himself into a hippy. He was very nervous when he
first performed in his new identity, his long, straight hair,
beard, tie-dye T-shirt and jeans making him unrecognisable to
the audience. His act was similarly transformed, with material
about drugs and a looser, more physical style. He had found a
new, younger audience, and by embracing the counterculture,
he was also taking a political stance, rejecting conformity
152 GETTING THE JOKE

and aligning himself with the more radical elements in youth

culture.
Mark Thomas has used costume in a way that is more
tangibly political. He builds the politics of his act into the
entire organisation of his shows, with campaigning groups
selling T-shirts and other merchandise in the foyers of the
venues where he performs. Care is taken to make sure that the
clothing sold is ethically produced, avoiding sweatshop labour.
Thomas found an easy way to help them shift more products:
‘War on Want …were touring with us and they said, “Can you
wear a T-shirt, because we sell more if you’re wearing them?”
[I said,] “Oh, all right.” And so … it became a way of gener-
ating money for various … causes and campaigns.’33
Footwear might seem to be the most insignificant aspect
of stand-up comedy. Audiences probably don’t notice what
shoes a comedian is wearing on his or her feet, and in many
cases they wouldn’t even be able to see. In a comedy club,
the comic’s shoes may be well be obscured by tables or other
punters; in big theatres, shoes may be too small for the people
in the back row to see. But all stand-up comedians have to
have something to stand up in, and for some the choice of
shoe is an important practical consideration.
Ross Noble, for example, says, ‘I always wear skateboard
shoes. Because … they’re flat but they’re sort of bouncy at
the same time … ‘cos trainers are too runaroundy, you want
something that you can stand flat in.’ This is worth quoting
purely for the use of the word ‘runaroundy’, but it also
shows how shoes can affect performance energy. The chunky
skateboard shoes allow Noble to achieve the extraordinary
liveliness of his physical work, whilst also grounding him
and offering him control. Together with his long, curly hair
(which he describes as ‘heavy’), and the flared shirtsleeves
and trousers he wears, the shoes form part of an overall look
which he calls a ‘cartoony type thing’.34
Noble isn’t the only one who finds footwear important.
Rhys Darby says he wears sneakers, ‘so that I can jump
around, you know, because I do a lot of physical stuff’.35
 Onstage, offstage 153

Phill Jupitus says that changing from heavy boots to plimsolls

improved his performance: ‘It did feel different, yeah, it just
felt that you could scamper a little bit more … Whereas with
the boots, you’d stomp.’36
From the clothes they wear to the shoes on their feet,
costume is important to stand-up comedians, helping to form
their identity, affecting the way they perform, and sometimes
even making a political statement. Yet it seems that costume
is rarely something that is consciously decided, often being
found through trial and error. There was no conscious
strategy behind Ross Noble’s choice of stage wear: ‘Well, it’s
one of those things where I didn’t think it out, I just found
what worked, and then somebody pointed it out and I went,
“Oh yeah, that’s what I’ve done.”’37 Harry Hill’s distinctive
costume came about in a similarly haphazard way:

I just used to wear suits, you know, ‘60s suits from Oxfam,
and then I started wearing a tie in my first gig I did. And
that was just too kind of hot. Constricting. So I took that
off, and I thought, ‘Well … if you’re in showbusiness, you
make a kind of thing of it that you’re not wearing a tie,
you know, you shouldn’t be like just a bloke without a tie
on’ … so I used to just pull the collar up, really. And then
people would say, ‘Oh, that big collar of yours!’ And I was
kind of hunched over, so my head would sort of recede into
the collar. And then, when people started saying, ‘You’ve
got that big collar,’ I had them made, started getting them
made big.38

It was a longer process that led Milton Jones to find his bad
taste pullovers: ‘I think it was trial and error really, I tried
several things, you know, dressing up smart, dressing up
rough, dressing up like a tramp, you know, but you want it
to be minimal. And just enough to show the way. And not
like anyone else.’ He now has a selection of them, getting
them from charity shops, always for ‘under a tenner’. The
women who sell them to him often assume he’s buying them
154 GETTING THE JOKE

for everyday use: ‘[T]he lady says, “That’s just you, that is.”
And I say, “Yes, it is me.”’39 Her mistake may be funny, but it
also speaks volumes about the blurring of onstage and offstage
identities in stand-up.
Adam Bloom had a helping hand in deciding the best choice
of clothes:

In fact, my sound man in Edinburgh’97 said to me, ‘Adam,

you wore a shirt tonight, and last night you wore a T-shirt,’
and he said, ‘I think round neck looks funnier on you.’ And
when he said it, I knew exactly what he meant, and I knew
he was right. There’s something about, I’ve got quite a
funny face, haven’t I? I’ve got big, round eyes, I’ve got quite
a cartoony face. A shirt just gives that slightly conformist
thing.40

Mark Lamarr tended to wear smart, flashy clothes on stage,

his hair slicked into a quiff, with sharp sideburns. For him, this
was not a carefully chosen costume, but more an expression of
his youth and his working-class background:

I mean that was all it was, it was like, ‘Hey, it’s the weekend,
I’m dressing up.’ And of course, I worked every weekend of
my teenage, you know from 18 to 25, every weekend I ever
had was in a comedy club, so that was the only chance I’d
get to, you know, dress up for girls, probably.41

For actors, costume is an entirely separate category from their

offstage clothes. This may also be true for comedians, but
for many the distinction between costume and clothes is less
clear cut. What they wear onstage may simply be what they
happened to be wearing that day. As a result, the look they
become known for onstage can follow them into everyday life
– particularly when it involves their own hair.
When Wil Hodgson established himself as a comic he
sported bright pink hair fashioned into a mohican. This was
less an attempt to forge an outlandish stage image, more a
 Onstage, offstage 155

reflection of his offstage life. A keen fan of punk music, he

had his hair dyed pink, and the mohican came about when
his mum – a hairdresser – wanted to practice the style David
Beckham had just adopted, because ‘she was expecting an
influx of lads in Chippenham wanting mohican haircuts. And
she asked if she could try doing one on me. And I said, “That’s
fair enough,” because I didn’t have any job to go to …’ The
look worked well for his act, providing a visual context for
his tales of life in the outsider punk and skinhead subcultures
in the badlands of Chippenham, but this came at a cost to his
everyday existence:

It made me stand out more but this is the thing – people

don’t realise what a commitment that was … I used to go
to, like, Manchester, Liverpool, I couldn’t walk around.
I had to be careful where I went in between gigs. I
remember getting off the train at Manchester, at Piccadilly,
and some fucking twat … just grabs the top of my head
and goes, ‘Who the fuck are you??’ Like everyone’s stood
there in the street, they’re just fucking laughing along with
this …42

When Richard Herring grew a Hitler moustache for his show

of the same name in 2009, it was very much a choice made for
the stage act. The idea was to explore the taboos surrounding
this particular form of facial hair, to reclaim it for comedy –
with due respect to Charlie Chaplin – and simply to see how
people would react to him in everyday life if he grew one. As
with Hodgson’s hair, wearing his show on his face for a long
period became a major commitment:

[T]he joke rebounded on me, because I thought I was going

to do it for a week and I realised I had to basically do it
for the show, which then meant I had to have it for a year.
And that infects your whole life and actually impacted on
my life … It made me quite depressed and I felt judged
by people constantly, and worried everywhere I went
156 GETTING THE JOKE

that someone would … punch me, so it was exploring

that comedy-as-art but comedy-as-real-life and where the
division is, you know.43

Notes
1 Clive Barker, ‘The “Image” in Show Business’, Theatre
Quarterly, vol. VIII no. 29, Spring 1978, p. 8
2 Mark Lawson, ‘The Unforgiven: An Evening with Michael
Barrymore Was Bizarre and Unsettling’, the Guardian, 20
September 2003, p. 24
3 Quoted in Stephen d’Antal, ‘His Fall From Grace Has Been
Well Documented but Now the Shamed Entertainer is Trying
to Make a New Life for Himself in New Zealand; Will
Barrymore Ever be Able to Run Away from his Past?’, the
Express, 24 April 2004, p. 53
4 Quoted in ‘Comedian Jimmy Carr: I’ve made terrible error
over tax’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18531008
[accessed 23 October 2012]
5 Jimmy Carr, Gagging Order, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, 23
September 2012
6 Richard Pryor, Live on Sunset Strip, originally released 1982, in
…And It’s Deep, Too!The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings
(1968–1992), Rhino/Warner Bros., 2000, RS 76655
7 Jack Dee, Live in London, VVL/Polygram, 1997, 0475823
8 Andrew Duncan, ‘Jack of All Tirades’, Radio Times, 21–27
February 2004, p. 22
9 Gary Morecambe and Martin Sterling, Morecambe and Wise:
Behind the Sunshine, London and Basingstoke: Pan Books,
1995, p. 177. Also see p. 111
10 Peter Bailey, ‘Champagne Charlie: Performance and Ideology
in the Music-Hall Swell Song’, in J. S. Bratton (ed.), Music
Hall: Performance and Style, Milton Keynes and Philadelphia,
1986, pp. 50–1
11 Brian Logan, ‘Be Truthful – and Funny Will Come. To Mark
 Onstage, offstage 157

This Year’s Inaugural Richard Pryor Award for Comedy, We

Asked a Group of Comics to Put a Question to the Great
Stand-Up. Brian Logan Introduces the Results’, the Guardian,
9 August 2004, Arts pages p. 13
12 Andrew Duncan, ‘Lenny’s New Face’, Radio Times, 12–18
April 2003, p. 26
13 Les Dawson, A Clown Too Many, Glasgow: Fontana/Collins,
1986, pp. 72–3
14 Les Dawson, A Clown Too Many, Glasgow: Fontana/Collins,
1986, pp. 74–5
15 Tony Allen, Attitude: Wanna Make Something of it? The Secret
of Stand-Up Comedy, Glastonbury: Gothic Image Publications,
2002, p. 35
16 Sayle returned to stand-up in 2011
17 Interview with Alexei Sayle, University of Kent, Canterbury, 21
November 2003
18 Quoted in John Lahr, Show and Tell, Berkeley, Los Angeles
and London: University of California Press, 2000, p. 177
19 Quoted in John Lahr, Show and Tell, Berkeley, Los Angeles
and London: University of California Press, 2000, p. 128
20 A. Crooks Ripley, Vaudeville Pattern, London: Brownlee,
1942, pp. 35–6
21 Eddie Izzard (with David Quantick and Steve Double), Dress
to Kill, London: Virgin, 1998, p. 61
22 Eddie Izzard (with David Quantick and Steve Double), Dress
to Kill, London: Virgin, 1998, p. 62
23 Eddie Izzard (with David Quantick and Steve Double), Dress
to Kill, London: Virgin, 1998, p. 63
24 Ben Thompson, Sunshine on Putty: The Golden Age of British
Comedy from Vic Reeves to The Office, London and New
York: Fourth Estate, 2004, p. 103
25 Ted Ray, Raising the Laughs, London: Werner Laurie, 1952,
p. 67
26 Frankie Howerd, On the Way I Lost it: An Autobiography,
London: Star Books/WH Allen, 1976, pp. 67–8
158 GETTING THE JOKE

27 Frankie Howerd, On the Way I Lost it: An Autobiography,

London: Star Books/WH Allen, 1976, p. 68
28 Stand-Up America, BBC Two, 1 March 2003
29 Interview with Mark Thomas, Clapham, 27 February 2004
30 Interview with Adam Bloom, by telephone, 29 June 2004
31 Interview with Jo Brand, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1 April
2004
32 The South Bank Show, ITV, 4 September 1992
33 Interview with Mark Thomas, Clapham, 27 February 2004
34 Interview with Ross Noble, Orchard Theatre, Dartford, 24
June 2004
35 Interview with Rhys Darby, by telephone, 30 June 2004
36 Interview with Phill Jupitus, BBC Broadcasting House, London,
6 June 2004
37 Interview with Ross Noble, Orchard Theatre, Dartford, 24
June 2004
38 Interview with Harry Hill, by telephone, 26 August 2004
39 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 June 2004
40 Interview with Adam Bloom, by telephone, 29 June 2004
41 Interview with Mark Lamarr, Chiswick, 14 July 2004
42 Interview with Wil Hodgson, by telephone, 12 September 2012
43 Interview with Richard Herring, Gulbenkian Theatre,
Canterbury, 14 February 2012
 CHAPTER ELEVEN

Truth

In Eddie Izzard’s show Dress to Kill, there’s an extraor-

dinary routine about Engelbert Humperdinck. After telling
the audience that the popular singer was originally called
Gerry Dorsey, Izzard imagines the meeting where the
change of name was decided.1 He acts it out, showing
Dorsey’s managers trying out different possibilities. He has
them reeling out a string of bizarre names: ‘“Zinglebert
Bambledack! [laughter] Yengiebert Dangleban! [laughter]
Zanglebert Bingledack! [laughter] Winglebert Humptyback!
[laughter] Slut Bunwallah!” [laughter]’ He brings the
sequence to a climax by having one of the managers
reading back over the list of ridiculous names he’s come up
with – the penultimate one being ‘Engelbert Humperdinck’.
Another manager turns round and says, ‘No, no, go back
one, go back one.’ There’s a big laugh, and the audience
applaud.
Then Izzard changes the mood, becoming serious. He
announces, ‘But he’s dead now. D’you hear that? Yeah, today,
on CNN, I heard, just as I was coming out.’ He builds the
moment, adding a few details. The audience laugh uncer-
tainly. He assures them he’s serious, that he saw it on TV
before he came out.
Then he shakes his hands, shakes his head, and laughs,
saying, ‘It’s not true!’ There’s a big laugh. His eyes rise
upwards, as if despairing of the audience’s gullibility.
160 GETTING THE JOKE

Then he’s serious again: ‘No, it is true, erm –’ Another

laugh. He adds a few more details.
Then he shakes his head and smiles again, showing he’s
kidding. Another laugh.
He continues to repeat this sequence of confirmation and
denial six more times. Amazingly, each time he does it, he gets
a laugh. There are subtle variations. Sometimes he adds a few
words, sometimes he uses gesture alone. He smiles, narrows
his eyes and shakes his hand and his head to indicate he’s only
kidding. He nods slowly, adopts a serious face and widens his
eyes to indicate that he’s serious. The eyeliner he’s wearing
makes the wide-eyed look particularly funny.2
There are many things that make this a great stand-up
routine, like the childish joy of playing with language and
the perfectly judged performance. But what makes it truly
remarkable is that it plays with a central idea of stand-up
comedy: that it is about telling the truth. When Izzard tells
the audience that Humperdinck is dead, he convinces them
it’s true, even if their nervous laughter suggests they are not
completely willing to believe. The laughter he gets when he
admits he was only kidding is fuelled by the outrageousness of
lying about as serious a matter as somebody’s death to such a
large number of people. By repeating the sequence again and
again, he pushes his audacity to the limit.
Truth is a vital concept in most modern stand-up comedy
because of the idea that it is about authentic self-expression.
The boundary between offstage and onstage is blurred, and
in many cases, the audience believes that the person they see
onstage is more or less the same as the person they might
meet offstage. This inevitably means that there’s often an
assumption that what the person onstage says about his or her
life is more or less true. If comedians say they are gay, or they
just went on holiday, or they hate Mexican food, we generally
believe them.
Some comedians explicitly champion the idea of truth. In
a 2004 newspaper article, Richard Pryor was asked whether
he used to write to be truthful or just to make people laugh.
 Truth 161

‘Truthful, always truthful,’ he replied, ‘And funny will come.’3

At the Hammersmith Apollo in 2004, Billy Connolly is telling
an anecdote when he breaks off to warn us that there’s no
punchline because it’s a true story. He followed this up with
a line that perfectly sums up the point: ‘Life doesn’t have
punchlines.’4
For comics who started before Mort Sahl and the rest of
his generation introduced the idea that stand-up was about
expressing the self, the idea that truth could be funny without
being varnished by fictionalised jokework was unthinkable.
The producer of An Audience with Bob Monkhouse argued
with the veteran comedian over this. She wanted him to talk
about some of the traumatic events he had written about in
his autobiography, believing that ‘honesty was important and
would be appreciated more than fictional jokes’. Monkhouse
disagreed: ‘While I could deliver a truthful lecture on these
topics, it wouldn’t be all that comical …’5

Pranking the audience

Audiences are so used to taking what stand-ups say at face
value – accepting it as more or less the truth – that some
performers have had fun by exploiting their naivety. Izzard
is by no means the only one to prank the audience by pulling
the rug out from underneath their idea of what is true. Lee
Mack tells the audience about an encounter with a heckler
who claimed to be a judo instructor. Mack recalls trying to
best him by asking, ‘How often d’you get attacked by a man
in a dressing gown?’ – and the heckler replying, ‘I work in
a mental hospital.’ As if to cement what a brilliant true-life
anecdote it is, he follows it by saying, ‘You couldn’t write stuff
like that, could you? [laughter] Eh?’ Then he pulls a sudden
U-turn: ‘Course you could, I did. [laughter]’6
Josie Long plays a different kind of trick with the truth.
Towards the end of The Future is Another Place – a show
162 GETTING THE JOKE

full of righteous anger at Britain’s right-wing government

– she starts to build to an inspirational climax, telling the
audience to find out what’s under threat in our local area and
go out and defend it. Summing up, she tells us to, ‘Go out
and join the EDL.’ The idea of an endearingly earnest, liberal
comedian supporting the far-right English Defence League is
such a surprise that it gets a huge laugh, completely defying
the image we have of her from the rest of the show – and
indeed the rest of her career. We have been led to expect an
honest, truthful summing up, but instead she says something
which we immediately realise is the very opposite of what she
believes. She shares our enjoyment of the gag, laughing along
with us and telling us we’ve been ‘punked’.7
In 2007, Brendon Burns built a whole show around a
prank on the audience. So I Suppose This Is Offensive Now!
sees the Australian comic exploring taboos of sex and race.
He spends much of the show playing on the idea that he’s a
bit of a loose cannon who might say something appalling at
any moment, whilst also thoughtfully examining the roots of
the taboos. In the course of all this, he points out an Indian
woman, who is clearly not enjoying what he’s doing. Taking
this as a challenge, he promises her that within the next hour
he’ll make her laugh at something ‘very fuckin’ wrong’. She
continues to look unamused and affronted. He keeps going
back to her, picking away at her, trying to break down her
resistance – and yet only succeeds in making it firmer. At one
point, he starts talking to the white man she’s sitting with,
suggesting that he’d be laughing if she wasn’t there.
About an hour into the show, the situation comes to a head.
‘Some questions are just offensive to ask!’ he asserts, telling
the audience it’s OK to ask, ‘Are you Indian or Pakistani?’
but not ‘So which one are you?’ He notices the woman is
offended, and so do the rest of the audience. Now she openly
challenges him: ‘That’s so racist.’ She points out that he’s been
picking on her all evening, but the audience are firmly on his
side, not least because he cleverly plays on how awkward her
challenge is: ‘You know, the jokes work a lot better if I don’t
 Truth 163

have to explain them. [laughter]’ The argument builds to the

point where Burns shouts, ‘Why are you here??’ The audience
laugh, applaud and cheer.
Still the argument rages on, with the woman starting to
bicker with the man she’s with, who is apparently her brother.
Burns appears to have genuinely lost his temper, and rants
at them both. The man walks out, and then so does she,
continuing to shout at the comedian. The audience are clearly
exhilarated at what they have just witnessed, and Burns gets
some laughs – and even spontaneous applause – by playing on
how puzzled he is by the whole thing. He tries to makes sense
of it by telling the audience that his hecklers hadn’t set out to
be offensive.
That’s the cue for an amazing coup de théâtre. The two
hecklers suddenly bounce on to the stage with big, idiotic
grins on their faces, hands spread out in time-honoured
showbiz-style and shout, ‘We set out to be o-fun-sive!!’ As if
there were any doubt left that they’ve been in on it from the
start, they then join Burns and his dancers in a dance routine.
The audience’s laughter is quickly replaced by laughter and
cheers, continuing to the end of the routine and beyond. Even
when it eventually dies down, there’s still enough admiration
at the audacity of the stunt to allow Burns to get a huge laugh
simply by saying, ‘Aaaaand relax.’8
Pulling off a prank like this is a remarkable achievement,
not least because it required the cooperation of so many
people. First there were the hecklers – played by Sajeela Kershi
and Steve McNeil – who had to act their parts so convincingly
that the audience would believe them to be genuine punters.
Then there were the audiences, who were asked to not reveal
what happens in the show to anybody else. Even newspaper
critics played along, cryptically referring to ‘a real, live twist,
as shocking as the shockers in The Crying Game or The Sixth
Sense’, or apologising that ‘if I explain what the best element
of this show is I will ruin it for audiences to come.’9 The
film of the show – which I’ve described here – was made in
June 2008, nearly a year after it was originally staged at the
164 GETTING THE JOKE

Edinburgh Fringe, and yet the audience are clearly still taken
in by the prank. As well as being impressive, this also demon-
strates the extent to which audiences buy into the idea that
stand-up comedy is a real and authentic interaction.

Adapting the truth

Not all post-Sahl comics are expected to be truthful though,
and audiences have no problem accepting material that is
obviously fictional if it is fantastical and surreal. For example,
it’s hard to imagine that the audiences who watched Woody
Allen’s legendary stand-up routines really believed that he
had taken an injured moose to a costume party or escaped
from a chain gang dressed as ‘an immense charm bracelet’.10
Similarly, Milton Jones’s exaggerated performance and
absurdist material mean he’s unlikely to be taken at face value.
Having said this, extraordinary as it may seem, there have
been occasions where audiences have confused his unhinged
persona with his offstage self: ‘I have had people come up to
me afterwards and say, “Look, I really think you need help.”
… I mean, it tends to be in the less educated environments, but
you know [they say,] “You need help, mate, you need to just
go and see someone.”’11
Just as the person onstage is rarely exactly the same as the
person offstage, in most cases the truth comedians tell flows
easily into fiction. Shelley Berman – one of the generation
that established the ideal of authenticity in stand-up – had a
famous routine in which he recreates a telephone conversation
he’s had with his father. In the introduction, Berman recalls
being about 18 years old and belonging to a community
theatre group. He wants $100 to go to acting school in New
York, so he telephones his father, who owns a Chicago delica-
tessen. We hear only the father’s side of the conversation,
which is richly characterised in a thick Jewish accent.
Much of the comedy comes from the cultural gap between
 Truth 165

them. The father is shocked that Berman is too scared to ask

him for money face to face (‘Did I ever lay a hend on you?
In my whole life, did I ever lay one feenger on you? All right,
but on those times you deserved it’); he cannot understand his
son’s ambition (‘Shakespeare, Schmakespeare, I didn’t under-
stand one word’); and he’s worried about the company he’ll be
keeping (‘They are sissy boys, Sheldon, all the ectors are sissy
boys’). It’s a touching portrayal of the father, who eventually
agrees to give Berman $100 for acting school, and offers him
an extra $150 for other expenses, if he’ll work two Saturdays
for him in the delicatessen.12
It seems a very revealing, truthful routine, yet it’s well
documented that the events which inspired the piece have
actually been fictionalized.13 In reality, Berman’s father was
rather different from the one in the routine. He was a taxi
driver, and didn’t have a Jewish accent. Berman explains
the changes he made when turning the actual event into a
stand-up comedy routine:

In order to create a piece of theatre, especially if one is

using himself and his own history, there has to be some
licence. So some licence is being taken there. But in fact,
in absolute fact, it is not only my father who gave me
the money to go to school to study the theatre. It had to
be both … It had to be my mother and my father. But I
couldn’t play both my mother and my father. That wouldn’t
have happened. They both were fearful that there must’ve
been something wrong with me, if I wanted to be an actor.
I mean, why in God’s name would I want to be an actor,
unless I had some weird sexual preference. [he laughs] My
father was terrified! But these things, I have to angle this
piece of material, and I have to also increase the cultural
gulf so that people will understand where this father was
and where this boy is. So, yes, one could say, ‘No, it is not
absolutely the way it actually happened,’ but – it’s the way
it happened. May I tell you, it is the way it happened. It’s
not fudging. Listen, it’s a piece of artistry, it’s a piece of
166 GETTING THE JOKE

work. It’s a one act playlet, it can’t be without some focus

on the story I’m trying to tell.14

In some cases, the truth and fiction become so intertwined that

even the comedian finds it hard to separate the two. Mark
Lamarr did a routine about a drunken incident in which he
behaved so stupidly, it led him to give up alcohol. After a
night out, six men in a jeep, who recognise him from TV,
start shouting abuse at him. Being drunk, he decides to take
them on (‘Oh, it’s only six blokes in a jeep’). He tries to come
back at them with something ‘witty and clever’. They call him
‘wanker’, and he answers: ‘Look – don’t wank me, I’ll wank
you, all right, don’t – [laughter] Don’t come round here giving
it wank, I’ll wank all six of you separately, I’ll wank you all at
once. [laughter] Give me twenty minutes, I’ll wank your jeep,
all right, so don’t come round here – [laughter]’
Violence threatens as they get out of their vehicle, but
Lamarr is still showing ridiculous bravado (‘And I thought,
“Well that’s their first mistake – no jeep”’). Eventually,
because he has stood up to them, they start to like him,
admiring his guts. One of them still wants to fight, though,
and Lamarr says his stupid response to this (‘Look, six – or
nothing’) is the reason he gave up drinking.15
Lamarr starts to explain the interplay of truth and fiction
in routines like this: ‘Yeah, I mean you sort of invest so much
time getting those stories just right, that you do picture them
in your mind and they do become real. And I actually can’t
remember, there probably is some truth in there still.’ Then
suddenly, a realisation strikes him and he says, urgently, ‘No,
there is!! Actually, yeah! No, that is very much based on
truth!’
He goes on the explain that in the actual incident, he was
with some members of the pop group the Housemartins,
which he couldn’t mention because ‘it ends up as just, “This
is a fucking bloke namedropping.”’ In reality, the men who
had abused him were black, which he felt he had to change
‘because of those connotations’. Also, far from ending up as
 Truth 167

an example of his own stupidity, he resolved the situation

well, but he realised that ‘you’ve got to lose in this story or it’s
not funny’. Having remembered the truth of the incident and
the reasons for changing it, he explains:

That is a really good example of something that completely

transmogrified, from when I first started telling it, [when] it
was just how I would tell a story to mates in a pub. And it
was absolutely true, and it was a really cracking story. But
by the end of it, it’d become almost the opposite of what
happened and lots of the important elements that made it
really funny in the pub weren’t in there anymore.16

With some comedians truth and fiction don’t intertwine so

much as sit side by side, one replacing the other when it better
serves the aim of getting a laugh. On a TV appearance in
2004, Jo Brand tells the audience:

Now I can tell that a lot of you, you’re sitting there and
you’ve got that kind of feel about you: ‘Oh dear, it’s the
lesbian off Channel 4,’ right? [quiet laughter] Let me put
your mind at rest, I am married. Yes, I know it’s difficult
to believe. [laughter] And the papers, for years, have been
implying – nay, not even implying, they’ve been overt – and
said I was a lesbian. To the extent, right, that I read it so
many times about myself, I thought I prob’ly was as well.
[laughter]

This is pretty much the truth. Brand has been vilified by

some sections of the popular press, and there has been a
popular misconception that she is a lesbian. It’s also true
that she is married. The joke about her starting to believe the
newspapers’ comments about her sexuality isn’t literally true,
but it’s more exaggeration than out-and-out fiction.
Brand goes on to talk about her husband, referring to
him by his actual name, and shortly afterwards, there’s a
joke about him which is clearly untrue: ‘– a couple of weeks
168 GETTING THE JOKE

ago, right, I had to go and sit in casualty with my husband

for seven hours. Whilst he waited to have seventeen stitches
removed from his face.’ The audience laugh, uncertainly.
‘That’ll teach him to buy me a sewing kit for my birthday.’17
Now there’s a big laugh. The gag works directly because
the punchline is obviously fictional. The set-up is plausible,
and describes an unpleasant situation, hence the sense of
unease in the audience’s laughter. The laugh the punchline gets
is fuelled by the release of this tension, as the audience realise
they’re not hearing about real violence, but fictional, cartoon
violence. Assaulting her husband with a needle and thread is
a gleefully outrageous image, typical of Brand’s work. This
mixture of truthful information and pure fiction is not a delib-
erate strategy:

I’m kind of not at all conscious of mixing kind of complete

big lies and truth. I mean I’ve always felt … I had a very
sort of slapdash approach to comedy. I would just sit
down, and I would just try and think of some funny things,
you know, and if those funny things happened to be a
couple of things that’d really happened, I would put them
in, you know. And the other thing I would do is I would
mix a kind of true build-up with a false punchline as well.
Just maybe to give it a ring of truth, but not consciously.18

The awful truth

About 20 minutes into his show Chewed Up, the critically
acclaimed American comedian Louis C. K. tells the audience,
‘This is all totally true by the way, this is exactly what
happened.’ It’s not a particularly funny thing to say in itself,
but it’s an important statement because it puts a finger on
C. K.’s strength as a performer – his honesty. The brilliance
of what he does is that he is mercilessly honest in the way
he comically analyses his own life. This allows him to be
 Truth 169

outspoken whilst also getting laughs out of the contradictions

and hypocrisies in his own opinions, and also makes for a very
intimate engagement with his audience.
However, it’s not just himself that he’s honest about. As he
doesn’t live in a vacuum, he can also be merciless about other
people he encounters in his life, and that includes close family
members. In a routine about his two small daughters, he tells
the audience that his five-year-old gave him flu by coughing
into his mouth, and that she talks incessantly even though,
‘Nothing that she says matters.’ This is because, ‘They’re self-
absorbed people, they have no ability – no five-year-old ever
goes like, “No go ahead and finish, I’ll tell you after, it’s fine.”
[laughter]’ His two-year-old causes him problems by making
him carry her through New York on his shoulders: ‘She can
walk, but she won’t, she’s a bullshitter. [laughter]’ He holds
nothing back in the way he talks about them: ‘And I got two
of these fuckin’ things, remember that please, two of ‘em.
[laughter]’
The routine works by laying bare his exasperation at his
children, in a way that wouldn’t normally be acceptable.
The laughter comes from the savagery that he secretly feels
towards his daughters in certain situations. He fights a chuckle
as he confesses that carrying his younger daughter causes him
so much pain that he finds himself thinking, ‘You don’t love
her, just drop her, she doesn’t matter, just let her die [laughter
and applause]’
Most parents can probably relate to the hidden, unexpressed
anger which he describes, but it would be hard to come away
from the routine thinking he doesn’t love his daughters as
much as any father would. As well as being annoyed by his
daughter’s chatter, he also acknowledges that. ‘I enjoy the
things she says, they’re beautiful and poetic, I love hearing
them …’ Nonetheless, as I watch the footage of this excellent
performance, I find myself wondering what C. K.’s daughters
will think when they see the film of their dad saying these
things about them.19 This is a thought that must have passed
through C. K.’s mind, and revealingly, the DVD credits give
170 GETTING THE JOKE

thanks to, ‘My two girls who are simply the two greatest
people that I know on the planet.’20
His wife, too, might have had cause to object to the honesty
he has shown in talking about their relationship in his act.
As Chewed Up starts moving towards its conclusion, he tells
the audience, ‘My wife and I, we’ve been, we’ve been married
for about nine years now, so we’re almost done. And –’ He
is rewarded for his surprising frankness by a long extended
laugh, and yet his words turned out to be accurate and
prophetic. The show was recorded in March 2008, the year
he would get divorced.
C. K. is not the only comic to reveal personal, family
matters in his stand-up act. Marc Maron lets the audience
know what to expect in a performance at the Union Hall,
Brooklyn in 2010: ‘Right, let’s do an honest sound check. Test,
test, one-two, I disappointed my parents, two-two. [laughter]’
As the show progresses he does not disappoint when it
comes to baring psychological scars. He tries to explain how
his mother’s ‘eating problem’ – which has led to him being
‘frightened of food’ – has affected their relationship:

Like, I really think that for about the first twelve years of
my life my mother just saw me – as her fat. [laughter] That,
that she, I think – Some part of her thought that if, if she
just ate less, perhaps I would disappear. [laughter] And she
would not have to worry about the fat that was on me, that
was somehow connected directly to her.

At the end of this painful revelation, one or two people are

still laughing, and when it finishes it leaves behind a slightly
uneasy silence. Then Maron notices somebody making a
sympathetic ‘ahh’ noise. It’s not the reaction he wants, so
he corrects the kindly punter by imitating their noise: ‘No,
“Ahhuhhah.” [laughter]’ Then he explains how he wants
them to see what happened to him: ‘This has to be funny.’
The laughter and applause that greets this simple statement
of intent ring out for ten full seconds. In just five words, he’s
 Truth 171

summed up his whole approach to comedy – to share truths

with a roomful of strangers that are so emotionally brutal
that they might be more at home on a psychoanalyst’s couch.
Shortly afterwards he even says that the benefit of including
these ‘poetic titbits’ in his act is that he can go to his therapist
and say, ‘I think we’re done!’21

Ethics
Again, I find myself wondering what his mother would feel
about hearing herself portrayed in this way in a stand-up
comedy act. Clearly, there is an ethical issue here. It is
important for some comedians to tell the truth in their acts,
but what right do they have to tell the truth about other
people? This is not just a theoretical question. In spite of the
fact that most of his routines were clearly fantastical, Woody
Allen was sued by his first wife by ‘holding her up to scorn
and ridicule’ in his act.22
The person mentioned in the act need not even be somebody
close to the comedian to cause potential difficulties. In one
routine, Phill Jupitus tells his audience that ‘real life is funnier
than anything I can make up’, and talks about tragic stories
he’s seen on the news. He portrays himself as a sick voyeur,
taking delight in, for example, a story about a man who
has broken into the lion’s enclosure at London Zoo. Jupitus
impersonates Trevor McDonald announcing the story on the
ITN news, ‘Viewers of a nervous disposition may like to turn
awa-’ before interrupting in his own, narrator’s voice: ‘This is
the point I find myself pressing play and record!’
Most of the routine is about the lions’ reaction. Jupitus
characterises them like tedious middle managers, showing
them taking time to fully comprehend the situation. The lion
leader stands with his back to the audience, saying, ‘There’s
a what? [laughter] Oh do grow up, Gavin! [laughter]’23 Little
comment is made about the man himself, but using tragic real
172 GETTING THE JOKE

life material to get laughs can still have drawbacks, as Jupitus

recalls: ‘[T]he care worker for the guy who came in with the
lions came up to me, yeah. And said, “I was the case worker
for that guy” (and she gave me his name) “who jumped in
with the lions at London Zoo.” I froze, and she went, “– very
funny.”’24
For Rhona Cameron, the repercussions were closer to
home. On a TV appearance in the mid-1990s, she performs
a delicate, beautiful routine in which she reads out a letter
from her mother. This is not the stand-up comedy cliché of the
string-of-jokes-disguised-as-a-letter-from-home; in this case,
the letter is quite real. Cameron stresses this point, repeatedly
saying ‘This is true.’ When she takes it out of her pocket at the
beginning of the routine, she draws our attention to the fact
that it’s a bit shabby ‘because I have had many jokes at my
mother’s expense with it over the last few months’.
The laughter may be at her mother’s expense, but she is
not portrayed as mean or stupid. She comes across as a good-
hearted middle-aged woman. Most of the laughs come from
the precision and enthusiasm with which she describes the
mundane details of a party she has organised. She gives a long
list of the food she prepared, and this is funnily precise. One
of the items listed is ‘various salads brackets coleslaw not my
own close brackets’. She describes trying to get the cream to
whip up and set as ‘a nightmare’.
Cameron shows considerable skill in breathing comic life
into this. The letter probably wouldn’t raise many laughs as a
printed text. The comedy it contains is subtle, and it’s really
only drawn out by her performance. In fact, she has taken the
common phenomenon of grown-up children making fun of
their parents and made it work in a more public context.
We do not laugh purely because of what her mother has
written, but also at Cameron’s amused reaction. The letter
mentions decorating the garden with coloured fairy lights,
which are described as ‘really very effective’. When Cameron
reads this sentence, she lowers the paper for these last three
words, stressing ‘effective’ with disdainful relish. She pauses
 Truth 173

for a moment, letting the word sink in, a gleam of a smile

shining in her eyes as the audience laugh.25 Like Berman’s
routine about his father, this is about a cultural gulf between
the generations, and it comes across as a fond, amused
portrayal of a parent, not a hostile one. Nonetheless, Cameron
now regrets performing the routine, which she sees as the
action of a younger, less emotionally mature person:

Looking back now I cringe at the thought that I read out

my mum’s letter on stage, because it was kind of an awful
thing to do, but it seemed effective and I think people knew
it was genuinely authentic and that’s why they extra liked
it, as well as it having, you know, comedic value. But she
wrote me letters regularly and I just thought they were so
bizarre … Also, let’s face it, I was looking for some material
as well, if I’d had scores of my own material I wouldn’t’ve
had to read out my mum’s letter … My mum said, you
know, “I’m going to write to you again, but it’s not for
stage,” you know. And … oh, I felt so bad when she said
that.26

The way comedians handle the ethical dilemma posed by

doing routines about people who are close to them differs.
John Bishop has agreed to leave certain things out of his act at
the request of his sons, telling the Daily Mirror: ‘There’s been
a few things happening recently and they’ve said, “Dad you
can’t talk about that.” I have to respect that. They are teenage
lads now.’27 On the other hand, Margaret Cho creates comedy
out of the very act of breaking a confidence. She finishes a
no-stone-unturned exposé of her sex life with an ex-lover by
recalling him telling her: ‘Whatever you do – don’t talk about
this onstage.’ The audience is delighted by the naughtiness of
her disregard for his wishes, their laughter breaking out into
cheering and applause, the whole reaction lasting 13 seconds.
Then she gets another laugh by ironically taking the blame for
the slip: ‘My bad.’28
174 GETTING THE JOKE

Who is Stewart Lee?

In the Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury, Richard Herring is
talking about the kind of white lies that are told in relation-
ships. If a woman asks the man in her life whether her bottom
is as nice as Pippa Middleton’s, he has to say ‘yes’. So far, this
is a reasonably commonplace observation – but then Herring
turns it around and suggests what the equivalent question
would be for him. What he comes up with cuts to the bone:
‘Who’s funnier, me or Stewart Lee?’29
It gets a huge laugh, because although the routine is about
lying to protect someone’s feelings, it reveals what appears to
be a startling admission of the truth. We know Herring and
Lee used to do a successful double act, and can infer that
there may be rivalry between them. We also know that Lee
enjoys a higher public profile than Herring, and greater critical
acclaim. Herring’s insecurity about all this is probably just
a joke, but one that plays on an accurate assessment of the
respective reputations of the two comics.
Although his audience is dwarfed by the likes of Michael
McIntyre and John Bishop, since 2004 Stewart Lee has built
a devoted and growing following, and has been feted by many
critics. He has become known as a comedian whose work
bristles with intelligence, his delivery admired for its exceptional
deftness. His work has often been described as ‘anti-comedy’
or ‘meta-comedy’, but I would argue that the aspects of his
work that have inspired this description are commonplace in
stand-up. What makes him stand out is not that he has entirely
subverted the form; rather it is the skill, bravery and inven-
tiveness he has shown in exploring its creative possibilities.
The way he has played with the nature of truth in stand-up
comedy is a case in point. Like other comics, he has got laughs
by breaking confidences onstage. In a very early routine,
dating back to 1991, he talks about what a ‘horrible old
bitch’ his ex-girlfriend’s mother was, and follows it up with a
disclaimer which actually compounds the insult:
 Truth 175

People say to me, ‘Stew, you call yourself a progressive

comedian but material like that isn’t a million miles away
from the sort of thing that Les Dawson might do about
his mother-in-law, is it?’ And I say, ‘No, you’re wrong
there. ‘Cos Les Dawson deals in jokes – and I deal in truth.
[laughter] Truth is my ex-girlfriend’s mother’s a horrible old
bitch. [a few laughs] Her name’s Anne Wilson. [laughter]
And she’s a junior school teacher – from Greenwich, in
South London. [a few laughs] And that’s true.’ [laughter]
Quite funny that one, isn’t it? [laughter]30

For a 23-year-old comedian, little more than two years into his
stand-up career, to come up with a joke that so cleverly plays
with the notion of truth is a pointer to what Lee has gone on
to achieve. The words he speaks are plain enough, and his
plain, deadpan delivery does little to add comic varnish. What
turns this ‘truth’ into a joke is the thinking behind it. Like
Margaret Cho’s gag, the whole point is that it plays on the
naughtiness of using stand-up as a tool for personal revenge,
but Lee takes the ethical breach further by giving out personal
information about the person in question. Originally, the
name and the detail about her place of work were absolutely
authentic, potentially allowing the audience to identify the
real woman. Looking back on the routine, Lee recalls:

One night, I was in the Backyard Club that Lee Hurst used
to run in Whitechapel, and I said the woman’s name, and
a girl in the audience shouted out, ‘What, Polly’s mother?’
And I went, ‘Oh, yeah!’ And I thought, ‘I can’t do that ever
again.’ And I had to say a different name. And you know
in the ‘90s when you’ve only got half an hour of circuit
material and you do it forever – after about a year … her
new name that I’d made up felt real to me.31

More recently, Lee has played pranks on the audience like

Eddie Izzard and Brendon Burns, but in a way that – I’d argue
– leaves even more questions about exactly what the truth is
176 GETTING THE JOKE

hanging in the air. A good example is his routine about the

blokey, car-based TV programme, Top Gear. Lee excoriates
the bullying humour seen on the show, with its implicit right-
wing populism and tendency to pick on unworthy targets, all
of it thinly veiled by the justification of being ‘just a joke’.
Much of his comic animosity is aimed at one of the presenters,
Richard Hammond, who had narrowly avoided being killed
a few years earlier, whilst filming a stunt in a jet-powered car
for the show.
Not long into the extensive routine – which lasts for almost
half an hour – Lee says he can imagine that even whilst hanging
upside down in the car’s wreckage, Hammond was thinking
about writing a cash-in book about the experience. Having
made this outrageous suggestion, he pulls back from it, saying,
‘I, I’m not saying he did think that, I’m just saying – there
does seem to be an element of cynicism in it, doesn’t there?’32
There’s a little laugh here, but the audience sound uncertain.
He goes on to expand on the idea, again pulling back by issuing
a similar disclaimer. The laughter he gets comes partly from
the harshness of the idea he’s sharing, and partly from the
ambiguity he’s created. Does he really think this or not?
Shortly afterwards he brings the attack to a head, criticising
Hammond for his cynicism in writing a book about the crash,
and concluding, matter-of-factly, ‘… and I wish he’d been
killed in that crash.’ This gets laughter and applause. He goes
on to say he wishes Hammond had been decapitated, and that
the next series of Top Gear had been presented by his severed
head on a stick. Then, having said that, he reassures us that
what he has just said is ‘just a joke, like on Top Gear.’ This
time there’s a ten-second burst of laughter and applause, the
audience recognising cleverness of the car show’s justification
being used against it. Having made the point, he repeats it and
then pulls a U-turn: ‘But coincidentally – [extended laughter]
as well as it being a joke – [laughter] it’s also what I wish had
happened. [loud laughter]’
A bit further into the routine, he pulls exactly the same stunt
in relation to another Top Gear presenter, Jeremy Clarkson.
 Truth 177

Starting by berating Clarkson for a gag he had made about

the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown being blind in one
eye, Lee talks about how difficult it must be for the parents of
children who go blind, and builds his moral indignation to the
point where he concludes: ‘Now – Jeremy Clarkson has three
daughters. And I hope they all go blind. [laughter]’ He repeats
his ironic justification, this time shouting it angrily: ‘Come on,
it’s just a joke, like on Top Gear!! [laughter]’ He also repeats
the U-turn: ‘But again, as well as it being a joke – [laughter]
Nah, not really.’
Lee pulls the rug out from under what he’s saying so
skilfully and so often that he leaves us wondering what he
really does think. Is he really angry enough about this TV
show to harbour such vicious opinions about its presenters, or
is it just a cool, satirical exercise in irony? Even the comedian
himself seems unsure. In a footnote to the published transcript
of the show, he confesses: ‘Just to be clear, I don’t wish
Richard Hammond had been killed in that crash. However,
there is a half-buried and extreme part of me that entertains
as true every other aspect of this argument.’33
Some newspapers were less nuanced in their response,
taking Lee’s words at face value as a simple rant. The Mail
on Sunday, for example, described it as a ‘sick tirade’.34 As
a result, when the show is filmed at the Citizens Theatre in
Glasgow on 15 March 2010, Lee looks straight down the
camera and explains to anyone from that newspaper watching
the DVD that he ‘was using an exaggerated form – of the
rhetoric and the implied values of Top Gear – to satirize the
rhetoric, and the implied values of Top Gear. [laughter]’ He
then adds: ‘And it is a shame to have to break character and
explain that. [laughter] But hopefully, it will save you a long,
tedious exchange of emails’ This provokes 11 seconds of
laughter and applause.
Having already got so much mileage out of walking a
tightrope between earnestness and irony, he then plays an
even bigger game with the truth. He starts by telling the
audience that he went to school with Richard Hammond.
178 GETTING THE JOKE

There’s a small laugh of disbelief, and it sounds like somebody

in the audience is scoffing at the idea to the person in the next
seat – hardly surprising given the previous shenanigans.
The various ways that Lee goes on to overcome their doubts
are a testament to his consummate stand-up skills. Firstly, his
voice subtly takes on a tone and rhythm that suggests he’s
not striving for laughs, but merely giving across factual infor-
mation necessary to set up the next bit of comedy. Secondly,
he directly challenges the audience’s scepticism, telling them he
went to Solihull School and both he and Hammond are listed
as old boys which they can look up on ‘the Wikipedia’ when
they get home.35 Thirdly and most importantly, he throws in
enough telling details to give his story a patina of authenticity:
members of the grindcore band Napalm Death were also
at the school at the time; he went to their third ever gig at
Dorridge village scout hut; when he was library monitor, he
rescued Hammond from some bullies and took him under his
wing; at one point he saved Hammond from his tormentors
by blocking the door with a Penguin edition of James Joyce’s
Ulysses; the bullies were carrying a copy of a porn mag called
Rustler, which had a free flexidisc on the cover.
Some of these details are funny in themselves, but others
are not. The specificity of his memories and the level of detail
he goes into suggests he’s telling the truth, particularly in the
context of a stand-up act, where economy is normally so
vital and anything extraneous is left out. The story ends with
Hammond turning on Lee, hanging out with the bullies and
describing his former protector as ‘Some queer bender from
the sixth form, who’s always trying to feel me up.’ This bit
gets some laughs, but they don’t seem to be enough to act
as a climax for an anecdote that’s lasted the best part of ten
minutes.
The really big laughs comes when he reveals his hand:
‘Now,’ he says, staring at the audience and pausing for nearly
five seconds, causing a handful of punters to laugh. ‘That
story about Richard Hammond is not true.’ This amazing
admission gets a big, sudden laugh that lingers on for nearly
 Truth 179

nine seconds. ‘But I feel that what it tells us about Richard

Hammond-’ he continues, getting another big, lingering laugh.
He doesn’t need to finish the sentence – the audience is
perfectly capable of anticipating that it would end with the
words, ‘is true.’36
The punchline focuses on the nature of truth, and its comic
point is that Lee’s justification for making all this up is in
no way justifiable. If the story is untrue, how can it possibly
‘reveal’ anything about Richard Hammond? To spend so long
in manipulating the audience into thinking they’re hearing
a true story could be seen as a betrayal of trust, and indeed
immediately after confessing, he points out somebody leaving
the auditorium, and imagines what he’s thinking: ‘I didn’t
pay to hear a twenty-minute fictional story about Richard
Hammond. [laughter]’ What makes it all so funny is that Lee
is obviously acutely aware of what he is playing with, and the
outrageousness of it all. Although his manner is downbeat,
there’s a clear sense of fun that comes out in pauses, subtly
knowing glances, and moment when his own amusement
becomes discernible.37
What makes it particularly interesting is that even having
explicitly owned up to fabricating the whole anecdote, some
people still went away from the show thinking it might be
true. The Mail on Sunday’s ‘sick tirade’ article, for example,
reported ‘speculation that their shared school experience may
have prompted Lee’s diatribe’ and quoted an audience member
who said: ‘He told a joke which he said was made-up, about
how he had saved Hammond from some bullies, but you
couldn’t help wondering if there was something more to it.’38
Perhaps this is unsurprising, given the myriad ways that
Lee conjures with the truth in his act. He approached this
routine as an actor might, using actual memories of his school
in order to ‘locate the incidents I fabricated in precisely
remembered real locations, to almost trick myself that they
were real memories.’39 Indeed, this kind of ambiguous inter-
weaving of truth and fiction is there in the persona he adopts
for his stand-up act. He explains how this differs from who
180 GETTING THE JOKE

he is offstage, describing it as ‘like an exaggerated form of

the adolescent version of me, a kind of puritan, [with] very
intense feelings about particular things, but also all dismiss-
ively sarcastic, the teenage thing.’ More recently, he has found
himself having to adapt the persona:

I’m trying to move on a bit from that, because I don’t know

if it works that well for a man in his mid-forties, and also
it doesn’t work that well for someone who is demonstrably
a success on some level. You know, you can’t really do
that. It’d become a bit false … It’s a bit more about being
an exaggerated version of how I feel now, which you
could play kind of resentment of commitment, and being
stuck in your life, you know, and also, what can you find
to be frustrated about when it’s going so well? You can
be frustrated about a really petty thing that it’s not going
quite as well as you’d hoped, you know. You really have to
exaggerate that because people could quite legitimately go,
‘What is your problem?’

He argues that distinguishing person from persona – which he

refers to as ‘he’ – gives him the licence to say onstage more
than he could in an everyday context:

[I]t’s really clear to me that he would sort of resent Russell

Howard for getting credit for doing charity work when
like, hour for hour, he doesn’t do as much as me – as much
as him … And so I’m sort of surprised sometimes when
people are personally offended by things, because it’s really
obvious to me that to be true to the character, that’s what
he would say. Even though I wouldn’t say it, I might think
it, but I wouldn’t say it, you know.40

He makes a point of maintaining this clear separation between

the private man and his ‘stand-up character’, but the public
statements he has made about it only serves to whip up clouds
of ambiguity. In 2010, he wrote: ‘I am sort of in character as
 Truth 181

a smug, stuck-up, politically correct, holier than thou leftie,

a character I have researched so fully I often feel obliged to
behave like it in my own spare time, sometimes for years on
end.’41 In an interview with Kevin Eldon, he said: ‘[W]hen I
say the character of me is different to me, it isn’t, and I don’t
get into character in any way, and it is me … I say it’s different
as a false attempt to sort of distance myself from the things
that I do actually think.’42
The idea that Lee’s onstage views might be more authentic
than he often suggests is borne out by Richard Herring, who
recalls:

When we shared a flat he would often say something. I’d

say, ‘You should just do that as part of your stand-up.’
He’d go, ‘What do you mean?’ And he wouldn’t have
even seen what was funny about it … ’Cos it was really
his kind of ridiculous character that was blind to his own
ludicrousness, you know.43

Indeed, Lee admits that the character even affects important

decisions in his offstage life: ‘But then I’ve also started trying
to do things professionally that he would do, right.’44
All of this takes us back to the essential ambiguity of identity
at the heart of stand-up comedy. By creating such a complex
hall of mirrors around the question of who he is when he’s
onstage, Stewart Lee is not breaking the established rules of
stand-up comedy, but rather seeing how far they will stretch.
He is cleverly exploring the creative possibilities of the fact that
the line between person and persona is never absolutely clear.
This makes stand-up quite different to conventional theatre,
and in order to explain the difference – as unlikely as it may
sound – I’m going to invoke the classical myth of Zeuxis and
Parrhasius. The Roman author Pliny the Elder wrote of a
contest between these two artists. Zeuxis produced a painting
of grapes that was so realistic birds flew down towards it,
mistaking the picture for real fruit. Parrhasius then produced
his own painting, which was apparently covered by a curtain.
182 GETTING THE JOKE

Zeuxis ‘haughtily demanded that the curtain should be drawn

aside to let the picture be seen.’45 In fact, it was a painting of
a curtain. Parrhasius won the contest because whereas Zeuxis
only fooled the birds, he managed to fool a human being, and
a fellow painter at that.
In straight acting, the boundaries of truth and fiction
are fairly clearly drawn. However fine an actor’s portrayal
of Macbeth may be, we are unlikely to genuinely mistake
them for the actual eleventh century Scottish king. Like
Zeuxis’s painting of grapes, we might admire the realism of
the acting, but it will not fool us. Stand-up comedy is more
like Parrhasius’s painting of curtains. The comedian can fake
something so realistically that we believe it to be true – and
however distorted or exaggerated the persona, we can still
believe it is an authentic, unvarnished expression of the
private person. Indeed, as the example of Stewart Lee shows
us, the relationship between onstage and offstage selves is a
conundrum that even the performer himself may not fully
understand. Ultimately, it is stand-up comedy’s ability to play
with the truth that makes it so powerful and potent.

Notes
1 In fact, Humperdinck was born Arnold George Dorsey. Gerry
Dorsey was his first stage name
2 Eddie Izzard, Dress to Kill, VVL, 1998, 0579863. According
to John Lahr, Dick Van Dyke was the original subject of
Izzard’s fake death announcement routine (see John Lahr, Show
and Tell, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of
California Press, 2000, p. 173)
3 Brian Logan, ‘Be Truthful – and Funny Will Come. To Mark
This Year’s Inaugural Richard Pryor Award for Comedy, We
Asked a Group of Comics to Put a Question to the Great
Stand-Up. Brian Logan Introduces the Results’, the Guardian,
9 August 2004, Arts pages p. 13. I emailed Pryor as part of the
research for this book, asking for any wisdom he could pass on
 Truth 183

to me. His reply read ‘Always only tell the truth! love Richard’
(received 2 July 2004)
4 Billy Connolly, Too Old to Die Young, Carling Hammersmith
Apollo, 29 September 2004
5 Bob Monkhouse, Over the Limit: My Secret Diaries 1993–8,
London: Century, 1998, p. 66
6 Lee Mack, Live, 2 Entertain, 2007, 2EDVD0029
7 Josie Long, The Future is Another Place, The Horsebridge,
Whitstable, 18 February 2012
8 Brendon Burns, Live: So I Suppose This is Offensive Now!,
Universal, 2008, 8257671
9 See Johann Hari, ‘Laugh? I nearly cried … Johann Hari toured
the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in search of Britain’s funny bone.
He left with the feeling that, behind the smiles, as a nation we
are dissatisfied with our lives and uncomfortable with each
other’, Arts & Book Review, the Independent, 24 August 2007;
and Julian Hall, ‘Not a classic Burns’ night Comedy; Brendon
Burns: So I Suppose This Is Offensive Now; Pleasance Dome’,
Independent Extra, 15 August 2007
10 These routines can be heard on Woody Allen, The Nightclub
Years 1964–68, EMI, 1990, ECC3
11 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 June 2004
12 Track 3 on Shelley Berman, Outside Shelley Berman, Laugh.
com, 2002, LGH1115
13 For example, see Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel
Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s, New York: Pantheon
Books, 2003, p. 301; and Phil Berger, The Last Laugh: The
World of Stand-Up Comics, New York: Cooper Square Press,
2000, pp. 68–71
14 Interview with Shelley Berman, by telephone, 5 August 2004
15 Mark Lamarr, Uncensored and Live, VVL, 1997, 0474343
16 Interview with Mark Lamarr, Chiswick, 14 July 2004
17 Jo Brand on Jack Dee Live at the Apollo, BBC One, 27
September 2004
18 Interview with Jo Brand, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1 April
2004
184 GETTING THE JOKE

19 Not least because he has been known to admit onstage that he

prefers one over the other
20 Louis C. K., Chewed Up, Anchor Bay Entertainment, 2008,
ABD4815
21 Marc Maron This HAS to be Funny, Comedy Central Records,
2011, CCR0122
22 Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians
of the 1950s and 1960s, New York: Pantheon Books, 2003,
p. 531
23 Phill Jupitus, Live – Quadrophobia, VVL, 2000, 0740533
24 Interview with Phill Jupitus, BBC Broadcasting House, London,
6 June 2004
25 The Stand-Up Show, BBC1, 18 November 1995
26 Interview with Rhona Cameron, by telephone, 19 March 2004
27 Demelza de Burca, ‘The family is all I’ve got to talk about…
now my teen lads have gagged me, I have to respect their
wishes’, Daily Mirror, 21 July 2012, p. 28
28 Margaret Cho, Notorious C. H. O., Matchbox Films, 2011,
MBF019
29 Richard Herring, What is Love, Anyway? Gulbenkian Theatre,
Canterbury, 14 February 2012
30 ‘Stewart Lee – “Robert the Bruce” (1991)’, https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=seTMl6MQ1yw [accessed 23 October
2012] (originally broadcast on the Granada TV series, Stand
Up, summer 1991)
31 Interview with Stewart Lee, Patisserie Valerie, Canterbury, 25
February 2012
32 All of the quotes from this routine are taken from Stewart Lee,
If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask for One, Comedy
Central/Real Talent, 2010, COMEDY01
33 Stewart Lee, The ‘If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask
for One’ EP, London: Faber and Faber, 2012, p. 56. Great
though this book is, I’ve avoided quoting from the transcript,
partly because I wanted to use my own sense of how to
punctuate the lines to indicate Lee’s timing, and partly because
I needed to include the audience’s reaction
 Truth 185

34 James Tapper, ‘What Prompted Comic’s Sick Tirade Against

His Top Gear Schoolmate?’ Mail on Sunday, 30 August 2009
35 Wikipedia does indeed list both Lee and Hammond in its entry
for Solihull School, and as luck would have it, Hammond’s
name is listed directly under Lee’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Solihull_School [accessed 28 October 2012]). I think Lee adds
the definite article to ‘Wikipedia’ to make him sound out of
touch with modern phenomena like the internet, as this is a
fairly common motif in his recent stand-up
36 Indeed, the published transcript of the show includes these
words, thus demonstrating that it’s possible to communicate
more succinctly and efficiently in a stand-up act than in cold
print (Stewart Lee, The ‘If You Prefer a Milder Comedian,
Please Ask for One’ EP, London: Faber and Faber, 2012,
p. 71)
37 Having pulled this off once, Lee went on to repeat the trick in
his show Vegetable Stew (2010), with a routine about being
at Oxford with David Cameron. This features the same use of
telling details and a practically identical reveal and justification
at the end. This routine can be seen in the final episode of
Series Two of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle (see Stewart Lee,
Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle Series Two, BBC/2 Entertain,
2011, BBCDVD3471)
38 James Tapper, ‘What Prompted Comic’s Sick Tirade Against
His Top Gear Schoolmate?’ Mail on Sunday, 30 August 2009
39 Stewart Lee, The ‘If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask
for One’ EP, London: Faber and Faber, 2012, p. 65
40 Interview with Stewart Lee, Patisserie Valerie, Canterbury, 25
February 2012
41 Stewart Lee, How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and
Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian, London: Faber and Faber,
2010, p. 100
42 The interview is included as an extra feature on Stewart Lee, If
You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask for One, Comedy
Central/Real Talent, 2010, COMEDY01
43 Interview with Richard Herring, Gulbenkian Theatre,
Canterbury, 14 February 2012
186 GETTING THE JOKE

44 Interview with Stewart Lee, Patisserie Valerie, Canterbury, 25

February 2012
45 Pliny the Elder (trans. John Bostock and H. T. Riley), The
Natural History of Pliny, Vol. VI, London: 1857, p. 251
 CHAPTER TWELVE

Working the audience

Take the audience away from stand-up comedy and it starts

to look weird. In 1960, the rotund American comedian Buddy
Hackett released an album called The Original Chinese
Waiter. Unlike other records from the time from the likes of
Mort Sahl and Shelley Berman, it was not a live recording,
but was made in a studio, without an audience. There’s
something quite eerie about hearing the insistent rhythms of
his gags going down to total silence, an effect the recording
engineer seems to have tried to lessen by adding the tiniest bit
of reverb to Hackett’s voice. The really strange parts are when
he addresses his ‘audience’ directly. The album starts with him
announcing, ‘I don’t know about you folks, but I’m very fond
of Chinese food.’ The fact that he is obviously saying this to
a cold, unresponsive microphone in an empty studio makes it
sound rather desperate, an impression which is reinforced by
the first line of the final track: ‘Uh, I guess you folks is laughin’
pretty good by now.’1 Hearing this ring out in my silent office
more than half a century after the recording was made makes
Hackett’s guess sound pretty much like wishful thinking.
I’m not trying to put him down, it’s just that stand-up
comedy without an audience is only half there. Ben Elton has
argued that, ‘It’s a dialogue, it’s just very one way.’2 Without
the laughter half of the dialogue, there is nothing. I know this
from personal experience. Running through the act without
an audience is rather like leaving a message on somebody’s
188 GETTING THE JOKE

answerphone – you need to feel there’s somebody listening at

the other end, or it’s difficult to keep up the energy you need
to express yourself, and you often end up collapsing into total
inarticulacy. As Mark Thomas points out, ‘You can’t do the
gig in a vacuum, because it is specifically about the performer
and the audience, and it’s specifically about generating the
prerequisite number of responses. And they’re very audible
responses. And if you’re not getting that, really you should
stop.’3

Exchanging energy
Kiwi comedian Rhys Darby describes what he does: ‘You
become the energy of the whole thing, you just go out there
and switch on.’4 Some have compared the exchange of energy
between performer and audience that goes on in stand-up
comedy with electricity.5 Phill Jupitus paints a beautiful
picture of just how wonderful the energy exchange can be:

[There’s] this odd dynamic of just a thousand people in a

room … I’m the one and you’re the 999. And you’re just
like a lightning rod for the feeling in the room, really, as
a stand-up … And it’s two way. Because you need them
as much as they need you. There’s nothing like a good
stand-up gig. There is nothing like a good stand-up gig,
for that kind of unique, what-the-hell-just-happened-there?
kind of night, you know. It’s like alchemy.6

Funny lines, gestures and mimes flow from the comedian to

the audience, and laughter, applause and heckles flow back in
the other direction. The audience is energised and bonded into
a group by the comedy that flows from the performer, and the
performer is filled with the energy that he or she gets from the
audience’s responses. Comics must be able to generate energy
in the audience, or they will receive no energy in return, and
 Working the audience 189

there will be nothing to fuel their performance. Dying onstage

is a uniquely enervating experience. What comedians learn to
do as they gain experience is to read the audience, to under-
stand their reactions, to ensure that they can be properly
energised. As Dave Gorman points out,

What you do isn’t say those words in that order; it’s play
the audience. It’s feeling the consciousness of the room, and
when they’re ready to take the dive into the punchline and
when they’re not, and when they’re tense, and you can’t feel
that unless they’re there creating that atmosphere.7

The exchange of energy is subtle and although comedians

develop an instinct for handling it, it tends to defy cold
analysis.
Sometimes the energy of a show can go wrong. I remember
being last on the bill at the Banana Cabaret in Balham in the
early 1990s. The second act is an open mike spot, a four-
person black comedy troupe called They Wouldn’t. They
generate huge energy between the four of them, and leave the
stage after six minutes to the kind of ovation a proper paid
act would be proud of. They’re followed by accordion-playing
Scots oddball Lindsay Moran, who manages to catch the wave
of energy they have created, and ride it even higher. The show
has climaxed by the end of the first half. After the interval,
the audience are tired, and the comedian who follows Moran
can’t rouse them. I am similarly unsuccessful, getting a few
laughs, but unable to waft away the stink of anticlimax. I
remember seeing Johnny Vegas doing an open spot in a cellar
bar called Mulberries in Manchester a few years later, and
being similarly unfollowable.
James Campbell finds that playing to audiences of children
means he has to pay particular attention to energy levels:

With an adult stand-up gig, you try and build it and build it
and build it until you’ve got people literally rolling around
in the aisles with tears streaming down their face. You try
190 GETTING THE JOKE

and do that with a kids’ audience, they get hysterical. And

the lid just blows off. So you have to keep calming them
down every now and again. So you don’t get that constant
build up. You can do it to a certain extent, towards the
end, but I mean some of them will literally wet themselves
… There is nothing more horrible than the sound of 300
children laughing because you’ve paused. You get that fake
laughter, hysterical laughter. They’re just laughing because
they’re supposed to be laughing, and they can’t remember
why they’re supposed to be laughing. It’s horrible, it’s
demonic.8

However difficult it is to handle the exchange of energy

between performer and audience, it’s a defining feature of
stand-up comedy, and it’s one of the things that make direct
address so important. The directness of communication allows
the comedian to switch on, to generate electricity, to become
a lightning rod for the whole room. This is one of the reasons
why many actors find the idea of performing stand-up so
daunting. Shelley Berman trained as a classical actor, studying
Ibsen, Shaw, Shakespeare and Chekhov at acting school.
When he started as a stand-up, he brought with him many of
the practices of straight acting, and took time to adapt to the
demands of the new format:

I didn’t even address the audience, because I was used to

the Fourth Wall. I was really trained to ignore that, you
do not penetrate that Fourth Wall unless you are doing
a soliloquy… That Fourth Wall was sacred … This was
incredible, that I would not address the audience. I was
afraid to address them, because it was wrong … One day,
Billy Eckstein – the singer Billy Eckstein – said to me,
‘When you get onstage tonight,’ (because I was working
with him, I was opening the show for him in Canada),
and he said, ‘Will you do me a favour Shelley, just before
you sit down and go to your phone, why don’t you just
say thank you and good evening to the audience that’s
 Working the audience 191

welcomed you?’ ‘Well I can’t do that, Billy, I don’t do that.’

‘Well just try it.’ And he nagged at me, night after night.
And one night I tried it, and I got much more laughter. For
some reason, the material went over better. And it wasn’t
just that one night, I tried it again and I saw that there was
something. And then I started softening up and relaxing
with the audience, telling them about myself … and I found
that they were enjoying me more than or as much as my
material … I somehow realised that it’s dealing with the
audience that the comedian does, and, you know, I’d better
stop being such a snob.9

Energy and space

The skill of the individual comedian isn’t the only thing that
can affect the exchange of energy. Another big factor is the
particular circumstances in which the stand-up show occurs.
The time the show starts has an effect. A seven o’clock start
might mean a rather formal, reserved audience, whereas a
midnight show can be either lethargic or rowdy. In a Friday
night show, the audience may be bad tempered or overexcited
after a hard week at work; a Saturday show tends to be more
relaxed.
Space probably affects energy even more than time. The
comedy club I used to run was based in a largish pub function
room, which in many ways was ideal for stand-up. There was
a small stage at one end, and plenty of tables and chairs to
seat the audience. The room had its own bar and direct access
to toilets, meaning that paying punters would not have the
hassle of having their tickets checked if they wanted to fill
their glasses or empty their bladders. In spite of this, from very
early on in the life of the club, the audience tended to take
rather a long time to warm up. In the first half of the show,
although they liked the acts, they were not particularly vocal
in showing their support. Generally, the laughter was rather
quiet until the second half got underway.
192 GETTING THE JOKE

A solution to this problem was discovered by Jacqui, the

student who sold the tickets and did front of house for the
show. She had a way of arranging the tables which made
a tangible difference to the energy of the show, making the
audience significantly livelier in the first half. The room was
much longer and thinner than it appeared at first glance, and
there was a tendency for a large group of standing punters to
congregate at the back. This group, which could easily be as
much as a third of the total audience, were a long way from
the stage. I used to watch the show from the back myself
between my compèring spots, and I felt far removed from both
the act and the rest of the audience. Jacqui realised that by
putting as many of the tables and chairs as close to the front
as possible, the standing punters would be brought forward,
and the whole audience would be densely packed around the
stage. The proximity and density of the audience meant that
it was easier for a really efficient exchange of energy to occur.
Needless to say, I went on to marry Jacqui.10
I made similar discoveries when I worked with a collective
of comedians called Red Grape Cabaret. In the late 1980s
and early 1990s, we did shows in a motley collection of pubs,
students unions and arts centres. College gigs tended to be
the worst, often taking place in unsuitable venues, with poor
staging and technical facilities. Once we had become confident
enough to assert ourselves with the people running the shows,
we started to take charge of the situations we found ourselves
in. Sometimes this would mean taking obvious steps, like
turning off televisions, jukeboxes or one-armed bandits while
the show was on.
Other times, it would mean rearranging the space, finding
the best place for the stage to be set up, adjusting the lighting
and rearranging the seating. Usually, this turned an undoable
gig into an acceptable one, an acceptable gig into a joy. I don’t
ever remember discussing the principles behind our decision to
move things around, but I do remember developing a strong
sense of how a space and the way it was laid out would affect
a show.
 Working the audience 193

This acquired knowledge made me sit up and take notice

when I came across Iain Mackintosh’s book Architecture,
Actor and Audience. In a history of theatre architecture from
Elizabethan times to the present day, Mackintosh argues that
its ‘chief purpose … is to provide a channel for energy’.11 He
suggests a number of rules for theatre design to maximise the
flow of energy between actor and audience, including the idea
that it’s more important for an audience to be densely packed
than to be comfortable or have good sightlines, and that the
audience should ‘enfold the performing area in a welcoming
embrace’.12 This immediately made me think of Jacqui’s table
layout, and about the general principles of space and energy
in stand-up comedy.
One of these principles is that the acoustics of the space
are important, and not just to ensure that the audience can
easily hear the comedian. It’s equally vital that the space
should be shaped to maximise the volume of the audience’s
response. William Cook points out that, ‘Comedy works
best in basements, with low ceilings and tight crowds.’13 Low
ceilings are crucial, because they allow the laughter to bounce
back and reverberate through the room, boosting the energy.
High ceilings make things much harder. In 1997, I compèred
a series of shows at the Barnsley Civic Theatre, a great barn
of a room, both broad and long. I found that even with a big
audience, the laughter got swallowed up by the high ceiling,
allowing the energy to evaporate.
Different venues make different demands of a comedian.
Variety theatres were laid out in sections, and the comic had
to ensure that he or she was achieving an exchange of energy
with stalls, circle and gallery. Frankie Howerd would get his
sister Betty to sit in each part of the theatre to ensure that
there was nowhere he wasn’t reaching.14
194 GETTING THE JOKE

Arena comedy
Large venues can have a profound effect on the way the
audience experience the show. In September 2004, I go to see
Billy Connolly at the Carling Hammersmith Apollo. It’s a big
venue, with a seating capacity of 3,719. I’m in seat 76, row Y,
on the second to back row of the circle. It’s a long way from
the stage. When Connolly comes on at the beginning, he’s a
tiny figure. He looks like a digital photo taken on the wrong
light setting. The white and grey of his hair and beard blend
with the complexion of his skin, making it almost impossible
to pick out any features on the bleached-out blob of his face.
Any raised eyebrows, knowing glances or comic grimaces are
lost on the back rows.
However, he’s a superb performer, with vast experience
of playing big venues, and his performance works at both
short and long distance. People like me in the cheaper seats
might miss out on the facial expressions, but Connolly works
with his whole body. His long, lightweight hair flaps about
comically when he acts something out, and he habitually
strokes it back, running his hands down either side of his
head. His legs are very expressive – he demonstrates funny
walks and struts about the stage when he gets a big laugh.
He has great mime skills, for example illustrating how long it
takes a man of his age to urinate, finishing off by pretending
to wring out his penis with both hands. He also uses the
whole stage, occasionally stepping right up to the front of it
and lowering his voice to give the feeling of saying something
confidential.
In spite of all this though, I feel a little distanced from
the show because of the way the size of the venue affects
the audience. After a punchline, I can hear the wave of
laughter rushing through the stalls, but it rarely engulfs me.
In my section, there are pockets of laughter or applause
from individuals or groups around me, but there are not
many moments when we all laugh at once. As individuals,
 Working the audience 195

we’re more likely to laugh if surrounded by others who are

laughing, but on the peripheries of a large audience we’re less
likely to be surrounded.
There’s no doubt that large venues present particular
challenges for comedians, particularly when they move into
gigantic arena gigs. Steve Martin has written of the problems
he faced as the first stand-up to venture into such huge,
unwieldy venues. He found it impossible to retain any subtlety
in his act, pointing out that ‘nuance was difficult when you
were a white dot in a basketball arena.’15 He also found the
audience’s rock and roll attitude affected his delivery: ‘The
act was still rocking, but audience disruptions, whoops and
shouts, sometimes killed the timing of bits, violating my
premise that every moment mattered.’ Furthermore, it was
impossible to deal with disruptions because ‘if I had responded
to the heckler, the rest of the audience wouldn’t have known
what I was talking about.’ With hindsight, he realises that the
nature of his performances had completely changed: ‘I had
become a party host, presiding not over timing and ideas but
over a celebratory bash of my own making. If I had under-
stood what was happening, I might have been happier, but I
didn’t. I still thought I was doing comedy.’16
Having grown up in the punk era – with its preference for
small, sweaty, intimate venues – and worked as a comic in
cellar bars and pub function rooms, I find the idea of stadium
stand-up a bit odd, and as a result I attended one for the
first time only very recently. On 27 September 2012, I find
myself sitting in Block 110, Row E, Seat 282 of the O2 Arena
in London, watching Michael McIntyre’s Showtime. It’s a
curiously impersonal experience. The audience seem as varied
and random as you’d get on, say, a busy railway station.
I don’t feel part of a group much more than I would on a
station, either. The laughter is a weird, unnatural noise – a
kind of distant, disembodied rush that seems to emanate from
the centre of the arena.
McIntyre has spoken about what it’s like to play arenas:
‘Most of the time, you’re blinded …You don’t see the
196 GETTING THE JOKE

audience. You have spotlights in your face and, behind that,

it’s dark. You’re just talking into a black void.’17 The diffi-
culties of connecting with the audience are obvious at the
O2. As with any stadium gig, live relay of the comedian is
projected on large video screens behind him. He chastises
people sitting at the front, telling them it’s ‘rude’ to watch him
on the screens rather than actually looking at him. Pointing
this out as a breach of etiquette is a good gag and he gets
laughs with it, but the fact that he has to tell them off for the
same thing later on suggests that deep down he might be a tiny
bit frustrated by it.
I’m sitting near the front of a block that’s towards the
back of the arena, and from where I’m sitting watching the
screen is pretty much the only option. The comedian is a tiny
figure whose facial expressions are simply beyond my range
of vision. I make a conscious effort to try and watch the man
rather than his projected image, but I can’t last more than a
couple of minutes before my eyes flick back to the screens.
Part of the problem is that I can’t see his lips move, so it takes
an act of the imagination to believe that the hugely amplified
voice we hear through the PA is actually coming from him – it
fits much more readily with the image we see on the screens.
Before the show, clips from his previous DVDs were projected
and largely ignored by the audience as we filtered in. This was
weird, as the video images from his past performances looked
so similar to the live relay from tonight’s show which we now
watch so avidly.
Towards the end of the show, people start shouting out –
not really heckling, just trying to join in. He deals with it by
imitating the noise they make, which does the job in terms of
getting a laugh, but it’s really the only option that’s open to
him. He tells them he can’t hear what they’re saying – he’d love
to play with them, but it would have to be a more intimate
show. Stewart Lee is only half joking when he suggests a novel
solution for this kind of problem:

I don’t know what it’s like for these stadium guys. I mean
 Working the audience 197

… I don’t know who they think they’re talking to …

they’ve got a big monitor with a picture of the comic on
it, actually the comic should be looking at a big monitor
of the audience. Of, like, individuals, so he can see. That’d
make more sense.18

One thing I realise as I’m watching McIntyre is that spontaneous

applause – as opposed to the ritual applause that welcomes
the comic on to the stage and off again at the end – is almost
entirely absent from the show. In most stand-up gigs, this is
almost as important a reaction as laughter in showing audience
approval. It can be used to reward a particularly clever gag, or
an exceptionally deft bit of performance, or perhaps to show
they agree with an opinion the comedian has expressed. The
lack of spontaneous applause in McIntyre’s O2 show is odd
because he’s clearly immensely popular with the thousands
of people who have paid a decent amount of money to see
him here, and in fact we like him so much that we cheer him
back on for an encore. His act has the qualities that normally
merit spontaneous applause – there are clever gags, some
lovely moments of performance, and he expresses the kind of
mainstream opinions that hardly anybody could disagree with.
I conclude that problem lies less with the comedian and
more with the way the audience is configured. A review of
Newman and Baddiel’s show at the Wembley Arena in 1993
points out how difficult it was for the two comics to unify the
audience: ‘It was full-ish – but one end was curtained off, the
empty spaces acted like fire breaks in a forest, and although
it often crackled, it never quite caught fire.’19 It’s nothing
like as bad as that at McIntyre’s O2 show, but as with Billy
Connolly’s show at the Hammersmith Apollo, I don’t fully
feel part of the crowd. I’m never surrounded by laughter,
only hearing the laughs of isolated individuals sitting around
me. Spontaneous applause requires a kind of agreement
spawned by the zeitgeist in the room – but with such a vast,
amorphous audience this kind of quasi-psychic consensus is
near-impossible.
198 GETTING THE JOKE

Al Murray has an anecdote which shows just how big the

yawning gap between performer and audience can be in an
arena:

I had friends who went to one of [my] O2 shows, [who]

said, ‘Oh, there was a fight in front of us.’ You think, ‘I
didn’t know that!’ And you’d know that in a 40-seat room,
an 80-seat room, 300-seat room. You’d even know that in
a 4,000-seat big theatre, you’d know if there was that kind
of a disturbance. But in an arena you’ve no idea, and that
seems a shame in a way.20

Correcting audience response

Part of the skill of being a stand-up comedian is to be able to
control the exchange of energy by managing and manipulating
audience response. Often this is done so skilfully that the
audience will not even realise it is happening. The laughter,
the applause and the way that the energy builds through the
course of the show all seem to be totally spontaneous expres-
sions of the audience’s will. The subtle cues used to help the
punters know when to laugh or applaud – the gestures, timing
or vocal inflections – are largely invisible.
The technique only starts to show when the audience’s
reactions are in some way incongruous. Then the comedian
can get laughs by correcting whatever mistake the crowd
has made. A common example would be when only one or
two people clap, denying the comic the satisfaction of full-
blown spontaneous applause. Jimmy Carr deals with this by
saying, ‘All together or not at all on the applause. [laughter]
Otherwise we’ve got to throw you a fucking fish. [laughter]’
There’s a gentility underlying Carr’s wilfully offensive wit, and
having jokingly suggested that the lone applauder is a trained
seal, he then politely acknowledges the applause, saying,
‘Thanks very much.’21
 Working the audience 199

Even laughter in an unexpected place can be sent up as a

mistaken response. David Cross is about to launch into the
next section of a routine about drugs: ‘And where I live in New
York, er, um, eleven blocks from my apartment is a methadone
clinic. And, er –’ This is clearly set-up rather than punchline,
and methadone clinics are not really know for their humorous
qualities, so when this apparently innocuous line gets a laugh
from a single punter, he stops sharply, and his head snaps up
to look in the direction of the laughter. His face shows puzzled
amusement, and the audience laugh with him at the inappro-
priateness of the response. ‘Ha ha, wh-! Why is that funny?’
he ponders, then imagines the thought process of the person
who laughed: ‘“Ahhh, treatment!! Huh huh! [laughter and
a smattering of applause] Wha, huh huh. Just pop down the
methadone clinic for some gutbusters.” [laughter]’ A couple
of lines later, he tries to get things back on track, saying, ‘No
but then, all right, so in between, er, my apartment and the
methadone clinic, is a park. Tompkins Square Park in, er, in
East Village, and um – So, needless to say, there are a lot of
junkies in that park.’ There’s another single laugh, and it’s
louder this time. Cross pauses and looks down at the stage,
apparently annoyed this time. The audience laugh. He feigns
bemused disapproval: ‘I don’t wanna – encourage this, er –
[laughter] Or we’ll never get outta here, er –’ [laughter]’22

Hostility
Although Cross plays this as if his authority is being challenged,
in both of these examples the rogue punters’ responses are
actually positive. They are, after all, only applauding or
laughing. Sometimes, though, comedians can face genuine
challenges. Stand-up comedy is shot through with a dark vein
of fear and hostility. Comedians tend to fear audiences, afraid
of their ability to judge and reject. Speaking to an audience
is one of the most popular fears among the general public,
200 GETTING THE JOKE

and many people are horrified by the very idea of having to

perform stand-up.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the mirror, audiences fear
comedians. For most events, venues with unreserved seating
tend to fill up from the front, whereas in comedy shows they
tend to fill up from the back. Punters fear sitting near the
front in case they should get picked on or ridiculed by the act.
Stand-up jargon has hostility written into it. Comedians who
have done well with an audience say they have ‘killed’; those
that have done badly say they have ‘died’. Stand-up has been
compared with bullfighting. Comedians say that audiences are
‘the enemy’, that they can smell the comic’s fear.
In his influential book On Aggression, Konrad Lorenz
argues that humour is a veiled form of hostility, but says it
is unlikely to regress into ‘primal aggressive behaviour’. He
drives the point home with a memorable line: ‘Barking dogs
may occasionally bite, but laughing men hardly ever shoot!’23
However, there have been incidents in stand-up shows where
the fear and hostility that bubbles under the surface has
exploded into real violence. Milton Berle once used a couple
of standard comic insults on a group of three men sitting at
a nightclub table, getting nothing but silence in return. After
the show, one of them assaulted him, grabbing him by the
tie and sticking a fork into his chin, saying, ‘I could kill you
right this minute, you little rat bastard.’24 Hattie Hayridge,
an inoffensive comic with a deadpan act based on offbeat
one-liners, was assaulted less seriously while she was on stage
at the Tunnel Club in East London. The venue lived up to
its reputation for crazy, rowdy hecklers as a punter walked
across the back of the stage, stood behind her and lifted up her
dress. She responded by repeatedly kicking him, so he came
back at her by throwing an egg in her face.
There have also been cases where violence has been started
by the comedian. In an uncharacteristically slapstick move,
Lenny Bruce once repaid a heckler by inviting him onstage and
pushing a custard pie into his face. Milton Berle could give
as good as he took. An anti-Semitic heckler started winding
 Working the audience 201

him up by shouting ‘Kike!’, ‘Jew bastard’ and ‘Hitler’s right’.

Berle leapt off the stage and piled into the man, trying to pass
it off as a joke by pretending to dance with him. They were
separated by theatre ushers, and Berle was later arrested.25
But arguably, the prize for Most Violent Assault on a Paying
Punter should go to Bob Monkhouse. In 1977, Monkhouse
was performing in Watford when he was persistently heckled
by a young man shouting, ‘Fuck off!’ Eventually, the comedian
snapped. ‘No more!’ he said, before walking tightrope-style
along the railing that led from the stage to the punter and
kicking him in the head, instantly flooring him. The audience
cheered the comic, and he went down to much greater enthu-
siasm after the assault.26 With this in mind, I wonder what
would have happened if AA Gill had made the comment about
marzipan socks to Monkhouse’s face?

Notes
1 ‘The Original Chinese Waiter’ and ‘The Old Army Routine’
on Buddy Hackett, The Original Chinese Waiter, Laugh.com,
2002, LGH1107
2 Face to Face, BBC Two, 12 January 1998
3 Interview with Mark Thomas, Clapham, 27 February 2004
4 Interview with Rhys Darby, by telephone, 30 June 2004
5 E.g. ‘An electric shock shoots around the room when a comic
is really cooking.’, William Cook, Ha Bloody Ha: Comedians
Talking, London: Fourth Estate, 1994, p. 181; comedian Simon
Evans: ‘Laughter is like electricity’, quoted in William Cook,
The Comedy Store: The Club that Changed British Comedy,
London: Little, Brown and Company, 2001, p. 110
6 Interview with Phill Jupitus, BBC Broadcasting House, London,
6 June 2004
7 Interview with Dave Gorman, by telephone, 29 June 2004
8 Interview with James Campbell, by telephone, 25 August 2004
9 Interview with Shelley Berman, by telephone, 5 August 2004
202 GETTING THE JOKE

10 Really.
11 Iain Mackintosh, Architecture, Actor and Audience, London
and New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 172
12 Iain Mackintosh, Architecture, Actor and Audience, London
and New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 128
13 William Cook, The Comedy Store: The Club that Changed
British Comedy, London: Little, Brown and Company, 2001,
p. 110
14 Frankie Howerd, On the Way I Lost it: An Autobiography,
London: Star Books/WH Allen, 1976, p. 67
15 Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, London:
Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, 2008, p. 181
16 Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, London:
Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, 2008, p. 185
17 Stephen Armstrong, ‘Can You Hear Me At The Back? The
main players in comedy now perform to huge crowds of all
ages. What if your material doesn’t travel to these vast arenas?
Stephen Armstrong talks to the next wave of comics aiming for
the big time’, Sunday Times, 19 February 2012, p. 12
18 Interview with Stewart Lee, Patisserie Valerie, Canterbury, 25
February 2012
19 William Cook, ‘Funny Turn at the Arena; Newman and
Baddiel Strive to Fill Wembley Arena with Laughs’, the
Guardian, 13 December 1993, Features p. 5
20 Interview with Al Murray, by telephone, 2 April 2012
21 Jimmy Carr, Telling Jokes, 4 DVD, 2009, C4DVD10294
22 David Cross, Bigger and Blackerer, Sub Pop Records, 2010,
SP883 [DVD]
23 Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, London: Methuen, 1967, p. 254
24 Milton Berle (with Haskel Frankel), Milton Berle – An
Autobiography, New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema
Books, 1974, pp. 132–3
25 Milton Berle (with Haskel Frankel), Milton Berle – An
Autobiography, New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema
Books, 1974, pp. 164–5
26 Bob Monkhouse, Over the Limit: My Secret Diaries 1993–8,
London: Century, 1998, pp. 330–2
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sharing

What is interesting about watching James Campbell – whose

act is aimed at children – is seeing how many of the normal
expectations of a stand-up show are overturned. The expected
rivalry between comedian and audience is simply not there,
and there’s no question of him having to fight for survival, as
the status his adulthood affords him means he will always be
more powerful than most of his punters. When he asks them
questions, rather than shouting out, the children politely put
their hands up. There’s no way he could seriously ridicule
an individual audience member as he might in an adult gig,
because the battle of wits would be too uneven. It doesn’t bear
thinking about – the child, bursting into tears, the parents
furiously glowering at him and taking the child out of the
theatre, all of the other parents murmuring dangerously.
Campbell avoids all of this by treating the children with
skilful delicacy. At a show in Tunbridge Wells, he asks if any
of the children are evil, and a little girl puts her hand up. He
asks her why she’s evil. She says she doesn’t know. This leads
him into a flight of fancy about James Bond villains who have
no idea what their plans are.1 It’s a funny bit, which directs
the laughter away from the girl whose comment inspired it, by
focusing not on her but on a fantastical idea.
Tiernan Douieb – the regular compère for Comedy Club 4
Kids – explains what it’s like performing for an audience of
children:
204 GETTING THE JOKE

[T]he biggest difference I’d say is their enthusiasm. Kids

will fill the front row first, and then go backwards. And
also they heckle but not heckling, they want to take part.
You know, I prefer them to a drunk crowd on a Friday. You
get far more interesting responses … There’s a whole sort
of territory thing with adults … of somebody who wants
to be more impressive than the comedian so they’ll put you
down. Kids just wanna take part, it’s so lovely …2

Watching him in action at the Gulbenkian Theatre in

Canterbury, the difference is immediately obvious. Instead
of heckling, the kids put their hands up to try and get his
attention. Their comments are sometimes sincere – perhaps
earnestly telling him about their pets – and often imaginative
and very funny. One boy tells him that today was disap-
pointing, and when Douieb asks why, the boy replies: ‘My
parents woke up.’ Another boy declares, in a totally serious
tone, ‘I kill monsters.’3 All of this gives the comedian plenty
of fuel for his comic imagination, and much of the gig is a
collaborative conversation, the children making suggestions
and Douieb playfully running with them.
It’s refreshing to see comedian and audience on the same
side, but even normal adult stand-up gigs can be friendly,
collaborative affairs. Hostility is by no means inevitable and
outright violence is thankfully rare. Dave Gorman argues that
it’s a mistake to see the audience as the enemy:

People always talk about comedy in combative terms.

When one of us doesn’t go down well, people will say they
died, and when they go really well, they say they killed.
And it makes it sound like only one of us can be the winner.
Whereas actually, there’s only two ways for this to go: we
all have a good time, or we all have a bad time. There isn’t
a middle ground. We’re actually all on the same side.4

I’d argue that sharing is just as important a component of

humour as aggression. Laughter is a social activity. Studies
 Sharing 205

have found that individuals are much less likely to laugh when
alone than when they are part of a group, and that we’re
more likely to laugh when we’re surrounded by other people
laughing.5 Much of what stand-up comedians do is about
sharing feelings and experiences with the audience, to create a
sense of community.
In some cases, the sharing is quite literal. At the Pavilion
Theatre, Brighton in January 2004, Daniel Kitson spends a
lot of time talking to a couple of teenage boys in the front
row. One of them has been brought along by his father, and
Kitson chastises him for bringing his son to such an unsuitable
show. He chats to the boys, and goes back to them every so
often to ask them more questions. He asks them what music
they like, showing his disgust when they tell him they like nu
metal bands like Korn and Slipknot. Then, at the end of the
show, he gives them two CDs from his own collection, saying
that they can now start listening to ‘good music’. Sharing his
possessions with the two teenagers is a surprisingly touching
gesture, which shows that for all the ribbing, he also feels a
real connection with them.

Satsumas, fanzines and badges

Josie Long shares things out in her shows in a more organised
way. In her show Trying is Good, she tells the audience that,
‘[I]t’s a show about how much I love people who put in the
effort. Regardless of how – misplaced that effort is. [laughter]
And er, I thought I would reward audience members who put
in the effort, so I got, I got these.’ She holds up a net of little
oranges, and the audience laugh, appreciating the eccentricity
of the offer. ‘And I just thought – if you were a big laugher –
you know, or you had a nice face [a few people laugh] then I
would throw a satsuma [she starts throwing and catching one
in her hand] [laughter] at your head. [laughter]’6 She makes
good her promise, occasionally stopping to throw satsumas
out to people she thinks have earned them.
206 GETTING THE JOKE

She also wears her DIY ethos on her sleeve, producing little
hand-drawn, photocopied fanzines which she personally gives
out to punters before her shows. The ‘Official Showgramme’
of her 2011–12 show The Future is Another Place, for
example, is chockfull of silly, homemade fun – recommended
reading and listening, gags, puzzles and cartoons. She explains
the thinking behind this:

I’ve always wanted to be closer to the audience and meet

people because … even in my first tour my dream was
to meet all the creative people in all the towns and see
what they were up to, you know. I still feel that way
and … I don’t like having that distance, like I much
prefer it when I’ve gone round and given everyone a
programme for the show, so I can feel what people are
like …7

Sarah Millican is another comic who gives out little gifts to her
audience, in her case badges with slogans that relate to gags
in the show. In her show Thoroughly Modern Millican, she
does a routine about people who are cautious and people who
enjoy taking risks, labelling them ‘Dodgems’ and ‘Bumper
Cars’ respectively – and theatre staff give out badges with one
or the other label on it. Millican started doing this early in her
career, but has kept it going even now her audience has grown
so much larger:

I think by the end of this tour we will have sold 200,000

tickets. And we still give out badges. And that’s a lot
of badges, but also I’m aware that the tickets are more
expensive, I can afford the badges, it’s fine! … But it does
mean that the pressure’s on every year because … you have
to order the badges. Like, what happened last year before
Edinburgh, we had to order 10,000 badges before that bit
of material was working! Total panic! I can’t believe we’ve
just … designed and ordered 10,000 badges and that bit of
material still isn’t working! I was like, ‘Well it has to work,
 Sharing 207

I’ve got a shedload of badges.’ And it gradually started to

work which was such a relief.8

Sharing out badges is not just about specific material. As with

Long, it also reflects the ethos of the act and the relationship
Millican enjoys with her audience. She builds routines around
audience interaction, asking them questions and playing with
their responses. At the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury, she
asks the ‘Dodgems’ in the audience if they take extra pants
away with them when they go away, and having established
that they do, she asks them why. A voice from the balcony
shouts, ‘In case I cough.’ She has to make the person repeat it
a couple of times before she hears what they’ve said, and when
she does she cracks up laughing, which gets a huge laugh from
the audience. Then somebody asks her if she’s wearing red
pants. She says she doesn’t know – which gets a laugh – then
walks to the back of the stage with her back to us. She hitches
up her dress, and pulls her trousers open so she – but not we –
can see, and walks back to the mike. ‘No,’ she reports, simply.
There’s another huge laugh.9
She explains how important sharing is in this kind of inter-
action. She earns the right to ask them intimate questions
because of how much she shares about her own life:

I always make sure that the audience is as dark as possible

so that they have anonymity … and they can shout out
whatever they like … I like that because then it gives them
more freedom to shout stuff out … I share a lot. I think if
I went on and did topical stuff and then said, ‘How many
sexual partners have you had?’ they’d quite rightly tell me
to sod off. But because I sort of give so much of myself
away and tell so much private stuff … there’s so much of
me that’s given out that they don’t mind giving it back.
Because it feels like it goes both ways.10
208 GETTING THE JOKE

Observational comedy
A less obvious kind of sharing is observational comedy, in
which the comedian makes an observation about something
from the backwaters of life, an everyday phenomenon that is
rarely noticed or discussed. For it to work properly, it must be
based on shared experience, as Eddie Izzard observes: ‘Your
observations need to be something that people can relate to,
for the audience to pick up on it.’11
Sharing is built into the very language of observational
comedy. ‘Have you ever noticed …?’ was such a common
introduction to an observational routine that it’s become
a comedy cliché.12 When comedians describe the common
experience which they are observing, they often use the
second person: instead of saying ‘I do this …’, they say, ‘You
do this …’ These linguistic quirks emphasise the importance
of sharing, directly asking the audience to compare the
comedian’s experience with their own.
Observational comedy became popular in America in the
1950s, through the work of comedians like Shelley Berman. In
Britain, it was pioneered by the folk comedians and the Irish
comic Dave Allen in the 1970s, and further back by Al Read,
who based his 1950s radio routines on close observations of
northern working-class life, often relying on recognition for
effect.
The chances are, though, that observational comedy is
older than this, and may even have existed in the music hall.
Dan Leno, for example, had a routine called ‘The Robin’. It’s
delivered in Leno’s usual, rather theatrical style. In singsong
tones, he tries to be enthusiastic about Christmas, but what he
says acknowledges a harsher reality:

Why how beautiful it is on a Christmas morning, when a

man walks out into the frost and snow, or the mud and the
slush as the case might be, and his coat buttoned up, and
his nose a beautiful crimson. He meets a friend. Takes him
 Sharing 209

by the hand and he says, ‘Merry Christmas!’ And the friend

takes him by the hand and says, ‘Merry Christmas!’ And
there they stand, hand in hand, looking into each other’s
face, waitin’ to see who’s going to stand a drink first.

On one level, the gags are based on the simple premise that
Christmas isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but there’s something
about the way he says the last line that suggests that he knows
he’s striking a chord with the audience. When he describes
the experience of meeting a friend in the street and trying
to be jolly about Christmas but actually finding yourself in
a stand-off about who’s going to stump up the money for a
drink, he seems to be uncovering something the punters will
have experienced. It’s hard to tell given that this is, of course,
a studio recording made without an audience, but my guess is
that working-class Victorian punters would have greeted this
observation with the laughter of recognition. This impression
is reinforced by the fact that as the routine continues, Leno
starts using the second person:

And then you go home to your Christmas dinner, or other

people’s Christmas dinners, other people’s preferred ‘cos
it’s not so much expense. And there you sit, with your feet
under your friend’s table, and your eyes on the bottles and
things, and you have that beautiful feelin’ in your heart as
you’re sittin’ and eatin’ – you know you’ve got nothing to
pay for.13

The repeated use of ‘you’ anticipates a thousand observational

routines, and suggests that the audience are being asked to
compare Leno’s descriptions with their own experiences.
Later, front cloth comics working the variety theatres
would occasionally do something similar. Welsh comedian
Gladys Morgan, for example, talks about a seaside landlady
who says, ‘Now I want you all to enjoy yourselves while
you’re stayin’ with me – get out as much as you can.’ The
big laugh that follows might be due to the simple gag of the
210 GETTING THE JOKE

tight-fisted landlady cunningly trying to get her guests to make

as little use of her facilities as possible, but Morgan follows
it up with a line which suggests she’s describing a shared
experience: ‘Ahhh, they all say that, don’t they?’14
Observational comedy is now common in stand-up, and
the first thing it needs in order to work is recognition. Dane
Cook has an observational routine in which he asserts: ‘There
is one person – in every group of friends – that nobody fucking
likes.’ This may be a reasonably well-worn revelation, but for
this audience it’s both surprising and truthful. They signal
their agreement in a prolonged response that starts with
laughter and quickly dissolves into cheering, whistling and
applause. As he continues, somebody shouts, ‘It’s so true!’
Cook replies, ‘I know, it is so true – and that’s why it’s funny!
[laughter]’15
Of course, observational comedy needs more than simple
recognition to get a laugh, otherwise comics could get
a whole set out of simply describing the venue they’re
performing in with plain, factual language. The observation
needs to be not only true, but also incongruous. A Michael
McIntyre routine perfectly demonstrates this. Talking about
how stressful it is to go away on holiday and leave the
house unattended, he tells the audience, ‘You feel you have
to unplug everything. You think it might blow up.’ As they
start to recognise the truth of his observation, a gentle
rumble of laughter starts to underscore his words. ‘This is
the theory we all have. Despite the fact that many of you
will have come out tonight and left things plugged in in
your homes.’ The wave of laughter continues to grow, but
he doesn’t wait for it to break. ‘But you’re not sitting there
going, “The TV could blow up!”’ The wave grows louder
still. ‘But when you go away for two weeks, you think your
appliances will start to combust!’16 Finally, the wave of
laughter crashes ashore.
What McIntyre manages to nail is not just that we share
this anxiety about potentially explosive household appli-
ances, but also that it’s an inconsistent and irrational fear. The
 Sharing 211

audience laugh because they recognise the neurotic thinking

he describes in themselves, and they also recognise the silliness
of their anxiety.
This suggests that in some cases there is a therapeutic
element to observational comedy. The situations it describes
may involve worry, paranoia or embarrassment, and the act
of sharing them allows a release of these tensions. In the late
1950s, Shelley Berman had a routine called ‘Embarrassing
Moment’ which contained such gems as:

Listen, listen – has this ever happened to you, have you ever
been talking intimately with somebody and all of a sudden
you spit on them, has that ever happened? [laughter] Now
for the person who’s been spat on, it’s embarrassing too,
you know, because he doesn’t know whether to wipe it off
or forget about it! [laughter]17

There’s a slightly hysterical quality in the audience’s response.

The first laugh lasts for nine seconds, the second for eight.
As each starts to quieten down, you can hear individual
punters hooting, wailing or shrieking. There seems to be
something outrageous about drawing attention to such an
embarrassing phenomenon as accidentally spraying somebody
with a globule of saliva.
Some observational gags rely less on the observation itself,
and more on what is done with it. Adam Bloom offers a good
example of this: ‘I’ve actually spent the day in East London,
ha’ we got any Cockneys in?’ There’s a cheer of assent from
a few Cockneys in the audience. ‘You lot fascinate me, right,
what fascinates me about Cockneys is they always laugh at the
end of their sentences – right? Even if what they’ve said isn’t
funny, that little cackle.’ This observation doesn’t get a laugh,
even though Bloom asks the audience to identify with it by
saying ‘right?’ But here, the observation is merely a set-up for
what follows: ‘And I’ve worked out what it is. They’re trying
to compensate for the aitches they’ve just dropped. [quiet
laughter] So a Cockney walks in a pub and goes, “‘Ello ‘Arry,
212 GETTING THE JOKE

‘ow’s it goin’, ‘eard you been on ‘oliday, get us ‘alf a lager,

heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh!” [laughter and a few claps]’18
It’s a joke that works on more than one level. To start with,
there’s the energy and rhythm of the final punchline. Bloom’s
Cockney laugh sounds funny in itself, like a jolly machine gun.
Then there’s the concept of the gag. The fantasy explanation
that Cockneys spew out dropped aitches at the end of their
sentences like a broken machine, creates a very funny cartoon
image.
Bloom sees the gag as typical of his style, offering a slightly
warped view of common experiences. He believes his obser-
vations are not so much based on asking the audience ‘Have
you ever noticed …?’, but rather telling them, ‘You’ve never
noticed …’ He describes how he relates to an audience: ‘I’m
one of you, but I’m the odd one of you … I was nearly one of
you, but something twisted and didn’t work out.’19
Observational comedy is now such an established part
of stand-up that some comics parody it. In a twentieth
anniversary show at the original Comedy Store in LA, Jim
Carrey tells the audience: ‘I’d like to do some observational
humour for you now – I hope you can identify with it. Hey
– don’t you hate – when you’re in bed with three women –
[laughter] and the least attractive one whispers, “Save it for
me!” [laughter and applause]’20 It’s a clever subversion of the
form, deliberately picking an experience the audience won’t be
able to ‘identify with’, while at the same time suggesting that
Carrey is a habitual sexual athlete.
A joke by Steve Coogan’s character, the dreadful comedian
Duncan Thickett, is based on the same idea of observing an
unrecognisable experience, but in this case it’s not a fantastical
boast, but a glimpse of the grimness of the character’s life. The
bespectacled, woolly hat wearing Thickett explains that obser-
vational comedy is, ‘where I observe something, right, and you
go, “Yeah – that’s true, that”’. Then he goes on to observe:
‘Have you ever noticed, when you’re walking along the streets
at night, you’re just walking along the streets, there’s always
someone, in’t there, on the other side of the road, that says, at
 Sharing 213

the top of their voice, “Hey you, you four-eyed bastard, where
d’you get that hat?” [laughter]’ He pushes the gag further
by insisting that his observation is a good one, confidently
referring to ‘one or two laughs of recognition’.21

Found comedy
If observational comedy works by making the audience not
only identify with what is described, but also perceive it as
absurd, there’s another type of stand-up routine which works
in a similar way. The comedian finds something from everyday
life – perhaps an object, a newspaper article, or some kind of
document – and takes it onstage to present it to the audience,
and share its unintentional absurdity. Just as the objet trouvé
is defined by the act of designating it as art, so the comedian
creates ‘found comedy’ by presenting something not designed
to be funny as an object of amusement.
When I was working as a comedian, I went through a
phase when practically every new routine I came up with
worked like this. There seemed to be no end to the things
I’d take on stage with me to get laughs: an English-French
phrase book; a misleading headline from the front page of
The Guardian; the Highway Code booklet; a set of inflatable
Spice Girls dolls which came free with a pop magazine; a
catalogue full of tacky gift ideas. My favourite was a booklet
I picked up in a local government building in Michigan.
When I got back from the States, I used it in my compèring
at The Last Laugh:

I picked up this excellent document called Crack Down on

Drugs Colouring Book, right. [laughter] The title, Crack
Down on Drugs, no pun intended, obviously. [laughter]
And ‘Colouring Book’, but nowhere in this is there a
warning not to sniff the pens you’re colouring the pictures
in with, right? [quiet laughter] But, aside from that,
214 GETTING THE JOKE

the thing that caught my eye was this first picture. You
probably can’t see it, but I’ve thought of that.

I unroll a large photocopy of the picture, and the audience

laugh as they take it in. It shows a respectable-looking man
in casual clothes holding out a handful of pills to a kid in a
school playground.

Now as you can see, it’s a picture of a drug dealer selling

drugs to a kid. Not your, not your stereotypical drug dealer.
He looks more like a Jehovah’s Witness, or something.
[laughter] And it says, ‘If someone offers you a drug, say
no!’ And the kid’s saying, ‘No, I care about myself,’ but
he’s actually, if you look closely, already been taking drugs,
‘cos here is a dog in an overcoat – [laughter] and checked
trousers, you know. [laughter and a few claps]22

Sure enough, there is a dog in an overcoat and checked

trousers in the background, and a British audience, unfamiliar
with the American character McGruff the Crime Dog, share
my amusement at the hallucinogenic implications of the
picture.
Of course, found comedy isn’t my own invention, and
a much more celebrated example is Jasper Carrott’s 1977
routine, in which he quotes actual statements made on car
insurance claim forms:

The other man altered his mind and I had to run over him.’
[laughter] ‘I bumped into a lamppost which was obscured
by human beings,’ ha ha ha ha – [laughter] Ha – ‘Coming
home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree
I haven’t got.’ [laughter] ‘The accident was caused by me
waving to a man I hit last week.’ [laughter]

This is a really efficient bit of comedy, with the audience

laughing long and loud at each ridiculous statement. The
sentences which Carrott reads out are funny in their own
 Sharing 215

right, but the fact that they’re genuine is important. Before

he starts, he assures the audience: ‘And people say to me,
“Surely these are made up”, these are not, these are genuinely
what people wrote on their claim forms, when they’d had an
accident and sent into this insurance office in London, right,
and they’re all true.’ As with observational comedy, the idea
of sharing is important. Carrott shows his own enjoyment
of the statements, laughing along with the audience, and
occasionally throwing in comments like, ‘This is the best one,
I think,’ or ‘Tremendous, I love those, I love those.’23
In some cases, found comedy is more political. Mark
Thomas reads from a book called The Strategic Export
Control Annual Report, 1999, which lists British arms sales.
He acknowledges how unpromising this sounds as a basic
comedy premise: ‘I know many of you are thinking, “Er
– knob gag, please, Mark” [laughter]’ He goes on to pick
out some choice facts, building on them by imagining tiny
cartoonish scenes: ‘I found out we sold India anti-gravity
suits. [laughter] “We shall fight to keep Kashmir!” “How?”
“We shall fly above them!” [laughter]’ Like Carrott, he points
out the absurdity he likes best: ‘This is my favourite one:
“General purpose machine guns” [laughter and clapping]
‘Cos – I thought they were fairly specific! [laughter] “No,
general purpose, you can wear it as evening wear, you can
kill people with it – [laughter] Says, ‘I’m casual, I’m deadly.’”
[laughter]’
The difference is that Thomas is asking the audience not
just to share his amusement about what he has found, but
also his outrage. He sets up his argument before reading from
the book: ‘It’s ‘n incredible link between – it’s not incredible,
it’s fucking obvious – between arms sales that we make as
a country and asylum seekers and refugees.’ After getting a
laugh with the anti-gravity suits, he comes back to this point,
saying that India comes ‘in the top 15 of countries of origin
for asylum seekers’.24 In a context where asylum seekers are
being demonised by the popular press and certain politicians,
pointing out the UK’s own culpability by contributing to
216 GETTING THE JOKE

unrest in other countries is an important statement to make

between the laughter.

Shared history
Another close relative of observational comedy is the type
of routine in which comics reminisce about past experiences
they share with the audience. Liverpudlian comedian Tom
O’Connor provides a classic example. O’Connor built up a
loyal following in the working men’s clubs of Merseyside,
basing much of his comedy on his understanding of the
local culture. Playing the Maghull Country Club in 1975, he
talks about the working-class upbringing he shares with his
audience: ‘D’you remember years ago – when you played in
the street and the women used to shout at yer? “Go on, you!
Up yer own end! [laughter] Yer like yer mother you are, go
on!” [laughter] Whaddever that meant. And – [laughter]’
The audience laugh, recognising the type of fearsome
woman O’Connor describes, and the accuracy with which he
has remembered the kind of things she says. As the routine
continues, real memories are interspersed with fictional ones,
like the game he remembers called ‘forwards-backwards-
sideways’: ‘You’d hit a kid on the head with a shovel and – see
which way he fell. [laughter]’ There’s also comic exaggeration,
like the memory of the one posh family in every street, with a
mother who ‘scrubbed the step in her fur coat’. But the biggest
reactions are won by the memories themselves, particularly
O’Connor’s imitations of the way mothers would sing to
call their children home: ‘“Ma-ry/ You’re wan-ted!” [loud,
extended laughter and applause] With – with some of them,
you coulda danced! “Joh-nny/ Yer fa-ther’s gonna/ Ba-tter
yer!” [extended laughter]’25
In this way, O’Connor forms a strong, warm bond with his
audience, identifying himself very much as one of them. His
whole act radiates with Merseyside pride. ‘Round ‘ere we’re
 Sharing 217

brilliant,’ he tells his audience. Nostalgia is crucial, and his

longing to return to the values of their shared past is explicit:
‘Wasn’ it good, when we didn’t ‘ave any problems like the
modern people’ve got?’
In the 1960s, Bill Cosby used shared history in a way that
allowed members of his audience to share in racial unity. He
would look back at his childhood, choosing memories that
were not specific to being black. In one routine, for example,
he talks about the milk he used to drink in kindergarten,
which had been ‘sittin’ on the radiator for about 80 years’:
‘Nothin’ in the world better for a bunch of five-year-old kids
than good old lukewarm curdley milk [laughter] Yes sir, we
loved it!’26
By deliberately not mentioning the racism he must have
experienced as a child, he allows both black and white
Americans in his audiences to enjoy shared memories together.
This might seem a rather safe, cosy approach, lacking the
edge of, say, Dick Gregory, but it’s important to realise that
for a black comedian like Cosby to ignore his own race was a
radical step in itself in the 1960s; and to remember that black
comics who had come before him had been sacked for not
being ‘Negro’ enough.27
The sharing aspect of stand-up is at its most conspicuous
when comedians give out little gifts to the audience, or
invite them to consider common experiences and memories.
However, on a subtler level it can also be found more deeply
ingrained into the act, in the references which the jokes and
routines are built on.

Notes
1 James Campbell, Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells, 1
June 2004
2 Interview with Tiernan Douieb, Gulbenkian Café, Canterbury,
17 March 2012
218 GETTING THE JOKE

3 Tiernan Douieb, Chatback Comedy Club’s Kids Hour,

Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury, 17 March 2012
4 Interview with Dave Gorman, by telephone, 29 June 2004
5 See Phillip Glenn, Laughter in Inaction, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003, pp. 26–8, 30, 53
6 Josie Long Trying is Good, Real Talent/PIAS UK, 2008,
RTDVD001
7 Interview with Josie Long, Horsebridge Centre, Whitstable, 18
February 2012
8 Interview with Sarah Millican, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury,
23 April 2012
9 Sarah Millican, Thoroughly Modern Millican, Marlowe
Theatre, Canterbury, 23 April 2012. For any American
readers, when she says ‘pants’, she’s talking about underwear
(i.e. underpants or panties)
10 Interview with Sarah Millican, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury,
23 April 2012
11 Kate Mikhail, ‘Eddie Izzard, Comedian’, Observer Magazine,
22 September 2002, p. 22
12 For example, a comedy preview by William Cook starts off, ‘If
you’re sick and tired of stand-ups spouting trite “have you ever
noticed?” observation…’ (‘Ealing Live!’, the Guardian, The
Guide section, 24-30 January 2004, p. 40)
13 ‘The Robin’ on Dan Leno, Recorded 1901–1903, Windyridge,
2001, WINDYCDR1
14 ‘Gladys Morgan’, various artists, Great Radio Comedians,
BBC Records, 1973, REC151M
15 ‘The Friend Nobody Likes’ on Dane Cook, Retaliation,
Comedy Central Records, 2005, 300304, disc two
16 Michael McIntyre, Live & Laughing, Universal, 2008,
8258740
17 Shelley Berman, Inside Shelley Berman, Laugh.Com, 2002,
LGH1111, track 8
18 Various artists, Stand-Up Great Britain, Laughing Stock, 2000,
LAFF CD 105, track 2
19 Interview with Adam Bloom, by telephone, 29 June 2004
 Sharing 219

20 Various artists, The Comedy Store: 20th Birthday, Uproar

Entertainment, 1996, UP 3669
21 Live and Lewd, extra feature on Steve Coogan, Steve Coogan
Live: The Man Who Thinks He’s It, Universal, 2000, 902
020 2
22 Oliver Double at The Last Laugh Comedy Club, The Lescar,
Hunters Bar, Sheffield, 4 May 1995. A recording of this
routine, together with the picture I’m describing, is available
here: http://www.oliverdouble.com/page15.htm
23 ‘Car Insurance’, Jasper Carrott, A Pain in the Arm, DJM
Records, 1977, DJF 20518
24 ‘Arms and Asylum’, Mark Thomas, Dambusters: Live 2001
Tour, Laughing Stock, 2003, LAFFCD 0136
25 ‘Kids’, Tom O’Connor, Ace of Clubs, North West
Gramophone, 1975, NWG 75102
26 ‘Kindergarten’, Bill Cosby, Why Is there Air?, Warner Bros.,
(no date given for CD release, album originally released 1965),
1606–12
27 See Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: A History of African
American Comedy from Slavery to Chris Rock, Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 1999, p. 504 for more on this
 CHAPTER FOURTEEN

References

The word ‘reference’ is an important item in the lexicon of

stand-up jargon, a term that’s widely used by comedians,
critics and even discerning comedy punters. References are
the basic blocks of knowledge from which the joke is built. In
order to understand it, the audience must recognise whatever
words, names, places, news stories, songs, movies, TV shows
or other cultural artefacts it may contain. It’s a process of
shared understanding.
Some comedians play it safe by using very broad refer-
ences, dealing with subjects familiar to audiences across many
different cultural boundaries. Because of this, some topics
have inspired hundreds of stand-up routines, some of them
imaginative and funny, others tired and clichéd. Many comics
have done observational routines about air travel or pointed
out the differences between cats and dogs, or men and women,
for example.
Advertising provides a renewable source of references.
Anybody with a television will probably be familiar with a
prominent new advert, so it becomes a viable subject for joking,
with the added benefit of giving the act currency. The downside
is that jokes about TV adverts have a relatively short shelf
life. Even though the opening routine from Shelley Berman’s
1961 album A Personal Appearance is beautifully crafted and
skilfully performed, it loses something for audiences unfamiliar
with the napkin commercial to which it alludes.1
222 GETTING THE JOKE

The possibility that the audience won’t pick up a reference

is always there. This is something that the makers of a
documentary called Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth
clearly understand. They use an audio clip of a famous Bruce
routine, in which he imagines facing a white racist with a
dilemma:

You have a choice of spending fifteen years, married to

a woman. A black woman – or a white woman. Fifteen
years kissing, and hugging, and sleeping real close on hot
nights. Fifteen years with a black woman or fifteen years
with a white woman, and the white woman is Kate Smith –
[laughter] and the black woman is Lena Horne. [laughter]
So you are not concerned with black or white any more,
are you? [laughter]2

The film was made in the 1990s, and the makers must have
realised that a large part of its audience wouldn’t necessarily
even have heard of the two singers, and probably wouldn’t
hold in their heads the mental image of what each one looked
like. To remedy this, when Bruce mentions Kate Smith, they
flash up a photo showing her as a fat, wholesome white
woman; and when he mentions Lena Horne, we see that
she was a slinky, sexy black woman. Without this shared
knowledge, the joke makes no sense. The photos are there to
make sure the references are picked up.
Another documentary, made in 2003, shows what happens
when live audiences don’t share the comedian’s references.
In Bernard’s Bombay Dream, Bernard Manning – who was
notorious for his relentless racial gibes – is sent to perform
for audiences in India. The thinking behind this is clear:
wouldn’t it be interesting to see how Manning gets on trying
to entertain people who are normally the butt of his jokes?
Although he does reasonably well at the first venue, the
Jazz by the Bay club in Mumbai, he realises he has a problem
with his references. In one gag, an Irish working men’s club
are having a sweep on a mystery tour, and the driver wins
 References 223

£68. The joke dies, and Manning comments: ‘You see, that’s
fell on flat ears because you don’t know what a sweep is, do
yer? That’s a bet to guess where yer going on this tour, a secret
tour, you see.’ But the gulf of understanding is deeper than
that. The audience doesn’t understand the literal meaning of
the joke, but the nuances are completely lost on them as well.
The British phenomenon of working men’s clubs and their
cultural baggage is entirely alien to the young, hip Indians
watching Manning.
A later show at the very refined Gymkhana Club is an
outright disaster. A flat joke about Captain Cook is followed
with the comment, ‘Now if you remember, Captain Cook
discovered Australia, but you’re not fucking bothered, are
yer?’ Manning ineffectually tries to explain terms like ‘quid’
and ‘vicar’. Then, after a few painful minutes, he walks off the
stage to the hostile sound of an audience starting to mutter to
themselves.3 Manning has claimed, ‘[I’ve] never died on me
arse in me life.’4 Seeing footage of him doing just that at the
Gymkhana Club would bring a smile to the lips of anyone
who found his harsh wit distasteful.

Local references
Local references – which rely on knowledge of the particular
area in which a show takes place – can help the comedian
to develop a rapport with the audience. Frank Skinner’s
brilliant 20-month stint as resident compère of Birmingham’s
4X cabarets at the beginning of the 1990s saw him making
‘profoundly local’ jokes about such subjects as ‘Bearwood
Fruit Market, the mad bloke with the long scarf who hung
around the Hagley Road, and the nearby chip shop that sold
bright-orange chips’.5 Skinner was a hero to the audience in
those clubs, and the extraordinary affection he enjoyed was
undoubtedly helped by his authentic Brummie accent and
extensive knowledge of the area.
224 GETTING THE JOKE

This kind of thing is not just the privilege of a resident

compère. At a show in Sevenoaks in 2004, Jack Dee gets
some good laughs by talking about how rough the nearby
Bat and Ball is: ‘Why do they always keep their kitchen
appliances outside the house? [laughter]’ A few minutes
later, he mentions that he was born in Orpington, a town
which is close enough for the audience to know. A woman
heckles: ‘And you think Bat and Ball’s rough?’ There’s
a huge laugh, which Dee rides by smiling sarcastically.
Although it might seem like his use of a local reference has
backfired, there’s still a sense that the woman’s jibe binds
the comedian and the audience together in shared local
knowledge.
There’s a really interesting example of local references in
a 1979 recording of Jasper Carrott. Although performing in
Central London, Carrott observes that a lot of the audience
are from different parts of the country. In a routine about
local radio, a mention of Capital Radio receives a cheer,
presumably from the Londoners in the audience. It’s drowned
out by booing, presumably from punters from the rest of the
country. A mention of Manchester’s Piccadilly Radio inspires
cheering and clapping from a single, solitary woman. ‘Oh,’
says Carrott, getting a laugh by drawing attention to the
incongruity of this response. ‘There’s always one, isn’t there?’
he adds, getting another laugh.
Later, he gets a big cheer when he mentions Birmingham’s
BRMB Radio, and gets another cheer just by naming one of
the presenters, Tony Butler.6 The prospect of a Birmingham
hero like Carrott playing a big venue in the nation’s capital
must have attracted a big contingent of Brummies, and by
mentioning their local station, he allows them to make their
presence felt.
In this routine, Carrott finds references which are local
to different sections of the audience, allowing them to assert
themselves in cheering and booing, showing pride and good-
humoured rivalry. References are not just about understanding,
they may also provoke an emotional response, getting cheers
 References 225

or boos. This kind of response is part of the sharing, the

exchange of energy which is central to stand-up.

Language
One of the most basic types of reference is language.
Obviously, the audience must be able to understand the
words a comedian uses. When the music hall comedian Harry
Lauder started performing in England, he replaced his broad
Scots with a gentler accent, thus still giving his audience
a feel of his ethnicity whilst allowing them to understand
his jokes. However, he would still use linguistic local refer-
ences when playing to a Scots audience, like coming over as
exaggeratedly posh by pronouncing every syllable of the place
name ‘Strathaven’ instead of using the normal pronunciation
‘Straiven’.7
Linguistic references can be hazardous for Scots comedians.
At a performance in Glasgow’s King Tut’s, fearless improviser
Phil Kay uses the English word ‘lake’. A heckler corrects him,
shouting ‘loch’. Clapping his hand to his mouth to draw
attention to his blunder, Kay provokes good-natured booing,
before getting a big laugh by intoning a heavily-accented
‘locchhhhh.’8 He plays the situation well, and it’s worth
pointing out that his blunder might be deliberate. Certainly,
he says the word ‘lake’ twice, slightly stressing it and pausing
afterwards as if to encourage somebody to correct him.
As both Lauder and Kay show, language can have particular
meanings for particular audiences. It can also help to bond the
audience in a feeling of cultural or ethnic kinship. Comedians
playing to Jewish holidaymakers in the Borscht Belt hotels in
the Catskills would sometimes deliver the set-up of the joke
in English, and the punchline in Yiddish.9 This allowed those
who understood the joke to feel a sense of belonging, exclu-
sivity and collusion, while making it incomprehensible to the
uninitiated.
226 GETTING THE JOKE

Pop songs
Pop music occupies an important position in many people’s
lives, and particular bands and singers can inspire anything
from passionate devotion to utter revulsion. As a result, it’s
not surprising that pop references often crop up in stand-up
routines. Quoting the lyrics of popular songs out of context
is a reasonably common joke, and nobody has used it as
compulsively as Harry Hill. The references in Hill’s act are
part of what makes it unique, and these come in two obsessive
strands.
On the one hand, there are references which are cosy,
old-fashioned and very English – chops and mash for tea,
sleeping bags, lollipop ladies, Savlon, his nan. He explains
this as being like his own twisted version of the material more
conventional stand-ups do about shared history: ‘Well, it’s a lot
of sort of childhood stuff, really, isn’t it? It’s sort of childhood
stuff, without saying, “Do you remember Spangles?” or you
know, “Do you remember chops?”’
On the other hand, he has an almost Tourettic tendency to
quote lyrics from pop songs. A five-minute TV spot in 1996
sees him quoting or deliberately misquoting songs by artists as
diverse as Mud, Babylon Zoo, the Lighthouse Family, Queen
and Ini Kamoze.10 Hill now works with a keyboard player
and a drummer, allowing him to actually sing snatches of
songs, albeit in an incongruous, old-mannish style. At a show
in September 2004, he performs such unlikely recent hits as
Outkast’s ‘Hey Ya!’ and The Streets’ ‘Dry your Eyes’.11
He started quoting pop songs in 1991, when Bryan Adams’
‘(Everything I do) I Do it for You’ spent umpteen weeks at the
top of the UK pop charts. Hill decided to speak the opening
line of the song in the middle of his act, throwing it in as a
non-sequitur. It got a big reaction, so he developed it as a
technique. He explains why he thinks is works:

A lot of the time, it’s something that everyone knows about,

 References 227

but no-one’s sort of pointed it out to them. And I’m not

even saying anything about it, really. I suppose I am in
a way. I’m saying, you know, ‘We’ve all seen this, isn’t it
annoying,’ I suppose, in a way, but I’m not actually saying
that out loud.12

If Hill’s gags are about the inanity and meaninglessness of

pop songs, other comics are more celebratory. Richard Pryor
had a routine in which he contrasts the coldness and reserve
of white churches with black churches where ‘you get a show
wit’ your money’. This sets things up for a typically exuberant
impersonation of a black preacher. The first laughs come from
the character’s convoluted language, and the quirky inflection
which Pryor gives him, transforming the phrase ‘inferior
mind’ into a growled ‘inferio’ miihhhhhnd’. This leads to a
reading from the ‘book of Wonder’, starting with the line, ‘A
boy was born in hard time Mississippi’. There’s a laugh, some
clapping, and a cheer of recognition.13
The gag is that the preacher has not chosen to read a
biblical text, but has instead opted to quote the lyric of Stevie
Wonder’s 1973 hit single, ‘Living for the City’. In order to
get the joke, the audience must recognise the song, but there’s
more to it than this. Wonder is a politically conscious soul
singer, and ‘Living for the City’ is an angry indictment of
the corrosive effects of racism and poverty. The choice of
this reference by a politically conscious black comedian, in a
routine which shares experience of black American culture, is
no accident. It works as a joke, but also as a celebration of an
African American musical hero.
Similarly, the way Patton Oswalt uses pop references
allows his audience to celebrate their own shared values. In a
routine about his teenage years in Sterling, Virginia, he tells
them, ‘I grew up ten minutes outside of Washington DC in
the ‘80s, fuckin’ Fugazi, and Minor Threat, and Bad Brains
were happening.’14 The audience cheer in recognition of these
hardcore punk bands, but he corrects their response: ‘Oh, oh
no, I didn’t know about any of that shit. [laughter]’ Shortly
228 GETTING THE JOKE

afterwards he confesses the shameful truth about the music he

listened to at the time:

The first album I bought with my own money? Phil Collins,

No Jacket Required, [laughter] that was the first – album
I bought, and I would get in people’s faces, I w’s like,
‘Man, this guy fuckin’ rocks, he’s pretty dark! He’s pretty
fuckin’dark! [laughter] He’s totally punk rock, he’s got on
sneakers with a suit, HE’S CRAZY!!’ [laughter]15

The laughter springs from not just knowing these specific

bands and records, but also their shared meaning. It’s about
what the names connote as much as what they denote. As
we saw in an earlier chapter, Oswalt has made a point of
playing to younger crowds in alternative rock venues. A more
general audience might not have even heard of cult bands
like Bad Brains or Minor Threat, but for their fans they are
underground legends who connote coolness, integrity and
anti-establishment politics. Phil Collins, on the other hand,
represents middle-aged mainstream pop – uncool, unchal-
lenging and musically lame. This understanding must be
shared in order to appreciate exactly how funny Oswalt’s
youthful faux pas was.

In jokes
The American comedian Henny Youngman was famous for a
minimalist style based on quickfire one-liners. In a recording
of his act, he comes out with the old chestnut, ‘Take my wife –
please!’ A laugh starts but is quickly drowned out by cheering,
applause and whistles. This reaction goes on for a full 20
seconds, and doesn’t even subside when he acknowledges it by
shouting, ‘I love this crowd!’16
Why the strange reaction? The reason is that although the
gag has been used by many other comedians, Youngman is
 References 229

popularly credited with being its inventor. The recording was

made late in Youngman’s career, and the audience isn’t so
much cheering the line, as celebrating his comic longevity and
his general contribution to comedy. The joke itself has become
the reference.
This is an example of what comedians can do, once they
get established enough in the minds of their audience – use
references which are internal to the act. There’s an excellent
example of this kind of in-joke near the beginning of Eddie
Izzard’s Glorious. He does an impression of God’s mum, using
a Scottish accent, then comments, rather hesitantly, ‘His mum
was – Mrs Badcrumble.’ As with Henny Youngman’s gag, this
gets cheers, whistles and applause as well as laughter.
In this case, it’s an even more explicit reference to previous
work, referring back to a routine from Izzard’s previous show
Definite Article, about an elderly clarinet teacher called Mrs
Badcrumble. Presumably, the audience are cheering to show
their appreciation of the earlier routine, but they’re also
showing they belong to a kind of Izzard in-crowd, united by
their knowledge of his comedy. Izzard’s fans clearly have long
memories. Glorious was performed just a year after Definite
Article, but at the Laughs in the Park comedy festival in St
Albans in 2011, Izzard again gets a cheer for a reference
to Mrs Badcrumble, a full 15 years after doing the original
routine.17
Jasper Carrott relies on a similar sense of insider knowledge
with a technique which involves quoting just the punchline of
a familiar joke. In a 1983 routine about a trip to Hong Kong,
he describes a hair-raising taxi drive from the airport to his
hotel, saying that he was a ‘darn sight lighter’ at the end of
the trip than at the beginning. He follows this suggestion of
involuntary bowel evacuation with the line, ‘Smell it? I was
sitting in it!’18
This is a reference to a joke which was in common circu-
lation at the time about a man who smelled a funny smell
every time he drove his new car. Unable to get to the bottom
of the problem, the mechanic asks the man to take him for a
230 GETTING THE JOKE

drive. The man is a terrifyingly bad driver, and at the end of

the trip he asks if the mechanic can now smell the smell. ‘Smell
it? I’m sitting in it!’ replies the mechanic
For the audience to pick up the reference, they must be
familiar with the joke. Unlike the Izzard example, here the
audience require knowledge of comedy in general, rather than
knowledge of Carrott’s act in particular. This still helps to
form a closer rapport, because by referring to the kind of joke
that his audience know from the home, the workplace or the
pub, Carrott is showing he’s just like them.
The path between popular street culture and Jasper Carrott’s
stand-up act is not just one-way. In a 1977 routine, he tells
the audience about hearing the word ‘zit’ for the first time,
explaining ‘it’s American slang for our “spot” or “pimple”’.19
There’s no hint that the audience recognise the word, and the
definition he offers is received in silence.
In a 1979 TV show, the same routine gets a very different
reaction. He segues into it after talking about appearing on
Top of the Pops and meeting the cult female dance troupe
Pan’s People who, he says, are ‘all covered in zits’. There’s a
laugh which quickly breaks out into cheering and applause in
recognition of the word. Carrott realises that this means the
audience must know the routine from either his earlier tour,
the album of it or the previous year’s TV series An Audience
with Jasper Carrott. ‘Oh, d’you know about them?’ he asks,
with mock innocence, then seems slightly flummoxed: ‘Oh,
hur hur hur! [laughter] I think we’d better cut the next ten
minutes! [laughter]’
In spite of this, he continues with the routine as planned,
which goes down every bit as well as if a large section of
the audience hadn’t heard most of it before. There are some
additions, like when Carrott tells the audience, ‘I’m trying to
introduce a word into the English language’.20 The cheer he
gets for his first mention of the word suggests that he’s already
been pretty successful in achieving this ambition. It seems
likely that he is largely responsible for importing ‘zit’ into
British slang. In this kind of way, stand-up draws from street
 References 231

culture but also influences it, with material from comedians’

acts spilling out into everyday life.

Alexei Sayle’s intellectual references

Lenny Henry was already an established name by the time
Alexei Sayle started his career in 1979, but it was the influence
of Sayle and others like him at The Comic Strip that led Henry
to reject the casual, self-deprecating racism of his early work
and develop a more positive style. However, Henry found
Sayle puzzling as well as exciting: ‘I thought he was funny,
but I thought a lot of his reference points were really weird.’21
This comment was inspired by the intellectual references
which Sayle would liberally sprinkle across his act, name
checking the likes of Karl Marx and Jean Paul Sartre. A
political routine about tower blocks is a classic example.
Sayle lays into the architects and town planners who build
horrendous concrete estates with the idea of ‘designing the
working class the perfect fuckin’ workers society’.
He continues: ‘All them fuckin’ estates, all them new
towns, they’re all supposed to be somethin’ like William
Morris Worker’s Paradise, you know, everybody sittin’ in the
tower block, weavin’ their own fuckin’ yoghurt! [laughter]
Standin’ in the windswept concrete piazza discussin’ Chekhov!
[laughter]’ Then he adopts a working-class Cockney accent
to imagine the discussion: ‘“Oh yes, er, I do actually, wiv
Chekhov, you know, that erm, ‘is alienating use of naturalism,
you know, makes one completely reassess one’s attitude to
the Russian bourgeoisie in the late nineteenth Century.”
[laughter] “Fuck off, you cunt!” Wallop! [laughter]’22
The basic gag of having working-class people discussing
intellectual ideas in highfalutin language had already been
used by Monty Python – who showed charladies discussing
philosophy – but the Python team were middle-class intel-
lectuals, emerging from the Oxbridge revue tradition. This
232 GETTING THE JOKE

is different. There’s an interesting tension between the Sayle’s

sweary, Scouse persona and the references to William Morris
and Chekhov’s ‘alienating use of naturalism’.
The political point of this is not that working-class people
are too stupid to discuss Chekhov, but that middle-class
people impose a ridiculous set of idealised expectations on
the working class, whilst providing them with poor housing.
Sayle’s sympathies are made clear by what he says (pointing
out that you don’t catch architects ‘living in any of the shit
they’ve been designing for the twen’y years’), but also in the
way he says it (his accent indicating his own working-class
origins). Sayle explains why he was so keen on intellectual
references whilst also hoping to attract a popular, working-
class audience for his comedy:

I mean, one of the comedian’s tricks is to pretend to be

much more erudite than you are. Lenny Bruce used to do
that all the time. He used to find the right name to drop. I
don’t fucking know anything about Kierkegaard, it doesn’t
matter, I know very little about any philosophy, Sartre, you
know, my knowledge is minimal. It doesn’t matter. It is a
fake, it’s a trick, but you know, it’s about finding the telling
phrase, the right name.23

He rightly argues that it’s wrong to underestimate an

audience’s ability to cope with more difficult references, and
says that just as he only needed ‘minimal knowledge’ to drop
the names, the punters would only need the same to pick
them up. However, he also feels that his quirky references
held him back: ‘I do also think though in a sense, it’s harmed
my career, because people – like, especially journalists and
critics – like simplicities.’
 References 233

Shared misunderstanding
In October 2003, Jim Davidson is doing his Vote for Jim show
at the Winter Gardens, Margate. At one point, he imagines
himself as prime minister, being interviewed by Jeremy
Clarkson.24 Neither he, nor the majority of his audience
realise the mistake – that he means Jeremy Paxman (the
serious journalist from Newsnight, famous for his no-holds-
barred interviews with politicians), not Jeremy Clarkson (the
presenter of Top Gear).
In February 2004, Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown is playing the
same venue. In a routine about the good old days, he fondly
remembers a time ‘when the royal family were roundheads,
not fucking dickheads’.25 The gag is based on the premise that
roundheads were royals – rather than the republicans who
temporarily abolished royalty.
In both cases, the references are factually incorrect, but in
neither case does it spoil the audience’s enjoyment of the joke.
This is because although references require shared under-
standing to be effective, that understanding does not have to
bear any resemblance to the truth. A shared misunderstanding
can be just as effective.
Sometimes, comedians create comedy which is knowingly
based on such shared misunderstandings. Omid Djalili based
the accent he opens his act with on that of a distant uncle, a
professor of English literature at Oxford, whose voice he had
always found funny and endearing. The problem was that the
uncle did not have an Iranian accent:

He was an Iranian who was raised in Lebanon, so he was

actually Iranian but had an Arabic accent. And I just kind
of said, ‘Well, people don’t really know the difference
between Iranian, [and] Arab.’ … what I was doing was
actually against my culture. I mean I was playing an Arab
but saying I was Iranian. And most Iranians [would] say,
‘That’s not an Iranian accent.’ I thought, ‘Well look – for
now, it doesn’t matter, it’s just funny.’26
234 GETTING THE JOKE

Comics can also create comedy from their own sloppiness

in getting the references right. Marc Maron has a hilarious
routine about visiting the Creation Museum in Kentucky – a
tourist attraction aimed at proving the literal truth of funda-
mentalist Christian creation myths by showing that humans
and dinosaurs once coexisted. He talks about an exhibit
showing Noah’s Ark, in which the animals entering two-by-
two include ‘two brontosauruses’. The image gets a laugh, but
having made the joke work he goes on to comment about the
reference:

And some of you are like, ‘There are no brontosauruses,

that was not the proper name,’ like I got an email about
that. [laughter and some applause] That they’re not called
that. And you know what? I didn’t even fuckin’ make note
of what they’re really called, because when I was a kid
it was a brontosaurus. [a few laughs] And I think we all
know what I’m talking about. [laughter] I’m not here to do
research. [laughter]27

The laughter springs from the audience’s knowledge of who

Maron is and what his audience are like. As an alternative
comedian, there’s a nerdy, intellectual edge to his material,
and this is reflected in the kind of people his comedy attracts.
The idea of somebody emailing to correct him on the name
of a dinosaur absolutely fits the audience’s own idea of itself.
They know that Maron fans are likely to be the sort of people
who would be obsessive enough to do this, and indeed know
that the brontosaurus is now properly known as Apatosaurus.

Playing with references

A stand-up act might refer to anything from an advert to a
Russian playwright, from a slang word to a pop song. Factual
accuracy is unimportant. All that matters is that the audience
 References 235

share the comedian’s understanding of the reference. This

basic principle is so well established that some comedians have
even made jokes about it.
In a 1961 show, Lenny Bruce tells the audience how hard
it is for him to reach people over the age of 40, because his
language is ‘completely larded’ with hip, intellectual and
Yiddish language, and that for anybody over 45, ‘all I have to
do is hit one word that’ll send him off’. He suggests a fantasy
solution to the problem posed by his hip references: ‘I’m
gonna have a thing where nobody over 40’s allowed to come
in to see me. [laughter] Have a sign up, man.’28
Mitch Hedberg plays with the idea of references in a
routine in which he describes tripping out on acid while
out in the woods with a friend. They come across a bear,
which his friend mistakes for Smokey the Bear, the popular
cartoon character designed to promote fire prevention in the
countryside. Having got big laughs from this premise, he tells
the audience:

I went to England to tell jokes, and I wanted to tell my

Smokey the Bear joke in England. So I had to ask the
English people if they know who Smokey the Bear was. But
they don’t. Because in England Smokey the Bear is not the
forest fire prevention representative. [laughter] They have –
Smackie the Frog. [laughter and some clapping]29

The premise behind this gag is only partly factual. It’s certainly
true that Smokey is a culturally specific reference, being a
popular character in America since its introduction in 1947,
but unknown in Britain. Hedberg’s first gag about his hallu-
cinating drug buddy doesn’t mention Smokey by name, so
watching the footage as a British person it was difficult for
me to get it. Even more puzzling was the reference to Smackie
the Frog – something I’d never heard of. Some quick research
revealed that there is no such character – Hedberg had made
it up for the routine.30 As a joke about translating references,
this is a brilliant double bluff. What it actually shows is the
236 GETTING THE JOKE

very untranslatability of the gag, which could only work in

America – where they know Smokey and could plausibly
believe that the made-up Smackie is a real character.
Steve Martin pioneered this kind of messing about with the
conventions of stand-up. In his autobiography, he explains
that his thinking was changed by a psychology course at
college, in which he was introduced to the relief theory of
comedy. This probably has its origins in the works of Kant,
who wrote, ‘Laughter is an affection arising from the sudden
transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.’31
The idea is that the set-up of a joke builds tension in the
listener, and this is released – in the form of laughter – by the
punchline. Inspired by this, Martin started to think about how
he could subvert this pattern:

What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was

an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all
that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out
sometime. But if I kept denying them the formality of a
punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own
place to laugh, essentially out of desperation.32

He put this idea into action in material like his 1977 routine in
which he says that there is a large group in from a plumbers’
convention, and that he is going to do a joke just for them.
He warns the audience that ‘those of you who aren’t plumbers
probably won’t get this’, before launching into a gag filled
with ostentatiously phony technical references, like ‘a Finley
sprinkler head with a Langstrom seven inch gangly wrench’
and ‘Volume 14 of the Kinsley Manual’. The ‘joke’ ends with
a nonsensical punchline: ‘It says “sprocket”, not “socket”!’
After a sticky pause, Martin puts an anxious question to the
stage manager: ‘Are those plumbers supposed to be here this
show, or –?’33
There’s certainly an anticlimax at the end of the gag, but
whether or not the audience are truly picking their own place
to laugh is a matter of opinion. In fact, they seem to be in on
 References 237

the joke from the beginning. After each dubious plumbing

reference, Martin pauses, and there’s a proper, unified laugh.
Unlike Hedberg’s audience, they are totally aware that the
references have been made up by the comedian. When the
supposed punchline ‘fails’, Martin gives a desperate little
chuckle, and his audience laugh again. The actual punchline is
his aside to the stage manager, and this gets the biggest laugh.
In fact, the joke he’s ostensibly telling is not the real joke;
the real joke is the joke’s failure. The fiction is that Martin’s
trying to use specialised references to form a closer bond
with a particular section of the audience. The reality is that
by using silly-sounding references that can’t be picked up by
the audience, he unites them in their understanding of the
metajoke with which he’s presenting them. The real reference
in the gag is not plumbing terminology, but the very idea of
references and the need for shared knowledge in stand-up.

The individual and the community

In a show at the Horsebridge Centre in Whitstable at the very
end of August 2012, Stephen K. Amos makes expert use of
references, using shared knowledge to form connections with
particular groups or the audience as a whole. Throughout his
act he plays directly on various aspects of his own identity,
and how these relate to the audience.
As a black Briton of Nigerian descent, he points out that
he’s the only black person in the room. The audience laugh,
delighting in being teased for the general whiteness of our
town. In fact, there are a few people of colour in the audience,
but they don’t let on and spoil the fun. Later, he explains what
it was like to be a black kid learning about the British Empire
at school – and through the jokes gently making us aware of
the racism he grew up with.
As a gay man, he uses the licence of being onstage to flirt
outrageously with some of the younger male punters. He also
238 GETTING THE JOKE

asks if there are any gay people in the audience, and after
having identified a group of gay men and lesbians at the front,
there’s some relaxed chat between them. He lets us in on what
it was like growing up gay, telling us what happened when he
told his mother about his sexuality.
As a famous comedian, he plays on the indignity of playing
a venue which is too small for him. We laugh because we
know that although the venue really is far smaller than the
places he’d normally play, his swanking and superiority
is only in jest. ‘I’ve got money!’ he keeps telling us. Going
into an anecdote, he tells us he was on a train, then corrects
himself, saying, ‘I never go on a train because I have money,
but for the sake of the joke …’
As a man of a certain age, he plays to the older punters,
sharing memories of growing up in the 1970s – asbestos
in classroom ceilings, no mobile phones, not being allowed
to use the family telephone without dad staring at you
and so on. He plays directly on the idea that the younger
punters won’t get these references, and throws something
in especially for them. ‘Ain’t nobody got time for that!’ he
shouts, referencing the most famous line from a popular
YouTube clip.34 The younger punters laugh and cheer the
reference, and Amos explains it for the older ones. This is
lucky for me, because without his explanation I’d have been
none the wiser.
All of these tactics help to define who Amos is in relation to
individuals, groups and the audience as a whole. His intention
is to bring his diverse audience together:

I looked at the demographic of the kind of people who

come to my gigs and as you saw, people come with their
parents, teenagers with their parents, and I’ve had older
people as well in the audience. And if you can get a cross
section of society who can all laugh at the same things – but
we all know that inherently our point of reference may be
different, but if we can make everybody laugh and join us
all together, that is what I’m striving for really.
 References 239

He has also realised that working the audience in this way is

‘all about trying to get respect … there’s nothing beats more
acceptance than, you know, a hundred people or whatever it
was in that room, sitting there listening to your every word.
Wow!’ Partly this is about personal validation, but there is
also a political aspect to it. He recalls the comedy he grew
up with in the 1970s and 1980s – the ‘mother-in-law jokes,
racist, sexist, homophobic jokes, which were all the norm’ –
and suggests:

I think one of the reasons why I never went to a comedy

club when I was growing up is because I just didn’t think
it was a place for me. You know, having seen what was on
offer on TV … ‘Let’s go to a comedy club and be the only
black person there and that be pointed out and be being
made to feel … awkward and out of place just for being in
a comedy club.’ The same with a young gay or lesbian or
transgender person, you know. Imagine being the butt of
all jokes.35

The fact that he is now the one making the jokes is a neat
revenge for the prejudice he has experienced.
All of this illustrates something very important. Stand-up
comedy is an individual talking to a community. A lot of it is
about defining who the individual is, who the community is
and how one relates to the other. Amos used shared references
to connect with the audience, but also explains knowledge
that they might not already share, particularly relating to the
experience of being a member of various minority groups.
He plays on the things that unite him with his audience, but
also on what separates him from them. What this shows us is
that although stand-up can be written off as frivolous enter-
tainment, the politics that lie just underneath its surface are
very interesting. As well as confirming the audience’s beliefs,
the comedian can also find ways to challenge them.
240 GETTING THE JOKE

Notes
1 ‘Introduction/ dinner napkin’, on Shelley Berman, A Personal
Appearance, EMI Records, 1961, CLP 1512
2 Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth, BBC Four, 3 June 2003
3 Bernard’s Bombay Dream, Channel 4, 26 June 2003
4 Stand-Up with Alan Davies, BBC One, 26 June 2000
5 See Frank Skinner, Frank Skinner, London: Century, 2001,
p. 258
6 ‘Local Radio’, Jasper Carrott, The Unrecorded Jasper Carrott,
DJM Records, 1979, DJF 20560
7 See Albert D. Mackie, The Scotch Comedians, From Music
Hall to Television, Edinburgh: Ramsay Head Press, 1973,
pp. 14–15, p. 41
8 Phil Kay, That Philkay Video, Colour TV, 2000, JW112
9 Stand-Up America, BBC2, 22 February 2003
10 Saturday Live, ITV, 1 June 1996
11 Harry Hill, Battersea Arts Centre, 14 September 2004
12 Interview with Harry Hill, by telephone, 26 August 2004
13 ‘Our Text for Today’, on …Is it Something I Said? in 9-CD set
…And It’s Deep, Too! The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings
(1968–1992)
14 Minor Threat (1980-83) were a seminal hardcore punk band,
their DIY politics and musical minimalism influencing many
subsequent hardcore bands. Their frontman Ian MacKaye
went on to form the more melodic and lyrically oblique Fugazi
(1987–2003). Bad Brains are a Rastafarian hardcore punk
band formed in 1977, who have always alternated fast, loud
punk with reggae and have more recently embraced other
musical styles
15 ‘Sterling, Virginia’ on Patton Oswalt, Werewolves and
Lollipops, Sub Pop Records, 2007, SPCD 737 [CD] It’s very
fitting that this was released by Sub Pop, an important label in
the American underground rock scene which bands like Minor
Threat and Bad Brains helped to establish
 References 241

16 Henny Youngman, Henny Youngman Himself, Laugh.com,

2001, LGH 1008
17 Laughs in the Park, Verulamium Park, St Albans, 23 July 2011
18 ‘Hong Kong’, Jasper Carrott, The Stun (Carrott Tells All),
DJM Records, 1983, DJF 20582
19 ‘Zits’, Jasper Carrott, A Pain in the Arm, DJM Records, 1977,
DJF 20518. According to Jonathon Green, the word has been
in usage since the 1950s, and was originally used by American
teenagers (Jonathon Green, Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang,
London: Cassell, 1998, p. 1311).
20 ‘Zits’, Jasper Carrott, The Unrecorded Jasper Carrott, DJM
Records, 1979, DJF 20560
21 The South Bank Show, ITV, 5 December 1993
22 ‘Stoke Newington Calling’, Alexei Sayle, Cak!, Springtime
Records, 1982, CAK 1
23 Interview with Alexei Sayle, University of Kent, Canterbury, 21
November 2003
24 Jim Davidson, Vote for Jim, Winter Gardens, Margate, 25
October 2003
25 Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown, Margate Winter Gardens, 24 February
2004
26 Interview with Omid Djalili, by telephone, 28 June 2004
27 ‘The Creation Museum’, Marc Maron This HAS to be Funny,
Comedy Central Records, 2011, CCR0122
28 Lenny Bruce, The Carnegie Hall Concert, World Pacific/Capitol
Records, 1995, CDP 7243 8 34020 2 1, disc one
29 From Hedberg’s Comedy Central special, included on the
DVD: Mitch Hedberg, Mitch All Together, Comedy Central
Records, 2003, CCR0024
30 See ‘Commenter Of The Day: Smacky The Frog Edition’,
Jalopnik, 22 June 2010 [accessed via Nexis, 31/10/12]
31 Reproduced in John Morreall (ed.), The Philosophy of
Laughter and Humor, Albany: State of New York Press, 1987,
p. 47
32 Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, London:
Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, 2008, p.111
242 GETTING THE JOKE

33 ‘Let’s Get Small’ on Steve Martin, Let’s Get Small, Warner

Bros., (no date given for CD release, album originally released
1977), 9 45694-2
34 ‘Sweet Brown’s Cold Pop Escape’, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=udS-OcNtSWo The clip itself had amassed over
7,000,000 hits when I checked [accessed 31 October 2012],
but has also spawned numerous other YouTube videos.
35 Interview with Stephen K. Amos, by telephone, 18 September
2012
 CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Insiders and outsiders

In the late 1990s, Phill Jupitus created an entire full-length

stand-up show about the film Star Wars. It started off as ‘a
Wookiee impression and a joke about Darth Vader’, which he
threw into a 20-minute set at the Comedy Store, pretty much
on the spur of the moment. This went down well enough for
him to develop it further. Every time he watched the film, he
thought of more ideas for routines.
It became a stand-alone show at the Edinburgh festival,
entitled Jedi, Steady, Go, which went on to tour nationally. The
last time he performed it, at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith,
it lasted one hour and 55 minutes, almost as long as the film
itself. The show was based on the unusual idea of comedian
and audience sharing detailed knowledge of this one particular
cultural artefact. Without this, the jokes wouldn’t really work,
as Jupitus points out: ‘I did have a woman at the Edinburgh
show once that hadn’t seen the film. [To] which I’m gonna say,
“This is going to be a very dull hour for you.” And it probably
was, you know …’
Jupitus was pleased to attract obsessive fans of the film to
his show: ‘The front row always had the Star Wars T-shirts.
The nerds would come down and, yeah, the geeks loved it.’1
Star Wars fans are notorious for their detailed and pedantic
knowledge of the films, and Jupitus would play on this fact,
needling the nerds by deliberately mispronouncing things,
getting them to tut disapprovingly. By showing a mischievous
244 GETTING THE JOKE

disregard for the insignificant details of the film which were

so dear to that audience, the comic was, albeit in a tiny way,
challenging their values. The fact that he could create a show
based on obsessive Star Wars knowledge indicates how similar
he was to the people who were attracted to go and see it; but
the fact that he made fun of their obsession shows that he was
also different from them.
This highlights a basic choice which stand-up comedians
face. Bob Monkhouse argues that an audience is ‘not a
community’ but a set of ‘individuals who have assembled
for a single purpose’. The comic ‘may impose a temporary
bonding upon such a throng’ but ‘it vanishes as soon as the
people disperse’.2 There’s a certain amount of truth in this,
but in some cases, a stand-up audience may be already bound
together by some sense of community, even if it’s only a shared
love of Star Wars.
But Monkhouse was right to argue that the comedian
imposes a temporary bonding on the audience. In many
cases, this is achieved by the sharing of common experience.
Observational comedy, routines about shared history and a
well-judged set of references can all help to bond the audience
together in temporary feeling of community. With this kind
of approach, the comedian is defined as an insider, very much
part of the community of the audience. A classic example is
Tom O’Connor at the Maghull Country Club in 1975, sharing
a common past with the audience, and uniting with them
against the debased values of the modern day.
However, comedians can also define themselves as outsiders,
distinct from the community of the audience. Sometimes, the
comedian becomes an outsider against his or her will. In the
variety era, the Glasgow Empire was notorious among English
comics, because of the rough reception they’d get from a
drunken, Scots audience for the second house on a Friday
night.
In this case, the comedians suffered from a pre-existing
hostility based on national rivalry, but in other cases, the
comic can become an outsider by making a mistake. In the
 Insiders and outsiders 245

late 1960s, Bob Hope enthusiastically supported the Vietnam

War, and firmly aligned himself with Richard Nixon. Playing
to GIs in Vietnam, he misjudged his audience, assuming they
would share his hawkish views. At a show at Camp Eagle in
1970, an audience of 18,000 American soldiers responded to
his act mostly in silence. He got a similar reception at Long
Binh in 1971, where he was faced with heckling, walkouts and
banners reading ‘Peace Not Hope’.3
But being an outsider doesn’t always mean dying on stage,
and some comedians embrace the role. As a Muslim, Shazia
Mirza is automatically recognisable as being different from
most of her audience:

Everybody knows I’m not the same as them, because what

I’m saying is so different, you know, I say that I don’t
smoke and I don’t drink and I don’t take drugs and I don’t
gamble. And I don’t do any of the things that the people
sitting in my audience are sitting in front of me doing at
that time. So they are all smoking, they are all drinking,
and I’m telling them that I don’t do those things, and they
know that I’m different.

She realised that what makes her different from her audience
also makes her different from most comics on the circuit:
‘When I saw other comedians talking about themselves
growing up, and I thought’, ‘Oh, well I could talk about
something different here, I could talk about my growing up,
which would be different to all these white, laddy comedians.’
Her difference became a source of material, as well as affecting
the way she relates to her audience, but she points out that
she is not entirely an outsider: ‘For some reason, in some way,
they do feel as though we have something in common. We do
feel that there is some connection between us.’4
Bill Hicks, on the other hand, was not marked out as an
outsider by race or religion, but willingly accepted the idea
of being separate from the community of the audience. His
act lambasted President Bush, the Gulf War and Christianity,
246 GETTING THE JOKE

whilst enthusing about smoking, drugs and pornography, so it

was always likely that he would find himself in opposition to
audiences in the more conservative parts of America.
It was not just his material that separated him from his
audience, but also his onstage attitude. Hicks’ performance
exuded high status. He took his time over his delivery, he
stroked back his longish hair in the pauses, and he seemed
totally assured and absorbed in his own train of thought.
He would sometimes approach an audience with an attitude
bordering on contempt, like when he starts a show at the
Funny Bone in Pittsburgh in 1991 by saying: ‘Good evening
ladies and gentlemen, I hope you’re doing well tonight, I’m
glad to be here, I’ve been on the road doing comedy now for,
er, ten years, so bear with me while I plaster on a fake smile
and plough through this shit one more time. [laughter]’ Later
in the same show, he announces, ‘Y’all are about to win the
election as the worst fuckin’ audience I’ve ever faaaced. Ever!
Ever! Ever!’5
Hicks clearly feels the audience isn’t appreciating his act,
and many stand-ups must have berated their audiences like
this as a desperate response to the horror of dying onstage.
The difference here, though, is that Hicks isn’t dying. There’s
laughter throughout the act, albeit patchy at times, so the
antagonism which becomes a running theme is something
much more interesting than an expression of comic failure.
In shows like this, he’s the polar opposite of Tom O’Connor.
But Hicks also enjoyed a following of devoted fans, and
sometimes had a less hostile relationship with his audience.
Even so, he was never afraid to challenge opinions. Playing
to an excitable crowd in Oxford in 1992, he announces:
‘Actually I quit smoking, so er –’ There’s a groan of disap-
pointment from somebody in the audience, and others join
in, hissing and groaning. They clearly feel let down by
Hicks’ apparent U-turn from his earlier stance, when he was
aggressively enthusiastic about cigarettes – but there’s also a
pantomime quality to their response. It sounds as if they’re
teasing him in the spirit of fun rather than really taking him to
 Insiders and outsiders 247

task. Nonetheless, he’s quick to chide them: ‘This ain’t Dylan-

goes-electric, chill out, OK? [laughter]’6

Frankie Howerd has nothing against

The Establishment
Comedians don’t have to be as radical as Bill Hicks to play the
outsider role. When Frankie Howerd played at Peter Cook’s
fashionable satire venue The Establishment in 1962, he based
the entire act on the idea of being a fish out of water. After
huge success in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Howerd had
gone into a career nosedive, largely thanks to being cast in
acting roles in a series of theatrical flops. He was on the point
of giving up showbusiness, when Peter Cook saw him give a
speech at the Evening Standard Drama Awards, and invited
him to appear at The Establishment.
Howerd was an odd choice. Cook’s venue was the product
of the satire boom which originated in the Oxbridge revue
tradition, and was normally the stomping ground of well-to-
do satirists. Earlier that year, Cook had imported a genuinely
dangerous comedian by booking Lenny Bruce to play a
controversial season there. Howerd was far cosier. Although
inventive and innovative in his day, he was essentially an
old-fashioned front cloth comic from the variety circuit.
Daunted by the prospect of playing such an unlikely venue
even in the midst of a major career crisis, he enlisted the help
of big-name comedy writers like Johnny Speight, and Galton
& Simpson to provide him with material. From the beginning
of the act, he plays on the idea of being out of place and
different from his audience:

Brethren – before we start this little eisteddfod, [laughter]

I want to make a little, er, apology to you, if I may. Well,
I say ‘apology’, it’s really, it’s an appeal. Well it’s, no, it’s
an explanation. Well no, it’s an apology, let’s be honest.
248 GETTING THE JOKE

[laughter] I may as well be honest, it’s an apology. I’ll tell

you why. Because erm – you see, ah – I’d like to explain
‘ow I happened to get here at this place – [laughter] before
we start. Because, as you know, if, if, well if you do know
at all, I’m a humble music hall comedian, a sort of variety
artist, you know, I’m not usually associated with these
sophisticated venues, [laughter] and erm –

The word ‘venues’ is twisted in typical Howerd style. He

pronounces it ‘vunnyews’, finishing the word with a slight,
but distinctly camp lisp. Even though he’s ostensibly apolo-
gising for being the odd one out, the way he says the word
gives a hint that he’s mocking the pretensions of the place he’s
playing. He continues:

And I, no – Well I mean, a lot of people have said to me,

you know, ‘I’m surprised at you going to a place like that.’
[laughter] And it is a – it is a bit different to a Granada
tour with Billy Fury, hoh hoh! [laughter] But so I thought
if I can explain – I thought if I can explain how I happened
to be here, er, it might, er, take the blame off me a bit, you
understand, it might disarm criticism a bit, you under-
stand? [a few laughs] And you won’t expect anything sort
of too – sophisticated. Now, erm – [a few laughs]

Then, responding to the few punters who have laughed at his

apology, he uses one of his classic techniques. He reprimands
them for laughing, thus making them laugh more: ‘No, please
now, please. Now – [laughter] I’ll tell you – No, please. Now
please, don’t – this is going to be a rowdy do, I can sense it.
[laughter]’ He goes on to tell a fictionalised version of what
happened when Peter Cook approached him at the Evening
Standard awards, dispensing a number of bitchy jibes along
the way. He clearly separates himself from the fashionable
satire which is The Establishment’s bread and butter:

I find these days, unless you’re sort of, you know, bitter,
 Insiders and outsiders 249

you’re not considered artistic, you know. I’ve always found

this, and I mean I’m not that kind of a comedian, I’m more
the lovable kind, you know. [laughter] Sort of cuddlesome,
you know. [laughter] Don’t take a vote on it! [laughter]

Having set himself up as not wanting to criticise, he goes on

to say some rather uncuddlesome things about the audience:

There’s so much bitterness, in any case, I mean I’ve got

nothing against this place. I said, the only – Well I mean,
admittedly – [laughter] admittedly, I think – you get some
odd people here. I mean, not that I pry, as I say – I keep to
– I keep meself to meself, I think it’s best. [laughter] Don’t
you? Keep yerself to yerself, that’s what I say, you don’t get
– I mean you don’t get into any mischief, do you? [laughter]
Unfortunately, [laughter] but I mean –7

Listening back to the show over 50 years after it was recorded,

it’s still exciting hearing Howerd establishing and negoti-
ating his relationship with the audience. Defining himself
as being outside the community of the audience allows him
to be cheeky, catty and cutting, sometimes at their expense,
sometimes at his own. There’s no real antagonism or hostility,
and you can feel the affection of a younger generation redis-
covering the talent of an older star fallen on hard times. The
season at The Establishment was a great success, a turning
point in Howerd’s career. Whilst working there, he was
spotted by Ned Sherrin, the producer of the famous television
satire show That Was the Week that Was. Howerd’s satirical
spot on TW3 was successful enough to re-establish his
reputation.
250 GETTING THE JOKE

A fat, pink-haired man in a

leopard-print coat
For the first few years of his stand-up career, Wil Hodgson
cut an extraordinary figure onstage: shocking pink hair,
sometimes fashioned into a mohican; nail polish and eye
make-up; tattoos of toys and cartoon characters; and a
penchant for leopard-print. This was not an artfully-crafted
costume designed to convey a fictional stage character, but
an authentic reflection of his offstage lifestyle. Hodgson is a
genuine eccentric, a man whose tastes and experiences make
him an outsider for most mainstream audiences – a former
skinhead and former wrestler who has embraced his feminine
side and collects girls’ toys from the 1980s. Many of his early
gags addressed such apparent contradictions:

If you’re five years old and you’re a boy – and you come
into a primary school in Chippenham with Glo Worms,
Glo Friends, Wuzzles, Popples – Wild SnuggleBumms,
Puffalumps, She-Ra, Catra – [he draws in breath] Y’ave to
learn to fight pretty fuckin’ sharpish. [laughter] If only to
keep yer collection in mint condition. [laughter]

He takes the audience into his world, sharing his passions to

them. In one routine, he explains how he goes about collecting
his vintage toys by responding to small ads in local papers like
the Chippenham News or the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald:

They’re always very glad to see me ‘cos what they really

wanted for placing that advert – was a fat, pink-haired
man in a leopard-print coat with make-up smeared all over
his face – stood in their living room, looking at the ponies
with a jeweller’s eye glass monocle thing – [laughter] to
see if they’re legit. You gotta do that, you’ve gotta bring
the air of a crack cocaine deal to these proceedings, if
you – [laughter] If you go into a My Little Pony deal with
 Insiders and outsiders 251

any kind of innocence or naivety, they’ll fuck you over

[laughter] every step of the way, let me tell you.8

The way he describes himself shows he’s well aware that he

might come across as odd or even intimidating – the first laugh
comes from the image of such an unusual-looking person
turning up in somebody’s own home. However, sometimes
audiences have been less willing to laugh, and Hodgson argues
that this is because they are not always willing to accept him
because he’s an outsider:

It’s very much a double edged sword because what it means

is … stuff that wins you awards and gets you nice write-ups
in The Guardian and … gets you artistically respected, that
doesn’t translate … into things like regular bookings and
stuff. It means you die a lot when you’re finding your feet,
and it means it’s difficult to get booked. I mean I have died
some horrible deaths in my time. Horrendous deaths.

More recently, Hodgson has changed his look, with close-

cropped, undyed hair and a beard. He says that he no longer
gets so much hostility now ‘because I don’t look like I did.’
In spite of this, he is wary of ‘appeasing people that I maybe
shouldn’t want to be appeasing’, which would include casual
bigots, and sexist, laddish men who can dominate certain
kinds of stand-up audience. He also knows that he appeals
to others like him who have become outsiders because of
their own lifestyle choices – ‘People who are maybe sort of
transgender or have got like elaborate hairstyles, and they’re
Goths and they live in places like Dewsbury’ – and worries
about ‘moving too far away from them’.9 Clearly, facing the
audience as a true outsider is a difficult line to tread.
252 GETTING THE JOKE

Inside and outside

Whilst some comedians play the insider and others play
the outsider, most play both. In his Vote for Jim show,
Jim Davidson spends most of his time identifying with the
community of the audience, by pushing populist, right-wing
buttons, but not all of his imaginary policies go down well.
When he asks why he should have to pay 40 per cent tax on
most of his earnings, somebody shouts, ‘Because you’re a rich
bastard!’ He’s unapologetic, explaining he deserves to be rich
because: ‘I’m more talented than you’.10 Suddenly, Davidson
is separate from the audience, a high status outsider. Although
he isn’t cheered for what he says, he doesn’t lose the audience.
The brazen confidence with which he states his case shows
control and asserts his status as somebody to be admired
rather than messed with.
For Jo Brand, the choice of defining herself as an insider or
an outsider depends on the kind of audience she’s playing to.
She explains that as she has a family to support and refuses on
principle to appear in adverts, she sometimes earns ‘shedloads
of money’ by doing ‘these weird corporate gigs with sort of
loads of businessmen in them’. In such circumstances – which
she describes as ‘just fucking weird’ – her upfront feminism
and her penchant for the outrageous clearly define her as
being separate from the community of the audience. On other
occasions, she can feel part of the community of audiences
‘who are very much politically in tune with me and roughly
the same age and all that sort of thing’. Sometimes, though,
she finds herself shifting between the insider and outsider
roles:

I mean you might say to an audience, ‘Oh, isn’t so-and-so

a pain in the arse,’ and they’ll all agree with you, and then
kind of five minutes later you might find you’ve gone too
far, and suddenly you’re outside what’s acceptable with
them, so you then have to relate to them on that basis.11
 Insiders and outsiders 253

Surreal comedians have a natural tendency for the outsider

role, portraying themselves as exotic aliens with a skewed
outlook on the world. Milton Jones uses hair gel and loud
shirts to achieve exactly this effect. For Harry Hill, though,
playing the outsider is what makes him close to his audience,
which he describes as ‘a room full of outcasts’. He believes
his audience collude with him as he unleashes his torrents of
silliness on them: ‘I think … that the audience know that I’m
in on it as well.’12
Ross Noble – whose act is made up of high-energy cartoon
images and surreal trains of thought lubricated by the fluidity
of improvisation – sees himself as being both like and unlike
his audience. Having started in stand-up at the age of 15, he
is clearly unlike most of the people who come to see him: ‘I’m
different from the people in the audience purely because I’ve
never had a job, I’ve never had a normal existence, and all
I’ve ever done is stand-up … I don’t live a particularly normal
life because I’m always on the road.’ On the other hand, the
process of touring, with its days spent wandering around city
centres, eating in Little Chefs and getting into conversations
with people gives him enough experience of normality to
identify with his audience. The combination of the surreal and
the everyday has its origins in his upbringing in a new town
in the North East: ‘I was in this kind of slightly mundane
situation, which meant that my head lived in a slightly more
sort of fanciful place.’13

Dividing the audience

As well as being an insider, an outsider or a bit of both, there’s
also another choice available to comedians – to relate differ-
ently to different sections of the room. Dividing the audience
up is a basic stand-up skill. A compère may generate energy
at the beginning of the show by splitting the audience into
sections and getting them to compete about how loudly they
254 GETTING THE JOKE

can shout, cheer or applaud. Comedians playing big theatres

may play the stalls off against the balcony, perhaps poking
fun at the snobbery of punters who have paid for expensive
tickets in the front rows and the tightfistedness of the ones in
the cheap seats.
Stewart Lee often observes that he’s going down noticeably
less well with certain sections of the audience, and points out
the divide between those who are going with him and those
that are not. At a show in the 1,200-seat Marlowe Theatre in
Canterbury in early 2012, he identifies a ‘pocket’ of people
on the balcony who are not laughing. He sets up the idea that
his audience has grown thanks to his two TV series, and that
some of the punters watching him might have been unwill-
ingly dragged along by friends. He talks about only wanting
to play to people who’ve seen him before, and suggests that
he’ll soon lose these newcomers and it’ll be ‘just us’ again.
Pointing out his failure with a section of the audience
seems counterintuitive. It’s a risky move that could create real
hostility from those punters, and damage the entire audience’s
faith in Lee’s comic ability. In fact, it sits well with his overall
approach, in which he remains arrogant whilst at the same
time feigning comic failure. Carving out a section of punters
who are apparently not going with him allows him to gets
laughs by reversing the normal etiquette of stand-up. He
blames them – instead of himself – for any joke that ‘fails’.
When a straightforward topical gag gets a good reaction, he
suggests that our reaction means we’re probably Jimmy Carr
fans and tells us, ‘Don’t come again. [laughter]’ After making
a comment which is clearly ironic, he patronisingly explains
it for the newcomers: ‘When I say that, that’s the opposite of
what I actually think. [laughter].’14
As well as being a good source of laughter, dividing the
audience also fulfils another function for Lee. Ironically, it
helps to unite them behind him. To an extent, the idea that
there’s a whole section of the audience who are not getting
behind the act is fictional. Lee confesses that he’s not really
aware of specific sections where the laughter is sparse:
 Insiders and outsiders 255

You can sort of pretend to instigate things, but actually

you can’t really tell if they’re happening or not. It’s a
reasonable assumption that they are. That there are people
feeling particular ways and other ways in a room of twelve
hundred. You don’t really know. You just hear a kind of,
like, it sounds like the sea. You can’t hear an individual
wave.

However, by splitting the audience into people who get it and

people who don’t, he can persuade more people to follow him
into his hall of mirrors: ‘No-one likes to think that they’re in
the bit that aren’t getting it. You know, and they always think
it’s about other people.’15
In other cases, dividing the audience serves a more political
purpose. Jo Brand plays differently to the men and women
in the audience, sharing experiences with the women, and
making out that what she says will be going over the heads
of the men. She imagines the husbands of the women in the
audience telling their wives, ‘This is your one treat this year,
I’m coming with you but don’t expect me to laugh.’16
Similarly, Richard Pryor would relate differently to black
and white people in his audience. At the beginning of Live
in Concert, this starts when he notices punters filing to their
seats: ‘This is the fun part for me, when the white people come
back after the intermission and find out niggers stole their
seats. [laughter, cheering, whistles and applause]’ He imagines
the reaction of a very square, white punter (‘Er, weren’t we
sitting here, er, dear, weren’t we –?’), and the response of a
cool, defiant black one (‘Well, you ain’t sittin’ there now,
motherfugger!’). All of this is played out to riotous laughter
and applause.
As Pryor gets into the act, it’s clear that he identifies with
the black punters whose experience he shares, not the white
punters who have come along for the ride. He asks, ‘You
ever noticed how nice white people get when there’s a bunch
of niggers around?’ which leads to an impression of a white
man grinning idiotically and introducing himself to a bunch of
256 GETTING THE JOKE

black people: ‘Hi, how ya doin’? [laughter] I don’t know you,

but here’s my wife, hello!! [laughter]’17
It’s beautifully acted, precisely capturing the ridiculous
jollity and underlying anxiety of white people in this situation.
Observational comedy may be about shared experience, but
in this case, the phenomenon that Pryor is observing is
experienced differently by blacks and whites in the audience.
For black people, the observation is about the ridiculous
behaviour of another group. For white people, it is their own
behaviour they are being invited to see as ridiculous. There’s
clearly a political edge to this, a chance for a black comedian
and black punters to enjoy having the upper hand for once,
but it’s not actually hostile towards the whites in the audience.
Bill Hicks, on the other hand, would single out certain
groups and lay into them without mercy. In one routine, he
gets laughter and applause by announcing: ‘By the way, if
anyone here is in advertising or marketing – kill yourself.’ He
repeatedly rams the point home, saying: ‘Seriously though – if
you are, do. [laughter] Ahhhh – [some clapping] No, really.
There’s no rationalisation for what you do, and you are
Satan’s little helpers, OK? [laughter] Kill yourself, seriously.’
Of course, it may be that there are no advertisers or
marketing types in the audience, in which case Hicks’ violent
advice is purely symbolic; but if they are there, he makes sure
they can’t wriggle off the hook. He imagines them trying to
find ways to join in with the laughter, perhaps by thinking
he’s going for ‘that anti-marketing dollar’ or ‘the righteous
indignation dollar’. In each case, he cuts their thoughts dead,
calling them ‘fucking evil scumbags’.18

With or against the mob?

On the face of it, Hicks seems to be doing something very
subversive here. He is sticking his comic boot into the
advertising industry – which plays a key role in free market
 Insiders and outsiders 257

capitalism – and the laughter and applause which greets

his invective seems to unite the audience behind him. On a
personal level, any advertisers or marketers who did happen
to be in audience would probably feel very out of step with
the mood of the room. What appears to be happening is that
Hicks – a daring outsider – is comically attacking a powerful
social group and by doing so undermining an important
ideological idea.
This chimes with Hicks’s view of what a comedian is.
He saw being an outsider as an inherent part of his job: ‘To
me, the comic is the guy who says, “Wait a minute” as the
consensus forms. He’s the antithesis of the mob mentality.’19
Other performers have expressed similar views. Rick Overton
argues that, ‘To a soul, comics are all misfits … I think out of
the box because I was never invited in the box, so outside the
box is the only territory I know.’20 Simon Munnery wraps the
idea up in a neat quip: ‘When the crowd get behind you you’re
probably facing the wrong way.’21
On the other hand, Jimmy Carr and Lucy Greeves argue
that:

Comedians are not the kind of people you want to

put in charge of protecting minority views. As a breed
they’re instinctively with the mob. Far from being fearless
mavericks, riding roughshod across popular sensibilities
in pursuit of a laugh, most stand-up comics, and most
‘offensive’ jokes, are not taboo-busting at all: they are
inherently conservative. By mocking situations that we
would otherwise find uncomfortable, by legitimizing our
anxieties about people who are different and hard to relate
to, these jokes perpetuate the status quo.22

What we seem to have here is two diametrically opposed

opinions. Stand-up comedy is subversive or conservative,
with or against the majority perspective. In fact, it’s possible
to reconcile these two arguments. Richard Herring expresses
a popular view when he says, ‘I’ve always felt with comedy
258 GETTING THE JOKE

either it can be bullying, and it can be looking down …

or you can be attacking up.’23 There are certainly some
comedians who legitimise our anxieties about people who are
different, building careers out of mocking minority groups
and people less powerful than themselves – thus reinforcing
social hierarchies. On the other hand, there are those like
Wil Hodgson, who legitimise people who are different and
invite us to embrace the outsider; or Bill Hicks, who mocked
the powerful. All of this leads us into the walking-through-a-
minefield question of the politics of stand-up comedy, and the
effect it might have on the way an audience thinks.

Notes
1 Interview with Phill Jupitus, BBC Broadcasting House, London,
6 June 2004
2 Bob Monkhouse, Over the Limit: My Secret Diaries 1993-8,
London: Century, 1998, p. 85
3 See Stephen Wagg, ‘“They Already Got a Comedian for
Governor” Comedians and Politics in the United States and
Great Britain’, in Stephen Wagg (ed.) Because I Tell a Joke
or Two: Comedy, Politics and Social Difference, London:
Routledge, 1998, pp. 252–3
4 Interview with Shazia Mirza, by telephone, 28 June 2004
5 See ‘Intro’ and ‘Worst audience ever’, Bill Hicks, Flying Saucer
Tour Vol. 1 Pittsburgh 6/20/91, Rykodisc, 2002, RCD 10632
6 ‘More about smoking’, Bill Hicks, Live at the Oxford
Playhouse 11.11.92, Invasion Group, 2003, INVACD 1001.
The gag is a reference to the famous incident at a 1960s
festival when Bob Dylan was booed by folk purists for playing
with an electric rock band
7 Frankie Howerd, At The Establishment Club & at the BBC,
Decca, 1963, LK 4556
8 Wil Hodgson, Skinheads, Readers’ Wives and My Little Ponies,
Go Faster Stripe, 2008, GFS-10
 Insiders and outsiders 259

9 Interview with Wil Hodgson, by telephone, 12 September 2012

10 Jim Davidson, Vote for Jim, Winter Gardens, Margate, 25
October 2003
11 Interview with Jo Brand, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1 April
2004
12 Interview with Harry Hill, by telephone, 26 August 2004
13 Interview with Ross Noble, Orchard Theatre, Dartford, 24
June 2004
14 Stewart Lee, Carpet Remnant World, Marlowe Theatre,
Canterbury, 24 February 2012
15 Interview with Stewart Lee, Patisserie Valerie, Canterbury, 25
February 2012
16 Jo Brand, The Stag Theatre, Sevenoaks, 10 May 2004
17 Richard Pryor, Live in Concert, Revolver Entertainment, 2004,
REVD1806
18 Revelations, on Bill Hicks, Totally Bill Hicks, VCI/4 DVD,
2001, VCD0162
19 Cynthia True, American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story, London:
Sidgwick & Jackson, 2002, p.178
20 Paul Provenza and Dan Dion, Satiristas! Comedians,
Contrarians, Raconteurs & Vulgarians, New York:
HarperCollins, 2010, p. 333
21 Quoted in Stewart Lee, ‘What I really think about Michael
McIntyre … and the Daily Mail, too’, http://www.chortle.
co.uk/features/2011/07/19/13653/stewart_lee%3A_what_i_
really_think_about_michael_mcintyre#ixzz28KNehi9v
[accessed 5 November 2012]
22 Jimmy Carr & Lucy Greeves, The Naked Jape: Uncovering the
Hidden World of Jokes, London: Penguin, 2006, p. 192
23 Interview with Richard Herring, Gulbenkian Theatre,
Canterbury, 14 February 2012
 CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Licence

Some comics base their entire output on a kind of joyful

offensiveness. Appearing on TV in 2004, Jo Brand delights in
creating a series of sexually explicit cartoon images. A vagina
is described as ‘the old velvet Tardis’. She suggests The Sun
should produce a page three for women, featuring ‘a bloke,
with his pants on, with a little cheeky testicle poking out the
side’. She talks about having a bra fitted by the company which
supplies the Queen with underwear, and asking whether the
monarch has ‘pink nipples or brown ones’.
Brand completely subverts conventional ideas about
femininity. In an anti-matter universe she would be the
epitome of ladylike. Her behaviour – as described in the act
– is hilariously bizarre and disgusting. She pisses in an estate
agent’s briefcase, breast feeds her husband in a café and eats
her children’s leftover meals out of the bin. She reverses the
classic image of an ideal wife:

I’d like to say I’m very happily married. Er, my husband’s

not, unfortunately, but fuck him, you know. [laughter and
applause] And the thing I find difficult about marriage is
that bit where all the nice sort of love and all that’s worn
off – and you’re just left with some twat in your house,
[laughter] d’yer – d’yer know what I mean?

Announcing that she’s become a parent, she imagines the

262 GETTING THE JOKE

audience’s reaction: ‘And I know you’re looking at me, going,

“I don’t think you had sex with your husband for your
children. We think, as a group, that you used a turkey baster.”’
There’s a big laugh, mixed with audible groaning. The sound
of the groans suggests not disapproval or hostility, but a
pure reaction to the grotesqueness of the image. She pushes it
further: ‘“Or perhaps you got a gay friend of yours to get very
drunk and turn you against the wall,” well no!’ There’s a big
laugh, and some people clap. She picks up on this: ‘People are
clapping that, now that’s an interesting reaction, isn’t it? “We
want you to have done that, and we want to hear more about
it, please.” [laughter]’1
She explains that she’s always had a penchant for outrage:

I’ve always been like that. I mean, again, it’s that old
cliché of saying, like, ‘Bum’ during assembly when you’re
at primary school … I just always wanted (rather sadly I
suppose) to kind of shock people, and I just very much
enjoyed … the result when I did. Funnily enough, in some
ways, I’m not really that sort of person in my personal
social life. I am when I’m pissed (you know, well I suppose
we’re all a bit like that when we’re pissed), but there’s
always a bit of me that’s wanted to be like that, you know.
So I suppose it’s that bit of me that does the stand-up, really
… If I actually thought seriously about some of the things
I said onstage, I probably wouldn’t do it, so I just don’t
think about it.2

When she picks up on the audience’s clapping at the joke

about being taken from behind by a gay friend, she is bringing
into the open the idea that the audience expects her to say
outrageous things. In this sense, she is licensed to shock. It
could be argued that this blunts the subversive edge of her
full frontal assault on notions of femininity – that the role of
comedian gives her a special licence, but also safely contains
her outrageousness, stopping it from spilling out into the
wider world.
 Licence 263

There are certainly comic theorists whose ideas would

tend to support this interpretation. The anthropologist Mary
Douglas, for example, argues that the joker ‘appears to be a
privileged person who can say certain things in a certain way
which confers immunity.’3 She allows that ‘All jokes have [a]
subversive effect on the dominant structure of ideas’,4 but
goes on to say that they offer only a ‘temporary suspension
of the social order’ because ‘the strength of [their] attack is
entirely restricted by the consensus on which [they depend]
for recognition.’5
It’s certainly true that some stand-up comedians do
express consensus and work within the boundaries of what is
considered acceptable. When Bob Hope talked about politics
in his act, he usually kept the gags mild and neutral, aiming
them at both parties. He did this because, as he puts it, ‘I’m
usually selling a product everybody buys and I don’t want to
alienate any part of my audience’.6 Observational comedy and
material about shared history is usually about establishing
consensus within the audience, although Richard Pryor’s
observation about how white people behave in a crowd of
black people shows that this isn’t always the case.
However, when Douglas talks about consensus, she is not
implying that all joking has to be conspicuously safe and
inoffensive, but that ultimately it is prevented from playing
with subjects which are commonly held to be inappropriate:
‘Social requirements may judge a joke to be in bad taste, risky,
too near the bone, improper or irrelevant. Such controls are
exerted either on behalf of hierarchy as such, or on behalf of
values which are judged too precious and too precarious to
be exposed to challenge.’7 This means that, ‘the joker is not
exposed to danger … He merely expresses consensus. Safe
within the permitted range of attack, he lightens for everyone
the oppressiveness of social reality …’8
The clear implication is that comedy is always toothless and
conservative. Rather than challenging the status quo, jokes
merely let off steam and allow us to live more comfortably with
the restrictions which society places upon us. Interestingly,
264 GETTING THE JOKE

there are certain comedians who have put forward similar

arguments, albeit with an important twist. According to
Stewart Lee, ‘By reversing the norms and breaking the taboos,
the clowns show us what we have to lose, and what we might
also stand to gain, if we stand outside the restrictions of social
convention and polite everyday discourse.’9 Similarly, Billy
Connolly has argued that:

The biggest favour we do for people is to release them.

Society, culture, puts them in jail – and we let them out.
The rule-makers, whoever they are, decided a box you’re
going to live in. We need to be reminded that you can step
out of the box – and you can go right back in again if you
want, too.10

Both comics imply that rather than just relieving pressure,

comedy also has the power to suggest how things might be
different.

Too near the bone

It’s obviously true that some subjects are deemed unsuitable
for joking, but the problem with this is that the consensus on
what’s suitable and what’s not can change. Stewart Lee argues:

When you talk about it in anthropological terms, you

might be thinking of some little village where there’s a
clown and he does something every year, and everyone’s the
same in that village … but actually in a big multicultural
society, there’s all sorts of different people … We’re not a
village any more …11

Consensus can shift and change from moment to moment, and

location to location. Audience attitudes may be very different
from one night to the next even in the same venue. Indeed,
 Licence 265

many stand-ups build an act out of daringly pushing at the

edges of consensus. A common technique in contemporary
British comedy clubs is to follow an edgy gag which gets a
big laugh with the comment, ‘I think I’ve found your level.’
Similarly, after an outraged laugh, the comic will often say, ‘I
think I’ve gone too far.’
Bill Hicks had lines which he could pull out if he was in
danger of losing the audience. After a particularly obscene
gag, he would say, ‘My mother wrote that one’ or ‘I am
available for children’s parties’. On the other hand, if he felt
his audience was getting bored with his political rhetoric, he
would say, ‘Let me assure you right now – there are dick jokes
on the way.’12
Then there are sick jokes, which gleefully play about
with forbidden subjects. During Billy Connolly’s show at
the Carling Hammersmith Apollo, I witness a very pure
example of a sick joke. He starts talking about Ken Bigley,
the 62-year-old British engineer who has been kidnapped by
a terrorist group in Iraq. Just broaching the subject makes a
hush fall over the auditorium. This is a big news story, and a
horrible one. The terrorists are threatening to behead Bigley
if their demands are not met. Connolly skilfully identifies the
unease he’s provoked, imagining the audience thinking, ‘Oh
God, what’s he going to say?’
This punctures the tension for a moment, but he pumps
it up again by continuing to talk very seriously about the
issue. He mentions that earlier in the evening, he’s seen
on the news that the terrorists have released more video
footage of Bigley. This makes the story even more current,
even more risky. Having built the tension, he walks to the
very front of the stage and asks, in a hushed voice, whether
we, like him, listen to the news hoping that Bigley has
been beheaded. The theatre is filled with the sound of the
audience going, ‘Ooooo!’, in a wave of disapproval that
rushes towards the stage, but before it can crash over him,
Connolly defiantly shouts, ‘Fuck off!’, transforming it into
a big laugh.13
266 GETTING THE JOKE

Regardless of the morality of joking about such a thing,

it’s a beautifully performed piece of taboo surfing. Connolly
manipulates the audience with extraordinary control. Like
all sick jokes, his comment derives its power from the fact
that it’s about a subject deemed inappropriate for joking. It
rebels against the expected emotional reaction to the Bigley
case, replacing horror and sadness with laughter. It’s a pure
sick joke, in that it has no real motivation other than to play
with the tension surrounding a current news story. Connolly
is not really telling the joke at Bigley’s expense, he’s honestly
revealing a prurient part of himself that secretly yearns for
horror in a news story with which he has no direct connection.
What is truly shocking is the feeling that he might be right in
suggesting that many of us share his secret prurience.
Initially, it seems as if Connolly can make this work
because, like Brand, he enjoys a licence to say outrageous
things in his act. On 3 October, a few days after I see the
show, the Mail on Sunday publishes a five-star review which
says: ‘When he provocatively mentions hostage Ken Bigley, he
crosses the threshold of respectability, knowing full well he’ll
get away with it by comedic daring, by force of personality,
by reputation.’14
But a few days later, the tide has turned. A number of
newspapers report that Connolly has been booed and heckled
for the joke. A headline in The Express screams, ‘Audience
Jeers Connolly’s Sick Joke about Iraq Hostage; That’s Just
Not Funny, Billy’. Bigley’s brother, understandably upset,
is quoted as saying, ‘I don’t like his humour anyway.’ The
Muslim Council of Britain, which has tried to negotiate
Bigley’s release, says, ‘This is the time when everyone needs to
be showing solidarity with Ken Bigley’s family, to work for his
release. The jokes can wait.’15 A few days after that, the fury
provoked by Connolly’s joke is swept away by the genuinely
disturbing news of Bigley’s death.
Clearly consensus is more transient and complicated than
Douglas’s argument suggests, and social requirements can
shift even in the course of a few days. This is important
 Licence 267

because in some cases sick jokes can go beyond simple outra-

geousness and say something profound. Bill Hicks provides
a classic example of this, in a routine which starts with him
talking about how much he enjoyed the special effects in the
film Terminator 2. He says he thinks they will never be able
to better those effects, then uses a single word to qualify his
argument:
‘Unless – ’ There’s a small laugh, anticipating that something
good is coming.
He continues: ‘They start using terminally ill people –’
While the audience laugh, he looks at them quizzically, as if
puzzled by their not taking him seriously. ‘Hear me out,’ he
says, getting another laugh, before finishing his idea: ‘– as
stuntmen in the movies.’ There’s some laughter at this, which
lasts a few seconds. During this, he looks at the audience
again, biting his bottom lip, as if eagerly trying to see if they
approve of the idea. ‘OK, not the most popular idea ever,’
he concedes, getting another full laugh. So far, so good. Like
Connolly, the way he plays with the audience’s reactions to
the horrific idea he’s suggesting is masterful.
Now he takes the routine to another level. He says the
audience probably think it’s a cruel idea, then answers back:
‘You know what I think cruel is? Leaving your loved ones to
die in some sterile hospital room, surrounded by strangers.
Fuck that! Put ‘em in the movies.’ There’s a big laugh, and
applause. Now he sounds exasperated with them: ‘What?
You want your grandmother dying like a little bird in some
hospital room, her translucent skin so thin you can see her last
heartbeat work its way down her blue vein? Or you want her
to meet Chuck Norris?’ There’s another big laugh and more
applause.16
Talking about how dying people are treated is far more
than a thin justification for a sick routine. The description
of the grandmother has a kind of dark poetry which is rare
in stand-up. He holds the moment, using his hand to subtly
suggest the passage of the blood down the vein, a pained look
on his face. It’s a daring piece of performance. He’s facing his
268 GETTING THE JOKE

audience with a true horror, one that may well await each
one of them. He’s making an important point about the way
our culture treats the sick and elderly. At the heart of a truly
grotesque sick routine there’s real tenderness and passion.

The permitted range of attack

Stand-up can be restricted by unspoken rules about what
constitutes an acceptable subject for comedy, but there’s
a long history of comedians who have erased these rules,
expanding the possibilities of the form by tackling supposedly
unsuitable subjects. Some have broken taboos of obscenity.
Frank Skinner, for example, has joked so enthusiastically
about heterosexual sodomy that he has been dubbed ‘the Billy
Graham of anal sex’.17
Others have joked about subjects which might seem too
esoteric or dull for comedy. In 1990, Tony Allen’s act included
routines on the financial markets, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty
Principle and the horticultural habits of rainforest tribes.18
Dave Gorman had an extensive routine about pure maths,
which was inspired by reading about Fermat’s Last Theorem:

I found myself being fascinated. And I just thought, ‘I

wonder if I can convey this to people.’ ‘Cos I’m fascinated
and I really like this, and I know you’re not supposed to,
‘cos it’s maths, but if I can convey that, then I think people
will find just that funny.19

There are also comedians who deal with subjects which might
be considered too tragic or uncomfortable for joking, particu-
larly their own physical afflictions. Adam Hills talks about
having a metal foot.20 Paul Merton did a show about his spell
in a mental hospital.21 On his final tour, Richard Pryor joked
about the multiple sclerosis that was forcing him to retire.22
The acclaimed 2002 Edinburgh Fringe show, Andre Vincent
 Licence 269

is Unwell dealt with the fact that the comedian had been
diagnosed with cancer. Vincent decided to tackle the subject
precisely because it was unsuitable:

[P]eople were saying, ‘You can’t talk about it,’ [and] that
really became the moment for me where it was like, ‘I won’t
be told that. I won’t be told that, because it’s me. It’s me,
and I’m a comedian. And I talk about what I know and
what I see. And at the moment I’ve got cancer, so I’ve got
to talk about it.’

He started talking about it immediately:

And on the very day that I was told I had cancer, I was doing
Southampton Jongleurs, and just before bringing on the
second act, somebody heckled me, and I went, ‘Don’t heckle
me, I’ve got cancer!’ And it got sort of like a laugh and an
‘Oo!’ And [to] the people that went, ‘Oo,’ I went, ‘What are
you oo-ing about?’ And one of them said, ‘You shouldn’t say
that, that’s not nice.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but I have.’ And there was
a real lull in the audience. I went, ‘No, I just found out today,
I got cancer of the kidney.’ And there was no material at that
point, there was nowhere for it to go. And bless him, to this
day, George Egg, who I brought on next, still never lets me
forget about the fact that I brought him on to an audience
who were just going, ‘That poor bloke’s got cancer!’

He went on to find ways of dealing with the subject more

successfully. The Edinburgh show includes gags about the
absurd things that have happened to him in the course of
dealing with the disease, like the questions he’s asked about
his urine in the process of being diagnosed: ‘“Does it smell
or taste different?” I’m like, “What?? [laughter] Taste??”
[laughter]’23 He also commentates over the top of actual film
footage of his operation. The show was a big critical success,
but perhaps understandably, it still provoked unease among
audiences:
270 GETTING THE JOKE

But even though … it was doing so well, it still made people

kind of go, ‘Oo, I’m not sure this is right.’ On the Friday of
the first weekend, The Times gave me a five-star review, it
was the first five-star review that they’d given out. I was on
the front page, and there was a full-page interview. It was
just brilliant. Couldn’t get better coverage. I still only had
18 people in that night.

This kind of unease only made him more determined to

continue talking about cancer in his act: ‘I wanna talk about
it now. I wanna talk about it. Fuck ‘em! I’m not gonna go
with the norm. I will talk about it. And started playing more
and more with it. And now I just don’t give a fuck about it.’24
Sometimes there is a deeper political purpose to going
outside of the permitted range of attack. Doug Stanhope’s
scattergun satire is aimed at worthy and undeserving targets
alike, but he’s completely open about his willingness to
offend anybody. Those he offends are likely to heckle him,
so he tells his audience: ‘If nobody gets thrown out tonight,
that’ll increase our streak to – one.’ On his 2012 UK tour,
his first big routine is a comic evisceration of the Daily
Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, who had criticised
Tony Nicklinson – a man who was suffering from locked-in
syndrome following a stroke – for pursuing a legal battle for
the right to die. Stanhope’s tactics range from low and common
abuse to reasoned argument, but the riskiest moments come
when he launches into a lengthy anecdote about helping his
mother to end her life when she was dying from emphysema.
He goes through the details of how he ‘catered’ her suicide
by supplying her with White Russians to wash down the
overdose of morphine tablets. She is surrounded by her family
as she waits to die, and they ‘roast’ (i.e. tease) her, telling her
‘Mom, they found a cure’, to which she replies by sticking
up her middle finger. He tells us that he made sure other
people weren’t around to see this because they wouldn’t find
that kind of thing funny – and then suddenly refers this back
to us, in this theatre, pointing out that we probably don’t
 Licence 271

find it funny. In fact, he manages to get big laughs from this

distinctly unlikely comic premise.
On a technical level, he’s taking a significant risk by joking
about a subject that’s so serious and laden with emotional
weight. He’s also taking a personal risk, publicly confessing
to behaviour which verges on illegality. For all his bad-boy
comic bluster, he has managed to construct a convincing and
sensitive case for the right to die. Even in his act, he shows that
he’s aware that it’s the licence which stand-up comedy affords
that allows him to speak so freely. He tells us about getting
into a public spat with Pearson, and claims that she has
publicly asked for his employers to sack him. ‘My employers
is comedy,’ he says. ‘How am I going to get the sack for that?
I’ve been trying for the last 15 years.’ He also points out that
his audience is actually his employer – ‘and you’re not going
to sack me.’25
If stand-up offers the possibility of a free space within
which comedians can transcend the bounds of acceptability
and explore unconventional ideas, I’d argue that nothing
tests this freedom as consciously as Stewart Lee’s show 90’s
Comedian. This comic tour de force was created in the
aftermath of a public furore over Jerry Springer: The Opera,
which Lee had written with the musician Richard Thomas.
When the musical was televised by the BBC in 2005, the show
was targeted by right-wing groups like Christian Voice, who
picketed theatres where it was appearing. Christian Voice
threatened the BBC with a private prosecution for blasphemy,
and the most extreme protestors even issued death threats
against the executives who had commissioned the televised
version.
90’s Comedian takes the audience on a carefully crafted
journey on the way to an outlandish conclusion. Lee tells them
that after the woes inflicted on him by evangelical Christians,
he went to recuperate at his mother’s house in Worcestershire.
This builds to a poetically grotesque tall tale in which he drinks
too much barley wine in a nearby pub, and is accompanied
back to his mother’s house by a stranger who turns out to be
272 GETTING THE JOKE

Jesus. After getting back, he starts vomiting up improbable

amounts of sick, to the point where the downstairs toilet and
washbasin are overflowing. Not knowing where to throw up
next, Jesus offers his own mouth – and then even his anus – as
a receptacle for the apparently never-ending vomit.
It’s hard to imagine anything more spectacularly
blasphemous than this, and the fact that Lee can take the
audience with him, getting laughs at each outrageous escalation
of the imagery demonstrates his supreme artistry. Film of the
routine shows individual punters wincing or covering their
mouths in disbelief amongst the laughter. What’s particularly
odd is that there’s almost a spiritual dimension to the story, as
Christ has willingly offered himself up as a receptacle in order
to help a man who has suffered at the hands of his followers.
The idea that Lee is testing the limits of the freedom that
stand-up offers is absolutely explicit. Before going into the
routine, he draws a chalk circle around himself and explains
that he’s following the example of the bouffons in Languedoc
who make themselves safe to make fun of the church by
drawing a shape around themselves so that they are ‘protected
by the magic spell of comedy’. Later, the anecdote concludes
with Lee’s mother discovering Lee standing over the vomit-
filled Christ and advising him not to recount these events in
his act unless he has a good reason to do so. He then articu-
lates three reasons why it was important for him to say all of
this, the third of which is:

[I]f you attempt to apply limits to freedom of expression

– either through legislation or intimidation or threats –
what will then happen – is that reasonable people, often
against their own better judgement [quiet laughter] will
– feel obliged to test those limits – [laughter] er, by going
into areas they don’t feel entirely comfortable with. [quiet
laughter] I – personally haven’t enjoyed the last half hour
at all, I do it – [laughter] I do it only – to safeguard your
liberty. [laughter and applause]26
 Licence 273

Irony
Comedians may enjoy the freedom to stretch the limits of
acceptability, but doing so is not necessarily a political act, or
even one with a clear meaning. In the last few years a number
of comedians, on either side of the Atlantic, have made delib-
erate offensiveness a central plank of their stand-up style.
They trample on all sensibilities – particularly liberal ones
– but resist straightforward interpretation by shrouding their
gags with irony.
Jimmy Carr is an excellent example. His quips are short,
clipped and supremely well-crafted, their neatness offset by
their tasteless subjects, which typically include rape, paedo-
philia, disability, scatology and sexual disgust. The act plays
out like an elaborate game, in which the idea is simply
to persuade the audience to laugh in spite of their better
judgement. ‘I should warn you this isn’t a show for the easily
offended, it isn’t even a show for people that are quite difficult
to offend,’ he declares. ‘Essentially this is a show for people
without a moral compass. [laughter]’ He goes on to play with
their reactions, revealing ‘the rules of the gig’ which are that
they have to choose between laughter and disapproval: ‘What
you can’t do is laugh, applaud, then look round and go,
“Oooh!” [laughter] I’m not having that.’27
At another show, he finds somebody in the front row who
claims he will not be offended by anything and takes this as
a challenge, reeling off a string of increasingly tasteless jokes,
culminating in an Auschwitz gag.28 Carr might come across as
misogynistic, anti-gay and prejudiced against the disabled, and
although a number of jokes seem to support this, the fact that
he’s playing a game actually tends to render them blank and
meaningless. At times, the gap between what his gags suggest
and what he actually believes becomes visible. In one routine
he criticises a tabloid newspaper’s outing of a gay footballer
for its ‘demeaning’ treatment of homosexuals, explaining, ‘It’s
only a joke, jokes are fine. Proper homophobia isn’t fine.’29
274 GETTING THE JOKE

He offsets his offensiveness with a surprisingly genteel

demeanour. He can be outrageously rude to individual punters,
but will often follow this with a polite comment which
suggests an underlying respect for his audience. Indeed, the
gap between the appalling things he says and his hardworking,
middle-class professionalism is so wide, there’s almost an
avant-garde quality to his act.
Frankie Boyle’s comedy is much more straightforwardly
obnoxious. An aggressive, bespectacled Scot, his eyes gleam
with malevolent disdain as he dispenses gags about paedo-
philes, necrophiliacs or any recent news story that offers up
the possibility of a depraved comic angle. He lacks Carr’s
respect for the audience – even telling them that his show is
‘for scum’ – but shares the sense that the offensiveness is all
part of a game that he’s playing with them.
After a gag about the racing driver Lewis Hamilton’s
brother having cerebral palsy, he assures them that, ‘The
show doesn’t sink any lower than that. [laughter] Oh no, wait
a minute, it does. [laughter] Quite often. [laughter]’ At that
point, he laughs himself, giving out an evil, hooting guffaw.
When a punter is reluctant to tell him what he does for a
living, he explains, ‘You just tell me what you do. I make a
joke about how it’s a shit thing to be doing. [laughter] We
all get on with our lives. [laughter]’ Then he turns to the rest
of the audience and says, ‘Sorry, have I ruined the magic for
anybody there? [laughter]’
Unlike Carr, there is a hint of a moral purpose behind
Boyle’s comic bile, a feeling that he might be motivated by
genuine anger at the horror of the world. His reaction to
coming across a stockbroker in his audience is to sneer, ‘You
evil cunt!’, which gets laughter and applause. He then asks,
‘Do you invest in ethical stocks, or is it largely – landmines to
Somalia? [laughter]’ On finding out that the punter actually
has traded in guns, Boyle asks, ‘D’you ever think about buying
a gun and blowing your own fucking head off? [laughter]’30
With Sarah Silverman, the game is different and the sense
of purpose more clearly defined. In a typical gag, she tells
 Licence 275

the audience, ‘I was raped by a doctor. Which is, um – you

know, so bittersweet for a Jewish girl.’ This gets laughter and
a smattering of applause. As well as joking about a serious
subject like rape, she’s also playing to a stereotype of Jewish
people as incongruously obsessed with social status in general
and doctors in particular.
She may deal with unpleasant subjects and flirt with racist
attitudes, but her game is about more than simply persuading
the audience to laugh at the unacceptable. What she says
is contextualised by how she performs. As an article in the
online magazine Slate puts it:

She delivers even the most taboo punch lines with almost
pathological sincerity. It looks like her face isn’t in on her
own jokes: Her nostrils flare, her mouth cocks meaning-
fully to one side, her teeth (of which there seem to be a few
extra) hide and reveal themselves in strategically earnest
formations.31

It is precisely this unawareness that creates the comedy.

Silverman is slim and pretty, and adopts an airheaded persona
who has no real understanding of just how awful the things
she says are. She tells the audience about a clearly fictional
type of jewel she likes, which is ‘only found like on the tip of
the tailbone of Ethiopian babies’. She grimaces, showing her
big, white teeth, as she explains, ‘They de-bone the babies.’
She then grins gauchely and attempts to justify herself: ‘I know
that sounds so bad when you say it out loud! [laughter] But
no, if you saw it! [laughter]’ She closes her eyes and holds up
her hands, fingers splayed, as if trying to visualise the jewel.
‘So worth it, so worth it! [laughter]’
Here the distance from the material is provided by the
‘acting’ of the persona, which is exquisitely detailed – there’s
kind of a satirical point in that she’s making fun out of the
kind of vacuous, selfish attitude that would allow somebody
to justify the fantastical cruelty which she describes. Later, the
satire hits even closer to home as she sends up the cowardice
276 GETTING THE JOKE

behind a stand-up act based on wilful offensiveness. She recalls

an earlier gig in which she dropped the word ‘nigger’ from a
routine because she had noticed some black people sitting on
a front table: ‘And then you gotta ask yourself, is that, er – an
edgy joke or is that a racist joke? You know, and I didn’t do
it because I was afraid of them. [laughter] You know. I didn’t.
And I ended up changing that joke to Chinks. [laughter]’
It seems clear that Silverman’s audience is in on the joke.
She tells them, ‘If I based my material on stereotypes that
would be messed up, it would. But I don’t. OK? I base it on
facts.’32 The joke is that the audience understands that it’s
actually the other way around – the act is based on ignorant
stereotypes rather than facts – and their laughter underlines
this point. However, meaning can be slippery in stand-up,
and there is always the worry that whatever the comedian’s
intention, the audience might interpret things differently. The
Slate article argues that Silverman is playing ‘a dangerous
game’, adding, ‘If you’re humorless, distracted, or even just
inordinately history-conscious, meta-bigotry can look suspi-
ciously like actual bigotry.’

Al Murray’s cosmic prank

Part of the problem is that there’s a lack of clear distinction
between Silverman’s stage persona and private self, which
means that the ridiculous views expressed in her act might
be mistaken for her own. Even an act like Al Murray’s – in
which the Pub Landlord is clearly a fictional character with
views quite unlike those of the comedian – has been accused of
being misinterpreted. An article in the Sunday Herald provides
a typical example:

There’s a strong argument that the only real difference

between Murray and repugnant right-wing comedians of
old is that they meant it and Murray doesn’t. That’s a
 Licence 277

significant difference but, without wanting to patronise any

of the thickos in the crowd, it’s more than probable that
critics and fellow self-satisfied sophisticates laugh because
they see each joke as a negative, the opposite of itself, while
others are taking all this at face value. At what point does
the casual subversion of a particular sensibility become a
celebration of it …?33

The Pub Landlord character is sexist, homophobic, patriotic

and xenophobic, frequently ranting about the French and the
Germans. He is also anti-intellectual, and hates those whose
jobs might impinge on his trade, like tax inspectors and the
police. The idea that Murray’s audience take all this at face
value is fairly common, and I’d argue that it’s the way they
behave at his shows that’s fuelled this opinion.
The Pub Landlord frequently banters with individual
punters. When a woman tells him her husband’s name is
Klaus, there’s disbelief in his voice. ‘It’s Klaus??’ he says. This
gets a massive reaction. There’s laughter, whistling, clapping,
booing and jeering, and the uproar lasts for 12 seconds.34
This might look like an explosion of rampant anti-German
sentiment, but I’d argue it’s more playful than that. The
audience seem to react in this way because they recognise the
parameters of the character, and play along with the fiction.
When the Landlord comes across a police officer and
a VAT inspector, each of these is booed. It seems unlikely
that there are enough punters who have direct experience of
VAT inspectors to produce an audible burst of disapproval
like this. It seems to be more like the ritualised booing of a
pantomime villain than a genuine expression of animosity.
Significantly, in each case they only react when the Landlord
has repeated what they have said to him, his disdain cuing
their reaction.
The way the show is built invites the audience to play-act
as enthusiastic supporters of the Landlord’s ludicrous views,
starting with a ritualised call-and-response: ‘Let’s hear it for
the beer! [cheering] All hail to the ale! [cheering] And welcome
278 GETTING THE JOKE

the wine for the ladies.’ At the beginning of a show at the

London Palladium in 2007, he extends this interactive riff:

Pint for the feller, glass of white wine – fruit-based drink for
the lady. Those – are the rules, and if we didn’t have rules,
where would we be? [audience: ‘FRANCE!’] That’s right!
[laughter] Where would we be? [audience: ‘FRANCE!!’] If
we have too many rules, where would we be? [audience:
‘GERMANY!!’] That’s right! [laughter]’35

Again, the fact that the audience play along might suggest
that they accept the stereotype of France as ill-disciplined
and anarchic and Germany as regimented and highly-
ordered. In fact, they’re being cued to respond, and the fact
that they shout when they’re asked to may have no more
significance than a panto audience shouting, ‘Oh no you’re
not!’ or, ‘He’s behind you!’ Crucially, they don’t laugh at the
idea that France has no rules and Germany has too many.
The real joke is that the Landlord believes these things and
confirms their approval, and they only laugh when he says,
‘That’s right!’
Murray is aware of how his audience play-acts to join in
with the fiction of the Pub Landlord, and points out that the
particular dynamics of this change depending on where he is
performing:

[T]he audience perform, they join in, they get it … If

I perform in Scotland, we get into a whole essentially
ritualised performance of them calling me an English prick
and me calling them Scottish bastards, and at the end of
it everyone’s happy. You know, that’s a rehearsed and
performed thing.

Even so, he admits there may be some punters who take the
act at face value – as a celebration of the character’s absurd
views – but rather than be horrified by this, he relishes the
irony:
 Licence 279

An audience’s reaction to a character like mine, it may well

be that they think they agree with what the Pub Landlord
says, but half of what he says is hallucinatory mental
bollocks. If they do agree with it, then the joke’s on them …
the bloke who doesn’t get it, the bloke who’s being mocked
to his face and has bought a ticket so I can mock him, wow,
what an amazing cosmic prank that is! You know, result!
Jackpot!36

Going too far

If the way comedians like Carr, Boyle and Silverman play
with irony and taboo is a game, it’s one that carries distinct
risks. All of them have told jokes which have crossed the line
between joke outrage and actual outrage, attracting censure
and criticism from the press. In a television interview with
Conan O’Brien in 2001, Silverman talks about trying to get
out of jury duty. Her friend advises her to ‘write something,
like, really inappropriate on the form, like “I hate Chinks.”’
The audience’s laughter is uncertain, with a sense of shock.
She goes on to explain that she doesn’t want people to think
she’s racist, ‘so I just filled out the form – and er, I wrote, “I
love Chinks.” [laughter]’37
The point of the joke is clearly about her persona’s stupidity
– she hasn’t managed to avoid the charge of racism simply by
reversing the sentiment, because she’s still using the racist
slang for Chinese people. Nonetheless, Guy Aoki from the
Media Action Network for Asian Americans complained to
NBC, arguing that, ‘It’s not constructive to use such a hateful
word and play off it for laughs. It just gives people permission
to continue to use it.’38 The joke is about the very unaccept-
ability of the word ‘Chinks’, but for Aoki it is too sensitive to
use even in that context.
Similarly, in a show at the Hexagon theatre, Reading, in
April 2010, Frankie Boyle delivered a routine about Down’s
280 GETTING THE JOKE

syndrome. Asking a front-row punter called Sharon Smith why

she was talking, she reluctantly told him that her daughter had
Down’s syndrome and she was finding his jokes upsetting.
According to Smith, he went into a long justification of his
‘vicious’ approach to comedy, and confessed that this was ‘the
most excruciating moment of [his] career’.39
What both of these cases show is that while the comedian
may see a gag as a game with taboo or even an attempt to
send up prejudice, anybody directly affected by the issue might
view it differently. Down’s syndrome or the word ‘Chink’
have enough taboo qualities to create the discomfort needed
for a shocked explosion of laughter, but these taboos are
not neutral. It is perfectly reasonable for a parent of a child
affected by the condition, or somebody who has been at the
receiving end of a racial slur to see these matters as too serious
or sensitive for jokes.
Sometimes though, regulation of subjects suitable for joking
is, as Mary Douglas suggests, exerted on behalf of hierarchy.
In October 2009, Jimmy Carr kicked up a storm of press
outrage when he told the following joke at the Manchester
Apollo: ‘Say what you like about servicemen amputees from
Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re going to have a fucking good
Paralympic team in 2012.’ Conservative MP Patrick Mercer
said that such subjects should be ‘off limits’ for stand-up
comedians, adding, ‘It’s not funny and his career should end
right now.’40 Defence secretary Bob Ainsworth argued that,
‘Our brave Armed Forces put their lives on the line for all of
us and deserve our utmost respect.’41
What’s interesting about this is that unlike many of
Carr’s other jokes, there is nothing derogatory in this one.
Rather than denigrating the disabled, he is celebrating them,
suggesting that they’ll make ‘fucking good’ sportsmen. Nor
is he undermining the institution of the military. The clear
implication is that servicemen are heroically resilient, showing
how undeterred they are by the tragedy of losing limbs by
becoming Paralympians. Furthermore, this kind of gag is
typical of the dark humour which servicemen share among
 Licence 281

themselves, as Carr would probably be aware, having visited

injured troops in rehabilitation centres.
What the joke reveals is the true cost of war. Perhaps simply
drawing attention to the fact that people are coming back
from conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan with limbs missing was
what really needled politicians like Mercer and Ainsworth,
particularly given the bitter public disputes over the justifi-
cation for these wars. Typically, Carr’s played down the gag’s
satirical bite in favour of the idea that it was only a joke: ‘I’m
sorry if anyone was offended but that’s the kind of comedy
I do. If a silly joke draws attention to the plight of these
servicemen then so much the better. My intention was only to
make people laugh.’42
Probably the biggest scandal in recent stand-up history was
a racist outburst by Michael Richards at the Laugh Factory in
Hollywood in 2006. Prior to this, Richards was best known
for playing the part of Kramer in the sitcom Seinfeld, but the
incident was so notorious that it will follow him around for
the rest of his career. Unlike the other examples, what he said
was not a joke but a furious spontaneous tirade against some
African-American hecklers. Once upon a time this might have
been quickly forgotten, but footage of it was posted on the
TMZ website.
Apparently filmed on a punter’s mobile phone, it shows
Richards incandescent with rage as he shouts, ‘YOU CAN
TALK, YOU CAN TALK, YOU CAN TALK! YOU’RE BRAVE
NOW, MOTHERFUCKER! THROW HIS ASS OUT, HE’S A
NIGGER!! HE’S A NIGGER!!! HE’S A NIGGER!!!!’ There’s
an audible stirring in the audience but it’s not laughter, and a
female punter can clearly being heard saying, ‘Oh my God!’
‘A NIGGER, LOOK, THERE’S A NIGGER!!!’ he continues,
and when the audience greets this with an apprehensive ‘ooo’,
he mimics this back at them.
What follows is largely incoherent. He seems to try and
distance himself from what he has said, as if it was a delib-
erate demonstration of outrage: ‘All right, you see? This
shocks you, this shocks you, you see?’ At one point, his
282 GETTING THE JOKE

confusion is all too clear as he yells, ‘I DON’T KNOW, I

DON’T KNOW, I DON’T KNOW!!!’ He gets into a shouting
match with the hecklers – understandably upset by his racist
aggression – and they swap insults. Finally his voice drops
and he says, ‘You see? There’s still those words, those words,
those words.’ Then he simply wanders off the stage, clearly
befuddled.43
The furious press reaction and public outrage sparked
by what happened at the Laugh Factory clearly shows that
although stand-up comedians enjoy licence, this can be revoked
if what they say genuinely upsets people. The ambiguous
fog of irony and the fuzzy line that divides performer from
persona make it possible for comedians to get a laugh from
things which would often offend, and for Jimmy Carr this
provides a distance between what he jokes about and what he
actually believes. However, when Richards spewed out racial
insults at his hecklers, what seemed to be happening was that
his anger caused him to crack open and show the unpleasant
attitudes that lay beneath the surface. It revealed the belief
that often stand-up comedians believe what they say – and
what they say has a relevance than can spill off the stage and
into the real world.

Notes
1 Jo Brand on Jack Dee Live at the Apollo, BBC One, 27
September 2004
2 Interview with Jo Brand, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1 April
2004
3 Mary Douglas, ‘Jokes’ in Implicit Meanings (2nd edition),
London: Routledge, 1999, p. 158
4 Mary Douglas, ‘Jokes’ in Implicit Meanings (2nd edition),
London: Routledge, 1999, p. 150
5 Mary Douglas, ‘Jokes’ in Implicit Meanings (2nd edition),
London: Routledge, 1999, p. 158
 Licence 283

6 John Lahr, Show and Tell, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London:
University of California Press, 2000, p. 213
7 Mary Douglas, ‘Jokes’ in Implicit Meanings (2nd edition),
London: Routledge, 1999, p. 152
8 Mary Douglas, ‘Jokes’ in Implicit Meanings (2nd edition),
London: Routledge, 1999, p. 159
9 Stewart Lee, How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and
Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian, London: Faber and Faber,
2010, p. 241
10 Paul Provenza and Dan Dion, Satiristas! Comedians,
Contrarians, Raconteurs & Vulgarians, New York:
HarperCollins, 2010, p. 6
11 Interview with Stewart Lee, Patisserie Valerie, Canterbury,
25 February 2012
12 See Cynthia True, American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story,
London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2002, p. 82; and ‘Worst
Audience Ever’, Bill Hicks, Flying Saucer Tour Vol. 1
Pittsburgh 6/20/91, Rykodisc, 2002, RCD 10632
13 Billy Connolly, Too Old to Die Young, Carling Hammersmith
Apollo, 29 September 2004
14 Mark Wareham, ‘Sick with Laughter’, Mail on Sunday, 3
October 2004, FB section p. 80
15 Myra Philp, ‘Audience Jeers Connolly’s Sick Joke about Iraq
Hostage; That’s Just not Funny, Billy’, the Express, 6 October
2004, News section p. 15
16 Revelations on Bill Hicks, Totally Bill Hicks, VCI/4 DVD,
2001, VCD0162
17 Ben Thompson, Sunshine on Putty: The Golden Age of British
Comedy from Vic Reeves to The Office, London and New
York: Fourth Estate, 2004, p. 128
18 See Tony Allen, Attitude: Wanna Make Something of it? The
Secret of Stand-Up Comedy, Glastonbury: Gothic Image
Publications, 2002, pp. 165–81 for a full transcript of his
extraordinary act
19 Interview with Dave Gorman, by telephone, 29 June 2004
20 See Live Floor Show, BBC Two, 8 February 2003
284 GETTING THE JOKE

21 Merton originally toured with this show in the late 1990s, but
his experience also inspired a section of a show which toured
in 2012 (Paul Merton, Out of my Head, Marlowe Theatre,
Canterbury, 24 April 2012)
22 See ‘M.S.’ on Richard Pryor, … And It’s Deep, Too! The
Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968–1992), Rhino/
Warner Bros., 2000, RS 76655
23 Hurrah for Cancer, BBC Three, 28 October 2004
24 Interview with Andre Vincent, Central London, 14 July 2004
25 Doug Stanhope, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, 24 March
2012
26 Stewart Lee, 90’s Comedian, Go Faster Stripe, 2006, GFS-1
27 Jimmy Carr, Comedian, 4 DVD, 2007, C4DVD10160
28 Jimmy Carr, Gagging Order, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury,
23 September 2012
29 Jimmy Carr, Comedian, 4 DVD, 2007, C4DVD10160
30 Frankie Boyle, Live, 4DVD, 2008, C4DVD10161
31 Sam Anderson, ‘Irony Maiden: How Sarah Silverman is
raping American comedy’, http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/
culturebox/2005/11/irony_maiden.html [accessed 28 August
2012]
32 Sarah Silverman, Jesus is Magic, Warner Music Entertainment,
2006, 5051442978520
33 Stephen Phelan, ‘Lager than Life’, Sunday Herald, 27 October
2002, p. 10
34 Al Murray, The Pub Landlord Live: My Gaff, My Rules,
Universal, 2001, 8208892
35 Al Murray, The Pub Landlord, Live at the Palladium, ITV
DVD, 2007, 37115 26373
36 Interview with Al Murray, by telephone, 2 April 2012
37 Originally broadcast 11 July 2001. ‘Sarah Silverman –
‘Chink’”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bYOWVLWybk
[accessed 7 November 2012]
38 ‘Slur wasn’t funny, Chinese tell O’Brien’, Edmonton Journal,
19 July 2001, p. C3
 Licence 285

39 Peter Walker, ‘Mother stands up to comic over Down’s

syndrome joke: Theatre confrontation with Boyle is Twitter
sensation. Stand-up routine criticised as childish and ignorant’,
the Guardian, 9 April 2010, p. 5
40 Victoria Ward, ‘Carr Crass: calls for comic to quit after joke
on Forces’ amputees’, the Mirror, 26 October 2009, p. 7
41 Camilla Tominey, ‘TV comic’s slur on amputee soldiers; Fans
stunned as Jimmy Carr insults our Afghan heroes’, the Express,
25 October 2009, p. 1
42 Quoted in Victoria Ward, ‘Carr Crass: calls for comic to quit
after joke on Forces’ amputees’, the Mirror, 26 October 2009,
p. 7
43 ‘Michael Richards Spews Racial Hate -- Kramer Racist Rant’,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoLPLsQbdt0 [accessed
7 November 2012]
 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Politics

In a show recorded in 1960, Mort Sahl says, almost as an

afterthought: ‘I’m really not interested in politics as much
as overthrowing the government. [laughter]’1 The audience
laugh, because he’s clearly joking. The idea that a humble
stand-up comedian could be using his art to foment revolution
is ridiculously hyperbolic, and anyone who seriously put
forward this idea could be written off as fanatic or a fantasist.
But the joke didn’t spring from nowhere, and Sahl’s comedy
was fuelled by genuine political anger:

I had a basically rebellious nature, you know I always act

like, ‘Well, I’m not gonna fold,’ but I hit the nerve when I
began to talk about the things that really bothered me. You
have to conquer your timidity and talk about what people
really hate – like, ha ha ha, the government and the police.2

He is by no means the only comedian with political inten-

tions. Margaret Cho, for example, acknowledges that. ‘I
have a more of a personal-as-politicalised duty, I think, than
just performance.’3 Josie Long’s recent work is openly hostile
towards the UK’s Conservative-led coalition government, but
she argues that she has always been a political comic: ‘I’ve
had so many interviews with people of late where they’ve
been like, “You’ve just started being political,” and I’m like,
“No, I think what I’ve done has always been like political
288 GETTING THE JOKE

with a small P because, like, DIY culture for me is deeply

political.” She believes her DIY ethos promotes self-determi-
nation, creativity and lifelong learning, and ‘all of these to me
are, like, deeply political concepts’4
Mark Thomas has clear aims for his work: ‘You want to
engage people, you want them to walk out having made them
change their minds about something or seen something differ-
ently, or feel differently about something.’5 This is clearly the
highest ambition any politically radical comedian can have –
to change minds. The question is, is it possible to do so?

Preaching to the converted

The oldest and most damning accusation that can be levelled
at political comedy is that it just preaching to the converted.
Its critics argue that only people who share the comic’s
beliefs will be attracted to their shows, so however radical
the material might seem, in Mary Douglas’s terms, it ‘merely
expresses consensus’.
It seems likely that stand-ups who wear their political
beliefs on their sleeves will attract likeminded audiences, and
I’ve certainly been at shows where this became quite tangible.
In her show The Future Is Another Place, Josie Long lays
into George Osborne’s cowardly attitude towards the banks,
a Lib-Dem spin doctor she encountered while filming a TV
show and the tax-dodging rich, but as ever her style is far
from confrontational. She apologises to any Tories in the
audience who might not like what she’s saying – albeit in a
jokey, backhanded way – and the fanzine she gives out before
the show even includes a word search for them to do if they
feel bored or offended. In fact, she’s perfectly serious about
not wanting to offend people:

That’s why doing this show about politics has been quite
tricky actually because I hate the fact that sometimes people
 Politics 289

get really offended because I’m going, ‘The Conservatives

are cunts and if you like what they do, you’re wrong.’
Like, it does upset me to offend people because I do think,
‘Well under different circumstances I’m sure we could do
something positive.’6

There aren’t too many Conservatives in evidence when I see

the show in Whitstable.7 In fact, I’m struck by the tangible
signs of assent from the punters around me. I hear people
saying ‘yes’ under their breath, and a woman in front of me
nods in agreement at many of the points Long makes as she
moves towards her conclusion. For the comedian, there was
a real value to doing comedy for people with similar opinions
to her own on her Alternative Reality Tour:

I just wanted for people who felt how I felt to know they
weren’t alone and to know that their anger was justified
and to feel that like comfort a bit. And I actually think
that that’s not pointless, that means they can fight another
day. [I]t’s like, ‘Oh thank God, yes! Oh!’ and then being
like the next day, ‘What can I do that’s positive, what can
I actually do?’8

Margaret Cho attracts a liberal-minded gay audience, and

when I see her perform at the Leicester Square Theatre in
October 2012, I’m hit with the refreshing realisation that as
a straight man, I’m probably in the minority here. As Cho
explains, her shows reverse the normal position of the gay
community: ‘[I]t’s an outsider culture but to be inside of it is
really a wonderful experience. So, you know, because we’re
so used to being outsiders that it feels really glorious and
honourable to be inside – for a moment, you know?’9
The feeling that the audience is dominated by gay men and
lesbians is confirmed by her use of gay-specific references,
which she doesn’t feel the need to explain for us. There are
gags about ‘bears’, ‘twinks’ and the geosocial networking
app, Grindr.10 A lot of the material observes and celebrates
290 GETTING THE JOKE

gay culture, but some of it is more overtly political. She

jokingly suggests that Republicans like Mitt Romney and Paul
Ryan – who oppose gay marriage – look like they might be
closet homosexuals. There’s booing from the audience when
she mentions Michelle Bachmann, and it’s a much angrier
boo than the one Al Murray’s audience aimed at the VAT
inspector.11 Having never heard of Bachmann this puzzles me,
and it only makes sense when I discover she’s proposed legis-
lation to prevent the state from recognising gay marriage. Cho
believes that reaffirming the values of her audience is:

[A] reinvigorating thing, a kind of a reinforcing thing …

sometimes we need kind of encouragement … in America
it’s kind of like there’s a lot of anti-gay rhetoric and there’s
a lot of anti-gay sentiment, and then you really feel like
a sense of hopelessness and kind of a sense of real fear
about what is going to happen. What if you’re going to be
against the law some day? Or your way of life is going to
be outlawed … So I don’t think of preaching to the choir
as a negative thing.12

Cho uses the American version of the phrase, talking of

preaching to the choir rather than the converted, and this
strikes me as a less accurate description. It implies that the
choir can be guaranteed to share the priest’s convictions, but
the general congregation cannot. As a former churchgoer,
I’d argue that anyone who’s made it into the church is
likely to be on your side, and if anything the choir might be
less convinced, perhaps only coming along to sing the nice
hymns. In any case, the point of the phrase is that preaching
to the converted is a useless activity, because they’re already
converted. This ignores the fact that a sermon is partly about
sharing and celebrating common beliefs to send the flock out
into the wicked world with strengthened faith.
In his 1972 album Class Clown, George Carlin points
out ‘the sexual side’ to the Vietnam War: ‘But they’re always
afraid of pulling out, that’s their big problem, you know?
 Politics 291

[laughter and some applause]’ A couple of lines later, he uses

the same analogy to make an even harder political point:
‘Because that is, after all, what we’re doing to that country,
right?’ This time, there’s only a smallish laugh, but it quickly
turns into a huge surge of applause, cheering and whistling.13
Having recently embraced the counterculture and reinvented
himself as a hippy, the chances are that the audience who
came along to this show would have shared Carlin’s anti-war
sympathies. This suspicion is cemented by the fact that they
cheer and applaud more than they laugh at his suggestion that
America is ‘fucking’ Vietnam. But I’d argue that to allow an
audience to publicly express their anger about the war, and to
send them out from the show energised and bolstered in their
beliefs at a time when America was so bitterly divided over the
issue, is distinctly subversive.

Uncovering
For me, the most exciting moment in Michael McIntyre’s O2
Arena show is the reaction he gets when he does a routine
about booking fees. The basic joke is that it’s stupid being
charged a booking fee when you book tickets online, because
you’ve done all of the work yourself – if anything you should
charge them a fee. When he says this, he gets more than just
laughter. We applaud and cheer the idea that booking fees
are a rip off, to the extent that he seems genuinely surprised
and amused by our reaction. He assures us that none of the
previous audiences on this tour have reacted like this. He
teases us, saying the gig has become a ‘political rally’, and
imagining us demanding that ‘the government’ should stop
booking fees.
It’s a potent situation, because the issue is very close to
home. My ticket cost £35, but I also had to pay a £4 booking
fee and £2 to get it posted out to me – thus adding over 17
per cent to the overall price. The quips about turning into
292 GETTING THE JOKE

a political rally get laughs, but they don’t really address the
situation. It’s not the government which charges booking fees,
it’s companies like Ticketmaster, and as pretty much everyone
in the venue will have paid them to be at the show, they are
probably aware of this. Furthermore, this is McIntyre’s gig,
and although he has no control over Ticketmaster’s charging
policies, he could be seen to share the responsibility for the
fees imposed. At around the time of this show, Sarah Millican
announced that she would not be appearing in Ambassador
Theatre Group venues because, ‘I don’t agree with the extra
charges ATG put on top of the face value ticket price to you
the customer’.14
However, McIntyre never brings this lurking awareness
out into the open, perhaps fearing the audience’s anger might
turn on him. His affable, uncontroversial style would make it
hard to address, so he never directly relates the booking fees
issue to this particular gig. It’s conspicuously ignored, like the
elephant in the arena.
I relate this because it highlights the important fact – that
one of the most subversive things stand-up can do is to uncover
the unmentionable. Comedians can joke about subjects which
are difficult or impossible to discuss in everyday conversation
or the broadcast media. Observational comedy is a form
of uncovering. As well as being about shared experience, it
derives its power from the fact that the comedian has noticed
something which the audience previously haven’t. Stand-up
allows a special kind of frankness. It’s not unusual for male
comedians to discuss their masturbation habits. For some
reason, making such confessions to an audience of strangers
is acceptable, whereas telling them to a single stranger would
be excruciating.
This kind of uncovering comedy can be extremely powerful
when it uncovers an important taboo. Chris Rock’s 1996
HBO Special Bring the Pain includes a routine called ‘Niggas
vs. Black People’, which had an extraordinary impact. In the
routine, he tells a black, working-class audience in Washington
DC about a ‘civil war’ between different types of black people,
 Politics 293

the criminal, antisocial ‘niggas’ and the honest, hardworking

‘black people’. He stalks up and down the stage, smiling
broadly, his eyes gleaming with what could be amusement or
fury. His voice is loud, abrasive, high-pitched. He punches his
consonants percussively.
He talks about how niggas ruin things for black people, in
a series of razor sharp barbs which are greeted with laughter,
applause and cheering. He says that niggas always ‘want some
credit for some shit they supposed to do’, like taking care of
their kids. He imagines a nigga saying, ‘I ain’t never been
to jail’, to which he replies, ‘What do you want, a cookie?’
He talks about the way niggas hate education, coming out
with the memorable lines ‘Niggas love to keep it real – real
dumb’; and ‘Books are like Kryptonite to a nigga’. He also
aims some of the jokes at himself, admitting that he failed a
black history class at community college: ‘That’s sad. ‘Cos you
know fat people don’t fail cooking.’ The routine ends with
the shocking observation that Martin Luther King, who was
against violence, is now remembered as a street name: ‘And I
don’t give a fuck where you live in America, if you on Martin
Luther King Boulevard, there’s some violence going down.’15
Context is crucial here. Performed by a white comedian,
this would be grotesquely racist. As it is, Rock delights his
audience by acknowledging problems which they recognise
but might find difficult to discuss openly. Although the live
audience at the show’s recording at the Takoma Theatre were
predominantly black, when this was shown on TV, it was seen
by a wider, racially mixed audience.
The central thesis of On the Real Side, Mel Watkins’
impressively detailed history of African-American comedy,
is that black people have always tended to joke differently
behind closed doors than when in the company of whites.
Watkins argues that comics like Richard Pryor and Chris
Rock are remarkable because they take that private humour
and present it publicly. Fellow black comic Dave Chapelle has
said of this routine, ‘It’s the kind of thing that black people
say in their living room to one another all the time. All over
294 GETTING THE JOKE

America. But that’s the kind of thing that you never would say
in front of a white person.’16
Others have been more critical. Russell Simmons, the
producer of the early 1990s black stand-up showcase Def
Comedy Jam argues that the routine confirms the prejudices
of conservative whites. Rock is unafraid of the disapproval his
daring comedy attracts: ‘If I don’t get somebody going “boo”,
I’m not doing my job.’ Bring the Pain, and especially ‘Niggas
vs. Black People’, made Rock a comedy superstar, but the
routine got so much attention that he has found it difficult to
escape its shadow, complaining that it makes him look like ‘a
one-joke wonder’.17
If the impact of a single routine shows how powerful
uncovering can be, Shazia Mirza makes the point even more
strongly, causing an enormous stir with a single one-liner.
Mirza started out in stand-up wearing traditional Muslim
dress on stage. Less than a year later, the world was changed
by the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
on 11 September 2001. Initially, she was worried her career
was over because of the fear and suspicion which Muslims
faced in their wake. She cancelled all her gigs for a week, and
when she started performing again, she found people afraid
to laugh.
Two weeks later, she found a way to uncover the paranoia
that was in the air. She went onstage and started her act by
announcing: ‘My name is Shazia Mirza – at least that’s what
it says on my pilot’s licence.’18 The audience got to their feet
and applauded, but the reaction could not be contained by
the walls of a comedy club – it was a joke that rang out
around the world. A LexisNexis search using the terms
‘Shazia Mirza’ and ‘pilot’s licence’ carried out on 28 October
2004 reveals 78 articles which mention the joke, from a
list of countries including the UK, Ireland, the US, Canada,
Australia and India, in publications as diverse as the Yorkshire
Post, The Times Educational Supplement, the Boston Globe,
the San Francisco Chronicle and the St John’s Telegram,
Newfoundland. A review in the Independent even found it
 Politics 295

worth mentioning that she had not performed the gag in her
2003 Edinburgh Fringe show.19

Shifting consensus
According to Mark Thomas, this process of uncovering hidden
truths is where stand-up’s ability to change minds resides:

In comedy, in a club night or on a tour night or what have

you, you do have the chance to rewrite the rules. You
create a forum where … the normal rules of behaviour and
perception are abandoned. So you can say things through
the prism of knowingness that would be outrageous and
that you’d be strung up for if you said them in normal
everyday polite society. There is a kind of licence and that’s
what’s always happened, that there’s been a licence to
misbehave. And to come up with the unsayable or to come
up with ideas which…wouldn’t normally be accepted. And
so when you do that, what that means is that you actually
create a space where you can challenge ideas.20

As previously argued, consensus is shifting and negotiable,

and by shifting it, political comedians are capable of changing
their audience’s preconceptions. In America, black comedians
used to be prevented from talking directly to an audience,
either by precedent or direct instruction. Dick Gregory points
out that when he first moved out of the Chitlin Circuit in the
early 1960s, the very act of a black comedian addressing a
white audience was extraordinary: ‘Black comics was never
permitted to work white nightclubs. The racism that existed in
America would not permit a black person to stand flat-footed
and talk. You could come out as a Sammy Davis and dance,
but you could not come out as a human being and talk.’21
Even if some of the whites in his audience had
enlightened views about race, it stretches belief that all of
296 GETTING THE JOKE

them did. His first white audience at the Playboy Club in

Chicago in 1960 included a large contingent of Southern
businessmen, and when this was discovered, the club’s
management were so worried that they sent a message to
Gregory telling him he didn’t have to go on. However,
Gregory had strategies to win over potentially hostile white
punters. He realised that he could make them secure by
using jokes about himself to puncture the tension they
might feel at being addressed in this way by a black man.
He also looked at white humour and seeded his act with
what he saw as white jokes.
Having won them over, he could then present them with
a black perspective. An early routine describes how he has
recently moved into an all- white neighbourhood in Chicago.
A new neighbour meets him for the first time when he’s
shovelling snow on his front path. Mistaking him for a
servant, the neighbour asks him, ‘Whaddya you get for doin’
that?’ Gregory replies, ‘Oh, I get to sleep with that woman
inside.’ There’s a huge, outraged laugh and some applause.
Then Gregory asks the neighbour’s husband, ‘Hey baby, you
want me to do yours next?’ The husband declines with a
frightened, ‘No’. There’s another big laugh.22
The story shows a black man outwitting two whites by
using their own prejudiced expectations against them – and it
also hints at interracial sex. For it to get such a good, strong
reaction to it from a white audience in 1962 shows how
skilful Gregory was. It suggests that he was able to shift the
consensus of the audience.
There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that comedians have
managed to affect the way that individual punters think.
George Carlin talked about people telling him, ‘You really
changed my point of view about things’ or ‘Boy, you turned
me around with what you did on the show.’23 Similarly, Bill
Maher has reported, ‘Well, I’m chiefly out to get laughs,
no doubt about … but honestly, in the last few years too
many people have said to me, “I’ve changed my mind. You
convinced me.”’24 Omid Djalili gives a specific, detailed
 Politics 297

example of how he affected the attitude of not just individual

punters, but a whole audience. When he appeared at the Just
for Laughs festival in Montreal in 2002, he did two shows
with a very famous American comedian, at a time when the
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are still
fresh in people’s minds.
In a show at Club Soda, playing to an audience of about
500, the American makes a series of racist jokes, asking if
there are any Arabs in the audience and pretending to take
photos of them, and saying that the ‘towelheads’ should have
to remove their turbans on aeroplanes. He gets big laughs.
When Djalili follows him, he also gets laughs, but the fact
that he’s Middle Eastern clearly makes the audience uneasy.
The following night, they perform to an audience of 2,500 in
the main gala, but this time Djalili goes on first, and it’s the
American who suffers. Djalili recalls:

[Y]ou could see the panic in his eyes when he came out
with this stuff which had been killing for the last two or
three months: ‘Why are they not laughing now?’ He didn’t
even realise there was a Middle Eastern act on … in the
first half. And I took that as a very big personal triumph,
you know … Of course, people are gonna do what they
wanna do in reaction to events, but there is some kind of
comedy which is not really coming from a more humani-
tarian space, that, you know, will be exposed if you
present them with something else. And I showed them a
more human face. This is not even a year after 9/11, and
still things are a bit raw. It was the first Montreal Comedy
Festival where they were dealing with it. I took that as
a huge personal triumph when they clicked into me, and
already it meant their minds had changed. Already, the
audience had a shift about Middle Eastern people in
general, you know. And … that’s why they didn’t accept
what he said, half an hour after I’d been onstage. Whereas
the night before, half an hour before I’d gone onstage, they
were absolutely loving it.25
298 GETTING THE JOKE

The old charge of preaching to the converted might be valid in

some cases, but sometimes it is demonstrably not. When Mort
Sahl told his infamous joke about the McCarthy jacket with
the zip over the mouth, he divided the audience. According to
the hungry i’s owner, Enrico Banducci, some people laughed,
some stayed silent and some booed. Clearly, the ones who
booed or stayed silent weren’t among the faithful.
Mark Thomas has often been accused of preaching to the
converted, but his 2009 show It’s the Stupid Economy revealed
that his audience’s opinions were far more varied than this
lazy charge would suggest. The basic format involved asking
punters to submit policies for a manifesto, and at the end of
the show Thomas got the audience to vote for their favourite,
with the suggestion that he would then campaign to make the
policy a reality. Suggestions would range from the heartfelt
and sincere, to the plain daft. Indeed, Thomas recalls that
sometimes the audience would mischievously support silly
policies to see how he would react:

That audience that you saw also kind of played with me. It
was very funny … I don’t know if you remember this, but
the policy that won [at the Canterbury show] that was MPs
should have their expenses published in a local newspaper
every two months, and we should vote on whether they’re
approved or not, and the policy that nearly won was to
disguise leopards as foxes to fuck up the gentry. And
because I said I would campaign on some of these, you
could see part of the audience thinking, ‘Let’s fuck him up.’

What was particularly revealing was that the more serious

suggestions didn’t take the kind of leftist stance which might
have been expected from an audience of the converted.
Thomas remembers people seriously arguing for bringing in
the stocks as a punishment for drunkenness, and calls for the
reintroduction of capital punishment at every single show. The
fact that this kind of vengeful right-wing populism came out
into the open allowed him to challenge it directly:
 Politics 299

I remember the first night we did the show touring it was

in Huddersfield and one of the suggestions was that we
should sterilize people who got under five GCSEs. And I
said, ‘Who put that forward?’ and this bloke said, ‘I did.’
I said, ‘What do you do?’ He said, ‘I’m a teacher.’ I said,
‘Great! So rather than say you’re fucking shit at your job,
you wanna say well it’s their fault for being thick. And that
thickness is genetic. And therefore we should sterilize them
rather than actually, you know, you do your job and teach
them.’ And … it was an amazing moment and when I’d
slagged this bloke off, the fucking crowd just sort of like
erupted on it. That actually, you know, [he’d] put forward
this stupid idea, and so you get to strip away ideas like that.
And sort of challenge those ideas …26

Keeping comedians under control

Nothing speaks more eloquently of the power and potency
of comedy than the reactions of those who are the butt of
the joke. Jo Brand may be licensed to say outrageous things,
but this doesn’t defuse the challenge she poses to sexism.
Certainly, men fear her. She has been persistently and scath-
ingly criticised by Bernard Manning and right-wing tabloid
journalist Garry Bushell.
She also gets strange reactions from men she meets: ‘I’m
always surprised when people kind of go, “Oh, you know, I’d
better not talk to you ‘cos I’m a bloke, and you know, you might
do something.” But like what? Punch them? … Ridiculous.’
She even inspires fear in her actual shows. At a performance in
May 2004, she gets a huge laugh just by saying ‘Oh, hello’ to a
couple filing in late to seats near the front. The audience laugh
because they expect her to mercilessly make fun of them, but in
fact, she leaves them alone and quickly moves on.27
She explains, ‘People will say to me, “Oh, I’m not heckling
you” … as if I can somehow, like, completely destroy them by
300 GETTING THE JOKE

what I say, which again is, like, utterly ridiculous really.’ All
of this suggests that what she does in her act makes people see
her as having dangerous, almost magical powers. As she puts
it, ‘The feminist female comedian is a sort of, you know, a
witch in some ways.’ She believes that this kind of reaction is
based on a fundamental misreading of her work, because it is
sexism, not men, that she is attacking: ‘It’s got nothing to do
with hating individual men, it’s got to do with kind of social
roles, you know.’28
In some cases, the targets of satire will step in and
actively try to stop jokes being told at their expense. The
fearless Mort Sahl ran into trouble after the election of JFK.
He had campaigned for Kennedy, but believing that the
role of the satirist was to tell jokes about the government,
he continued to do just that, aiming his jokes at the new
regime. Kennedy’s father, Joseph, was so incensed at Sahl
making fun of JFK’s government that he threatened the
comedian’s career, putting pressure on Enrico Banducci
not to book him at the hungry i. Ironically, after JFK was
assassinated, Sahl moved back to supporting the Kennedy
camp, pitching his weight behind the investigation into the
supposed conspiracy. This led to his career being damaged,
as he believes he was blackballed for talking so much about
the Kennedy assassination in his act.
Even when not actively trying to silence comedians, govern-
ments and other forms of authority tacitly recognise their
power by subjecting them to regulation and control. On radio
and television, stand-up comedy is hemmed in by censorship
and broadcasting regulations. During the 1980s – before
writing musicals with Andrew Lloyd Webber and compèring
the Royal Variety Show brought him mainstream respect-
ability – Ben Elton’s TV appearances felt distinctly edgy. In
amongst observational routines and heavyweight scatology,
there were scathing attacks on the Thatcher government
and the consumerist culture it promoted so aggressively.
Performing such material in a live show had its hazards, as
he recalls: ‘I used to have to do my act to a lawyer … each
 Politics 301

Saturday, which was a horrible experience because the lawyer

never laughed.’29
Albums and videos provide fewer problems, and on his
classic 1972 album Class Clown, George Carlin performs
possibly his most famous routine, ‘Seven Words You Can
Never Say on Television’. Here, he specifically addresses the
restrictions posed by television, talking about the importance
of words, and then listing the seven unsayable ones in a
glorious, obscene, rhythmic stream: ‘You know there’s seven,
don’tcha, that you can’t say on television? “Shit”, “piss”,
“fuck”, “cunt”, “cocksucker”, “motherfucker” and “tits”,
hunh?’ There’s a laugh which mutates into rapturous applause,
lasting for ten seconds.30 The sense of release is palpable. Even
so, when a later version of the routine was broadcast by the
Pacifica radio station WBAI-FM the following year, it led to a
complicated series of legal proceedings which continued right
through to 1978.
Even without being broadcast, there are still some restric-
tions that apply to albums and videos. In 2001, Robert
Newman put out a video called Resistance is Fertile, in which
he does comedy routines about neo-liberalism and globali-
sation, intercut with real footage of anti-capitalist carnivals,
the Seattle protests and the Zapatistas. At one point, he
suggests his own ‘ethical foreign policy’: ‘What we do is we
ban imports of Nike, Disney, Reebok, Tommy Hilfiger and
The Gap until they stop sweated labour.’ Then he starts having
fun with the legal restrictions he’s working within: ‘Cos it’s a
video, I can’t say “children” and “slaves”, but they do. I could
say “until they stop using children as slaves – although they
don’t”.[laughter] And then – but then if I went –’ He wiggles
his fingers as if to secretly indicate that he’s being forced to
lie, getting a laugh, then continues: ‘– that would be libellous,
and I’d have to go into court, and say, “Repeat the gesture.”’
He wiggles his fingers again and gets another laugh. Then he
imagines the judge saying: ‘“No, as you did it before.”’ This
time, he wiggles his fingers, with a sheepish look on his face.
Another laugh. He continues with the theme, speaking rather
302 GETTING THE JOKE

haltingly to show he’s taking great care with his words, before
concluding: ‘Can you feel it, this is corporate power, you can
feel it in the room. [laughter]’31

Bill Hicks and Lenny Bruce have their

careers damaged
Some stand-ups have been seen as such a challenge to the
status quo that the efforts made to shut them up have seriously
damaged their career. In the comedy boom of the 1980s, Bill
Hicks’ agent Sandy DiPerna found it hard to get him bookings.
More clubs meant more competition, and many venues would
give out free tickets for shows early in the week to ensure an
audience. A non-paying audience is harder by definition, as
people who have got in for free have no investment in listening
carefully and joining in. In this context, a comic like Hicks,
with an intellectual edge and a compulsion to jab at taboos,
must have looked like trouble to club owners.
But it was TV that posed real problems. On his third
appearance on David Letterman’s Late Night show in February
1986, Hicks had the end of a joke about a televangelist and a
reference to a wheelchair edited from the broadcast, rendering
both gags incomprehensible to the viewers at home. Worse
was to come. In 1993, Hicks’ final Letterman appearance was
cut in its entirety from the broadcast. His set included routines
about homosexuality, pro-lifers and an imaginary game show
in which celebrities are hunted down and killed – and had
gone down well with the studio audience.
After the show, its producer Robert Morton phoned to tell
him that CBS’s Standards and Practices department had forced
them to cut the act from the transmission. Hicks was angry
and upset, particularly when they refused to send him a tape
of the act. In a bizarre twist, it turned out that the decision
to cut the act had not been made by CBS, but by the show’s
producers, who had been nervous about how Hicks’ jokes
 Politics 303

would have gone down with the viewing public in middle

America.
Lenny Bruce’s career was harmed in a more devastating
way. Bruce’s willingness to cross the boundaries of accept-
ability was extraordinary, particularly in the late 1950s and
early 1960s when he was at the peak of his career. Talking
about sex, religion and racism was commonplace for him. He
used obscenity very effectively. In one routine, he announces:
‘If you’ve er – ever seen this bit before, I want you to tell me,
stop me if you’ve seen it. I’m going to piss on you.’ It takes
him ten seconds to say this, but the outraged laugh he gets
with it goes on for around twice that long.32
He also spoke candidly about illegal drugs. In a 1960
routine, he imagines the dialogue for a radio advert that will
never be made. It starts with a grumpy voice: ‘I don’t know
what the hell it is, Bill, I’ve been smoking the pot all day
and I still can’t get high on it!’ There’s a laugh in which you
can pick out a female punter shrieking with delight. Then
he adopts a calm, reasonable voice to reply: ‘What kind
are you smoking?’ Surprised, the grumpy-voiced character
replies: ‘Well, all marijuana’s the same, isn’t it?’ The calm
voice comes in more assertively with the punchline: ‘That’s
the mistake a lot of people make!’ There’s a big laugh and
applause.33
Bruce massively expanded the possibilities of stand-up,
but his boundary-exploding approach brought him trouble.
In 1961, he was arrested for possession of drugs, although
he had a prescription for the offending substance. The real
reason for the bust was that he had refused to bribe a corrupt
official. Five days later, he was arrested after a performance
at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco, after using the word
‘cocksucker’.34
It occurs in a routine about Bruce being asked to play in a
club which has changed its policy. He asks the owner, ‘Well
what kind of a show is it, man?’ After hedging, the owner
replies that ‘they’re a bunch of cocksuckers’ and it’s ‘a damn
fag show’. Bruce is apparently nonplussed by this: ‘Oh – well
304 GETTING THE JOKE

that is a pretty bizarre show, er – [laughter] er – I don’t know

what I could do in that kind of a show. [laughter]’35
Bruce was tried for obscenity and after an extensive court
case, the jury took nearly five and a half hours to decide he
was not guilty. He went on to talk about the case in his act,
using the phrase ‘blah blah blah’ in place of ‘cocksucker’ in
order to be able to talk about it without being arrested again.
It’s a very funny routine. He says it’s bizarre that ‘blah blah
blah’ was interpreted as a homosexual word, because it relates
to ‘any contemporary chick I know or would know or would
love or would marry’. Later, he acts out the court case with the
judge, the lawyers and court officials repeatedly saying ‘blah
blah blah’ in shocked tones. He finally makes a realisation:
‘Then I dug something. They sorta like saying “blah blah
blah”. [laughter]’36
Sadly, there was more trouble to come, and Bruce could not
joke his way out of it. On Tuesday 4 December 1962, he did
a show at the Gate of Horn in Chicago.37
The recording of the performance shows that he wasn’t on
his best form. Some of the routines are saggy and he sometimes
sounds confused. However, there’s an amazing bit in the
middle of the show where he takes on the character of Adolf
Eichmann, describing the workings of a concentration camp
with chilling coldness. At the end of this, he has Eichmann
say, ‘Do you people think yourselves better, because you burn
your enemies at long distances with missiles?’ Snapping out
of the character, he argues that if the Allies had lost the war,
President Truman would have been strung up ‘by the balls’,
with mutants left behind after Hiroshima paraded as evidence
of his crimes. The audience is deathly silent throughout the
routine. Bruce is clearly pushing the boundaries as far as
he can, and during the show he draws attention to punters
walking out, presumably in disgust.
The end of the performance is extraordinary. In the middle
of a routine, Bruce makes a realisation: ‘OK! It’s the first
time they made a bust right in an audience!’ As police officers
approach the stage to arrest him, he tries to keep joking,
 Politics 305

pretending he’s going to make a daring escape: ‘It’s Superjew!’

38
The cops make the arrest. They literally stop the show.
The use of the word ‘balls’ in the devastating Eichmann
routine was one of the reasons given for the bust. Bruce was
found guilty of obscenity and received the maximum penalty
of a $1,000 fine and a year in prison. He never actually had
to serve the sentence, but got caught up in a series of legal
difficulties from which he could not escape. He was arrested
15 times in less than two years.
In addition to this, most clubs would not risk booking him.
As a result of his arrest, the Gate of Horn had its liquor licence
suspended. Clearly few promoters would want the scandal or
economic damage which Bruce’s show could bring down on
them. His earnings plummeted to about 10 per cent of what
they had been. A second engagement at The Establishment
in London was cancelled when he was refused entry to the
UK on the technicality of failure to obtain a work permit.
The Home Office issued a statement saying that ‘it would not
be in the public interest for him to be allowed in the United
Kingdom’.
To make matters worse, the few performances Bruce
could give were marred by his obsessive ranting about his
legal problems. He died of a morphine overdose in 1966, 18
months before his guilty verdict was overturned. As a final
insult, police allowed photographers to take photos of his
corpse.39
Clearly, Mary Douglas’s assertion that ‘the joker is not
exposed to danger’ is wrong in this case. Bruce had gone far
outside of the permitted range of attack and although this had
made him very successful for a time, he eventually had to pay
a very heavy price. Nonetheless, he left behind an important
artistic legacy, inspiring the generations of comedians that
followed him to have the courage to go beyond merely
expressing consensus.
306 GETTING THE JOKE

Notes
1 Mort Sahl, 1960 or Look Forward in Anger, Verve Records,
1960, MG V-15004
2 Stand-Up America, BBC2, 1 March 2003
3 Interview with Margaret Cho, by telephone, 19 April 2012
4 Interview with Josie Long, Horsebridge Centre, Whitstable, 18
February 2012
5 Interview with Mark Thomas, Clapham, 27 February 2004
6 Interview with Josie Long, Horsebridge Centre, Whitstable, 18
February 2012
7 Josie Long, The Future is Another Place, The Horsebridge,
Whitstable, 18 February 2012
8 Interview with Josie Long, Horsebridge Centre, Whitstable, 18
February 2012
9 Interview with Margaret Cho, by telephone, 19 April 2012
10 ‘Bears’ are large, hairy gay men. ‘Twinks’ are slim, boyish,
good-looking gay men. Thank you, Wikipedia
11 Margaret Cho, Mother, Leicester Square Theatre, London, 29
October 2012
12 Interview with Margaret Cho, Leicester Square Theatre, 29
October 2012
13 ‘Muhammad Ali – America the Beautiful’, George Carlin, Class
Clown, Eardrum Records/Atlantic, 2000, 92923-2
14 ‘Sarah Millican in ticket fees boycott. Comic won’t
play expensive theatre chain’, http://www.chortle.co.uk/
news/2012/09/16/16152/sarah_millican_in_ticket_fees_boycott
[accessed 8 November 2012]
15 Chris Rock, Bring the Pain, Dreamworks, 2002, 0044504009
16 Dave Chappelle quoted in Stand-Up America, BBC Two,
15 March 2003. Also see Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: A
History of African American Comedy from Slavery to Chris
Rock, Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999, pp. 32, 34, 38, 581
17 See Stand-Up America, BBC Two, 15 March 2003 (Russell
Simmons); and ‘Chris Rock Interview’, extra feature on Chris
 Politics 307

Rock, Bring the Pain, Dreamworks, 2002, 0044504009 (Chris

Rock)
18 Dominic Cavendish, ‘Muslim Makes Bin Laden a Laughing
Matter; Dominic Cavendish Reports on a Stand-Up
Comedienne in Demand on Both Sides of the Atlantic’, the
Daily Telegraph, 18 October 2001, p. 11
19 Julian Hall, ‘Edinburgh Festival 2003: Comedy: Shazia Mirza
and Patrick Monahan, Gilded Balloon, Teviot 00999’, the
Independent, 21 August 2003, Comment section p. 14
20 Interview with Mark Thomas, by telephone, 1 May 2012
21 Stand-Up America, BBC Two, 1 March 2003
22 Dick Gregory, Talks Turkey, Vee Jay/Collectables/Rhino
Entertainment, 2000, COL-CD-7163
23 Paul Provenza and Dan Dion, Satiristas! Comedians,
Contrarians, Raconteurs & Vulgarians, New York:
HarperCollins, 2010, p. 344
24 Paul Provenza and Dan Dion, Satiristas! Comedians,
Contrarians, Raconteurs & Vulgarians, New York:
HarperCollins, 2010, p. 298
25 Interview with Omid Djalili, by telephone, 28 June 2004
26 Interview with Mark Thomas, by telephone, 1 May 2012.
For a more detailed analysis of this show and Thomas’s work
in general, see Sophie Quirk, ‘Who’s in charge? Negotiation,
manipulation and comic licence in the work of Mark Thomas’,
Comedy Studies, vol. 1 no. 1, 2010, pp. 113–23
27 Jo Brand, The Stag Theatre, Sevenoaks, 10 May 2004
28 Interview with Jo Brand, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1 April
2004
29 Face to Face, BBC Two, 12 January 1998
30 ‘Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television’, George
Carlin, Class Clown, Eardrum Records/Atlantic, 2000, 92923-2
31 Robert Newman, Resistance is Fertile, Laughing Stock, 2001,
LAFFV 0123
32 ‘I Just Do It and That’s All’, Lenny Bruce, To Is a Preposition;
Come Is a Verb, Knit Classics/Douglas Music, 2000,
KCR-3019
308 GETTING THE JOKE

33 ‘Commercials’, Lenny Bruce, The Lenny Bruce Originals,

Volume 2, Fantasy, 1991, CDFA 526
34 See Paul Krassner, ‘The Busting of Lenny’, Index on Censorship
(The Last Laugh edition), vol. 29 no. 6, November/December
2000, issue 197, p. 80
35 ‘A Pretty Bizarre Show’, Lenny Bruce, To Is a Preposition;
Come Is a Verb, Knit Classics/Douglas Music, 2000,
KCR-3019
36 ‘Blah Blah Blah’, To Is a Preposition; Come Is a Verb
37 In Albert Goldman (from the journalism of Lawrence Schiller),
Ladies and Gentlemen – Lenny Bruce!!, Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1991, Albert Goldman says the show stared at
12.30 a.m. on 6 December, but on the recording of the show,
the compére can be clearly heard announcing the date as
Tuesday, 4 December
38 ‘War Criminals’ and ‘The Bust’, Lenny Bruce, The Historic
1962 Concert when Lenny Bruce Was Busted, Viper’s Nest,
1992, VN178
39 The documentary Lenny Bruce – Without Tears includes stills
and film footage or Bruce’s corpse, as discovered by the police,
and very chilling it is too. It’s available on the DVD Lenny
Bruce, Ladies and Gentlemen … Lenny Bruce, VDI Inc./Best
Medicine Comedy, 2006, 304327
 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Recorded live

It’s February 1979, and I’m 13 years old. I’m watching a

stand-up show on ITV, by a Brummie comic called Jasper
Carrott. It’s actually being broadcast live as he performs it.
Soon after coming on to the stage at the Theatre Royal, Drury
Lane, he capitalises on this, saying: ‘People said, “No, it’s not
really live is it?” and it is live, it is live, ‘cos look, look –’ He
turns on a large television set placed on a stool, to show the
programmes being broadcast on the three channels that exist
at the time.
When he turns it on, the audience in the theatre take a
couple of seconds to take in what the TV is showing, and
then there’s a really big laugh and some applause. Carrott
laughs along, sharing their enjoyment of the gag. Then he
changes the channel, announcing: ‘That’s er, that’s BBC One.’
There’s another big laugh and more applause. This time, the
laughter keeps going, coming back in pulses at the audacity
of his daring to show what’s on the other main channel.
Carrott hoots along with them, before commentating on what
they’re watching: ‘It’s a, it’s a really boring film. [laughter]
It’s got Lauren Bacall in it, and er, actually, she, she isn’t a
housewife, she’s in fact a Russian spy, and she’s the murderer.
[laughter] So if you’re thinkin’ of switchin’ over, forget it,
right? [laughter]’
Seeing this on TV is a moment that has lived vividly in my
memory ever since. What was it that so delighted me?
310 GETTING THE JOKE

I think that a lot of the appeal was the sense of mischief.

In the late 1970s, there was much greater rivalry between
ITV and the BBC, and newspapers gave big coverage to stars
like Morecambe and Wise defecting from one channel to the
other. In this context, the idea of showing what BBC One was
broadcasting whilst performing on an ITV programme feels
very naughty. Much more than this, the fact that it is being
broadcast live creates a feeling of total freedom that borders
on the dangerous. Carrott plays on this in the show: ‘The
thing is, see, it’s live, I can do whatever I wanna do, I can say
anythink. [laughter]’1
Ultimately, the gag with the television works because it
create a vivid sense of immediacy for the audience watching
at home as well as the punters in the theatre. What Carrott
demonstrates is the intense feeling that what he is doing is
happening right now, in the present tense.

Stand-up comedy in a box

Before the recent success of shows like Live at the Apollo,
there was a general perception that, as Harry Hill puts it,
‘[S]tand-up doesn’t really work very well on TV’.2 The feeling
seemed to be that it’s incredibly difficult to capture the essence
of the live experience on video. The problem with this is that
stand-up has actually enjoyed a long history as recorded enter-
tainment. Comedians have worked on radio since its earliest
days, and the fact that audiences could hear acts like Fred
Allen and Jack Benny for free on their wireless sets rather than
paying to see them in theatres probably contributed to the
decline of vaudeville. In Britain, the variety theatres were so
afraid of competition from radio that in 1927, the three main
circuits, Moss, Stoll and GTC, launched a campaign against
the BBC.
Later, radio co-existed more happily with variety, as theatres
realised that radio stars could draw a big live audience, and
 Recorded live 311

comedians realised that radio success could bring them more

fame than years of touring. Frankie Howerd, for example,
first toured the variety theatres in 1946 as a newcomer at the
bottom of the bill in a show called For the Fun of It. Later
that year, he made his first broadcast on Variety Bandbox. His
radio appearances quickly made him famous, so that when he
went back to the theatres he was topping the bill.
When television arrived, stand-ups soon moved into the
new medium, discovering that it could transform their careers
just as effectively as radio. In the late 1940s, Milton Berle was
already an established act, but by getting his own TV show at
a time when ownership of sets was mushrooming, he became
a huge star. American TV stand-up was revolutionised in the
1970s by the growth of cable. In 1975, Home Box Office made
its first broadcast of a stand-up concert, with a film of Robert
Klein at Haverford College. Simple economics made the cable
channels very keen on comedy concert films. HBO found that
it got similar rates of viewer satisfaction from a stand-up show
which cost $75,000 to make and a movie which could cost
as much as $1 million. A successful HBO special still has the
ability to rocket a comedian to the big time.
Stand-ups have also benefited from putting out commercial
recordings of their acts. Mort Sahl at Sunset, recorded in 1955
at the Sunset Auditorium in Carmel, California is often cited
as the first stand-up comedy album, but it certainly wasn’t the
earliest commercial live recording of a stand-up act. As long
ago as 1938, HMV issued a three-record set of 78rpm discs,
containing a recording of Max Miller’s act at the Holborn
Empire on 7 October of that year. They went on to release
recordings of five more live shows between 1939 and 1942,
and in 1957 issued a 33rpm 10” LP of a performance at the
Metropolitan Theatre of Varieties.
Comedy albums became hugely popular in America in the
1950s and 1960s, and the people who bought them were
encouraged to imagine that listening to them was as good
as being there for the live show. The sleeve notes to Shelley
Berman’s first record read: ‘This album is a recording of
312 GETTING THE JOKE

Shelley Berman actually doing one of his nightclub acts. It’s a

new idea in records … Take “Inside Shelley Berman” home,
put the record on your gramaphone [sic.], turn the lights
down low and there you are – a do-it-yourself night club, with
guaranteed laughs.’3 Berman released his first album in 1959,
and by 1963, he had produced three gold records. He recalls
how this helped his career:

It was a friend of mine, another comedian by the name of

Mort Sahl, who had recorded for Verve, and he talked me
into doing mine on record. And at first I resisted. I said,
‘But people will know my material, what good is that?’
[He said,] ‘Yes, well, let’s see what happens.’ So I did, and
the people didn’t care if they knew my material. They just
wanted to see me do it, and they were with me. So these
records were making a lot of money for me, but more
important, they were bringing me to the public, and I was
pretty happy about that.4

Bob Newhart owed the very fact of becoming a stand-up to his

first comedy album, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart.
When he came to the attention of record company executives,
he had some clever routines, but had never performed them to
a live audience. The record company arranged for him to play
three nights at a club in Houston, recorded his performances,
and edited the results into the album. His first recording
session was also his stage debut. The result was the first of a
series of hit records that made him famous and allowed him
to embark on a successful career as a live stand-up.
Audio recordings of stand-up occupy a less important
position in the market than they did in the heyday of the
comedy album, but there’s still an incredibly diverse range
available on CD and download. Some of the most interesting
are the warts-and-all private recordings made by comedians
on reel-to-reel tapes or even low quality formats like audio
cassette, which have been bought up by record companies
and cleaned up for release. Some of Lenny Bruce’s home-made
 Recorded live 313

recordings turned up on the box set Let the Buyer Beware.5

A double CD of Linda Smith’s private recordings from
throughout her career was released after her death.6 There has
even been a commercial release of Stewart Lee’s first stand-up
gig, his own sleeve notes confessing, ‘The material Stewart Lee
performs here, at the age of twenty … is undeniably poor.’7
In recent years, audio has been overshadowed by video,
and in the current British stand-up boom DVD sales have
rocketed. As Ross Noble points out, stand-up DVDs sell
particularly well in the run-up to Christmas: ‘There’s an inter-
esting statistic that 40 per cent of all DVDs are sold at the very
end of the year – from the middle of November to December.
So they’ve replaced socks as the thing you get your dad, you
know. There you go, DVDs are the new socks.’8 Those looking
for an unimaginative gift will find plenty of choice in the racks
– 45 of them were released in the festive season of 2010 – and
many of them have little stickers on saying, ‘New for 2012!’
presumably to help avoid buying dad the same one you got
him last year. An article in the Sunday Times revealed that
in 2011, Peter Kay sold over a million DVDs, John Bishop
sold half a million and Sarah Millican nearly a quarter of a
million.9
As in music, alongside the big companies, there are now
a number of small independent labels releasing comedy CDs
and DVDs. Cardiff’s Go Faster Stripe is a good example. Since
2006 they have filmed shows by comics like Stewart Lee, Wil
Hodgson and Richard Herring at the Chapter Arts Centre
and issued the results on DVD. As Herring explains, this has
allowed him to document his work in a way that would not
previously have been possible:

I’ve done all these Edinburgh shows that just disappear into
the ether … I’ve gone back and done Christ on a Bike so I
can have the DVD of it … It just feels like you haven’t lost
something. Whereas I was doing all these Edinburgh shows
and you feel you’ve lost something and no-one knew and
you go, ‘Hold on, that was a really great show, but no-one
314 GETTING THE JOKE

will ever know it was a great show.’ So you still feel like it’s
there as a record if in five years’ time … Plus it adds a little
bit of revenue to things as well, so it adds an extra layer to
making live work work.10

Recording reshapes stand-up

Inevitably, recording a form of live entertainment which relies
on happening in the here and now changes its nature. When
a comedian appears on radio or TV, the act the audience at
home sees will be different from what they would experience
in a theatre or a comedy club. This is a lesson I learned
the hard way – by appearing on the lunchtime magazine
programme Pebble Mill.11 I had seen other comedians I knew
on the show, and when I heard they were holding auditions, I
thought I’d go along and give it a try. I prepared my audition
piece carefully.
Someone told me that a gentle, surreal comic whose act
I thought would be perfect for a family audience had been
rejected just because he’d used a couple of rude words when
he was auditioning. I was amazed that the producers hadn’t
seen beyond the bad language – you could easily take the
swearing out of his act and most of it would still work. This
presented a problem for me, because I knew that much of
my act was unsuitable to TV, particularly this kind of bland
daytime fodder. I had heard that the studio audience tended
to be made up of old aged pensioners, so I’d also have to take
out anything which relied on a knowledge of youth culture.
That left me without enough material to fill the three-and-
a-half minute slot, so I had to start going through old routines
to find enough stuff. The act I eventually assembled was a
lumpy ragbag of bits that didn’t really fit together properly.
I turned up to the audition which, bizarrely enough, was
held in the Frontier Club, formerly the Batley Variety Club.
I did the act I’d crudely stitched together to a huge concert
 Recorded live 315

room sparsely filled with other hopefuls: comedians, a circus

performer and a bad rock band. A few damp laughs echoed
around, and I got the gig.
On 20 April 1994, two days before my 29th birthday, I
arrived at the Pebble Mill studios in Birmingham, and after an
excruciating camera rehearsal doing the act to the unlaughing
producer and cameramen, I had time to enjoy the novel
experience of being around TV people and minor celebrities.
The programme was being broadcast live at about 11.30 a.m.,
which meant performing before noon – an unnatural hour to
do stand-up comedy. My time came, and I went out to face
the audience. It was the weirdest crowd I’d ever seen. There
were two seating blocks, each of which had about 50 people
sitting in it. In the right-hand block, they were all pensioners
as I’d anticipated, but to the left, they were all teenagers. It
was like playing to two different audiences. Each side reacted
differently to different gags. If this was a real stand-up show,
I could have a lot of fun by commenting on the peculiar age
segregation in the audience, but with only three and a half
minutes to play with, I had to just plough on through the set
as quickly as possible.
Watching the footage back today makes me writhe with
embarrassment. It’s one of the only records of my act, but
it’s nothing like what I actually did in the comedy clubs. The
material is different, and the way I approach the audience is
completely hemmed in by the cameras and the timeslot. Worse
still, even though I knew this was a meaningless appearance
on an obscure show, I can still see myself trying too hard. I
seem too cheerful, I smile too much, and when the show’s
host, Ross King, thanks me at the end, I stand there clapping
him like an idiot, not knowing what else to do. I look like a
puppy in a pet shop window, begging the passers-by to buy
me.
If appearing on Pebble Mill can change an act so profoundly,
the effect of a truly important show, a potential big break, must
be enormous. For many American stand-ups, an appearance
on one of the big talk shows has long been the crucial step
316 GETTING THE JOKE

which leads to fame and success. This makes the hosts and
producers of such programmes extremely powerful – they are
effectively the gatekeepers of the big time, deciding who gets
through and who doesn’t. From the 1960s to the 1990s, The
Tonight Show’s host Johnny Carson was probably the biggest
gatekeeper of all, as Bob Zmuda recalls:

If Carson liked your act, at his whim you were invited to

the next level, which was to cross the stage and actually sit
and chat with His Excellency. If you finished your act and
didn’t get the wave-over, that is, if Johnny just applauded
and thanked you but made no attempt to speak to you, you
probably should have considered the insurance business as
a new career before you even left the stage.12

A 1992 British TV documentary follows the path of American

comic Al Lubel as he prepares for his first appearance on
Carson. He feels the pressure keenly: ‘I’ve got eight years
invested in, like, one six-minute appearance with The Tonight
Show, and The Tonight Show is almost like a final exam.
This is where you find out if you can really make it in
showbusiness.’13
Building up to the filming, we see him performing at a
comedy club in Vegas. He’s wearing comfortable clothes – a
T-shirt under his jacket, and trainers on his feet. His delivery
is just as comfortable. He’s relaxed and in control, as if talking
to friends. Towards the end of the film, we see his Carson
spot. He’s transformed. His clothing is neat and formal, his
T-shirt replaced by a smart white shirt and a tie. His delivery
is taut and keen. Just like me on Pebble Mill, he smiles too
much, as if he’s meeting the parents of his future spouse for
the first time. Although Lubel is still a working comic today,
this clearly wasn’t the big break he’d hoped for.
Comedy albums and videos place fewer restrictions on
stand-up than television. Comedians often have a reasonable
amount of artistic control over the recorded products they put
out. Jo Brand, for example, remembers the process behind her
 Recorded live 317

last video: ‘I went down … and sort of sat in the editing suite
for as long as I could stand it … and said, “Can we put that bit
in, can we take that bit out, blah blah blah.” … How people
are editors, I don’t know, it takes so bloody long!’14 Similarly,
Harry Hill says his production company, Avalon, ‘give you all
the control that you want.’15
Unlike radio and TV, albums and videos aren’t particu-
larly restricted by censorship, and in fact, that’s part of their
appeal. They often contain forbidden fruit, jokes too juicy for
the broadcast media. In 1950s America, Redd Foxx’s albums
gave the buying public the chance to experience the thrill of
listening to uncensored black comedy. In the early 1990s, the
American music industry was coming under pressure from
Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center to introduce
warning stickers on albums with controversial content, and
Bill Hicks responded to this by putting a label on his debut
CD Dangerous which said, ‘Are we to have a censor whose
imprimatur shall say what books should be sold and what we
may buy?’ In spite of this act of defiance, Hicks acknowledged
that warning stickers on albums probably helped sales.16
The comparative lack of restrictions means that albums
and videos don’t draw stand-up comedy’s teeth in the way
that radio and TV often do. However, they can still have a
powerful influence on the art form, albeit a less negative and
more interesting one. When comedy albums were at the height
of their popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, they probably
affected the way that many American stand-ups shaped their
acts. Some albums, like Lenny Bruce’s The Carnegie Hall
Concert, contain what appears to be one entire performance,
even if some edits have been made.17 Others, like The Sick
Humor of Lenny Bruce, are made up of various routines,
which are presented as a series of individual bits, clearly
separated by silence.18 In both cases, the live recordings are
usually presented like music albums, with the routines named
and listed as if they were songs.
This meant that when audiences went to see a comedian,
they would often ask for bits they had heard on an album,
318 GETTING THE JOKE

as if they were requesting a song at a music concert. Shelley

Berman remembers: ‘People would come in and they would
request certain routines, and of course I had a little joke for
them, I would say, “I’ll make up my own damn show if you
don’t mind.”’19 Lenny Bruce was even less happy to do bits
from his LPs, and on the album of his legendary Carnegie Hall
concert, you can hear him tell the audience: ‘People say to me,
“How come you don’t do all the bits on the records?”… As
soon as it becomes repetitive to me, I can’t cook with it any
more, man.’20
Thinking of routines as if they were songs meant that
stand-up shows became like a series of individual items rather
than a flowing, seamless whole. Bob Newhart would introduce
each routine as if it were a song, explaining the basic premise
and finishing by saying that the situation he’d described
would go ‘something like this’. Shelley Berman used a similar
structure. Here’s how he introduces one of his routines:

Anyway, after a particularly terrible experience in New York

in dealing with a department store, I wrote this particular
piece of material. While the bit is rather extended, a little
elaborate, I think you’ll get the point I’m trying to make of
the difficulty you may encounter in phoning a department
store.21

He emphasises the last two words, as if to indicate that this is

the title of the routine, and indeed this is the title as it appears
on the album Inside Shelley Berman.

The illusion of a genuine event

Whatever reservations comedians may have about whether
stand-up works in the recorded form, its long history on radio,
78rpm discs, television, comedy albums, and the modern
panoply of CDs, DVDs and downloads would suggest it
 Recorded live 319

must retain at least some of its appeal. Certainly, it survives

the recording process much better than conventional theatre,
which is exponentially less likely to be issued commercially.
With stand-up, it is not just the performance on stage that’s
being recorded, but the total event. The intensely present
situation of the gig is recorded and preserved, the momentary
and ephemeral becoming permanent. As Ross Noble puts it,
‘It’s a record of what happened on that night.’22 In the opening
track on Henning Wehn’s CD My Struggle, we can hear the
German comedian in the recording studio contextualising this
particular show for us: ‘This is a recording from the Edinburgh
Festival in August 2010, where I did perform the show at the
Caves, proper caves, oo scary!’ That fact becomes relevant on
the second track when we hear Wehn coming on to the stage
and announcing, ‘Welcome to my bunker. [laughter]’23 Like
most of his work, this plays on self-aware German stereotypes
– with its reference to Hitler’s final destination – but without
the knowledge that the show was taking place in a cave, it
wouldn’t really work.
However, it doesn’t necessarily matter if a recording leaves
something to the imagination of the listener. Steve Martin’s
unprecedented success as a live stand-up act was partly
fuelled by sales of his comedy albums. His debut, Let’s Get
Small was released in 1977 and sold 1.5 million copies. The
recordings it contained included visual gags, but the fact that
these didn’t work for the listener at home wasn’t a problem,
as Martin explains: ‘The uninitiated heard clanks and spaces
that brought forth laughs, and this minus turned into a plus,
as the transitions seemed more surreal than they already were.
Audiences were intrigued to see live what they could only hear
on the album, and the theatres filled.’24
A recording captures not just the comedian but also the
audience, and the interaction between them. As long ago as
the 1930s, an American survey found that 61 per cent of
listeners felt that radio comedy was improved by hearing the
laughter of a studio audience.25 When we listen to recordings
made decades ago, something about the way the comedian
320 GETTING THE JOKE

connects with the audience we hear laughing preserves

a sense of immediacy. This is particularly true when the
recording captures a two-way interaction between the comic
and an individual punter. On Patton Oswalt’s Werewolves
and Lollipops, we hear the comic trying to build a delicate
moment of expectation and being interrupted by someone
making a noise like a manic chicken. This inspires a fantastical
rant, which includes Oswalt taking on the character of his
interrupter and shouting, ‘I’m ’oin’ be a douchebag forever!
[laughter] I’m being burned on to a CD for eternity being a
douchebag! [extended laughter and applause]’26
The sense of immediacy is heightened when comedians
draw attention to the recording process, having fun with the
creative possibilities it presents. Jasper Carrott’s routine with
the portable television set was typical of his approach. In his
debut TV series the previous year, he frequently got laughs
by playing on the fact he was being filmed. At the beginning
of episode three, he starts with a gag about the fact that they
are filming more than one show in front of the same studio
audience: ‘Well, what a coincidence, it’s the – same audience
as last week. [laughter] They’re gonna cotton on, you know.
[laughter] They’re not daft you know. [quiet laughter] Can’t
you move seats or something? [laughter]’27
This kind of playfulness is common, and commercial audio
and video releases often include references to the recording
process. Demetri Martin’s These Are Jokes includes a routine
in which he invites his friend Leo Allen on to the stage to
describe the visual elements of the joke that may be ‘lost on
the CD’. For example, Martin does some physical business
showing somebody having trouble trying to drink through
a straw, and having got a laugh from the live audience,
Allen adds his commentary: ‘Through the art of mime,
Demetri made it look like he was struggling with the straw.
[laughter] Which caused us to emotionally connect to the joke.
[laughter]’28
On Mitch All Together, Mitch Hedberg plays on the fact
that he’s being recorded for a CD all the way through the
 Recorded live 321

show. It’s the first thing he mentions when he enters the stage,
adding ‘You won’ even wanna buy it ‘cos you’ve already seen
it, so – [laughter] this is not the target market. [laughter]’ He
commentates on the audience’s response, suggesting someone
with a distinctive laugh should be miked up, and after what he
takes for a disappointing response to a gag says, ‘Maybe they
can add some laughs to that joke. [laughter]’ At one point,
he announces out of the blue, ‘Track number five will not be
– chainsaw juggling. [laughter] H-ha! No! It will be this one.
[laughter]’ On the CD, this joke is actually on track 3, which
is entitled, ‘Not track five, not chainsaw juggler’.29
On Eddie Izzard’s DVD Sexie, there’s a routine about
Greek mythology in which he does an impression of the
Sirens, the joke being that they sound like different types
of siren. He then shows Odysseus going past, commenting,
‘Someone’s trying to break into that island.’ Realising that
the way he has acted this out makes it seem as if Odysseus
is going past in a speedboat, he goes on to show alternative
versions of the same moment, involving different modes of
transport: a sailing ship, a bicycle, water skis. In each case,
he finishes with the same line. Then he gets a big laugh and
a round of applause by explaining, ‘This is for the DVD, you
see – different endings.’30
By playing to the live audience about the recording process,
such gags actually highlight the importance of actually being
there. Jasper Carrott’s audience get his joke about being the
same as last week, because they are there and the fact that they
have already watched one show being recorded is immediately
obvious to them. Demetri Martin’s audience can enjoy the
visual gags and the humour of Leo Allen’s deadpan decon-
struction of them really relies on having seen them in the first
place. For those of us experiencing the performances via the
recordings, these gags are a puzzle that can only be solved by
thinking our way back into the situation the original audience
were in, and filling in the blanks. When I do this, this act of
the imagination somehow makes me feel closer to the original
event.
322 GETTING THE JOKE

The fact remains, though, that actual punters in the venue

are the elite few, destined to be far outnumbered by the people
who will eventually see or hear the recording. In his TV series
Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, Lee brings this potentially
uncomfortable fact out into the open. Having mercilessly sent
up some popular television shows, he fixes his unforgiving gaze
right down the camera, pushing his face close up it to and
saying, ‘What is it that you want, the public? It’s easy – to blame
programme makers and schedulers for these things, but – you’re
complicit – in watching them, aren’t you?’ Shortly after making
the accusation, he turns back to the audience in the venue and
says, ‘Not you. You’re good people, you’ve come out – to live
entertainment, but’ – now he turns back to the camera – ‘you
people, [laughter] you people at home. [laughter continues]’31
He plays a similar trick in Stand-Up Comedian, with a
gag which not only openly divides the live audience from the
audience watching the DVD, but also highlights the superi-
ority of the actual show over the recorded version. He gets
into a dispute with a woman over whether Abu Hamza has
one or two hooks for hands, and eventually tells her he will
go away and check:

Er, if it’s factually inaccurate – I can remove it from this

video. [laughter] As I can everything you’ve said. [extended
laughter and applause] So I’ll just look like a 60-minute
stream – of uninterrupted success. [laughter] Although
ironically – I may consider leaving this part in – to give the
illusion of it being a genuine event. [laughter] What d’you
think of that – viewers at home? [laughter]32

Notes
1 ‘Muppets’, Jasper Carrott, The Unrecorded Jasper Carrott,
DJM Records, 1979, DJF 20560
2 Interview with Harry Hill, by telephone, 26 August 2004
 Recorded live 323

3 Shelley Berman, Inside Shelley Berman, Laugh.Com, 2002,

LGH1111
4 Interview with Shelley Berman, by telephone, 5 August 2004
5 Lenny Bruce, Let the Buyer Beware, Shout! Factory, 2004,
D6K 37109
6 Linda Smith, I Think the Nurses Are Stealing My Clothes: The
Very Best of Linda Smith, Hodder & Stoughton Audiobooks,
2006
7 Stewart Lee The Jazz Cellar Tape, Go Faster Stripe, 2011,
GFS-33
8 Interview with Ross Noble, Leicester Square, London,
25 August 2009. A published version of this interview is
available: Oliver Double, ‘Not the definitive version: an
interview with Ross Noble’, Comedy Studies, vol. 1 no. 1,
2010, pp. 5–19
9 The precise figures given are: Peter Kay – 1,025,000; Lee Evans
– 911,000; John Bishop – 502,000; Sarah Millican – 241,000
(Nicholas Hellen and Cal Flyn, ‘Rock on – comics rake in
millions; Peter Kay Heads A New Breed Of Comedian With
Tour Earnings That Match The Giants Of Pop’, Sunday Times,
12 February 2012, p. 3)
10 Interview with Richard Herring, Gulbenkian Theatre,
Canterbury, 14 February 2012
11 Broadcast BBC One, 20 April 1994. I hope nobody ever gets
the clip of my act out of the archive – it’s pretty dreadful. No,
really
12 Bob Zmuda (with Matthew Scott Hansen), Andy Kaufman
Revealed!, London: Ebury Press, 1999, p. 91
13 ‘A Stand-Up Life’, Funny Business, BBC Two, 29 November
1992
14 Interview with Jo Brand, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1 April 2004
15 Interview with Harry Hill, by telephone, 26 August 2004
16 See Cynthia True, American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story,
London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2002, pp. 141, 166
17 Lenny Bruce, The Carnegie Hall Concert, World Pacific/Capitol
Records, 1995, CDP 7243 8 34020 2 1
324 GETTING THE JOKE

18 Available on Lenny Bruce, The Lenny Bruce Originals Volume

1, Fantasy Records, 1991, CDFA 525
19 Interview with Shelley Berman, by telephone, 5 August 2004
20 Lenny Bruce, The Carnegie Hall Concert, World Pacific/Capitol
Records, 1995, CDP 7243 8 34020 2 1, disc one
21 ‘Department Store’, Shelley Berman, Inside Shelley Berman,
Laugh.Com, 2002, LGH1111
22 Interview with Ross Noble, Orchard Theatre, Dartford, 24
June 2004
23 Henning Wehn, My Struggle, Laughing Stock, 2010, LAFFCD
0200
24 Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, London:
Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, 2008, pp. 173–4
25 Hadley Cantril and Gordon W Allport, The Psychology of
Radio, New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1935,
p. 100
26 ‘I Tell a Story About Birth Control and Deal with a Retarded
Heckler’ on Patton Oswalt, Werewolves and Lollipops, Sub
Pop Records, 2007, SPCD 737
27 Jasper Carrott, An Audience with Jasper Carrott, Network,
2011, 7953436 (originally broadcast 22 January 1978)
28 ‘These Jokes’ on Demetri Martin, These Are Jokes, Comedy
Central Records, 2006, CCR0044
29 Mitch Hedberg, Mitch All Together, Comedy Central Records,
2003, CCR0024
30 Eddie Izzard, Sexie, Universal Pictures Video, 2003, 8208905
31 Episode 2, ‘Television’ on Stewart Lee, Stewart Lee’s Comedy
Vehicle, 2 Entertain, 2009, BBCDVD3010 (originally broadcast
23 March 2009)
32 Stewart Lee, Stand-Up Comedian, 2 Entertain, 2005,
VCD7210
 CHAPTER NINETEEN

The present tense

One of stand-up’s defining features is that it is firmly and

conspicuously rooted in the present tense. As Tony Allen puts
it, ‘The “Now” agenda defines stand-up comedy.’1 That’s
why I adopt the present tense when I’m writing about specific
stand-up routines, even when they were performed decades
ago. Straight drama depicts events from another place and
another time, but in stand-up the events happen right there
in the venue.
It’s normal for stand-up comics to incorporate the here
and now into the material of the show. Lenny Bruce starts his
Carnegie Hall concert by talking about the prestigious venue
in which he’s performing. He fantasises about coming on with
a violin and playing Stravinsky for an hour, then splitting
without saying a word. He imagines this is a secret gig that
the venue’s managers don’t know about it, that he’s set it up
with the help of a corrupt janitor (‘All right, but don’t make
no noise, and clean up after you finish, all right?’).2
A Ross Noble show in Dartford, Kent, in June 2004
coincides with an important England match in the European
Championship. With extreme topicality, Noble plays on this,
saying that all the theatre staff are watching the match on a
portable TV backstage. He asks if anyone in the audience
is videoing the match, hoping to not to find out who’s won
the match before they watch the tape. A number of voices
shout, ‘Yeah.’ After the interval, he plays with these punters,
326 GETTING THE JOKE

announcing a fictitious half time score – before admitting he’s

only kidding.
The stand-up comedian has an unwritten contract to
address the here and now. If something unexpected happens
during the show, whether it’s a heckle, a dropped glass or
the ringing of a mobile phone, the comic must react to it. As
Milton Jones puts it: ‘You learn early on … that if you don’t
react to something that happens in the crowd, the audience
lose faith in you.’3
The present tense is built into the language of stand-up.
When comedians tell stories about past events, they’re still
related in the present. They say, ‘I’m walking down the road
…’, not ‘I was walking down the road …’ Even self-contained
shows, like Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure – which
are entirely based on telling the story of a particular set of
events that happened in the past – are still told in the present
tense, as Gorman explains:

[E]ven though I’m telling you something which has happened

and everyone knows I’m telling it, this is six months ago …
the grammar of what I use is kind of, ‘So, I’m on the train,
and –’, and I try to make it feel present tense. I try not to
tell it with hindsight, so that it feels immediate.4

Bertolt Brecht, stand-up comedian

As we saw with recorded stand-up, the intense immediacy of
live performance is reinforced by the fact that comics often
draw attention to their own processes, making the audience
aware of exactly what they’re doing. As Bertolt Brecht might
have said, they show that they are showing.5 Phyllis Diller,
a dispenser of short, self-contained jokes strung together in
loose narratives, sets up a joke by complaining that the venue is
filthy and advising the audience ‘don’t ever eat here’: ‘I ordered
a steak rare, are you ready? [laughter] With a little care, this
 The present tense 327

thing coulda recovered! [laughter]’6 The key phrase here is

‘are you ready?’ By asking the audience if they’re ready for the
punchline, she’s drawing attention to the strict set-up/punchline
formula which she uses so heavily. She’s making them aware
that she’s not describing a real steak she really ate, she’s just
telling a fictional gag. She’s showing them exactly what she
does, like a magician giving away how the trick is done.
At the end of the first half of a show in Brighton, Dylan
Moran points out that comedians are supposed to end on a
big laugh, but brazenly admits, ‘I can’t be bothered.’ At the
end of the second half, he talks about how ritualised encores
are, suggesting that the audience should just applaud the
show without him having to go to the trouble of going off
and coming back on again. They duly oblige.7 He has pointed
out and subverted the conventions of how stand-up shows
are framed, in a manner that befits his charmingly shambolic
persona.
Even mistakes can be pointed out and played with. Daniel
Kitson constantly draws attention to the sloppiness of his
own technique, making it funny – and thus paradoxically
showing how razor sharp his technique is. Someone heckles
him halfway through a joke, and after answering them, he
says he can’t go back and finish it because it’s all based on
rhythm and the rhythm’s been broken. Then he relents and
finishes the joke anyway, and his honesty is rewarded. Having
been let in on his dilemma the audience appreciate the joke
for what it is.8
Richard Pryor stumbles over his words at the start of a
routine about dating. ‘And you know, when you want some
pissy –’ he says. He has fun with the fact that he’s failed to
say the word ‘pussy’ correctly: ‘“Pissy”? H-huh – [laughter]
“When you want some pissy.” [laughter] That’s a new thing,
h-huh. [laughter] I hope to get some soon – some pissy.
[laughter and a smattering of applause]’9 Again, stumbling
over delivery might seem like a sign of weakness, but the
ability to get laughs by drawing attention to the mistake is
anything but.
328 GETTING THE JOKE

Failing to get a laugh can be played with in a similar way.

Eddie Izzard has a standard technique for dealing with gags
which don’t get the response he’s hoped for. After a small
laugh, one hand becomes a notebook, and the other mimes
writing on it, noting his comic failure with a phrase like,
‘Should be funnier.’ He even draws attention to this technique,
following it by miming another note: ‘Why am I writing on
my fingers?’10
Like so many aspects of stand-up, the technique of drawing
the audience’s attention to the performance process can be
traced back to music hall. Little Tich is best remembered for
his big boot dance and his physical size. He was only about
four feet tall, and the word ‘titch’, meaning somebody who is
very small originates from his stage name. His famous dance
involves a series of sight gags using boots with enormous
soles, and J. B. Priestley – who had seen Tich’s act – eloquently
described how he would draw attention to what he was doing:

He would suddenly take us behind the scenes with him,

doing it with a single remark. He would offer us a joke and
then confide that it went better the night before. He would
drop a hat and be unable to pick it up, because he kicked
it out of reach every time, and then mutter, half in despair,
“Comic business with chapeau”.11

Stewart Lee has made the trick of drawing attention to form

central to his comic style. There’s an excellent example in the
2011–12 show Carpet Remnant World, in a routine about his
young son asking him about a Muslim woman wearing a veil.
Lee tries to explain that it’s because it’s her religion and she
believes God wants her to dress like that, but he’s stumped
when his son asks why. He confesses that when faced with
a question he can’t answer, he’d normally just say, ‘Because
I say so,’ but says this wouldn’t work in this context. We
all work out where he’s going with this, but he acts it out
anyway. Quite deliberately, he takes a few steps to the left to
play his son saying, ‘Why?’, then walks back to show us how
 The present tense 329

he replied. Before delivering the inevitable line, he turns his

face towards us to acknowledge what he’s doing, and there’s
a big laugh – and another when he actually says, ‘Because I
say so.’12
That tiny gesture – the knowing look at the audience – says
so much. Like Tich’s joke from 100 years earlier, it takes us
behind the scenes with him. It lets us know that he knows
perfectly well that we understand the comic structure he’s
using, and thus how the joke’s going to play out. Lee explains
how this kind of gag works for his audience:

They don’t realise how much they understand about art

forms. But they do subliminally understand them and
then when you pull it out for them, they’re suddenly quite
pleased with themselves. They go, ‘Yeah, I realised that’s
what happened and I never knew.’ So it’s nice that they
come out thinking, ‘Oh yeah, I see how things work.’ … the
problem is it then spoils other stuff for them a bit!

As well as showing that he is showing, Lee is also doing

something else Brechtian here. He defines his particular
approach to constructing a joke: ‘You tell them what you’re
gonna do. And do it anyway. To take the surprise out of it
and make them enjoy the process.’13 This is strikingly similar
to the way Brecht would use projected scene titles to let the
audience know what was about to happen so that, ‘The actor
would have to find a different way of drawing attention to
those incidents which had previously been announced by the
titles and so deprived of any intrinsic element of surprise.’14

Fake spontaneity
Appearing on The Comedians in 1971, Duggie Brown is
telling a joke about a plumber talking – unbeknownst to him
– to a parrot which is lurking behind the door of the house
where he’s supposed to be doing a job. The parrot keeps
330 GETTING THE JOKE

screeching, ‘Who is it??’ and the plumber keeps replying, ‘It’s

the plumber, I’ve come to mend your pipes.’ As the sequence
is repeated, Brown starts to sound uncertain and hesitant.
Then he comes clean, getting a big laugh by announcing, ‘I’ve
forgot the end!’ Trying to remind himself, he talks through
the set-up to the joke, going through the characters and what
they say. The audience laugh along with his confusion, and
laugh more when he gives up and goes on to another joke.
Eventually, he comes back to finish the parrot gag, saying,
‘I ‘aven’t forgotten,’ and explaining where he’s gone wrong.
When he finally delivers the punchline, he gets a huge laugh
and a big round of applause, probably a much better response
than the joke deserves.15
It seems like an extraordinary moment. On national TV, a
comedian is potentially messing up his big break by forgetting
the gag, then winning out over adversity by getting laughs
from his mistake. But all is not what it seems. This is not
genuinely spontaneous. The joke – complete with mistake – is
a set piece, which is so strong that Brown uses it to conclude
his stage act. A book written in 1971 gives an account of the
sequence performed at the Batley Variety Club, and it’s played
out almost word for word as it is on The Comedians.16
I recall this moment not to criticise Brown for his deception,
but rather to praise his ability to pull it off. When he acts as
if he’s gone wrong, he’s so convincing that the audience
don’t have to suspend their disbelief – they really do believe
him. This is a very good example of what happens in almost
every stand-up comedy act: the pre-planned is passed off as
the spontaneous. As Dave Gorman puts it, ‘Although most
stand-ups pretend to have an air of casualness about it, you
are, on the whole, saying the same words as you said the night
before.’17
This might seem like a dark secret, but the fact is that
what comedians say to their audiences doesn’t flow fresh and
unfettered from the source of their comic genius, different
every show, every word a laugh-getting gem. Inevitably,
some planning is involved. It might seem naïve to think any
 The present tense 331

different, yet even experienced comedy critics can be fooled by

faked spontaneity. William Cook recalls being ‘gobsmacked’
by seeing Ben Elton repeat an apparently ad-libbed response
to ‘accidentally’ spitting on someone in the front row. Cook
cites this as an example of what he calls the ‘illusion’ that
‘what is actually painstakingly prepared is inspired banter’.18
Former Independent on Sunday comedy critic Ben
Thompson, on the other hand, seems to see the illusion of
spontaneity as a form of cheating. He squirms at the idea
of comics like Paul Merton or Robert Newman repeating
material, whether on TV or in a live show, and has a
particular dislike of comedians slipping bits of material into
TV interviews.19
On the other side of the fence, comedians can feel rather
sheepish about the fact that apparently spontaneous material
is actually planned. Ellen DeGeneres says that ‘the whole
secret’ of stand-up is that the audience ‘really think it’s
something that is brand new’, and finds the idea of people
seeing her over and over again and hearing the same jokes
‘really scary’.20 In a tour programme, Eddie Izzard is defensive
about people saying ‘it looks like it’s improvised but it isn’t’,
pointing out that he’s never claimed his work is entirely
improvised.21 Tony Allen attributes his own inconsistency as
a stand-up to the fact that he ‘couldn’t hack the fundamental
deceit’ of fake spontaneity.22
By contrast, Bill Hicks was daringly candid, and would
break the illusion on stage. Raring up for a routine about why
women are attracted to serial killers, he mentions an article
he read about women at Ted Bundy’s trial trying to give him
love letters and wedding proposals. ‘Does anyone remember
readin’ this fuckin’ article?’ he says. A few people show they
do by clapping or shouting, ‘Yeah!’ Then he lays his process
bare: ‘That’s enough to continue the bit, now – [laughter] If
no-one’d applauded, I’d still be doing it. How? We don’t know.
[laughter] You have to rationalise on your feet. [laughter] All
I know is I got a script, and I’m headin’ towards the ending.
[laughter and applause]’23
332 GETTING THE JOKE

Given that spontaneity can be so convincingly faked, the

big question is how much do stand-up comedians make it
up as they go along, and how much of their acts is scripted?
Clearly, the answer will vary from comic to comic. Woody
Allen was quite dismissive of improvisation, and it’s been
claimed that he ‘never improvised a syllable onstage’.24 In
most cases though, while much of the act will be decided in
advance, there’s still some room for spontaneity. Tony Allen
argues that, ‘An honest stand-up comedian will admit that the
moments of pure improvisation account for less than five per
cent of their act.’25 Lenny Bruce – who championed the idea of
improvising – once estimated that about eight minutes of his
forty-five minute act would be ‘free-form’.26
Leaving the security of pre-planned routines seems to be
something that comes with experience, and it’s difficult to
learn. Alex Horne says, ‘I think that was the thing I found
hardest, was to … leave the script, and just react.’27 Rhys
Darby agrees: ‘It takes a long time between you being yourself
and you doing your orchestrated stuff that you worked out,
and finding that bit in between where you can naturally be
funny and be relaxed enough onstage to muck around.’28 For
Milton Jones, his exaggerated persona made it particularly
hard to break out from the script:

I think it took so long because the style is quite honed, and

it was very hard then to go into improv that was equally
honed. Because it felt like changing character. But I think
I’ve actually got better at that. And just staying in character
and having a number of bullets in my gun that are in
character should I need them … gives me the security to
venture out and to talk nonsense.29

But if leaving the script behind is difficult, it also brings the

comedian satisfaction. As Andre Vincent points out, it relieves
the potential drudgery of repetition: ‘I mean I suppose the
material is a frame that you sort of like hang it off. But to
make it interesting for yourself, you’re looking for those other
 The present tense 333

things, you know, otherwise it’s just there every night.’30 Adam
Bloom argues that the genuinely spontaneous moments are
what bring both comic and audience the greatest joy:

[M]y favourite moment of any gig is always an improv

moment. Because firstly, you’ve surprised yourself with
your own, you know, speed of thought or whatever. To
make yourself laugh onstage is beautiful, as long as the
crowd are laughing too. The biggest laugh of a night will
always be an ad lib, I think.31

Planned spontaneity
In Pittsburgh in 1991, Bill Hicks starts working the audience.
This is a process in which the comedian starts talking to
individual punters, perhaps asking them their name, where
they come from, what they do for a living. It’s a way of making
the conversation of stand-up comedy a little less one-way,
allowing the audience to make a bigger contribution. It also
lets comedians show off how quick-witted they are, getting
laughs from the spur of the moment. If a gag arises directly
from something somebody in the audience says, surely it must
be truly spontaneous? With typical daring, Hicks uncovers
the less romantic truth of the situation. ‘Whadda you do for
a living?’ he asks a woman. She’s slow to respond. He tells
her that answering more quickly would ‘really help the timing
of the show’, then admits that he already has ‘pre-planned
comedy answers’, adding, ‘Sorry to pop the spontaneity
fuckin’ bubble.’32
In fact, working the room involves a mixture of the planned
and the spontaneous, as Al Murray explains:

[S]ometimes I use standard beats, but all too often I don’t

because … you can’t think of everything, so you don’t
bother. And certainly for the first sort of year I was doing
334 GETTING THE JOKE

jobs, I did rely on standard things but I’ve broken out of

them, although of course, like anyone who works in a
spontaneous kind of environment, you reserve the right to
repeat the spontaneous thing you said before if it worked
really well. And sometimes you get offstage, you think, ‘I’d
better save that one because when that comes up again,
that’ll be really, really useful.’33

Performing in Kent in early 2004, Murray picks on punters in

the first five rows, asking their names and what they do for
a living. His Pub Landlord character gives this an interesting
tension, as we know his incongruous conservatism will make
him react in particular ways to particular types of people. If
somebody says they’re a student, he’ll be able to make fun of
them for lazing around at the taxpayer’s expense. If someone
says they’re a pub landlord, he’ll be able to ask them some
esoteric question about their trade, accusing them of running
a wine bar – a pet hate of his – if they give an unconvincing
answer.
The laughs he gets from these people could be premedi-
tated, involving responses recycled from other shows – but
some punters give him answers which couldn’t be anticipated.
One of the students he picks on tells him she is studying
‘contemporary witchcraft’. He bubbles with scorn and incom-
prehension, and his response is every bit as funny as those he
gives to the more predictable answers he gets from punters. He
weaves the spontaneous and the semi-spontaneous together
with planned routines quite seamlessly, frequently reincor-
porating the punters he has talked to so that they become
characters in his show.
In other cases, interaction with the audience can be almost
entirely pre-planned. Harry Hill made a ‘conscious effort’ to
talk to individual punters after watching Frank Skinner doing
it very effectively, and realising the benefits it can bring: ‘I
always used to shy away from audience participation. I used
to think it was cheap. Which it is. But it’s a brilliant thing
for kind of breaking the ice.’34 Hill found ways of interacting
 The present tense 335

with his audience which completely fitted his style: surreal,

involving cosy childhood references, and with a delicious hint
of menace.
Taking out a tub of flying saucers – the old fashioned rice
paper and sherbet sweets which newsagents sell for a few pence
each – he picks out a punter in the front row and says, with the
slightly patronising manner of an indulgent uncle: ‘Hah – Go
on then. I know you’ve been – I know you’ve been eyeing ‘em
up! [laughter] Ooo, I know you want one!’ He walks forward
and offers the tub to a woman in the front row. His voice gets
softer, encouraging her gently: ‘Go on then, flying saucer, go
on. [laughter] Go on madam, help yourself, there we are. Go
on, flying saucer. There you go. Ha ha!’ She takes one of the
sweets, and he pauses for a moment. Then his manner changes
with a snap, and he’s suddenly cold and businesslike as he says:
‘Two pee, please. [loud laughter and applause]’
In another bit, he asks ‘Why do they put the little tiny
holes in the top of the biscuits, though, hm?’ He spends some
time explaining he means the holes in bourbon and rich tea
biscuits (‘Yum yum!’), and not the big hole in jammy dodgers,
then repeats the question: ‘Why do they put the little tiny
holes – in the top of the biscuits, though?’ Rather than going
into some surreal explanation of his own, he suddenly points
to a punter in the front row and with formidable sternness
commands: ‘You!! Go and find out!’ There’s a big laugh.
Nearly ten minutes later, he comes back to the punter and
sternly demands: ‘What news on biscuits?’ There’s another
big laugh.35
Hill admits that the audience interaction he does is ‘very
prepared’, and both of these bits are cleverly designed because
while they allow him to talk to individual punters, the way
those punters respond is almost entirely irrelevant to the way
the gag plays out. It’s quite unlikely that somebody would
refuse to take a flying saucer from the tub, and even if they
did, it would be easy enough to find another punter who
would oblige. The biscuit joke is even more self-contained,
not needing any response at all from the person he picks out.
336 GETTING THE JOKE

Perhaps the most striking example of planned spontaneity

is Howard Read’s double act with Little Howard. Read was
inspired to create the act when somebody told him about a
comedian using some very tired pre-planned audience inter-
action gags at the Comedy Store, which led Simon Munnery
to quip, ‘One day, all this will be done by machines.’ This led
Read to build an act based on the question, ‘Is it possible to
mechanise improvisation?’ Little Howard was just a projected
image of a computer animated boy, and his movements and
dialogue had to be painstakingly put together in advance,
but the act was designed in such a way as to allow him to
interact with the audience. As Read explains, this was a
conscious attempt to highlight the artifice behind apparent
improvisation:

Everything Little Howard said originally … was

pre-recorded. And there would be an ‘any questions’
section. So people could ask any question at all, and Little
Howard would answer it, and it was all pre-recorded.
And for me it was an intellectual exercise and a sort of a
slightly highbrow, snooty poke at people who pretended to
improvise … No-one just improvises an entire set. People
think we do and that’s why people think we’re brilliant,
[whispers] but we’re not.36

Notes
1 Tony Allen, Attitude: Wanna Make Something of It? The Secret
of Stand-Up Comedy, Glastonbury: Gothic Image Publications,
2002, p. 28
2 Lenny Bruce, The Carnegie Hall Concert, World Pacific/Capitol
Records, 1995, CDP 7243 8 34020 2 1, disc one
3 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 June 2004
4 Interview with Dave Gorman, by telephone, 29 June 2004
5 The opening line of a poem on acting by the great communist
 The present tense 337

playwright Brecht starts, ‘Show that you are showing!’,

‘Showing Has to Be Shown’ in Bertolt Brecht, Poems
1913–1956 (ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim), London
and New York: Methuen, 1987, p. 341
6 ‘Don’t Eat Here’, Phyllis Diller, The Best of Phyllis Diller,
Laugh.com, 2002, LGH1112
7 Dylan Moran, Monster II, Brighton Dome Concert Hall, 28
April 2004
8 Daniel Kitson, Brighton Dome Pavilion Theatre, 30 January
2004
9 ‘One Night Stands’ on Here and Now in the box set Richard
Pryor, …And It’s Deep, Too! The Complete Warner Bros.
Recordings (1968–1992), Rhino/Warner Bros., 2000, RS 76655
10 Eddie Izzard, Sexie, Universal Pictures Video, 2003, 8208905
11 J. B. Priestley, Particular Pleasures, London: Heinemann, 1975,
p. 190
12 Stewart Lee, Carpet Remnant World, Marlowe Theatre,
Canterbury, 24 February 2012
13 Interview with Stewart Lee, Patisserie Valerie, Canterbury, 25
February 2012
14 John Willett (ed. trans.), Brecht on Theatre, London: Methuen,
1978, p. 44
15 Duggie Brown on various artists, Laugh with The Comedians,
Granada TV Records, 1971, GTV 1002
16 David Nathan, The Laughtermakers: A Quest for Comedy,
London: Peter Owen, 1971, pp. 228–9
17 Interview with Dave Gorman, by telephone, 29 June 2004
18 William Cook, Ha Bloody Ha: Comedians Talking, London:
Fourth Estate, 1994, pp. 181–2
19 See Ben Thompson, Sunshine on Putty: The Golden Age of
British Comedy from Vic Reeves to The Office, London and
New York: Fourth Estate, 2004, pp. 65, 94, 107
20 Quoted in Franklyn Ajaye, Comic Insights: the Art of
Stand-Up Comedy, Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2002,
p. 98
21 Tour programme for Sexie, 2003
338 GETTING THE JOKE

22 Tony Allen, A Summer in the Park: A Journal of Speakers’

Corner, London: Freedom Press, 2004, p. 93
23 ‘Pussywhipped Satan’, Bill Hicks, Arizona Bay, Rykodisc,
1997, RCD 10352
24 See Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians
of the 1950s and 1960s, New York: Pantheon Books, 2003,
p. 532
25 Tony Allen, A Summer in the Park: A Journal of Speakers’
Corner, London: Freedom Press, 2004, p. 93
26 Quoted in Albert Goldman (from the journalism of
Lawrence Schiller), Ladies and Gentlemen – Lenny Bruce!!,
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991, p. 312
27 Interview with Alex Horne, by telephone, 6 July 2004
28 Interview with Rhys Darby, by telephone, 30 June 2004
29 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 June 2004
30 Interview with Andre Vincent, Central London, 14 July 2004
31 Interview with Adam Bloom, by telephone, 29 June 2004
32 ‘Vs. the Audience 2’, Bill Hicks, Flying Saucer Tour Vol. 1
Pittsburgh 6/20/91, Rykodisc, 2002, RCD 10632
33 Interview with Al Murray, by telephone, 2 April 2012
34 Interview with Harry Hill, by telephone, 26 August 2004
35 Harry Hill, ‘First Class Scamp’ Live at the London Palladium,
VVL, 2000, 9020192
36 Interview with Howard Read, by telephone, 17 August 2012
 CHAPTER TWENTY

Conversation

It’s September 2012, and Holly Walsh is headlining at the

Horsebridge in Whitstable. She frequently breaks away from
what she’s saying to talk to individual punters. Most of
these conversations are quite brief, giving the act a sparkle
of spontaneity, adding freshness to well-honed routines, and
lending the comedian an air of charm and affability. One
interaction, however, goes on longer than normal. One of the
regulars at the club is all too willing to chat, telling Walsh
about anything from a bout of food poisoning she once
suffered to the breakdown of her marriage. Walsh humours
the woman, resists the temptation to go for the comedic
jugular, and moves on with her act.
I’m compèring the show, and I feel it’s my job to maintain
order and to get laughs by commenting on how the whole
thing is going. After Walsh has finished and she’s taken her
applause, I start to explain to the audience how stand-up
comedy is built on the model of a conversation, albeit a very
one-sided one. The comedian does most of the talking, and
the audience’s side of things mostly consists of laughter and
applause, but it feels very conversational because of the direct
interaction. ‘But,’ I say, ‘you mustn’t forget that it’s only a
pretend conversation, not a real one.’ I make eye contact with
the food poisoning woman, and mock-sternly say, ‘OK?’ The
laughter builds as the audience gradually cotton on to my
camouflaged put-down, and the woman looks a bit sheepish.1
340 GETTING THE JOKE

What I said here about the conversational nature of

stand-up is more than just the set-up to a gag, and the
woman’s mistake – if she made one at all – was to treat the
conversational performance model of stand-up like an actual
conversation, perhaps thinking that her own contribution
would be as interesting and valuable as that of the comedian.
In an ordinary conversation it might well have been, but here
it feels a bit like attention seeking, and the rest of the audience
acknowledge this by laughing at my quip. In a sense I’m being
unfair, because the unwritten rules of stand-up allow for
individual punters to contribute to the show, and in this case
she’s responding to a direct question. However, punters don’t
always wait to be asked before shouting their opinions at the
comic.

When cousins marry

Nothing brings stand-up comedy as inescapably into the
present tense as heckling. Exchanges with hecklers give
substance and solidity to the illusion of spontaneity. When
somebody shouts something, whether hostile or supportive,
the comedian is under an obligation to respond, and as the
heckle could not have been anticipated, it must be dealt
with on the spur of the moment. Heckling is not exclusive to
stand-up. It certainly happened in music hall, and can even be
traced back to Elizabethan theatre, where clowns like Richard
Tarlton would respond to hecklers in rhyme.2 Perhaps the
reason why heckling is so strongly associated with stand-up is
because it relates to some key features of the form. It brings the
underlying hostility to the surface, it makes the directness of
communication even more intense, and it involves spontaneity.
In reality, the way comics deal with hecklers is not always
as spontaneous as it seems. There are a number of standard
lines which are used to respond to hecklers, and even on the
British comedy circuit in which stealing material from other
 Conversation 341

acts is a taboo, these are seen as common property. Standard

heckle put-downs include:

‘Isn’t it a shame when cousins marry?’

‘Never drink on an empty head.’
‘Sorry? [the heckler repeats what he or she said] No, I heard
you the first time, I’m just sorry.’
‘Just to think, out of millions of sperm, you had to get there
first.’

And:

‘I remember my first pint.’

In some cases, comics may invent anti-heckle lines of their

own, perhaps designed to fit their style. Steve Martin claims
to have originated the ‘first pint’ one early in his career – his
version being ‘Oh, I remember when I had my first beer’3 – and
given the influence he’s had on comedians either side of the
Atlantic, he’s probably right. Whether standard or original,
a pre-planned line is not spontaneous, even if the comedian
can’t know in advance exactly when it will have to be used.
More experienced acts tend to avoid such lines, preferring to
react to hecklers in the moment. For Mark Lamarr, this is a
matter of principle: ‘I never, ever used stock putdowns. And I
hated that … it would never be cousins marrying and all that
business ‘cos I always found that fucking agonising (after the
first time you’ve seen it, when it’s like the greatest thing you’ve
ever seen in your life).’4
Dealing with a heckle is a test of the comedian’s ability. To
ignore it is to seriously undermine the audience’s faith, and if
the comic ploughs on relentlessly with material rather than
responding, the illusion of spontaneity is broken. On the other
hand, to see a comedian deal brilliantly with a heckler can
seem like magic, and can win over an audience that was cold
or hostile before the heckle happened. This effect certainly
existed in music hall. In 1892, Jerome K. Jerome recalled how
342 GETTING THE JOKE

the singer Bessie Bellwood dealt with a heckle from ‘a hefty-

looking coalheaver’:

For over five minutes she let fly, leaving him gasping, dazed
and speechless. At the end, she gathered herself together for
one supreme effort, and hurled at him an insult so bitter with
scorn, so sharp with insight into his career and character, so
heavy with prophetic curse, that strong men drew and held
their breath while it passed over them, and women hid their
faces and shivered. Then she folded her arms and stood
silent, and the house, from floor to ceiling, rose and cheered
her until there was no more breath left in its lungs.5

It’s not possible to read without desperately wondering exactly

what it was she said to the offending coalheaver to get such an
extraordinary reaction. Presumably, you just had to be there.

Hostile heckling
As Bellwood’s case makes clear, heckling can be a hostile act.
It’s a battle for status between heckler and comedian, and
to this extent there’s an element of contest to it. Jack Dee
provides an excellent example of this in a 1994 show at the
London Palladium. In a quiet moment, a heckler has fun with
the fact that Dee was appearing in a series of John Smith’s
bitter adverts, asking him, ‘Where’s your widget?’ (the widget
device in the beer can being a focus of some of the ads). Dee
gets a good laugh simply by repeating the question in his
usual weary, sarcasm-drenched style. He follows it up by
saying, ‘Oh, you could be very sorry you said that. [laughter]’
The audience’s reaction shows they realise Dee is capable of
making mincemeat out of the heckler and recognise that his
high status is under no real threat. He confirms this by talking
to them directly: ‘I’ll look away, and he’ll think I’ve finished
with him. [laughter]’
 Conversation 343

Then somebody else heckles, with a reference to the

animated ladybirds that featured in one of the adverts. Dee
replies, ‘Eh? Where’s my ladybird? It’s in the dressing room.
[quiet laughter] Why, where’s your self-respect?’ This gets
ten seconds of laughter, applause and cheering, the audience
acknowledging that Dee has scored a match point against his
opponent. The heckler takes a bow as if to defy the fact that
he’s lost, but Dee is quick to disillusion him: ‘I know you –
took a bow there, but I don’t think they were applauding you.
[laughter]’6
Here the contest remains largely good natured, but the
heckler’s hostility can be less jokey, and reveal deeper social
tensions. For black comedians like Dick Gregory in the early
1960s, playing to white audiences inevitably meant the risk of
racist heckles, and dealing with them was hazardous in that
knife-edge context. Gregory found his own way of coming
back at racists. If somebody shouted ‘nigger’, he would tell
them that there was a clause in his contract which gave him
$50 more every time he heard the word. Then he’d ask the
whole audience to yell it.7
A recording of Richard Pryor performing at a club called
PJ’s in Hollywood in May 1968 captures a slightly more veiled
form of racism. Pryor is talking about how the white man has
used religion to assert racial superiority over black people,
and throws in a subtly barbed disclaimer: ‘And when I say
“white man”, I don’t mean everybody, you know who you
are. [laughter]’ He’s pointing out that some white people are
enlightened, but he’s also implying that some are not. As if to
prove the point, somebody heckles him, sounding distinctly
unamused: ‘You’re lucky I got a sense of humour!’
It’s a potentially ugly moment, but Pryor doesn’t back
down: ‘I’m lucky you have too, because I know what you
white people do to us. [laughter and applause]’ Not content
with winning the status battle, he then widens his attack,
making it more explicitly political by asking the audience as a
whole: ‘Can I ask you – why are y’all afraid of Black Power?
Why?’ He turns back to the heckler and says, ‘You seem to be
344 GETTING THE JOKE

the spokesman for the bigot group, why are you – ? [laughter
and applause]’8 Given that the heckler sounded slightly tetchy
in the first place, I imagine that his mood was not improved
by being called a bigot, but he doesn’t make any more trouble
for Pryor, and the rest of the audience are audibly delighted
by the put-down.
In a sense, comedians and hecklers are motivated by the
same thing – a craving for attention. An exchange with a
heckler is a battle for the attention of the audience, and
there’s a delicious example of this kind of tussle on the
recording of Frankie Howerd’s act at The Establishment.
Kenneth Williams – another camp comic of the same gener-
ation as Howerd – is in the audience, and draws attention
to himself using the most unusual of heckling techniques:
ostentatious laughter.
Williams was famous for his dirty laugh, and it is unmis-
takable as it blasts out like an effeminate machine gun with
a blocked-up nose. On and on he laughs, for twenty seconds.
The audience quickly tune into his laughter, and as it goes on
they respond with two strong laughs of their own. Howerd
is left floundering, saying things like, ‘Oo, Gawd ‘elp us!’
to try and win the attention back to himself. Just when it
seems like he’s succeeding, Williams pushes his laugh up into
a higher register and gets another laugh from the audience.
Finally Howerd asserts himself, and very effectively at that:
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to watch this sight, of one
comedian laughing at another one, [laughter] it’s very rare.
Very rare. [some clapping] And of course, writing it down at
the same time. [laughter]’ A couple of minutes later, Williams
is at it again, inspiring the following exchange:

Williams: Hahahahahahahaha!!
Howerd: Shuuut up, you! [laughter] Anyway listen. Listen –
Williams: Yeees.
Howerd: ‘Yeees.’ [laughter and clapping] Is ‘e trying to steal
the act? Is ‘e trying to steal the limelight, do you think?
[laughter]9
 Conversation 345

Listening to the recording, it seems perfectly clear that

Williams is trying to steal the limelight, but he makes no
mention of this in his diary, simply remarking that Howerd’s
act was ‘v. good’ and complaining about ‘an awful woman
who kept shouting and interrupting him’. However, Williams’s
diaries do suggest that there was some rivalry between the two
men after this incident. They competed over parts in the Carry
On films, and after lunch with Howerd, Williams wrote, ‘He
is undoubtedly a very boring man.’10
When I first started doing stand-up, I lived in fear of the
heckler, believing that he – and it often was a he – was always
lurking somewhere at the back of every gig, waiting to strike.
With experience, I realised that hostile heckling is relatively
rare, that dealing with it was largely a matter of showing the
audience I was unruffled by it, and most of the time, it was
reasonably easy to cope with. As a result, I rarely worried or
even thought about being heckled. However, the one thing
that did unsettle me deep down was that because I knew what
heckling felt like from my side of the fence, I also knew how
easy it would be for a determined heckler to destroy me.
A funny heckle can be a dangerous thing. I once saw a
comic valiantly struggling to win over a small, cold audience
in a cellar bar in Manchester. As he started to look desperate,
somebody shouted, ‘Have you got any albums out?’ On
another occasion, a female comic at the Last Laugh was
trying to use the standard anti-heckle line, ‘What do you use
for contraception? Your personality?’ Sadly, she didn’t get to
the end of it. When she said, ‘What do you use for contra-
ception?’, the punter answered, ‘Your jokes.’ If a heckler gets
a bigger laugh than anything the comedian has got all evening,
the comic’s authority will often be badly dented.
On the other hand, heckles don’t have to be funny to be
destructive. ‘Say something funny’ and ‘Boring’ are neither
funny nor original, but they’re so blunt, predictable and
damning that it’s difficult to come back at them inventively or
positively. The key to making an unfunny heckle really hurt
is persistence, timing, or a combination of the two. I’ve seen
346 GETTING THE JOKE

a comedian blowing routines through poor concentration and

repeatedly putting down an apparently harmless punter sitting
at the front, much to the audience’s bemusement. Asking him
about it afterwards, he explained that the punter had given
him a non-stop barrage of insults too quiet for anybody else to
hear. The malevolent persistence of the hushed-voice heckler
was what broke the comic’s nerve. I’ve faced audiences where
a persistent unfunny heckler is supported by a table full of
cheering friends. However much I put him down, he kept
coming back for more, to the point where the rest of the
audience was simply bored with it. By that point, I’d lost.
Timing is also crucial to effective heckling. The most
destructive time to heckle is towards the end of a long routine.
Even if the comedian puts the heckler down well, the chances
are that the end of the routine will have to be abandoned. As
Jeremy Hardy puts it, ‘[I]f you are trying to take someone into
a world of your own, somebody at the back shouting, “Show
us your tits,” kind of breaks the moment.’11 A steady series of
well-timed heckles can destroy an act. The fact that this kind
of determined, destructive heckling is so rare shows the extent
to which most stand-up audiences have at least a modicum of
goodwill.

Real conversations
Heckling used to pose a problem for Harry Hill, because
responding to it with naked hostility would not suit his style:
‘I always suffered with hecklers when I started off, because I
didn’t really have a kind of way of dealing with them. Because
you can’t just say, “Fuck off,” you know.’12 With experience,
he found suitably surreal ways of answering hecklers, like
telling them, ‘You heckle me now, but I’m safe in the
knowledge that when I get home, I’ve got a nice chicken in the
oven.’13 As this shows, heckling isn’t always about hostility.
Phill Jupitus argues:
 Conversation 347

I think … a heckle says a lot more about what they’re

trying to say to the people they’re with than about your
act. They are establishing themselves within their social
group… And drunk girls on hen nights, you know, who just
are like car alarms. Quite often, you don’t need a put down
so much as a mute button.14

Ultimately, heckling highlights both the nowness of stand-up

comedy, and the fact that it’s a performance genre which
takes the form of a social interaction. Comedians are able to
instigate real, two-way conversations with individual punters
as much as hecklers are, but the American comic Margaret
Cho argues that they’re less likely to do this in her own
country:

British comedy is much more about being a social insti-

gator than it is about spectacle. Because American comedy
is really like, ‘We’re gonna show you what we’re gonna
do and we’re gonna have these jokes, and it’s gonna be
like this.’ But in British comedy there’s really a dialogue
happening between the audience and the performer. They
have to appeal to the audience in a way that is like,
‘I’m present, I’m here for you, and I’m gonna help you
communicate with each other and with me.’ But American
comedy’s not like that, so that’s what I’ve learned from
coming here and that’s why I come here, because I want to
be better at that …15

Many British comedians find conversations with punters

incredibly valuable. Al Murray started building them into
the act to stave off boredom: ‘[I]t became more spontaneous
because I was getting bored. Right, and I figured I was in for
long-haul theatre runs, and repetition I find extremely boring
… I want it to be different every night so I’m not bored so
it stays fresh so the audience can carry on liking it …’16 For
Sarah Millican, talking to punters is fundamental to being a
stand-up:
348 GETTING THE JOKE

The bits when I talk to the audience are the bits when I feel
like a proper comedian. I feel like a proper funny person
as opposed to somebody who pre-prepared a show and is
now reciting it for your pleasure … And also they’re the
bits that just make me awake and make me feel like … my
feet are pedalling underneath, I love those bits. And they’re
my favourite bits and without those I don’t think I could do
tours this length … because it would just do my head in. So
they’re the bits that sort of keep me alive.17

Bill Bailey is onstage at the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West

End in October 2003, and he asks the audience if anybody
has had a bad experience with marijuana. A man on the
balcony shouts out that he has. Interested, Bailey asks him
what happened. The man replies in a deep, clear voice,
apparently unaffected by the pressure of having to talk with
a theatre full of people listening in. ‘I was on a houseboat
on a frozen lake in Kurdistan,’ he begins, and as the story
unfolds, the audience laugh at both what the man says and
how Bailey responds.18
By avoiding the temptation to make fun of the man, and
being generous enough to let him have his say and share the
audience’s attention for a few minutes, the comedian creates a
moment in the act where it feels like anything might happen.
While the exchange is going on, we don’t know how it will
play out or when it will end. We know that what’s happening
is unique to this matinee performance – it didn’t happen last
night, and it won’t happen tonight.

Notes
1 Horsebridge Comedy, the Horsebridge Centre, Whitstable, 28
September 2012
2 See Peter Davison, Popular Appeal in English Drama to 1850,
London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1982, pp. 38–40.
 Conversation 349

It would be lovely to revive the idea of answering hecklers in

rhyme: ‘Thanks for that but let me be blunt/Your comment
was rubbish and you’re …’
3 Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, London:
Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, 2008, p. 84
4 Interview with Mark Lamarr, Chiswick, 14 July 2004
5 Morwenna Banks and Amanda Swift, The Joke’s on Us:
Women in Comedy from Music Hall to the Present Day,
London: Pandora Press, 1987, p. 15
6 Live at the London Palladium, in the box set, Jack Dee, Live
Stand-Up Collection, Universal, 2006, 8246871
7 See Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: A History of African
American Comedy from Slavery to Chris Rock, Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 1999, pp. 496–7
8 ‘Black Power’ on disc one of Richard Pryor, Evolution
Revolution: The Early Years (1966-1974), Rhino, 2005,
8122-78490-2
9 Frankie Howerd, At The Establishment Club & at the BBC,
Decca, 1963, LK 4556
10 See Russell Davies (ed.), The Kenneth Williams Diaries,
London: HarperCollins, 1993, pp. 198, 309, 312, 358
11 James Ellis, ‘60 Second Interview: Jeremy Hardy’, Metro,
12 March 2002
12 Interview with Harry Hill, by telephone, 26 August 2004
13 Quoted in Ben Thompson, Sunshine on Putty: The Golden Age
of British Comedy from Vic Reeves to The Office, London and
New York: Fourth Estate, 2004, p. 175
14 Interview with Phill Jupitus, BBC Broadcasting House, London,
6 June 2004
15 Interview with Margaret Cho, Leicester Square Theatre,
29 October 2012
16 Interview with Al Murray, by telephone, 2 April 2012
17 Interview with Sarah Millican, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury,
23 April 2012
18 Bill Bailey, Part Troll, Wyndham’s Theatre, 18 October 2003,
3 p.m.
 CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Improvisation

While filming a live video at the Wilde Theatre in Bracknell in

1997, Mark Lamarr notices a beetle crawling across the stage.
He crouches down to look at it, and some of the audience
laugh, seeing what he’s doing. Then he starts having fun with
it:

No, it’s all right, I was just trying to talk and this beetle
started walking across the stage, [laughter] and he’s got,
ah – he’s got all fluff on his back and he’s having a hard
time. [laughter] And, but the thing is, I feel like he’s really
bored with the show and he’s trying to fuck off, so that’s
– [laughter]’

He gets back on his feet to imitate the beetle, scuttling about

the stage: ‘He just keeps wandering around and going, “I’m
not into this menstrual stuff, I’m not really,” [laughter] and
he just – he’s got fluff on him, he’s just wandering around
in circles, and I know exactly how he feels at the moment.
[laughter]’ Now he goes back to the beetle, crouching down
again:

He’s not like a sacred, er, beetle from this part of the country
is he, like not one of you brought in the Sacred Bracknell
Beetle? [quiet laughter] And if I get, you know, if I say
anything out of turn, he just – goes into a really big beetle
352 GETTING THE JOKE

and hits me, or something like that? That’s – [laughter]

I know it’s fairly unlikely, isn’t it, I’m just musing here,
but – You know what, I’ve noticed that I’m – I’m wasting
your time, aren’t I? [laughter] You lot are all staring at me,
going, ‘He’s got some great beetle stuff coming up, I’m
sure he has,’ but no, [laughter] I’m just – That’d be so sad,
wouldn’t it, if I said to the stagehand, “Let the beetle on
now, I can do me beetle stuff!” [laughter]1

Before going back into prepared material, Lamarr has filled up

more than a minute of stage time and got at least 11 laughs
by taking the audience with him on his flight of fancy. He’s
taken them through twists and turns, creating an imaginary
scenario, acting it out, pulling back from it, replacing it with
another, commenting on what he’s doing. He even reflects on
the process of improvisation in stand-up, jokingly suggesting
the whole beetle incident might have been an example of
desperate planned spontaneity.
In some ways, Lamarr is modest about his ability to
improvise, saying that being able to do it in the high pressure
environment of a video shoot is a ‘bare minimum’ for him. On
the other hand, he’s aware that to be able to pull off a bit like
this is something that’s hard won by experience: ‘People have
said to me, “Oh, you were lucky there, weren’t you,” and I
[say], “No, what’s lucky? What, lucky I worked my arse off to
be good at doing this?”’ He explains exactly how experience
can help:

[W]hen you’re ad libbing, a lot of times it’s not quite an

ad lib, it’s sort of just remembering, you know, and I’ve
noticed I’ve got a lot better at it as the years go by, because
someone’ll say, you know, ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken,’ and
you’ll think, ‘Oh, I was working on a bit about that about
ten, fifteen years ago,’ and something’ll come out of it,
often something you’ve never used before, but … thought
you had. And a lot of it, it is obviously immediate spur of
the moment, but a lot of it comes with experience.2
 Improvisation 353

Nonetheless, the beetle routine seems more genuinely sponta-

neous, playing on something that was visibly happening just
at that very moment and probably couldn’t have been antici-
pated. Such improvisations happen when the comedian is very
alive to the possibilities of the present moment, and confident
enough to take a chance on being able to make something
funny out of it. They allow anything that happens in the venue
– no matter how unexpected – to become part of the act.
This has happened throughout stand-up comedy’s existence,
and can be traced back to its roots in music hall. R. G.
Knowles, a Canadian comedian who regularly played the
British halls from the 1890s to his death in 1919, was known
for his quick wit. On a show at the Star in Bermondsey, he
is said to have been interrupted in mid-flow by a latecomer
noisily taking his place in the audience. Knowles turned to him
and said, ‘Brother, you’re very late; but never mind, you’re just
in time for the collection.’ At another show at the same hall,
he did two encores, but even after five songs, the audience still
wanted more. ‘I only get paid for three, you know,’ he said.
‘If I do another, they won’t give me any more money.’ ‘Why
don’t you send the hat round?’ shouted a heckler. ‘Good idea,’
Knowles responded, ‘but if I did I wouldn’t get it back.’ On
yet another occasion, he was interrupted by the theatre cat
wandering across the stage, leading him to comment, ‘This is
a monologue not a catalogue!’3
Shortly after World War II, whilst performing in Blackpool,
Reg Dixon was inspired to improvise by something more
internal – a painful boil in his nose. In the middle of his act,
he decides to tell the audience about it: ‘I dunno what you’re
laughing at. I don’t feel very well. I’m poorly. I’m proper
poorly. Have you ever had a boil? I bet you’ve never ‘ad a
boil where I’ve ‘ad a boil. ‘Ave you ever ‘ad a boil up yer left
nostril?’
It’s a moment of pure spontaneity. On the spur of the
moment, Dixon shares what’s on his mind and gets some big
laughs. The idea of him suffering from some minor ailment fits
with his gentle loser persona, which means he’s struck comedy
354 GETTING THE JOKE

gold with his off-the-cuff comment. ‘Proper poorly’ becomes

his catchphrase, or as he put it, his ‘big gimmick’. This is
either one of those magical moments where the comedian
gives free rein to his or her imagination creating something
unique and special, or it’s a good story Dixon invented for
publicity purposes. A less successful comic called Roy Barbour
also used the ‘proper poorly’ catchphrase, and also claimed to
have invented it.4

Jonathan Winters works with his

audience
Improvisation is so central to the work of some stand-ups that
it becomes what they are best known for. Jonathan Winters
– part of the generation of sick comedians – is a classic
example. Winters started working as a comic in New York
in the early 1950s, playing venues like the Blue Angel and Le
Ruban Bleu, and became well known when he was picked
up by TV, appearing on shows hosted by Jack Paar, Garry
Moore and Steve Allen. He was a major influence on Robin
Williams, and would later go on to play the part of Mork’s
son in Williams’s breakthrough sitcom Mork and Mindy. This
was part of an eclectic career, which has included voiceover
work for animated films, his own syndicated TV show, live
performances and a series of comedy albums.
In some of his shows, he adopts a simple format in which
the audience suggest routines for him to improvise. They
might ask, ‘I wonder if you could characterise a male elephant
wrapping a present for his girlfriend?’ or, ‘Whaddya think
about hippies?’ He then repeats what they’ve said – a vital
part of the grammar of stand-up, ensuring that everyone in the
audience has heard it. Having done so, he either answers the
question, making a few witty comments, or more typically he
acts out the requested scene.
A woman asks him to do his impression of a doctor
 Improvisation 355

carrying out his first heart transplant, and Winters conjures

up a surprisingly rich sketch, with a large and varied cast of
characters. A stiff-voiced doctor talks to a gibbering patient
before his operation, telling him they’ve had trouble finding
a suitable heart, but assuring him, ‘We do wanna get you
a goodie!’ A wobbling anaesthetist makes an appearance,
turning out to be unashamedly drunk. A flirtatious nurse
comes in (‘I’m twen’y three!’), and informs the doctor that
all she has managed to get is a fox terrier’s heart. When the
patient comes round, in front of the eager cameras of the
world’s press, he is asked for a comment. ‘Arf! Arf!’ he replies.
In some cases, merely giving flesh to the suggestion given is
enough. A man asks, ‘Could you do a sergeant in the marine
corps that is interviewing a gorilla that has been drafted by
mistake?’ Winters takes on the gruff, gravel voice of a drill
sergeant, and shows him running through the list of names:
‘Here’s a guy – I guess he’s tryin’a be some kinda clown.
[laughter] ‘S just puddown “gorilla”. [laughter] That you,
fella? [laughter]’ Realising there’s been a mistake, the sergeant
tells the gorilla: ‘You don’t have to go to the rifle range today.
[laughter] But I would shave. [laughter and applause]’
The fact that the audience collaborate in the creation of
the show means that as well as giving it great immediacy, it
is also one of the most intense forms of sharing that exists
in stand-up. Winters has a warm and generous relationship
with his audience. Sometimes, their requests get laughs in
themselves, and there’s no hint that he is jealous of the punters
when this happens. Indeed, he sometimes laughs along. He’s
enthusiastic when he gets a particularly appealing request,
saying, ‘Oh yes!’ or ‘God bless your heart!’ – which gets a
laugh in itself.
Occasionally the warm rapport breaks out into flirtation.
Before starting to improvise a routine, he asks the woman who
made the request how old she is. She tells him she’s twenty-
three. ‘Perfect!’ he replies, getting a laugh. He goes on to chat
her up a little, finishing the conversation by saying, ‘We’ll talk
about that later! [laughter]’ On another occasion, the flirtation
356 GETTING THE JOKE

is initiated by the woman making the request, who says, ‘I’d

like you to do an imitation of you asking me for a date.’
Questions have been raised about how much Winters’s live
shows are prepared in advance, and whilst he is reasonably
cagey about his methodology, he does admit to sketching
out his ideas beforehand. However, the range and quirkiness
of audience requests which kick off his routines mean that
however much he prepares, he must have to improvise a great
deal. Having said this, Winters act is not pure free-form and
there’s plenty to ensure that it has shape. To start with, there’s
the basic call-and-response format of request and improvised
bit, which automatically gives structure and rhythm to the
show.
Winters also comes prepared with a whole set of tricks up
his sleeve. He has a repertoire of running characters, like the
crazy old lady Maude Frickert, and a six-and-a-half-year-old
boy called Chester Honeyhugger, and audiences often ask to
see these characters in a given situation. Then there are the
sound effects he produces himself. Using just his mouth, he
can produced a rapid series of wet clicks to imitate a squirrel
storing nuts in its cheeks, the ffffffffftkk!! of an arrow being
fired into a tree, or the deep, slow, drunken mechanical voice
of a talking toy. The sound effects are an important crutch.
When asked to do a piece with a motorcycle, he chides himself
for not having the relevant sound effect in his repertoire.5 The
characters and the sound effects give him a series of comic
readymades which he can pull out of the bag to fit together
spontaneously during a show.

Ross Noble sings Dire Straits

Improvisational stand-ups vary as much as any other kind
of comedian, and Ross Noble is a very different kettle of fish
from Winters. I first came across Noble in the early 1990s,
when he played the comedy club I compèred, the Last Laugh
 Improvisation 357

in Sheffield. At the time, the club was being run by someone

else, so the acts always came as a surprise to me. Noble
seemed like a very ordinary sort of act, distinguished only by
the fact that he juggled as well as doing gags.
A couple of years later, control of the Last Laugh had
reverted back to Roger Monkhouse and me, and we started
a short-lived second venue. The idea was that it would be a
place to try out newer acts to see if they were ready for the
Last Laugh, so we put them on in another pub on a Monday
night, charged a pound to get in, and called it Cheap Laughs.
Noble headlined one of the shows and he was extraordinary.
He looked different, the T-shirt replaced by a suit, and the
longer hair making him bear a slight resemblance to Steve
Coogan. But the real change was in his comedy.
His material was fresh and offbeat. He talked about
listening to what he thought was a really hardcore rave station
for ten minutes before he realised he was actually listening to
a badly tuned-in BBC Radio 2. There was a new fluidity to the
act, allowing him to move easily from material to playing the
situation. Conversations with punters led to bizarre flights of
fancy, which were interwoven and incorporated into existing
material. One of the frosted glass dividers which separated the
side of the stage from one of the tables became the window
of an all-night garage, and every so often he would try to
buy a Mars Bar from the person sitting on the other side of
it. Crucially, he was much, much funnier, filling the small
pub room with so much laughter and applause that it nearly
burst. As we watched him work, Roger and I kept exchanging
glances. After the show, I was astounded when Roger told me
that Ross was only 18 years old. That would have made him
just 16 when he I’d first seen him.
Having started performing stand-up at the age of 15, he
has now been doing it for more than half of his life, and
his improvisation seems effortless. The simplest things can
spontaneously take him down the strangest paths. He has
fewer safety nets than Winters when he lets his imagination
fly. Rather than using a request-response format, his ad-libbed
358 GETTING THE JOKE

routines arrive more spontaneously, inspired by something in

the venue, somebody’s clothes, a heckle, some casual banter
with an individual punter. He also lacks the handy bag of
running characters and vocal sound effects.
On the other hand, he has developed a style that has
allowed him to interweave improvised routine with prepared
material so seamlessly that it’s hard to see the joins. He
confesses it hasn’t always been like that: ‘It used to be really
clunky. It used to be the sort of thing where I’d be improvising
and people go, “Wurr, he’s improvising this,” and then it’d be
a real sort of clunky kind of gear change, of like, “Oh, he’s not
making this up any more.”’ The answer was to make even the
prepared material flexible and changeable:

A lot of the times, I take stuff that I’ve improvised and then
sort of play around with the idea. And … even an idea
that I’ve used the night before, rather than just doing it …
I’ll keep playing with it … I just try and keep it as fluid as
possible, in terms of like, halfway through I might start
talking about something else … So it never becomes set …
you never go, “I’m gonna say this, this and this,” you go,
“I might say that, but I might do that.” … And that way,
then there’s never a line between this-is-improvised, this-is-
scripted, because then your scripted stuff … it’s kind of like
it’s sort of scripted but it isn’t, you know.6

He starts a show at the Assembly Hall, Tunbridge Wells

in October 2012 by picking out a particularly enthusiastic
punter at one end of the front row and somebody at the other
end who’s reluctant to clap. These become his way of judging
the maximum and minimum level of audience reaction, and he
refers back to them throughout the show.7
It soon transpires that the enthusiastic one has a ridiculous,
high-pitched, whooping laugh, which unleashes a flurry of
comic possibilities from Noble. He hears it as the keyboard riff
from Dire Straits’ ‘Walk of Life’, then as the Bee Gees’ falsetto
vocals, allowing him to do extended silly impressions of these
 Improvisation 359

bands. Then the laugh becomes an animal mating cry on a

wildlife documentary presented by Bill Oddie.
He picks out a 17-year-old a couple of rows back who’s
apparently befuddled by all this, and finds out he doesn’t
know who Dire Straits are. He plays on the indignity of
having to explain references which the kid is too young to
get, and he makes this a running theme, coming back to it
at the mention of Status Quo, or the Goodies, or Back to
the Future. He also returns to the crazy laugher, at one point
even forming a makeshift musical duo with him, in which
Noble sings the lyrics of ‘Walk of Life’, then leaves a gap
for the punter to fill in the keyboard riff with his yodelling
guffaw.8
Another riff is kicked off by a conversation with a carpet
fitter sitting near the front, in which Noble struggles to find
the right word to describe wooden flooring. A woman further
back tries to help him out by shouting, ‘Hard!’ – rather too
vociferously. Even such a tiny cue leads him to postulate that
she’s reading Fifty Shades of Grey on her Kindle and has
accidentally shouted one of the words out. Later, she tries to
help out again by supplying the word ‘porn’, inspiring him
to create an off-the-cuff routine about an imaginary Women’s
Institute bring-and-buy sale, in which she’s on the stall selling
jam and pornography in knitted covers.
Similarly, after the interval, he returns to the stage to find
that somebody’s left him a bandana with a picture of a wolf
on it. This leads him to suspect that the man who left the gift
is sexually attracted to wolves and masturbates when he sees
documentaries about them on TV, his seminal fluid forming a
hard layer on his carpet, like peanut brittle or crème brûlée. A
colourful description of the sperm as ‘man goop’ leads to the
creation of an Indian servant of the same name – acted out
as the kind of dignified, respectful figure seen in dramas set
in the days of the Raj. Soon afterwards, Noble flings together
a quick excerpt from a made-up Status Quo song called
‘Spunking All Over the Stage’.
This is typical of his comedy, which plays with the
360 GETTING THE JOKE

unseemly as much as the whimsical. He’s as likely to talk

about religion, wheelchairs or interspecies sex as he is about
monkeys, muffins or pieces of meat glued to the face. This
is perhaps unsurprising given his daredevil approach to free
association. There’s a feeling that anything might come out of
his mouth – no matter how uncomfortable – when, as he puts
it, ‘your brain’s spinning and … ideas are colliding’.9 When a
taboo subject pops up, he makes a game out of it, playing with
the audience’s reaction, perhaps chiding us for laughing easily
at one thing when we’ve previously disapproved of something
palpably less outrageous.
He’s far from being a Jimmy Carr or a Frankie Boyle,
though. In spite of being willing to plunge into lewd or touchy
areas, he comes across as perfectly benign, guided by silliness
rather than malice. Interviewed in 2009, he explains why he
thinks he’s generally not seen as offensive in spite of what he
talks about onstage:

It’s about intent and it’s about the attitude behind what
you’re saying … I’m quite a positive person, and I don’t
mean anybody any harm, I don’t want to offend anyone
… if you can talk about everything, and you can just be
open about things … I can joke around with my dad …
and we can joke about the fact he’s in a wheelchair, but …
he doesn’t think I’m picking on him … I think that’s what
it is, you know, you can have a laugh but without it being
… mean spirited.10

This positivity and openness make for some interesting

encounters with punters. Somebody on the front row has
gone to the toilet during the second half of the show, and he
decides to play a prank on them by getting somebody else to
sit in his seat while he’s out. The seat-stealer shouts, ‘He’ll
get freaked out when he finds out I’m a tranny!’ Noble talks
about how gutsy the transvestite punter is for being so open,
refers to him as ‘she’, asks her name – it’s Suzie – and says she
looks good in her frock. Admittedly, there are some laughs at
 Improvisation 361

her expense, but the exchange is friendly and he even tells the
rest of the audience off for laughing at her. Essentially, the fact
that Suzie’s a transvestite is treated no less respectfully than
the fact that another punter is a carpet fitter.
Towards the end of the show, Noble gets talking to an
ex-serviceman who, it transpires, has a broken back, a false
leg, an eye that doesn’t work, and may be about to lose his
arm. He plays on having stumbled upon this unpromisingly
grim information (‘Comedy!!’), but remains unembarrassed
and argues that, having been in the Forces, this man could
probably ‘kick the shit out of’ another punter. He manages
to joke about the guy’s physical state without scoring comic
points at his expense, and when the rest of the audience show
doubt about whether it’s OK for him to be making comedy
out of his disability, he points out that the man himself is
laughing. This easy willingness to treat this punter’s physical
injuries lightly arguably shows him more respect than pussy-
footing about and awkwardly avoiding the topic.
As with Winters, the fact that Noble collaborates with
the audience in the creation of the show makes for a warm,
collusive rapport with them. I’d argue that this is the lynchpin
of his ability to weave pure daftness out of his carnivalesque
array of outrageous topics. He’s able to have a laugh about
them without being mean spirited because of the way he
negotiates the boundaries of what the audience is happy for
him to say, by taking information from them both collectively
and individually, and by constantly commenting on their
reactions.
I witness an amazing example of this at the same Tunbridge
Wells venue three years earlier, in his show Things.11 The word
‘AIDS’ is mentioned in passing, and Noble notices a particular
punter reacting to this with incongruous enthusiasm. He has
fun with this, acting out a quick scene in which the punter
starts cheering every time he says, ‘AIDS’. The problem is that
now the punter feels licensed to cheer the word AIDS every
time he says it, and it soon starts to spread, with other people
joining in. He plays on the way it’s all going out of control,
362 GETTING THE JOKE

telling us off in a way that also encourages us to take it further.

Soon the whole audience is shouting ‘AIDS’ to his cue, and
he uses this to put together a messed-up version of the old
spiritual ‘Kumbaya’:

Ross Noble: Kumbaya my lord, I’ve got –

Audience: AIDS!

Through all of this, we’re increasingly aware of the inescapable

wrongness of joking about something so sensitive and deadly
serious, and it’s precisely this that makes it so painfully funny.
It’s one of the very rare occasions when I’ve been helpless and
hysterical with laughter at a stand-up gig, physically doubling
over and feeling the tears rolling down my cheeks. All around
me I can see people doing the same, and there’s a feeling
of utter disbelief that this can really be happening. It’s an
explosion of comic catharsis, and it produces a tangible sense
of elation. Noble has managed to create a space within which
for a few moments we can refuse to respect the undeniable
dreadfulness of this horrible disease and instead laugh at it
like anything else.
In the cold light of day I feel slightly uncomfortable
about committing this to paper. To somebody that wasn’t
there, it probably sounds appalling, possibly even a direct
insult to anybody whose life has been torn apart by AIDS.
On the night, the redrawing of boundaries made sense. It
was about both spontaneity and collusion, with a strong
sense of understanding between everybody present. It
brings to mind what Billy Connolly said in the wake of his
notorious Ken Bigley joke. He complained the newspapers
had misquoted him, but refused to say what he actually
did say:

I won’t tell anybody what I said because you would have to

be in the room with 4,000 people when I said it. It becomes
a different thing when you print in the cold light of day
 Improvisation 363

what you thought I’d said, or what you’d heard I’d said. It
becomes a different thing altogether.12

Once again, what it all boils down to is the presentness of

stand-up comedy. In order to fully understand – in the words
of the old cliché – you just had to be there.

Notes
1 Mark Lamarr, Uncensored and Live, VVL, 1997, 0474343
2 Interview with Mark Lamarr, Chiswick, 14 July 2004
3 See S. Theodore Felstead, Stars who Made the Halls: A
Hundred Years of English Humour, Harmony and Hilarity,
London: Werner Laurie, 1946, p. 106; and Roy Hudd, Roy
Hudd’s Book of Music-Hall, Variety and Showbiz Anecdotes,
London: Robson Books, 1994, p. 108
4 The story is related in a Pathé News interview (entitled
‘Reg Dixon Hometown’) dating from 1950–9, available via
www.britishpathe.com, and in Roger Wilmut, Kindly Leave
the Stage: The Story of Variety, 1919–1960, p. 169. In the
Pathé interview, he claims the incident happened in his first
radio broadcast in Blackpool. In Wilmut’s book, he claims it
happened at the Palace Theatre, Manchester. The quotes from
Dixon are from the Pathé interview, the excerpt from the act
being as remembered by Dixon. Also see Bob Monkhouse,
Over the Limit: My Secret Diaries 1993–8, London: Century,
1998, p. 189 (on Roy Barbour)
5 All examples from Winters’s act taken from Jonathan Winters,
Stuff’n Nonsense, Laugh.com, 2001, LGH 1059 (esp. see ‘Male
Elephant Wrapping a Present’; ‘Hippies’; ‘Heart Transplant’;
‘Gorilla Drafted into the Marine Corps’; ‘Astronauts Going to
the Moon’; ‘Chester Honeyhugger as an Elevator Operator’;
‘Chester Honeyhugger Asking for a Date’; ‘Maude Frickert on
a Motorcycle – Asking for a Date – Funshirt’; and ‘Unusual
Sounds’)
6 Interview with Ross Noble, Orchard Theatre, Dartford, 24
June 2004
364 GETTING THE JOKE

7 Ross Noble, Mindblender, Assembly Hall, Tunbridge Wells, 1

October 2012
8 By coincidence, the crazy laugher is a drama student from
the University of Kent, who was a regular punter in the
previous year’s Monkeyshine shows (featuring students on my
stand-up course). There he’d become a regular character, his
mad musical chuckle leading one of the stand-up students to
christen him ‘Weepy Man’
9 From the extra feature ‘Ross Noble Interviewed by Oliver
Double’ on Ross Noble, Nobleism, Universal, 2009, 8250595
10 From the extra feature ‘Ross Noble Interviewed by Oliver
Double’ on Ross Noble, Nobleism, Universal, 2009, 8250595
11 Ross Noble, Things, Assembly Hall Tunbridge Wells, 3 April
2009
12 Alan Franks, ‘Sorry: the one s-word you won’t hear from me’,
The Times, 3 November 2004, Times 2 section p. 4
 CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Timing

The secret of great comedy is – wait for it – timing. Ask

anybody what you need to be a good stand-up comic, and
the chances are that they’ll mention timing. The problem is
that nobody seems very clear exactly what they mean by
the word. Definitions of ‘timing’ come in all shapes and
sizes.
Variety performer Valantyne Napier wrote a reference book
of showbusiness jargon, in which she calls timing ‘the most
misused and misunderstood term’. For her, it means ‘being
able to anticipate the audience reaction to a line … and wait
to deliver the next laugh … until just the right time when the
laughter or applause starts to fade … The laughter … is often
lost when cut off by the next line. On the other hand there
should not be any discernible pause.’1
Lupino Lane – who also worked in variety – defines the
term by describing bad timing:

The use of too many words, taking too long to get to the
point, making a bad entrance or exit, a gag too much, and
too many choruses to a song, all help to put the timing
wrong … Jumping in and interrupting before the sense of
the line has been got over, is another fault; being too late
with the interruption will also spoil the tempo. Speed is
important, not necessarily speaking too fast, but getting to
the big laugh.2
366 GETTING THE JOKE

Tony Allen’s definition is more lyrical and succinct, describing

timing as ‘an intuitive state of grace that has to be discovered,
an elusive abstract lubricant that exists in the eternal now’.3
Neal R. Norrick is dryer and more academic: ‘The overall
tempo of the performance, the ebb and flow of given and new
information highlighted by repetition and formulaic phrasing
along with rhythms of hesitation and more fluent passages all
co-determine timing.’4
Clearly timing means different things to different people.
Various themes run through these diverse definitions. Firstly,
there’s structure. As Lane points out, individual jokes and the
act as a whole must not be cluttered up with the unnecessary.
Secondly, there’s pace and tempo, which both Lane and
Norrick identify. Thirdly, there’s a sense of being responsive
to the audience. For Napier, timing is the straightforward
matter of waiting to deliver the line just before the previous
laugh finishes. For both Lane and Norrick, control of infor-
mation is important, and the comedian must have a sense of
when the audience have understood enough. Finally, there’s
the idea that timing is a state of mind in the performer, a point
which Allen makes so eloquently.
One of the classic definitions of comic timing centres on
the idea of striking at the right moment. In Simon Critchley’s
words, timing is ‘a careful control of pauses, hesitations
and silences, of knowing exactly when to detonate the little
dynamite of the joke.’5 For Joan Rivers, it’s ‘the right moment
to pause, the instant to hit a line like punching a button to
detonate laughter’.6 Both of these imply that timing is – as the
word suggests – a simple matter of time. If a pause is exactly
the right number of milliseconds long, and the punchline is
delivered at exactly the right number of milliseconds after-
wards, it will get the optimum amount of laughter.
I’ve always disliked the argument that stand-up is entirely
based on timing, and this simplistic definition is particularly
annoying because it reduces the comedian to a glorified
metronome. I think timing has become such a popular expla-
nation of comedy because people see something extraordinary
 Timing 367

happening when they watch a comedian at work. The comic

seems to talk like a normal person, and laughter appears as
if by magic, sparked off by a simple word or even a pause.
It’s easier to attribute the laughs to some kind of mysterious
atomic comic clock in the comedian’s head than to make sense
of the whole complex process of what’s going on behind that
word or pause to make it funny.
I may have been unusual, but when I did stand-up I was
never, ever aware of timing, and was always puzzled by what
it was supposed to mean. I didn’t consciously adjust pauses
or wait to strike with the punchline to ensure it came in at
exactly the right moment. When I was at my best, I was no
more conscious of time or tempo than in everyday conver-
sation. In fact, at my best, I was generally less self-conscious
than usual. Of course, I had some understanding of rhythm.
As I broke new material in, I would learn the best way of
pacing and phrasing a key line, and this would become fixed
so it was roughly the same at every gig. However, in the act of
performing this practised phrasing, I would be thinking more
about the content of the line than the minutiae of timing and
rhythm.

What’s so great about Bob

Newhart’s timing?
The problem with timing as a concept is not that it has no
bearing on how stand-up works, but that it’s such a loose,
ill-defined term. It refers to several things – not just one – and
some of them aren’t even connected with time. To illustrate
the point, take Bob Newhart, who has been widely praised for
his timing. There are a number of aspects of his performance
which might have inspired this praise.
First, there’s his beautifully relaxed manner. The old
fashioned term for this is ‘stage repose’, which means a quality
of ease, assurance and control, and an avoidance of tell-tale
368 GETTING THE JOKE

signs of a lack of confidence like unnecessary fidgeting.7

Johnny Carson has a neat definition: ‘When you stand there
doing nothing and it’s funny, that’s repose.’8
Second, there’s the tempo. Newhart’s delivery is slow and
unhurried, something which undoubtedly enhances his stage
repose.
Third, there’s the careful way he unfolds the information
in his routines. He subtly gives the audience enough clues to
understand each gag, but leaves them a bit of work to do. For
example, in a famous routine from his first album he plays a
driving instructor who remains calm almost all of the time,
no matter what dangers he faces. All of the other characters,
including the dangerously inept woman he is instructing, are
implied by what the instructor says. At one point, the woman
has driven the wrong way down a one-way street, and after a
pause filled by the audience’s laughter from the previous joke,
he says: ‘Er – same – same to you, fella! [extended laughter]’9
The joke relies on what Newhart doesn’t say. The audience
don’t hear the man in another car shouting an angry insult,
they infer it from the instructor’s response. This brings them
the pleasure of solving a puzzle, as well as popping a mental
cartoon of the altercation into their heads.
There’s a similar example in a routine about Sir Walter
Raleigh introducing tobacco to civilisation. The basic conceit
is that Raleigh keeps sending his discoveries from the New
World back to England, but the people back home don’t
appreciate their importance. Newhart plays somebody back
in England, who talks to Raleigh on the telephone and – as
in the driving instructor routine – Raleigh’s contributions
to the conversation are merely implied. Newhart’s character
nicknames Raleigh ‘Nutty Walt’, and can hardly conceal his
amusement at what he sees as his crazy ideas.
He is puzzled about why Nutty Walt is sending him 80
tons of leaves: ‘This er – this may come as kind of a surprise
to you Walt, but er – come fall in England here, we’re kind
of up to our, er – [laughter and applause]’10 Again, the joke
is in the gap. Newhart stops before finishing the sentence,
 Timing 369

making the audience fill in the blanks for themselves (‘up to

our necks/ eyes/ asses in leaves’). Both jokes involve pauses,
so their success might be attributed simply to timing – but in
both cases, the pause is built into the structure of the joke, so
that it’s as much about writing as it is about delivery.
Having said that, the way the line is delivered is exquisite,
and this leads to a fourth aspect of Newhart’s performance
that might come under the category of timing – his acting.
Most of his routines, including these two, are performed in
character, and although his characterisations are normally
fairly close to the stage persona he uses in the introductions
to them, there are fine nuances of tone, pace and punctuation
which not only bring the situations he evokes to life, but also
show the character’s reactions to these situations without
spelling them out in words. The ‘same to you, fella’ in the first
example has the same mild, calm tone as the most of the rest
of the routine, but there’s the merest whiff of the exasperation
he must be feeling in there too.
Sometimes, Newhart’s acting is so delicious that the
particular way that he says a word is all that’s needed to
bring out the flavour of the joke. In one routine, he plays
a policeman trying to talk somebody down off a ledge, by
following the advice of a new manual on the subject. In the
introduction, Newhart summarises the manual, which advises
the police to wear plain clothes in such situations, and talk
casually to the potential jumper. The policeman, he says,
‘slips into his sports jacket’, lights a cigarette, and walks out
on to the ledge. There’s a pause as he lights up to play the
policeman, then he says his first line in character: ‘Oh, hi!’11
There’s a huge, uproarious laugh, which is enhanced by
a little clapping. It goes on for more than ten seconds, and
individual laughs can be picked out – barking male guffaws,
female shrieks. What makes these two simple, innocuous
words so funny is the way he says them. He manages to fill
them with the forced brightness of fake surprise. It suggests
somebody trying to pretend they have just casually wandered
out on to the ledge of a skyscraper to enjoy a cigarette, and
370 GETTING THE JOKE

being pleasantly surprised to find somebody else up there with

him. He captures all of this perfectly in his tone of voice, and
by doing so highlights the absurdity of the situation in one
powerful comic flash.
What Bob Newhart’s performance makes absolutely clear
is that timing is not one thing but many. The fact is that
stand-up performance is infinitely subtle and multifaceted,
and all too often, words are inadequate at explaining why a
particular moment of delivery is so wonderful. As a result,
trying to fit all of its many aspects under the leaky umbrella
term of ‘timing’ is probably not a good idea.

Duh-d-d-dum-d-dum-d-durr
Rhythm is probably as important to comedy as it is to
music, but in comedy it’s much harder to identify and notate.
Stand-up’s backbeat pulses to and fro between performer
and punter, the comedian’s line followed by the audience’s
response, a joke-laugh-joke-laugh-joke-laugh rhythm that
speeds and slows throughout the show.
This is a beat that can be easily dulled by background noise.
When I compèred the Last Laugh, sometimes I would forget
to turn off the air conditioning fans before I went on at the
beginning. Although I’m sure the audience weren’t consciously
aware of this, my opening routine would feel like wading
through blancmange, and I couldn’t get the joke-laugh rhythm
crisp and clear. One time I realised what was happening
while I was on stage, and asked for the fans to be turned off.
Suddenly, the blancmange was gone, and the joke-laugh beat
started ringing out more clearly straight away. I’m not the
only one who has experienced this effect. Shelley Berman once
found himself distracted onstage by the noise of a refrigerator
motor.
Comic rhythm can work almost like magic. Stand-ups
talk about ‘getting on a roll’, which Jo Brand defines as the
 Timing 371

‘glorious’ moment when ‘the audience seems to laugh continu-

ously throughout the whole performance, and as the laugh
dies down from one joke or remark it starts to build up for the
next bit. Not only do they laugh at punch lines, they laugh at
the build-up to jokes as well.’12 Milton Berle once swapped the
punchline of a joke for an unfunny one that didn’t even make
sense. The insistent rhythm of the gags was such that when
he threw in the nonsensical, unfunny punchline, the audience
laughed anyway.13
There are strong links between musical and comical
rhythm. Mort Sahl’s delivery has been compared to a drum
solo. Similarly, Lenny Bruce had a routine in which he rhyth-
mically spills out the things people say to each other after sex,
which he compares to ‘a big drum solo’. To make the point
more audible, he adds real percussion instruments, following
the rhythms of his own speech on drums and cymbals.14 Harry
Hill has a drummer and a keyboard player on stage with him,
and as well as accompanying him in songs, they often chip
in to routines, adding sound effects, particular during bits of
physical business.
Sometimes comic rhythm is about repetition. In a
routine about childhood, Jerry Seinfeld sums up his main
motivation as a child as, ‘Get candy, get candy, get
candy, get candy, get candy, get candy.’ He goes on to
imagine a candy-obsessed child in an encounter with a
candy-proffering stranger, and each moment of the child’s
reasoning is punctuated with the phrase, ‘Get candy, get
candy, get candy.’15 The insistent repetition of the three
syllables gives the routine a relentless forward momentum,
heightening the feeling of obsession.
For Harry Hill, repetition goes hand-in-hand with economy:
‘When writing gags, I think you should use the least number
of words. Even though you can repeat the first line over and
over again, which is so often what I do.’ Hill laughs, and
admits a more prosaic reason for the repetition: ‘To fill it out!’
In some of his jokes, though, there is a more practical reason
to repeat something:
372 GETTING THE JOKE

[I]f you have got a gag which is a bit obscure, or is not

immediately obvious, it is useful to spell it out a couple
of times. So I mean I had this gag which was, ‘You know
the white plastic doll’s house garden furniture that you get
free with the home delivery pizzas?’ Right, that is a real
mouthful, right? There’s a lot of things in there, contained
in there. That’s the minimum amount of words you can
use to say this gag. ‘I keep getting the table,’ that’s the
punchline … So what I do is, I say, ‘You know the white
plastic doll’s house garden furniture? That you get free
with the home delivery pizzas?’ … You say it a few times.
And then they’re really kind of keen to know what the
answer is. You know, so you can do the next bit, and you
know they’re all sort of going to be on top of it, pretty
much.16

Hill also sees the myriad running jokes which punctuate his
act as a kind of rhythm, and it’s the feel of this rhythm, rather
than a fixed running order, which allows him to structure his
act.
Perhaps the subtlest rhythms at work in stand-up are those
contained in the sound of the words that make up key lines.
The music made by the patterns of vowels and consonants
which a spoken sentence can contain often holds the key to
why it gets a laugh. For Milton Jones, this music is crucial:
‘[Y]ou must have the duh-d-d-dum-d-dum-d-durr rhythm
worked out, even if means including an extra word that’s
grammatically questionable. The rhythm is more important.’
However, knowing this is not the same as knowing exactly
how rhythm works, which is instinctive and does not yield
easily to cold analysis. Jones doesn’t claim to fully understand
this kind of rhythm, but he has some interesting ideas:

I dunno what rhythm does, it must be some deep subcon-

scious thing. I mean obviously, it’s to do with timing, and
I guess facial stuff as well. Because it’s not unconnected to
what you’re doing with your face. You can even move from
 Timing 373

vocal to physical rhythm, the last face being the last beat of
the rhythm, if you see what I mean.17

The rule of three

By contrast, the simplest rhythm in stand-up is the rule of
three. The classic version of the three-part list joke has been
defined as ‘Establish, Reinforce, Surprise!’18 A lot of comedy
works by deviating from an expected pattern. The first part
of the list establishes the pattern, the second reinforces it, and
the third subverts it. Jo Brand’s early work provides a couple
of fine examples, which I’ve laid out so as to emphasise their
tripartite shape. At the beginning of her act, she apologises for
looking ‘a bit shit’, and explains:

I’ve ‘ad flu recently,

and I forgot to wash my T-shirt, and er – [quiet laughter]
my parents weren’t very attractive, so er – [laughter]19

In another performance, she’s talking about how she’s been

thinking a lot about body image:

I read that book Fat Is a Feminist Issue. [quiet laughter]

Got a bit desperate halfway through.
And ate it. [laughter]20

In the first gag, she gives two legitimate reasons why she’s
looking ‘shit’ at this particular moment, and a third one which
is so permanent and self-deprecating that it doesn’t really
follow. In the second gag, she has two sentences which set up
the simple narrative about reading a classic feminist text, and
a third which gives the story a surprise ending.
Not all three-part gags work like this, though. Omid Djalili
has a joke which goes: ‘Also, I know that some of you, you
associate the Middle East, er, with, er, oil. And phlegm, and
374 GETTING THE JOKE

halitosis, er – [laughter and clapping]’21 In this three-part

list – oil, phlegm, halitosis – the normal structure is inverted,
because the expectation is subverted after the first item.
In some cases, the three-part rhythm isn’t integral to the
structure of the joke at all. In other cases, separate jokes may
be grouped together in threes. Andy Parsons used to have a
joke about Tony Blair getting elected by applying marketing
principles and rebranding his party as New Labour. Parsons
wonders what they’ll come up with next, and makes three
suggestions of his own:

New Improved Labour. [laughter]

Labour Ultra. [laughter]
Or maybe, ‘I Can’t Believe it’s not the Tories’. [laughter and
applause]22

The crucial thing with clustering three jokes together is to

put the strongest gag last, to create a sense of climax. The
audience reaction to the third joke here shows Parsons has
got them in the right order. One reason for this might be that
the rhythm of three is intrinsically pleasing in public speaking.
In his book on political oratory, Max Atkinson shows how
politicians use three-part lists to elicit applause from their
audiences, and provides plentiful examples to prove his case.
He points out that they have ‘an air of unity or completeness
about them’.23

Those terrible syllables ‘er’ and ‘um’

Whilst most of the tips Lupino Lane gives in his 1945 book
How to Become a Comedian would be pretty useless to
anyone wanting to start out as a stand-up today, it does
give a useful snapshot of stage practice in British theatres in
the mid-twentieth century. The advice he gives on delivery
suggests a very formal approach. He advises comedians to
 Timing 375

undertake ‘a short study of elocution’, warns against ‘the

continual use of phrases such as: “You see?”, “You know!”,
“Of course”, etc.’, and commands, ‘Avoid those terrible
syllables, “ER” and “UM”.’24 Although he suggests that front
cloth comedians should appear to be ‘speaking in ordinary
conversation’, he actually makes it clear that they should
speak much more crisply:

Patter doesn’t come all at once. Go into an empty room

and practice on your own, listening to the sound of your
own voice … Watch your inflections and see that you
do not drop your voice at the end of a sentence or the
audience will lose interest. You must learn to speak with
clear diction, always see that you pitch your voice so that
the people who are farthest away in the audience can hear
you.25

Listen to recordings of the comics of this era, and you’ll tend

to hear diction that’s clear as a bell. Ted Ray may have worn
an ordinary lounge suit onstage to make it look as if he was
just one of the audience, but in spite of wanting to appear
as natural as possible, his delivery was polished and formal.
He grew up in Liverpool, but there’s no trace of a Scouse
accent. The northern u sound is gone, so that ‘umbrella’ is
pronounced ‘ambrella’, not ‘oombrella’. The a sound is rather
affected, so that ‘chap’ becomes ‘chep’. The consonants are
sharp and punchy, and there’s none of the mess of ordinary
conversation.26
By contrast, Mort Sahl’s delivery was so much like ordinary
conversation that, as Woody Allen observes, ‘you thought he
was just talking.’27 Sahl’s comedy is often misrepresented. In
1960, Time magazine did a piece on him which quotes some
of his finest one-liners, and this is often reproduced as a way
of giving a flavour of his style.28 One-liners suggest a honed,
minimalist delivery, but Sahl’s is nothing like this, and the
killer lines which Time quotes often emerge from a swamp of
conversational messiness.
376 GETTING THE JOKE

Sahl is no stranger to the terrible syllable ‘ER’. He is

perfectly comfortable to emit fragmented sentences as he tries
to find the best way of explaining something, or to go off at a
tangent, and return to the original theme by way of a quick,
‘Anyway –’. His speech is punctuated with the kind of phrases
Lane warns against: ‘You know?’; ‘See?’; ‘So, now –’; and
‘What else?’ Sometimes, he punches a gag home with a short,
staccato, ‘Ha ha!’29 Arguably, Sahl’s greatest achievement – in
a whole series of great achievements – is that he showed that
everyday speech could be just as effective as elocuted stage
speech, if not more so. Certainly, when I listen to recordings
of his act from 50 years ago, I can’t get most of the topical
jokes or pick up a lot of the cultural references, but the ‘UM’s
and ‘ER’s make it sound fresh and immediate.

Mark Watson drops the accent

In August 2002, Mark Watson won the Daily Telegraph
Open Mic Award with a set in which he told the audience,
‘I’m from Wales. Don’t clap that. That’s a fact.’ One of the
judges, Dave Gorman, said, ‘[W]hat was really impressive
about Mark was that it felt like he was being himself.’ In
fact Watson grew up in Bristol and the Welsh accent he used
to deliver his material was faked for the stage. ‘It’s a sort of
fabrication,’ he admitted. ‘There’s something charming about
the Welsh character, and instinct for self-deprecation I find
appealing.’30 Some were totally fooled by the accent. When
he came second in the So You Think You’re Funny compe-
tition that same month, the Mirror reported that he came
from South Wales.31
Of course, adopting a fabricated accent raises the usual
questions about the ambiguity of identity in stand-up comedy.
Looking back on it, even Watson himself seems unclear
exactly how the Welsh accent changed who he was while
performing his act:
 Timing 377

It’s a kind of complex question when it comes up because

it wasn’t exactly a persona, because it was basically pretty
similar to my personality. But it was a bit more than just
putting on an accent as well because just in the act of
putting on an accent you do sort of start behaving slightly
differently. So I suppose essentially it was a persona, but
a persona not very far removed from [me]. You certainly
couldn’t call it a character. It was more just a little bit of an
extension of myself, a kind of more hyper version of myself
… What makes it more complicated is that my family is
Welsh, so I’ve got a natural sort of lilt in the voice anyway,
so it wasn’t like it was any sort of effort. I barely noticed I
was doing it.

In the last few years, he has dropped the Welshness because of

the identity problems it posed:

I had to eventually phase it out because the gap between

my real self and it had become a bit of a problem, just in
practical terms. Like I’d be on the radio talking like this in
my normal voice because you can’t really fake an accent
for a normal interview. And that’s the thing, where do you
draw the line? I couldn’t fake an accent in the car home
with the other comedians either, so basically it became
known that I was faking it to some extent.

Having performed with the accent for so long made it difficult

to get rid of: ‘[I]t was basically like a reflex … I would’ve done
several hundred gigs where I just snapped into that voice as
soon as I came onstage … So it felt very exposed the first time
I didn’t do it.’ Aside from the question of identity, the Welsh
accent gave him a distinctive delivery, and a quirky sense of
timing. He explains:

Certain words just lend themselves to it. You draw them

out. And if you get used to doing a joke or a story with a
particular emphasis on a word, like drawling a particular
378 GETTING THE JOKE

word, then you find you do it. Even now, there are certain
words onstage … that I still basically say in a Welsh accent
just because it comes so naturally.

Even performing – as he does now – in his everyday English

accent, his timing is indelibly stamped by his former adopted
Welshness: ‘I can’t really change that, because that’s sort of
the pace that I go at… I think that Welsh accent initially gave
me those rhythms, it gave me the sort of energy that my set
has, that all comes from that initial persona.’32 Eyes wide and
gleaming, eyebrows raised, his speech is breathless and hyper-
active, babbling out long strings of words. Received wisdom
has it that economy is all important in comedy, but Watson’s
relentless garrulousness flies in the face of that. He directly
alludes to this at the end of his first DVD, telling the audience
at the Bristol Hippodrome:

That’s one thing. I d-, I’m well aware that I talk fast. I do
believe that when this DVD comes out there will be – very
few DVDs on the market that contain – so many words.
[laughter] If nothing else, people will be going, ‘W-was it
funny’ ‘Not exactly funny, but fuck, he says some words,
I’ll give him that.’ [laughter]33

I’ve used hyphens here to indicate the pauses which divide his
sentences, which tend to come in unusual places. Like Sahl,
his speech is full of ordinary conversation messiness – a word
started but abandoned here, a hint of a stutter there. He does
stop after a funny line, to give the audience the merest hint
that it’s time for them to laugh, but this only creates the tiniest
of pauses. With both of the laughs in the above extract, he
starts speaking his next sentence at pretty much exactly the
same time as the audience start laughing.
Clearly this goes against Valantyne Napier’s warning that
‘Laughter or applause is often lost when cut off by the next
line.’ Watson has shown that – counterintuitively – it is
possible to ‘tread on a laugh’ (as the old showbiz jargon
 Timing 379

has it) without stifling it. In fact, his rhythms give his act a
compulsive forward momentum, a headlong energy and an
enthusiasm that’s part of his distinctive charm. What he shows
is that there are no hard and fast rules about timing, because
each comedian will have an individual sense of how it works.

Notes
1 Valantyne Napier, Glossary of Terms Used in Variety,
Vaudeville, Revue & Pantomime, Westbury: Badger Press,
1996, p. 54
2 Lupino Lane, How to Become a Comedian, London: Frederick
Muller, 1945, p. 124
3 Tony Allen, Attitude: Wanna Make Something of it? The Secret
of Stand-Up Comedy, Glastonbury: Gothic Image Publications,
2002, p. 19
4 Neal R Norrick, ‘On the Conversational Performance of
Narrative Jokes: Toward an Account of Timing’, Humor, no.
14, vol. 3, 2001, p. 256
5 Simon Critchley, On Humour, Abingdon: Routledge, 2002,
p. 6
6 Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians
of the 1950s and 1960s, New York: Pantheon Books, 2003,
p. 596
7 See Lupino Lane, How to Become a Comedian, London:
Frederick Muller, 1945, p. 15
8 Quoted in Bob Monkhouse, Over the Limit: My Secret Diaries
1993–8, London: Century, 1998, p. 107
9 ‘Driving Instructor (Pilot for a New TV Series)’, Bob Newhart,
‘Something Like This…’ The Bob Newhart Anthology, Rhino/
Warner Archives, 2001, R2 76742
10 ‘Introducing Tobacco to Civilisation’, Bob Newhart,
‘Something Like This…’ The Bob Newhart Anthology, Rhino/
Warner Archives, 2001, R2 76742
11 ‘Ledge Psychology’, Bob Newhart, ‘Something Like This…’
380 GETTING THE JOKE

The Bob Newhart Anthology, Rhino/Warner Archives, 2001,

R2 76742
12 Jo Brand, Can’t Stand Up For Sitting Down, London: Headline
Review, 2011, p. 54
13 See Phil Berger, The Last Laugh: The World of Stand-Up
Comics, New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000, p. 39
14 ‘To Come’, on Lenny Bruce, To Is a Preposition; Come Is a
Verb,, Knit Classics/Douglas Music, 2000, KCR-3019
15 ‘Halloween’, Jerry Seinfeld, I’m Telling You for the Last Time,
Universal Records, 1998, UD-53175
16 Interview with Harry Hill, by telephone, 26 August 2004
17 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 June 2004
18 Tony Allen, Attitude: Wanna Make Something of It? The Secret
of Stand-Up Comedy, Glastonbury: Gothic Image Publications,
2002, p. 42
19 ‘Tory MPs’, Jo Brand, Jo Brand Live, Laughing Stock, 1993,
LAFFC 21
20 Friday Night Live, Channel 4, 26 February 1988
21 Various artists, Stand-Up Great Britain, Laughing Stock, 2000,
LAFF CD 105, track 9
22 Various artists, Stand-Up Great Britain, Laughing Stock, 2000,
LAFF CD 105
23 See Max Atkinson, Our Masters’ Voices: The Language and
Body Language of Politics, London and New York: Methuen,
1984, pp. 57–73
24 See Lupino Lane, How to Become a Comedian, London:
Frederick Muller, 1945, pp. 14–15, 71
25 Lupino Lane, How to Become a Comedian, London: Frederick
Muller, 1945, p. 71
26 This description comes from listening to the opening
monologue of an episode of Ray’s a Laugh, originally
transmitted 8 November 1949, on Ted Ray, Ray’s a Laugh,
BBC Radio Collection, 1990, ZBBC 1117
27 Quoted in John Lahr, Show and Tell, Berkeley, Los
Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2000,
p. 8
 Timing 381

28 For example, the Time piece is quoted in Albert Goldman

(from the journalism of Lawrence Schiller), Ladies and
Gentlemen – Lenny Bruce!!, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991,
p. 228; and in Lisa Appignanesi, Cabaret: The First Hundred
Years, London: Methuen, 1984, p. 175
29 This description comes from listening to Mort Sahl, 1960 or
Look Forward in Anger, Verve Records, 1960, MG V-15004
and Mort Sahl, At the hungry i, Laugh.com, 2002, LGH 1122
30 Dominic Cavendish, ‘Welshman who is not Welsh wins
Telegraph’s stand-up award’, Daily Telegraph, 21 August 2002,
p. 8
31 Brendon Williams, ‘2 Funny for the Festival’, the Mirror, 24
August 2002, p. 7
32 Interview with Mark Watson, Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury,
31 October 2012
33 Mark Watson, Live, 2 Entertain, 2011, 2EDVD0645
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Delivery

Deadpan
Today, although many stand-ups follow Mort Sahl’s example
by adopting everyday rhythms of speech, some still take a
more stylised approach. Deadpan comedians are a classic
example. The word ‘deadpan’ suggests an impassive, expres-
sionless manner, with voice, face and body giving away
little hint of emotion. Many stand-ups start their careers by
adopting a deadpan delivery, because it offers something to
hide behind. Jo Brand, for example, says:

The way it evolved was just because I was very nervous,

and that’s how it naturally came out, I didn’t plan it like
that, it was just the first few kind of open spots that I did,
I found myself talking like that. And I didn’t really even
notice it until people started taking the piss out of it, you
know. I got all this stuff about reading the football scores
and all that kind of thing.1

Dave Gorman took a similar approach, for similar reasons:

I was very deadpan when I first started. Which was largely

a defence mechanism … I’ve seen so many other people
starting in the same way since, where you think, ‘If I appear
384 GETTING THE JOKE

not to care, then if it doesn’t go very well, it hasn’t hurt me.

But if I appear to care about this, and it doesn’t go very
well, then I’m fucked.’2

Shazia Mirza was the same, being ‘very deadpan’ because

she was ‘very scared’.3 All three comedians realised the
limitations of the style they had adopted. Brand says: ‘If you
do a series of very deadpan one-liners … it’s impossible to
keep that up for any longer than about 20 minutes without
the audience getting bored shitless, to be honest. Because
there’s something about that rhythm that’s slightly sort of
narcoleptic.’4
Gorman agrees, saying, ‘deadpan acts find it hard to get
beyond the 40 minutes’. He slowly realised that ‘caring about
it makes it go better anyway … showing them you care about
it means you’re less likely to die.’5 Mirza changed her delivery
because she felt it was inauthentic: ‘The deadpan wasn’t me,
the gags weren’t me and the material wasn’t personal. Now
that I’m very relaxed onstage and I’m more myself … how I
am offstage is exactly how I am onstage. And that’s exactly
how I think it should be.’6 For Brand, dropping the deadpan
was an important move, and she took concrete action to
achieve it:

I just felt that I had to loosen up a bit and be a bit more

conversational and have a few more strings to my bow,
rather than just going de-der-de-der-de-der at people. So the
way I did that was I deliberately asked people to put me in
as a compère. So that I knew that I would have to sort of
talk to the audience, and I would have to kind of be more
spontaneous than just doing my set.7

Harry Hill, on the other hand, liked deadpan comedy but

found he was incapable of doing it. When he started on the
London comedy circuit, he admired deadpan comics like
Stewart Lee, Jack Dee, Norman Lovett, Arnold Brown and
Jo Brand:
 Delivery 385

[T]here’s something I do love about that, because it is so

dependent on the kind of delivery and the quality of the
gags, you know, there’s no kind of frills – moving around,
you know, pulling funny faces, none of that. So when I
started off, I wanted to be like that.

In an endearing admission, he explains why he never achieved

the deadpan style: ‘I mean my problem with being a deadpan
comedian was I used to smile a lot. I’m a bit too pleased with
myself, so, you know, I would laugh at my own jokes.’8
For some comics, deadpan is more than a mask to hide
behind, and it becomes the style they adopt for their whole
career. Jack Dee is widely known as a deadpan comedian,
but having said this, his delivery is by no means expres-
sionless. He’s probably been given the label because of his
miserable, surly, cynical persona. Unlike many stand-ups, he
never seems to be making an effort, and rarely shows any
obvious sign of warmth towards his audience. His delivery
is calm, slow and quiet. His eyes seem cold, his lids slightly
lowered. When his face is in repose, the corners of his mouth
turn down.
But this is only his neutral state onstage – he often moves
out of it. Sometimes, his eyes will gleam, or he will smile or
maybe even laugh. He screws his face up, or impersonates
other people. The laughter he gets from the way he says ‘Are
you?’ in his Gladiators routine gives a strong indication of the
range and skill of his expression. The subtlety of Dee’s perfor-
mance suggests that for him, deadpan hasn’t been adopted as
an artificial style, but is a natural form of expression extending
out of his offstage self.
Steven Wright is a very different deadpan. He started
performing in American comedy clubs in the late 1970s,
and has perfected possibly the most minimalist style in the
whole of stand-up comedy. He delivers a series of short jokes
– one after another – which give a jarringly bizarre view of
reality, like: ‘I got up the other day and everything in my
apartment had been stolen and replaced with an exact replica.
386 GETTING THE JOKE

[laughter]’ Or: ‘It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t wanna paint

it. [laughter]’9
His voice is deep, slightly croaky, and it sounds as if
overwhelming weariness has robbed it of all expression. There
is none of Dee’s range – but even here there is still inflection and
rhythm, albeit incredibly subtle. He points out that because he
is so deadpan, ‘everything is magnified’, so that even the way
he takes a sip of water, or the exact moment he puts his glass
back on the stool can make a difference: ‘You can take the
pause in jokes right to the edge – almost of boredom, and in
doing so you create a tension which is palpable.’10

The range of expression

In reducing expression to a minimum, what Wright does is
to highlight how much of it other comedians use. One of the
difficulties of describing a moment of stand-up is that there’s so
much going on, more than any formal system of transcription
could take in, no matter how scientific or precise. There are
infinite subtleties of tone of voice, pace of delivery, facial
expression, hand gesture and whole body movement.
Pretty much the whole of a joke’s funniness can be contained
in the merest gleam of an eye or the quirky way a particular
word is pronounced. Steve Martin has written about the
pleasure he found in the physical, non-verbal aspects of his
performance: ‘Some nights it seemed that it wasn’t the line
that got the laugh, but the tip of my finger. I tried to make
voice and posture as crucial as jokes and gags.’11
Some comics really explore the full range of human
expression. In a performance in the late 1990s, Bill Bailey
suddenly forms his hands into beak-like mouths, turning
them into puppets. His hands engage in a quickfire argument,
the right apparently a dog, the left a cat: ‘“Rruff!” “Mew!”
“Rruff!” “Mew!” “Rruff!” “Mew!” “Rruff!” “Mew!”’ The
right hand starts slightly higher than the left, and as the
 Delivery 387

argument continues, he forces the left further down. Bailey’s

face takes it all in, staring with eyes wide.
Suddenly the left hand leaps up and springs open, fingers
splayed, and the voice Bailey gives it changes from a squeaky
‘Mew!’ to a loud, deep, guttural, ‘BLUUUURGGHH!!!
YUURGGH!!’ The dog hand mutters a muffled, ‘Oh my
Gawd!’ and bounces off, apparently terrified. The cat hand
reverts to its normal shape with a ‘Bip! Zzhhhhh!’ – and
chuckles to itself. Bailey lowers his hand, and looks at the
audience. His eyes gleam with self-satisfaction and expec-
tation, as if to say, ‘Well that’s given you plenty to think about
– what did you make of it?’12
There are small waves of laughter as the sequence starts
and these build as the argument between the hands heats
up. There’s a full laugh when the dog hand runs away, and
another when the left hand transforms back from monster to
cat. When Bailey looks at the audience at the end, there’s a big
round of applause. It’s amazing how effective a naked hand
puppet show can be.
At the Orchard Theatre, Dartford, in June 2004, Ross
Noble generates a huge amount of energy onstage, sweating
through his shirt by the end of it. He demonstrates what it
would be like to be a puppet, being controlled by someone
else. Putting his whole body to work, he flops about the stage,
and whilst he may lack a formal training in mime, he’s surpris-
ingly convincing in suggesting that he’s being manipulated by
an external force. In another routine, he starts punching and
karate kicking an imaginary panda with real gusto. In yet
another, he flops his long, curly hair over to one side of his
head and pretends it’s a squirrel.13
As well as taking pure silliness into the realms of art, such
routines raise one of the hoary old questions people ask about
stand-up: ‘Which is more important, material or delivery?’ Of
course, it’s an impossible conundrum. The ideal is that the two
are inseparable and indivisible, working together in perfect
synthesis. In fact, there are some primarily verbal or conceptual
jokes which would survive well on the printed page, and other
388 GETTING THE JOKE

examples where the entire gag resides in the way it’s performed
– even if it contains words. Al Murray provides an excellent
example of the latter, in a routine in which the Pub Landlord
argues that anything sounds suspicious in a German accent,
adding: ‘Somewhere in the background you can hear the whine
of bomb bay doors opening, yeah? [laughter]’ To illustrate the
point, he recites the nursery rhyme ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little
Star’, with a stereotypical German character­isation which is
clearly drawn from an interrogating SS Officer in a war movie.
He starts in a staccato shout: ‘TVINKLE!! – TVINKLE!!
LIDDLE SCHTAAAAARRRGH!!! [laughter]’ Now he marches
slowly and deliberately across the stage, his arms and legs
straight and rigid, making the audience laugh all the way across.
He stops, points his finger at his mouth as if to indicate mock-
puzzlement. His voice becomes slower, calmer, more sing-song,
with an almost obscene lilt: ‘How I vundaarr – [laughter]’
Giving a dismissive, almost camp little wave: ‘Vot you are.
[laughter]’ Snapping back to full-volume staccato, starting at an
absurdly high pitch: ‘UP ABOVE!! [laughter] THE VORLD!
SO! HIGH!!’ Making a diamond shape with his hands: ‘LIKE A
DIAMUNT! IN THE SKY!!’ Pushing the mania to boiling point,
the words twisted almost beyond recognition: ‘DVINGLE-UH!
DVINGLE-UH! LULULULIDDLE SCHTAAAAARRRGH!!!
[laughter]’ Now he relaxes and mimes sucking on a cigarette, as
if post-coital. This gets a big laugh, and one or two people clap.
He runs the two fingers holding the mimed cigarette slowly
along each eyebrow, and his voice becomes slow and lilting
again: ‘How – I vundarr. [laughter]’ Miming another drag on
the cigarette: ‘Vot you aaare. [laughter]’14
Obviously, delivery is everything here. The material is just a
nursery rhyme – a well-known text, not normally thought of as
comical, which the Pub Landlord himself describes as ‘devoid
of content’. I’ve found the challenge of trying to conjure up this
routine for the reader a bit like creative writing, and although
I might have succeeded in giving a hint of what’s funny about
the actual performance here, I realise that I’ve missed a lot of
the nuance and detail that makes it work. As Murray explains,
 Delivery 389

the richness of what he does here was discovered by devel-

oping the routine night after night in front of an audience:

[F]our or five shows in it was getting bigger and more extrav-

agant and you’d find new things … I mean I did sit down
and write, ‘How about doing nursery rhymes in a German
accent? That would make them sound fishy, wouldn’t it?’But
I never thought, ‘Well I’ll act it out like this, and at that point
I’ll do this, that and the other.’ That all came directly from
performance – because there’s no way of knowing actually
what an audience is going to go for in that.15

When comedians laugh

When I was a kid, I remember being told that only bad
comedians laugh at their own jokes. I don’t know what the
thinking behind this was. Maybe the idea was that it makes
the comic look conceited? Or perhaps it was seen as a sign of
desperation? Certainly, it was a ridiculous thing to say, given
the number and variety of highly skilled, successful comedians
who do actually laugh at their own jokes, including Gladys
Morgan, Tommy Cooper, Ken Goodwin, Billy Connolly,
Phyllis Diller, Eddie Murphy and Bill Hicks. In fact, the
phenomenon predates stand-up. In music hall, performers
like Billy Williams and Randolph Sutton would use a kind of
laugh-singing technique, chuckling in a slightly forced way
between the verses and even while they sang the lines.16
There are plenty of good reasons why stand-ups laugh
onstage, but conceit and desperation aren’t among them. In
fact, laughter can become a key part of the overall delivery,
creating a number of different effects. First of all, when the
comedian laughs, it signals that something is particularly
funny. Billy Connolly often laughs in anticipation of what
he’s going to say, and this creates great expectation in the
audience. After all, if Connolly’s laughing, it must be pretty
390 GETTING THE JOKE

funny.17 When the comic laughs after the punchline, it creates

a lovely moment of sharing – performer and audience are
united in their enjoyment of a funny idea.
Laughing onstage also suggests authenticity. It implies a
moment where the comedian loses control and seems to allow
us a quick glimpse of the real person behind the façade of the
stage persona. I was never a habitual laugher when I was a
stand-up, but there were times when I cracked up onstage, and
they were among the most glorious moments I experienced.
Laughing is always a pleasure, but to experience that moment
of joy and unselfconsciousness in such a public context – and
for my laughter to boost the audience’s – felt like a very special
kind of acceptance.
Particular comedians put their own laughter to more
particular uses. Phyllis Diller, for example, had an amazing
laugh that veered from an uncontrolled gurgle to a raucous
bark. For her, the laugh was part of her eccentricity, something
which glued together the gags and the persona. Her comedy
revelled in grotesqueness – both her own and that of the world
around her – and the laughter was outrageous enough to fit
in perfectly. Its sonic properties were such that sometimes
simply hearing her go, ‘Ah ha ha ha ha ha!!’ was all that was
needed to make the audience laugh. She also used the laugh as
punctuation, adding beats to get the rhythm of a line perfect:
‘But we still have a lot of fun in here every night, one woman
nearly died laughing, ha ha! But I’m all right now. [laughter]’
The ‘ha ha!’ adds an extra clause to the set up, giving the
sentence a three-part structure. It also cements the idea that
Diller is celebrating her own success – thus sharpening the
contrast with the downbeat delivery of the punchline.18
Eddie Murphy’s laugh is a kind of catchphrase. By the
time he made his 1983 concert film Delirious, his laugh had
become his trademark, thanks to appearances on Saturday
Night Live and a starring role in the previous year’s movie
48 Hours. At the end of a long routine in which Murphy
plays a man drunkenly accusing a female relative of being a
Bigfoot, there’s a big response from the audience and as the
 Delivery 391

cheering, whistling and applause dies down, somebody shouts

something. Murphy replies, ‘Do that shit again?’ and does
the laugh. It’s a salvo of deep, rasping inhalations, bringing
to mind an asthmatic walrus. Just hearing this familiar sound
makes the audience laugh, cheer and whistle.19
Bill Hicks has a very different kind of laugh – a thin, bitter
ironic one. Whereas most stand-ups use laughter to highlight
how funny something is, Hicks uses it to emphasise how
unfunny something is. Sometimes it’s a way of demonstrating
his bitterness, like when he recalls his girlfriend leaving him and
taking the TV, the bed and the VCR with her. Other times it’s
a way of introducing apparently unpromising subject matter,
like abortion. ‘Let’s talk about mass murder of young, unborn
children, see if we can’t coalesce into one big, healthy gut laugh,’
he says, and lets out a chuckle so mirthless it’s almost demonic.20
What he says might suggest he opposes abortion, but in fact he
goes on to make a scathing comic attack on so-called pro-lifers.
The point of talking about ‘mass murder of young, unborn
children’ is to really ram home how unsuitable the subject is
for stand-up. By laughing at the very idea of this, Hicks does
the opposite of sharing amusement with the audience. When
his laugh finishes, there’s just silence. It’s as if he’s emphasising
how different he is from the people he’s playing to, showing that
what he finds funny is very different from what they find funny.
Or it could be a joyless admission of how unfunny the world
can be. Either way, it’s a very unusual strategy for a comedian.

Notes
1 Interview with Jo Brand, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1 April 2004
2 Interview with Dave Gorman, by telephone, 29 June 2004
3 Interview with Shazia Mirza, by telephone, 28 June 2004
4 Interview with Jo Brand, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1 April 2004
5 Interview with Dave Gorman, by telephone, 29 June 2004
392 GETTING THE JOKE

6 Interview with Shazia Mirza, by telephone, 28 June 2004

7 Interview with Jo Brand, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1 April 2004
8 Interview with Harry Hill, by telephone, 26 August 2004
9 Both examples from ‘7’s and Museums’, Steven Wright, I Have
a Pony, WEA Records, no date, 7599253352 OMCD 1150
10 John Hind, The Comic Inquisition: Conversations with Great
Comedians, London: Virgin, 1991, p. 53
11 Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, London:
Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, 2008, p. 141
12 Bill Bailey, Live: Cosmic Jam, Universal, 2005, 8236484
13 Ross Noble, Noodlemeister, Orchard Theatre, Dartford, 24
June 2004
14 Al Murray, The Pub Landlord Live: My Gaff, My Rules,
Universal, 2001, 8208892
15 Interview with Al Murray, by telephone, 2 April 2012
16 For example, see Billy Williams, ‘When Father Papered the
Parlour’ (various artists, Gems of the Music Hall, Flapper/
Pavilion Records, 1993, PAST CD 7005), and Randolph
Sutton ‘My Girl’s Mother’ (various artists, Music Hall Alive:
Edwardian Stars Recorded on Stage 1938 & 1948, Music Hall
Masters, 2003, MHM022/3)
17 Tony Allen makes this point well in Attitude: Wanna
Make Something of It? The Secret of Stand-Up Comedy,
Glastonbury: Gothic Image Publications, 2002, pp. 29–30
18 See Phyllis Diller, The Best of Phyllis Diller, Laugh.com,
2002, LGH1112 (esp. ‘The Way I Dress’ for an example of
Diller’s laugh making the audience laugh; and ‘Don’t Eat Here’
for the quoted joke). Diller herself acknowledged using her
laugh as punctuation ( see Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny:
The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s, New York:
Pantheon Books, 2003, p. 231)
19 Eddie Murphy, Delirious!, CIC Video/Eddie Murphy
Television, 1983, VHR 2162
20 See ‘You Can’t Get Bitter’, Bill Hicks, LoveLaughterAndTruth,
Rykodisc, 2002, RCD 10631; and ‘Pro Life’, Bill Hicks, Rant
in E-Minor, Rykodisc, 1997, RCD 10353
 CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Instant character

There’s something that occurs so regularly in stand-up that

anybody who has spent any time watching it will recognise it.
The comic is telling a gag, recalling an anecdote, talking about
a particular person or describing a fantasy, and in the course
of this, he or she lapses into acting it out. This is different from
a formal character piece signalled by a change of costume, like
Victoria Wood’s yellow-bereted Lancashire girl or Stacey Leanne
Paige, her hilariously savage parody of cruise-singer-turned-
celebrity Jane McDonald. The kind of acting out I’m talking
about involves an instant transition from narrator to character,
achieved through tone of voice, posture or facial expression.
There’s a huge variety of characters a stand-up can momentarily
become, from the stereotyped Irishman of the formulaic gag, to
a celebrity or a politician or just a particular type of person.
Even animals and inanimate objects can be characterised.
This is an incredibly common mode of performance in
stand-up, and most comedians use it in their acts. Eddie Izzard
calls it ‘the motherlode’.1 Yet it has so rarely been discussed
that it doesn’t even have a standard word or phrase to describe
it. American comedian Judy Carter calls it ‘mimicking’.2 Tony
Allen has labelled it ‘snapshot characterisation’.3 The phrase I
coined myself – when working on stand-up with students – is
‘instant character’.
The roots of instant character can be found in the kind
of acting that takes place in everyday conversation. A book
394 GETTING THE JOKE

published in the 1920s notes how shop girls often amuse

each other by imitating the customers, in a way which ‘would
delight the heart of a vaudeville audience’.4 Some comedians
have directly cited such everyday performance as an influence.
George Carlin, for example, recalls how his mother would act
things out: ‘She’d come home from the bus and tell a story
about something that just happened, and she could do all five
characters.’5
In his classic essay ‘The Street Scene’, Bertolt Brecht
discusses how witnesses to a traffic accident act out what they
saw to explain it more clearly, and sees this as a ‘basic model’
for his epic theatre. In a footnote, he also talks about comical
instant character in everyday conversation, for example when
a next-door neighbour takes off ‘the rapacious nature of
our common landlord’. He notes that such characterisations
can be linked together with ‘some form of commentary’, a
description which strongly suggests a stand-up routine. He
also remarks how this kind of characterisation is inflected
with the performer’s attitude: ‘The imitation is summary
or selective, deliberately leaving out those occasions where
the landlord strikes our neighbour as “perfectly sensible”,
though such occasions of course occur. He is far from giving a
rounded picture; for that would have no comic impact at all.’6

Attitude
This is a great description of how instant character tends to
work in stand-up – the comedian’s attitude is perfectly clear
in the way he or she performs a characterization, and a lot
of the humour flows from this. In a routine from the early
1990s, Jack Dee imitates his politically correct neighbour,
who wears a badge which says, ‘You smoke – I choke.’ Dee
adopts the neighbour’s voice to say the words on the badge,
making it sound infantile and slightly croaky. When he’s said
the words, to make the point more clearly, he characterises the
 Instant character 395

neighbour’s face. The eyes become exaggeratedly sincere, the

brow wrinkles with concern, the mouth turns further down at
the corners, and he moves his head about slightly to suggest
excessive earnestness. It gets a laugh. He continues: ‘“You
smoke, I choke. [laughter] ‘S my cause, that is. [laughter] You
smoke, I go ahcuh hugh huh huh!” [laughter]’7
This last bit is Dee’s impression of his neighbour’s coughing.
He curls up his upper lip, screws up his eyes, and emits a
pathetic, squeaky cough which sounds like crying. The whole
characterisation is shot through with the contempt which Dee
feels for this person. It’s reminiscent of a school bully imitating
somebody to make fun of them, generating a hilarity born of
cruelty.
In this case, the attitude encapsulated in the charac-
terisation is a kind of personal, disgruntled cynicism, but
in other cases it’s more political. In his 2001 Dambusters
show, Mark Thomas chronicles the successful prank-laden
campaign he helped to run against the Ilisu Dam project,
which would have wreaked environmental havoc in Turkey
and devastated the local Kurdish population. One of the
characters which Thomas brings to life in the story is Lord
Weir, the chairman of Balfour Beatty PLC, the company
contracted to build the dam. Weir is introduced with a
compact verbal sketch: ‘He reeks of alcohol, he carries a
stick, he is a ball of gout with a mouth. [laughter]’ When
Thomas makes Weir speak, he gives him the stereotyped
voice of a patronising aristocrat. A few jokes down the line,
he cranks the characterisation up a few notches into the
realm of pure caricature:

That man should just be followed by a bloke playing the

organ, everywhere. [laughter] ‘Hello, my name’s Lord
Weir!’ bam-bam-bam-baaaam! [laughter] ‘Hurr ha ha harr!
I’m a little bit camp, but I’m very frightening!’ bam-bam-
bam-baaaam! [laughter] ‘My name’s Lord Weir, I was
touched as a boy, it hurt me, but I liked it!’ bam-bam-bam-
baaaam! [laughter]’8
396 GETTING THE JOKE

It’s a cartoon melodrama, with Thomas imitating both the

villain and the bam-bam-bam-baaaam! of the organ. The
Lord Weir voice has become irresistibly funny, with a gleeful,
gloating tone and a fabulously evil laugh. Thomas points out
that his characterisation of Weir is based on actual meetings
with the man, but acknowledges his own bias:

You know, both him and I would see each other in very,
very strict cartoon terms … Actually I think I said … you
couldn’t have got better if you’d put him in a top hat and
given him a cigar, you know. When you say that, you’re not
only describing him, but you’re also making an admission
of actually how you’re seeing him.9

Both Dee and Thomas do what Brecht’s next-door neighbour

did when imitating the landlord: they present a selective
characterisation which shows their particular view of the
people they are imitating. Interestingly, Thomas acknowledges
Brecht as an important influence:

I’ve come at it from a slightly odd angle [of] someone who,

you know, studied theatre arts and has always had this kind
of eye on Bertolt Brecht … He was one of the most inspira-
tional and influential writers that I ever encountered – and
thinkers on theatre … That as much as, you know, Lenny
Bruce and Dave Allen has influenced what I’ve done.10

While Dee’s neighbour could well be a generic, fictional

liberal do-gooder, Thomas’s Lord Weir is a real person, and
this takes us back to the ethical question of how stand-ups
deal with the real world onstage, and particularly how they
represent other people. Dambusters also features Thomas’s
friends and colleagues, like Nick Hildyard of campaigning
organisation The Corner House, and Kerim Yildiz, a Kurdish
human rights campaigner and former prisoner of conscience.
Unsurprisingly, Thomas’s characterisation of these people is
far more sympathetic than his sizzling cartoon of Lord Weir.
 Instant character 397

He acknowledges onstage that representing people he loves

and finds inspirational is ‘really fucking odd’.11 However, as
Thomas points out, even Nick and Kerim are not charac-
terised with literal exactitude:

They were very funny, because they’d bring along their

friends, and their friends were the most interesting things,
because they’d say, ‘Oh – that was Nick!’ Do you know
what I mean, even though Nick said, ‘It doesn’t sound
like me!’ I said, ‘Well, your accent’s quite hard, Nick, but
you know, it’s actually not about sounding like you. It’s
about getting what you’re like and what you’re like in
that moment and conveying it. And it doesn’t matter that
I don’t enunciate the words exactly the same as you. It’s
a thumbnail sketch that’s there to kind of quickly show
people roughly what you’re like.’12

Thomas’s version of Kerim bears a slight resemblance to

Harry Enfield’s 1980s Greek-Cypriot kebab shop character
Stavros, and comes complete with a catchphrase, ‘Was
hilarious!’ This is liberally deployed in Kerim’s anecdotes
about his abuse at the hands of the Turkish authorities,
his cunning attempts to outwit them and the problems he
experiences with British immigration officials who keep
mistaking him for Saddam Hussein. At the end of the first
half of the show, Thomas describes how he felt when the
real Kerim first saw the impersonation. Asking, ‘What right
have I got to tell his stories?’ he recalls how nervous he felt
about facing Kerim, and hearing how he would react to the
way he was represented. He brings the moment to a head by
giving Kerim’s reaction: ‘Was hilarious!’13 In fact, Thomas’s
portrayal of Kerim is steeped in affection and respect which
transmits to the audience:

We did a couple of gigs in Edinburgh, to raise money for

Kurdish human rights. And we did a panel afterwards
and I introduced Kerim, and he got this amazing round of
398 GETTING THE JOKE

applause, you know, because they knew him, they felt they
knew him, and in many ways they did.14

Techniques of instant character

Instant character works not by representing people, animals
or objects with literal exactitude, but by doing just enough
with the face, voice and body to paint a picture in the mind
of the audience. This makes the stage extraordinarily pliable,
capable of being filled with a whole universe of characters,
events and sound effects – all conjured up at the comic’s
command. Some stand-ups act out whole scenes, which can
be extremely rich and nuanced.
In a 1968 routine, Richard Pryor shows a theatre company
visiting a prison, portraying a whole cast of characters to do
so. He becomes a gruff-voiced guard introducing the company
to the prisoners, then a pretentious actor with a pseudo-
English accent who explains that the play is about ‘a young,
southern girl who falls in love with a black’. Hearing this,
the prison guard tries to stop the play, complaining it is ‘a
little too controversial’, but the actor explains, ‘It’s quite all
right, the nigger gets killed.’ Then Pryor enacts a play-within-
a-routine, playing all the characters: a white patriarch; his
son; his daughter; and Jim the blacksmith, an outrageous
stereotype of a subservient southern black man. The play ends
with Ben telling the son that he is going to marry his sister,
but instead of the expected lynching, the son accepts Ben as
his future brother-in-law, explaining, ‘We’ll be the first in the
South to know true freedom and true love.’ Outraged at this,
the prison guard interrupts the play, demanding the ending
he was promised: ‘Nobody leave, I wanna dead nigger out
here!’15
There’s an amazing complexity in the levels of fiction in
this routine, and the fact that Pryor can become a whole cast
of identifiable characters shows his outstanding technical
 Instant character 399

excellence as a performer. In a later routine, he talks about

hunting in the woods, creating a set of images which range
from the delicate to the slapstick. Observing that snakes are
so frightening that they make you run into trees, he brings
this to life by quickly turning his body and walking into his
hand, which he has raised to head height to indicate the tree
trunk. ‘Pah!’ he says, voicing the impact of face against wood,
and the audience laugh at the knockabout image he’s created
so simply.
Later, he shows a deer drinking water by bending his
body forward, side on from the audience and lapping with
his mouth. For an instant, he becomes the hunter again,
making the leaves crunch as he steps forward. Then he’s the
deer again, snapping upright, facing the audience and staying
absolutely still. His frightened eyes move from left to right,
and there’s a big laugh and some applause at the accuracy of
the image. He extends the moment, getting waves of laughter
by making the deer narrow its eyes suspiciously, look behind
itself and tip its head to one side with a suspicious look on
its face.16 What makes this so effective is that he does so little
to create such a vivid comic image. Just as in the acting that
Brecht envisaged, the performer is just as clearly present as
the character he is representing, with the picture of the deer
superimposed on Pryor’s body.
The scope of the scenes which comedians act out in their
stand-up acts is increased by the fact that modern audiences
are familiar with cinematic convention. This means they are
easily able to cope with a sudden scene change. Lenny Bruce
would directly refer to the language of cinema when acting
out his routines. In his appearance on The Steve Allen Show,
5 April 1959, Bruce performs a routine about a boy building
a model aeroplane and getting high on the glue. He exclaims,
‘I’m the Louis Pasteur of junkiedom!’ and plans to exploit
his discovery. Then Bruce changes the scene: ‘Cut to the toy
store.’ In the toy store, we see another child asking for various
items before getting to what he’s really come to buy – two
thousand tubes of airplane glue. The simple device of using
400 GETTING THE JOKE

the cinematic term ‘cut to’ allows an easy transition. His next
routine is a parody of a Hollywood issue movie, and he uses
a similar device, switching between scenes with the phrase,
‘Now we dissolve to the exterior of the schoolyard.’17
Today, audiences are so familiar with the idea of instant
character scenes in stand-up that such obvious devices are no
longer necessary to effect a transition. Ross Noble describes
how he works when he’s acting something out:

[Y]ou’re actually making people visualise what’s happening,

obviously with your own physicality … Setting up things
on the stage, and then obviously sort of playing around
with people’s perspective of what’s happening … Like when
I was doing … the Jesus thing … One minute, Jesus is on
the ground, looking right up … to that guy up the top
there … and then by just standing and, like, looking down,
instantly the people watching the stage go from there, all of
a sudden … the camera’s gone up there.18

Functions of instant character

Sometimes, stand-ups create running characters which take
on a life of their own, reappearing in show after show –
thus helping the comic to build a familiar rapport with the
audience. In Richard Pryor’s 1983 concert film Here and
Now, he finishes a routine then wanders over to where the
microphone stand and the stool are. The expression on his
face changes, and he starts to talk in a different voice: ‘You
know – when I first –’ He pauses, chewing imaginary tobacco.
The audience applaud cheer and whistle.
This response might mystify anybody unfamiliar with
Pryor’s earlier work, but the audience are showing their recog-
nition of a familiar character. Mudbone – an old southern
black man with a penchant for tall tales – was brought into
Pryor’s act in the 1970s, and unlike, say, Victoria Wood’s
 Instant character 401

running characters, he is conjured up without the aid of a

costume change. A hesitant, barking voice, an infirm posture
and a chewing motion with the mouth is all that it takes,
and by the time Here and Now is filmed, the audience can
recognise him from the smallest cues.
Similarly, Jim Davidson has a named running character
which he produces with just a change of voice. Davidson’s
character is also supposed to be black, but unlike Mudbone,
Chalkie is very much a white person’s crude stereotype. His
voice is instantly recognisable – a cartoonish West Indian
accent, in a strangulated tone with a pitch slightly higher
than that of Davidson’s normal voice. As well as cropping up
regularly in Davidson’s act, Chalkie may have had a life beyond
it. Certainly, Jimmy Jones – another comic who emerged from
the working men’s clubs – used exactly the same Chalkie voice
when he imitated West Indians in the 1970s.19 Tony Allen
remembers seeing many acts doing similar characters when
he made forays into the club scene at the end of that decade.20
Another very useful function of instant character is to allow
the comic to comment on how he or she is being received
by the audience. Bill Hicks does this in his savage routine in
which he asks people who work in advertising and marketing
to kill themselves. He takes on the character of the ad men he
imagines are in the audience, and voices their responses to his
suggestion. Ben Elton uses a similar technique. After a rude
word or an obscene reference, he puts on an uptight voice
with a poshed-up northern accent – which vaguely resembles
that of Mary Whitehouse – and protests: ‘Well Mr Elton,
frankly that was a lovely observed piece of satire and suddenly
you had to bring your penis into it, [laughter] I don’t know
why!’21 Mark Thomas does much the same thing after a brief
reference to ‘fistfucking’, but in this case, he imagines different
kinds of reaction, using first a posh, uptight voice, then a
shaky, slightly seedy one:

Ha ha, there’s some of you out there, just going, ‘I, I didn’t
know it was going to be like this, darling, I really – [laughter]
402 GETTING THE JOKE

Fistfucking in the first two minutes? Marvellous!’ [laughter]

And then there’s half a dozen of you in there going, ‘I’ve
got a website that I need to tell ‘im about,’ [laughter] so
the, um – 22

Voicing the audience’s thoughts is a common technique, and

it’s useful in various ways. It allows comedians to anticipate
and neutralise any potential bad reactions to what they’re
saying. It’s another way of drawing attention to their own
performance processes – an effective trick in stand-up. Also,
by showing that the comedian understands how the audience
might be reacting, he or she demonstrates control of the
situation, as well as strengthening the rapport between stage
and auditorium.
A third function of instant character is simply to allow the
comic to show off. Acting out different scenes, performing
simple mime and demonstrating a range of voices and vocal
sound effects allows comedians to show the range of perfor-
mance they’re capable of. If a particular characterisation
is performed with enough energy and panache, it can get a
round of applause in its own right, regardless of the gag or
comic idea it’s tied to.
Examples of this range from African-American comedian
Jimmy Walker demonstrating for the white punters the way
the MC at the Harlem Apollo would introduce him; to
Lenny Henry doing a full verse and chorus of Prince’s ‘Kiss’
on the slender pretext of this being what he felt like doing
when he played the Mandela concert at Wembley Stadium;
to Al Murray’s crazed impression of a Frenchman repeatedly
shouting ‘I call myself Marcel!’23 In each case – while there
are laughs along the way – it is the sheer chutzpah which has
the biggest impact. The comic pushes and pushes the charac-
terisation, driving the energy up, and when the piece ends, the
audience explode into an unavoidable round of applause.
 Instant character 403

Emotional range
Perhaps the most extraordinary use of instant character is when
comedians act out painful, traumatic or terrifying experiences.
At the Laughs in the Park festival in St Albans in July 2011,
Tommy Tiernan presents the crowd – who are presumably at
an open air comedy gig to have a straightforward, uncompli-
cated good time – with a routine about being gathered around
a relative’s deathbed. In a powerful, hushed voice, interspersed
with long pauses, he slowly, masterfully ratchets up the
tension. Even with all the potential distractions of performing
out of doors, he manages to summon up pure, rapt silences.
He talks about the dying relative’s dying breath – ‘It’s called
the death breath’ – and imitates it in a chilling rasp. He leaves
a daringly long pause, during which it seems the relative has
finally expired – then imitates another breath. Now he adds
his own comment: ‘However much you love that person –
[laughter] you think, “Oh for fuck’s sake!”’24 What makes
this such a audacious bit of comedy is that the build-up to
the final, incongruous exasperation is properly imbued with
the emotion of the upsetting situation he’s portraying. On a
technical level, the performance skills he employs in acting the
scene out are formidable.
Billy Connolly re-enacts an incident from his childhood, on
holiday in Rothesay. Connolly becomes his father, instructing
his younger self to take a family photograph on the Box
Brownie camera. Then he becomes himself as a child, small
and vulnerable, but canny enough to know what will happen
if he messes it up. Frozen by the pressure, the young Connolly
struggles until his father beats him around the head.
It’s a brilliant piece of performance. The father is a rounded
character, not a two-dimensional monster. His first words are
kind and paternal, and the bad temper and violence emerge bit
by bit. Connolly’s recreation of his own childish wailing is a
hilarious yodel, which gets gales of laughter in its own right.
As he gets more upset, this changes to ‘Buddhist chanting
404 GETTING THE JOKE

mode’, a guttural, rhythmic grunt: ‘Mm-nm-ng-mn-mn-nm-

ningh-nun-yun-nggh-nn-naiyayyyy-deewaydutt!!’ This draws
out more big laughs.25 It’s the detail of the acting which does
most of the work. The scene Connolly paints with his voice
and body is vivid and upsetting and – as with Tiernan – it’s
a testament to his skill that he transforms it into something
which the audience can laugh at.
Richard Pryor effects a similar transformation by
re-enacting his heart attack. Twisting his right fist in the
centre of his chest, he makes his heart talk in a fierce, threat-
ening voice: ‘Thinkin’ ‘bout dyin’ now, aintcha?’ His own
voice is a frantic, panic-stricken falsetto: ‘Yeah, I’m thinkin’
‘bout dyin’, I’m thinkin’ ‘bout dyin’!! [laughter]’ The angry
heart replies: ‘You didn’t think about it when you was eatin’
all that pork! [laughter]’
‘Pork’ is emphasised with another twist of the fist, and
Pryor keels over from his knees to his back, writhing on the
floor, his eyes wrinkled hard shut, his mouth wide open in
a silent scream. It’s a truly amazing moment, because while
Pryor recreates his agony across the floor of the stage, the
audience’s laughter erupts into a storm of applause and
whistling.26 A man is reliving a physical trauma that could
easily have killed him, and the audience is ecstatic.
The ability of comics like Tiernan, Connolly and Pryor to
present something so naked and raw, to act it out so well, and
to turn it into something funny is truly remarkable. Stand-up
comedy is thought of as merely popular entertainment, but I
defy anybody to find anything more daring and profound in
the realm of theatre and performance than in routines like
this.
Clearly, stand-up can have an emotional range that goes far
beyond just getting laughs. Sometimes comedians can provoke
unexpected responses. Phill Jupitus has a bit where he talks
about his fear of spiders. Obviously, this is not in the same
league of trauma as being beaten as a child or having a heart
attack, but Jupitus still conjures up an evocative scene. He
talks about helping to move some furniture in the cellar with
 Instant character 405

his father-in-law and encountering an enormous arachnid. At

one point, the father-in-law picks it up.
Slowing the pace for dramatic effect, Jupitus says: ‘The
legs of this spider –’ Then he splays the fingers of both hands,
and slowly intertwines them, staring intently at what he’s
doing. There’s an audible groan, as the audience anticipate
the unpleasant image he’s going to create. He clenches the
fingers of his left hand, and wiggles the fingers of his right. The
audience laugh, acknowledging how vividly his simple mime
is showing the wriggling legs of the spider emerging from his
father-in-law’s fist. Then he finishes his sentence: ‘– stickin’ out
from ‘is knuckles.’27 The groan is as interesting as the laugh,
because it shows that Jupitus is doing more than just amusing
his audience. He remembers: ‘I did have a woman burst into
tears and run out of the show in Edinburgh when I did that
bit.’28
One of the things Mark Thomas likes about doing shows
like Dambusters is that they allow him to explore a bigger
emotional range: ‘I’ve found the nice thing about doing kind
of longer shows, like two-hour shows, is that you get a chance
to go through all sorts of different moods. You can take
audiences into places they didn’t expect to go.’29
The end of that show certainly takes the audience to such a
place. He talks about going to a restaurant in Turkey while he
was working on the campaign against the dam. On the next
table are a judge, a prosecutor and an intelligence officer, all
of whom he knows are important in helping to carry out the
Turkish state’s persecution of the Kurds – even though they
are dressed like golfers. He realises that he can’t confront
these people without endangering the people he’s with. This
makes him start to remember all of the Kurds he’s spoken to,
and the stories they have told him. It’s an urgent, furious rant,
detailing appalling human rights abuses:

Each and every one! From the mothers of the disappeared

who sit there in Ankara – Women – who have all their
crime – is to stand on the street, with photographs of their
406 GETTING THE JOKE

loved ones, who have been disappeared – as in Chile, as in

Argentina, as in El Salvador – and they will tell you – how
the police beat them – each and every week when they
stand there with their photograph. And you sit there, and
you go, ‘Fuck, that’s incredible!’ and they lift their shawl,
and you can see – their necks and their shoulders are black
and blue!

The list continues, going through torture techniques, Kurds

forced to walk across a minefield by the Turkish authorities,
and women raped by the military. It’s a terrible, gut wrenching
experience hearing the real stories Thomas has been told, and
his anger takes him to the verge of tears as he gets to the end.
‘And I wanted to kill those golfers!!’ he shouts. ‘I’m a fuckin’
pacifist and I wanted to kill those golfers!’ He briefly describes
a revenge fantasy with a woman emerging from the fountain
in the middle of the restaurant and shooting them dead.
Then his anger is spent. In the aftermath, he is quiet and
shaken. The show ends with him imagining the woman from
the restaurant telling him to go back to Britain and ‘tell them
everything.’ ‘And I haven’t even really touched the surface,’ he
admits, his voice aching with regret. Throughout this whole
sequence, there’s a taut silence in the audience, which stretches
across the long, long pauses he takes.30 Achieving this level of
anger at the end of the show was important to Thomas:

Just from a performance point of view, every night, there

are two things that I did. And one of them was to re-jig that
kind of long list of atrocities. So I’d remind myself of things
that I might not have mentioned the night before, and kind
of include them, and just kind of put them in my mind, that
they would be there.31

Crucially, there is nothing to relieve the anger. There’s no

gag to let the audience off the hook, to release the tension
in a huge, relieving laugh. The only relief comes from the
resounding applause. When I saw the show in Canterbury, the
 Instant character 407

people pouring out of the theatre at the end looked subdued

or shaken. The political effect of choosing to end the show
in this way is clear – the issue is left burning in the minds of
the audience, making it difficult to forget. The artistic effect
is to prove once again how elastic the boundaries of stand-up
comedy are, and show how far it can go beyond its basic remit
of getting a laugh.

Notes
1 Stand-Up with Alan Davies, BBC One, 19 June 2000
2 Judy Carter, Stand-Up Comedy: The Book, New York, Dell
Publishing, 1989, p. 77
3 Tony Allen, A Summer in the Park: A Journal of Speakers’
Corner, London: Freedom Press, 2004, p. 73
4 Frances Donovan in The Saleslady, 1929, cited in Erving
Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, pp. 150–1
5 Franklyn Ajaye, Comic Insights: the Art of Stand-Up Comedy,
Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2002, p. 84
6 John Willett (ed and trans.), Brecht on Theatre, London:
Methuen, 1978, p. 123; also see p. 121
7 Jack Dee Live, Channel 4, 13 October 1995
8 ‘Lord Weir and Mike Welton’, Mark Thomas, Dambusters:
Live 2001 Tour, Laughing Stock, 2003, LAFFCD 0136
9 Interview with Mark Thomas, Clapham, 27 February 2004
10 Interview with Mark Thomas, by telephone, 1 May 2012
11 ‘Eric, Nick and Kerim’, Mark Thomas, Dambusters: Live 2001
Tour, Laughing Stock, 2003, LAFFCD 0136
12 Interview with Mark Thomas, Clapham, 27 February 2004
13 ‘Fluffy Action’, Mark Thomas, Dambusters: Live 2001 Tour,
Laughing Stock, 2003, LAFFCD 0136
14 Interview with Mark Thomas, Clapham, 27 February 2004
15 ‘Prison Play’ on Richard Pryor, …And It’s Deep, Too! The
408 GETTING THE JOKE

Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968–1992), Rhino/

Warner Bros., 2000, RS 76655 (disc one)
16 Richard Pryor, Live in Concert, Revolver Entertainment, 2004,
REVD1806
17 Included in the documentary Lenny Bruce Without Tears,
available as an extra feature on Lenny Bruce, Ladies and
Gentlemen … Lenny Bruce, VDI/Best Medicine Comedy, 2006,
304327
18 Interview with Ross Noble, Orchard Theatre, Dartford,
24 June 2004
19 Jimmy Jones’s West Indian accent can be heard in various
routines on Jimmy Jones, All the Breast: Best from Jimmy
Jones, JJ Records, 1979, JJ0002
20 Tony Allen mentions West Indian impressions on the working
men’s club scene in Attitude: Wanna Make Something of It?
The Secret of Stand-Up Comedy, Glastonbury: Gothic Image
Publications, 2002, p. 83. In private conversations, he’s told
me that many of the comics who did the impressions would
use the name Chalkie
21 Ben Elton, Live 1989, Laughing Stock, 1993, LAFFC 16
22 ‘Farewell to Knobgags’, Mark Thomas, Dambusters: Live 2001
Tour, Laughing Stock, 2003, LAFFCD 0136
23 See ‘The Apollo’, Jimmy Walker, Dyn-O-Mite, Buddah
Records, 1975, BDS 5635; Lenny Henry in Lenny-Live and
Unleashed, BBC One, 27 December 1990; Al Murray in Live
Floor Show, BBC Two, 15 March 2003
24 Laughs in the Park, Verulamium Park, St Albans, 23 July 2011
25 Billy Connolly, Two Bites of Billy, VVL, 1995, 6362523
26 Richard Pryor, Live in Concert, Revolver Entertainment, 2004,
REVD1806
27 Phill Jupitus, Live: Quadrophobia, Universal, 2011, 8285413
28 Interview with Phill Jupitus, BBC Broadcasting House, London,
6 June 2004
29 Interview with Mark Thomas, Clapham, 27 February 2004
30 ‘Dinner with the Murder Machine’, Mark Thomas,
Dambusters: Live 2001 Tour, Laughing Stock, 2003, LAFFCD
0136
31 Interview with Mark Thomas, Clapham, 27 February 2004
 CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Magic

Stand-up comedy happens by magic. Comedians are born

with a fully developed comic talent, and the first time they
ever perform in front of an audience, they are greeted with
gales of laughter. There are different theories to explain this.
Some people believe that the comic emits psychic beams which
cause involuntary laughter in anybody they pass through.
Others think that stand-ups have a symbiotic relationship
with miniature, invisible beings, or ‘Comedy Pixies’, which fly
around the auditorium tickling the entire audience. Or maybe
I’m exaggerating for comic effect?
What certainly is true is that many comedians believe
they are born with their talent. Woody Allen says he learnt
the basics of stand-up very quickly because of instincts
he was born with. Jerry Seinfeld believes he was born
with the ability to find potential material in his everyday
experiences. Dan Aykroyd has argued that Richard Pryor
was born with his talent, that it is in his chemistry, in his
blood. Ken Dodd has implied that his own comic ability
is a gift from God, and his career as a comedian part of
a divine mission:

I get absolutely wonderful reactions from people, you get

some marvellous feedback from the people you’ve enter-
tained, and you think, ‘Good God,’ and I mean Good God,
‘Did I really, was I really able to help that person?’… that
410 GETTING THE JOKE

makes me feel … perhaps I’ve got a reason then, I’ve got a

purpose in life, I’m not just a dot, not just a speck.1

Alexei Sayle has fun with the idea that comedy comes from a
magical ability in his graphic novel Geoffrey the Tube Train
and the Fat Comedian. There’s a footnote about a fictional
music hall comic called Albert “Oo wants to see me luvverley
cockles” Magoogle, who lost his ability during a performance
at the Bristol Hippodrome, when ‘a small pink light was seen
to exit from his right ear.’2 In spite of this, though, Sayle still
believes there is ‘something which is indefinable’ about comic
ability, and argues that some comedians have ‘funny bones’
and others don’t.3

Superstition
It’s also true that comedians tend to be superstitious, and the
phenomenon of lucky clothes seems to be very common. Bill
Bailey says he has done all his best gigs in the same black
shirt: ‘It’s falling to bits, but I’m loath to let it go. It’s got my
superpowers in it.’4 When he first started, Mark Thomas used
to wear a ‘crap suit’ in a ‘subconscious homage to Alexei Sayle
… And it was really rank, it was really bad. But I couldn’t do
the gig unless I was wearing the suit.’5 Rhona Cameron still
likes to wear suits, which is the latest stage of an ongoing
relationship with lucky clothes:

I used to have certain clothes I could never deviate from

in the early years. I’ve never been able to, lately, ever go
on stage without a suit. I would find that unbearable. I’ve
only just progressed to a different type of shoe. I used to
have, in all the years of the circuit I had, like, the one
pair of socks I’d wear, I’d rinse them out at night and
wear them again the next night. And the same with pants
as well.6
 Magic 411

For Andre Vincent, it’s more a question of what he must avoid

wearing:

I went through a point where I seemed to really stink a

room up if I wore green … years ago, really early stages
… I had these really lovely green silk trousers … really
lovely Italian pleated green trousers, and they looked great.
I did two gigs in ‘em. Just died on my hole. And I got a
bit sort of like, ‘It’s green, it’s green, it’s gotta be green.’ …
every now and again, you know, if I’m wearing green …
and something doesn’t get a laugh, that’s where my head
goes. My head goes, ‘It’s ‘cos you got green on.’ And it’s
ridiculous. It’s absolutely ridiculous.7

Sometimes, superstitions attach to something other than

clothing. I once died horribly when I was on with a particular
comedian, and I was never at my best whenever I shared a
bill with him after that. I thought of him as a jinx. Rhona
Cameron would always write out her set list before every
show, even though the material hadn’t changed, and keep
it in her pocket as a ‘security blanket’: ‘And [I] would often
even set out the page in a certain way and I would rarely
deviate from it, because I think you do think you end up being
attached to kind of mini forms of compulsive disorder, and
ritualistic stuff, because it’s comforting.’8 The most supersti-
tious comedian I’ve talked to is Jo Brand, who impressed me
with the number of superstitions she’s had (including touching
wood, an obsession with numbers and lucky socks), and the
specificity of one of her rituals:

[W]hen I first started, I had a really storming gig one night,

and I just happened to have a bit of green toilet paper in my
pocket, and of course after that I just thought that I’ve got
to have some wherever I go. And then of course if I couldn’t
find any green, it was like, ‘Arrgh! … I’m gonna die. It’s
gonna be awful.’ … it was green toilet paper, there were
nine bits, right, like nine sections, so I thought that’s what
412 GETTING THE JOKE

I had to have, so I did that for ages, you know. Probably

for a couple of years. Always had some in my pocket.
Religiously. And then I think one night, there was just no
way of getting any green, so I used white, and it seemed to
work all right.

Why the rituals?

Brand realises that this kind of behaviour was ‘irrational’ and
that she had to wean herself off it. She eventually succeeded:
‘I have to say … now it’s become more like a job, I don’t feel
quite so much that I have the need to … cling on to those
sort of magical crutches in the way that I used to.’9 Rhona
Cameron came to a similar realisation about her clothing
ritual: ‘[T]he one time you break it, you realise it’s nothing
to do with that.’10 Sarah Millican was another who weaned
herself off such superstitions:

I had a lucky bracelet once … It was like 50p from Top

Shop … it wasn’t a quality bracelet, but it was just a little
elasticated bracelet … I wore it quite a long time for gigs
and it was blue. It didn’t even go with everything. But
it was my lucky bracelet. And then I lost it. And was
genuinely nervous about performing. Stupid! I’m quite
intelligent, I don’t believe in shit like that but anyway, I did.
And I performed – and it went really well and I realised it
was just jewellery!11

Comedians become attached to rituals and superstitions

because what they do seems to work almost like magic. They
have the ability to get up in front of a large group of strangers,
and conjure up laughter – a very tangible response which is
largely involuntary. What gives the idea of comedy-as-magic
weight is that funniness is not an inherent property. It’s
elusive, slippery, difficult to pin down. While we can identify
 Magic 413

certain structures in a joke that make it work, ultimately it’s

only funny if you find it funny. The thing that transforms an
ordinary incongruity into a joke is faith. The audience must
believe it is funny. Given that laughter is driven by something
as invisible and delicate as faith, it is not surprising that those
who have to get laughs for a living surround themselves
in mystique, perhaps possessing a mysterious genetic or
God-given power.
However, there is a counter-argument. Tony Allen has
called the ‘natural gift’ behind the comedian’s art a ‘myth’.12
For Jeremy Hardy, successful stand-up is based on learned
techniques:

I do think stand-up is excessively revered. I think it’s just

talking. I think it’s part of the oral tradition, it’s the same
skills as a Hyde Park ranter or a barrister or a teacher,
lecturer, priest, seanchai as it’s called in Irish. It’s platform
speaking, and that’s a skill, but it’s a skill that’s needed in
lots of occupations. There’s all kinds of tricks in stand-up,
but I don’t particularly respect them because they are
tricks.13

Lupino Lane was making a similar argument as early as 1945:

If there is such a thing as a born comedian, why, for

instance, does a brilliant person like Leslie Henson have to
spend hours creating comic ideas and gags? Why does my
old boyhood friend Charles Chaplin take months to make a
picture? … Surely, if these were naturally born comedians,
they wouldn’t have to worry: it would just happen to
them.14

Arguments against the idea of comedy-as-magic reveal

something important, that often tends to get lost in the
mystique – that there is some kind of process behind what we
see onstage in a stand-up comedy act. While it may be true
that what distinguishes a great comedian from a competent
414 GETTING THE JOKE

one is indefinable, and there must be an element of native

talent involved, there is also a methodology at work, which
has been learned by experience. The next two chapters are
a whistle-stop tour through the processes that lie behind a
stand-up comedy act.

Notes
1 In the Psychiatrist’s Chair, BBC Radio 4, 19 August 1987
2 Alexei Sayle and Oscar Zarate, Geoffrey the Tube Train and
the Fat Comedian, London: Methuen, 1987. There are no page
numbers in this book, but the footnote comes at the bottom of
the first full page of comic strip
3 Interview with Alexei Sayle, University of Kent, Canterbury,
21 November 2003
4 Andrew Harrison, ‘This Much I Know: Bill Bailey, Comedian
and Actor, 39, London’, Observer Magazine, 5 October 2003,
p. 8
5 Interview with Mark Thomas, Clapham, 27 February 2004
6 Interview with Rhona Cameron, by telephone, 19 March 2004
7 Interview with Andre Vincent, Central London, 14 July 2004
8 Interview with Rhona Cameron, by telephone, 19 March 2004
9 Interview with Jo Brand, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1 April
2004
10 Interview with Rhona Cameron, by telephone, 19 March 2004
11 Interview with Sarah Millican, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury,
23 April 2012
12 Tony Allen, Attitude: Wanna Make Something of it? The Secret
of Stand-Up Comedy, Glastonbury: Gothic Image Publications,
2002, p. 27
13 Interview with Jeremy Hardy, Streatham, 1 April 2004
14 Lupino Lane, How to Become a Comedian, London: Frederick
Muller, 1945, p. 12
 CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Material

Very rarely do comedians deliver a whole act off the top of

their head. Some preparation is involved, and the jokes have
to come from somewhere. Once upon a time, there was no
real expectation for comedians to write their own material.
Those who could afford to employed writers, those who could
not would beg, borrow or steal their gags. In both vaudeville
and variety, small time comics would steal material from
each other, from the better-known acts or from humorous
magazines and comic joke books.
Once the material was assembled into an act, the same
act could be performed for decades. Indeed, vaudeville
managements were fearful about comedians trying out new
gags, preferring them to stick to tried and tested routines
which were guaranteed to get laughs. On the other hand,
in Britain, George Black – who did so much to prolong
the life of the variety circuit – took comedians to task
for stealing jokes or refusing to spend money on new
material.
Some comics did pay scriptwriters. At the bottom end of
the market were writers who provided books or sheets of
jokes. Further up, there were small-time comedy writers like
Bill McDonnell, a Scots maths teacher who, between 1941
and 1953, sold 725 items to acts like Alec Finlay and Suzette
Tarri. The items he sold included complete acts with song
and patter, or sets of individual gags, and the rights for these
416 GETTING THE JOKE

would differ according to whether they were to be used on

radio or for live performances.
In America, top comedians like Bob Hope would employ
teams of writers. Over the years, he employed 88 of them,
keeping as many as 13 in his team at any one time. Towards
the end of his life, his staff writers earned between $150,000
and $250,000 a year, but the terms of employment were
such that the gags they produced became Hope’s intellectual
property. He continued to employ a couple of writers even
when age and infirmity stopped him from performing, and he
has left behind a massive archive, containing about a million
jokes.
When the sick comedians started breaking through in the
1950s, they promoted the idea that comics should create
their own material. For Lenny Bruce, performers whose
material was provided by writers were ‘fine comedy actors’,
but only those who write their own gags could be called
comedians.1 Even today, some stand-ups still work with
writers. Jack Dee, for example, writes his material in collab-
oration with writer Pete Sinclair, and Jo Brand sometimes
writes with Mark Kelly. Nonetheless, many contemporary
comics come up with their own jokes and routines. The
way they go about doing this differs from comedian to
comedian.

Making jokes
Any joke starts with an idea. It can flash into the comedian’s
brain fully formed or, more likely, hover around as a possi-
bility – a whiff of something that’s odd, kooky, incongruous,
a feeling that something doesn’t make sense, or a new way of
looking at something that flips it on to its head. The pressure
to produce new material never completely goes away, so
stand-ups are constantly searching for those little miasmas of
comic possibility.
 Material 417

Often, the hunger for ideas invades their entire life, and any
everyday interaction can be checked to see if it can be mined
for potential material. For Josie Long, this grows from her
desire for authenticity and honesty:

[B]ecause I do try and write it about what I genuinely have

been thinking and feeling … my whole life becomes really
hypersensitive to it, so like every conversation I have I’m
like, ‘Oh, I might use that, actually,’ and like everything
that I see or do or think suddenly becomes really relevant.2

Sarah Millican makes a note of anything funny she says in

conversations with friends, partner or parents: ‘And it’s awful
because you end up going, “Ha ha!” and everybody laughs,
and then you … go and write it down on your pad or text it
to yourself.’3 What she says here suggests acknowledges the
awkwardness of bringing out the tools of her trade in the
middle of a conversation, to note something down which
she might use onstage. Jimmy McGhie is candid about how
corrosive this kind of thing can be: ‘It’s horrible really to go
through your life almost sort of constantly thinking that what
you’ve said is worthy of going onstage, but sadly that is just
how it is.’4 Marc Maron even jokes about it in his act. In
one routine, his father says something awful to him and he
replies, ‘Let me get my notebook.’5 The audience’s laughter
acknowledges the incongruousness of raiding the personal life
for material.
Assuming the idea doesn’t arrive fully formed, it must then
be honed, crafted and worked into an actual workable joke.
For Jimmy McGhie, this is the hardest stage of the process:

The thing I think I’m most aware of being the most difficult
part of generating material is to get those scribbles and
actually work on them. There’s a middle bracket. There’s
‘generate the idea, have the little idea’, you know. And then
there’s the final sort of ‘doing an actual bit where you’re
performing it’. But the middle bit [is] where you take your
418 GETTING THE JOKE

scribble and you try and turn it into a piece of performable

material with a point, or with a central comic conceit rather
than just an idea.6

Milton Jones explains how he takes the raw idea and works
it into one of his killer surreal one-liners: ‘I get a feeling that
there’s a gag or something somewhere, like a pig sniffing out
a truffle … whether it’s a word that means the same thing or
an image or something – and reverse engineer [it] …’ Giving
it form means developing it so that the audience is taken
through a particular mental process:

Ideally, if a one-liner really works, you’ve misdirected the

listener/seer into looking at the wrong side all the way
through, and so they’re smacked between the eyes by the
punchline in the end … So usually you want the reveal or
whatever it is to be at the end. I think I succeed when I put
silly cartoons in people’s heads that surprise them.

He has a sophisticated understanding of how jokes work, but

even so he recognises that writing relies more on trial and
error than cold, calculation:

It sounds very scientific as if I’m in a laboratory with lots

of flip charts and pictures, but actually, you know, I do a
lot of new material nights and it is more a case of throwing
mud at a wall, unfortunately. Even 20 years on, I’m always
really surprised what works and what doesn’t.7

Writing it down
Having come up with the idea, there’s then the problem of
how to write it down. There’s no fixed way of doing this.
Some comedians work from verbatim scripts. Woody Allen,
for example, would sit and write his entire act on a typewriter,
 Material 419

based on ideas for gags which he wrote down on scraps of

paper. For Jenny Éclair, ‘Every word is totally scripted.’8
Similarly, Ben Elton sees writing as all important: ‘To me,
performing is an extension of writing. Everything for me starts
with the words, the writing. I write my act just as I write a
novel, or … sitcoms … or whatever.’ He writes his material,
learns it, and performs it, even seeing the improvisation which
is an essential part of stand-up as ‘sort of writing on the spur
of the moment’. 9
Other comics work with something looser. Lenny Bruce
would note down ideas on matchbook covers, napkins or
memo pads. The notes he kept suggest a neater, more clipped
style than the free-flowing routines he specialised in. A set of
notes for performances in St Louis and Chicago in September
1959 is largely made up of short jokes or one-liners, some
of them apparently only partly formed, like: ‘No use for H
in Italian alphabet’ Or: ‘Chicago people have a strange way
of talking – they’re always looking for someone who isn’t
there.’10
Josie Long assembles her ideas into ‘this big spider
diagram’.11 Rhona Cameron uses ‘a list, like a shopping list’,
adding ‘A lot of comedians are list based.’12 This seems to be
the case. Eddie Izzard’s script takes the form of a ‘set list’: ‘It
just says “European History” and I go into it. And sometimes,
on different nights, I’ll do totally different material on the
same idea.’13 For Omid Djalili, planning a routine is ‘almost
like theatre blocking’, and it’s written out as a set of bullet
points: ‘When I have a bullet point, I have a general ball park
idea that has to be put across before a joke.’14
Billy Connolly says he has ‘really fought the idea of
coming on as an act. You know, having an act.’ Instead, he
writes down a series of headlines on a piece of paper. At his
Hammersmith Apollo show, he has his notes on a stool, next
to his glass of water. He makes no attempt to hide them, and
indeed, they become part of the act. At one point, he knocks
over the water, and gets laughs by playing on the idea that this
is a disaster, making the ink run so that he can’t read what
420 GETTING THE JOKE

he’s written. He also plays up struggling to remember what

the notes are supposed to mean. ‘“Sex”?’ he says, ‘What have
I got to tell you about that?’15
This shows just how flimsy the existence of stand-up
material can be, outside of the actual moment of performance.
The list inscribed on a piece of paper can only really be inter-
preted by the comedian. The actual content of a routine – and
the particular way of performing it – exists solely in his or her
head. If Connolly has truly forgotten what ‘Sex’ means when
he sees it on his list, the routine may be gone forever.
Even so, the spider diagrams, lists or notebooks in which
comedians note down their ideas are enormously precious.
Bob Monkhouse kept his material in two loose-leaf files. When
they disappeared from his car in 1995, there was significant
press coverage, and he offered £10,000 for their safe return.
They had been stolen by someone who eventually approached
Monkhouse’s agent demanding money, and were recovered
by undercover police in a sting operation. Monkhouse was
mystified over why they had been stolen, saying that the files
were ‘of little use to anyone else but me’, presumably because
the information they contained would only have made sense
to him. However, what the culprits had instinctively grasped
was that even if these files of raw comic material were only
valuable to Monkhouse, their value to that one individual was
immense.16
The way that the notebook or gag file fits into the
comedian’s overall methodology varies. For Alexei Sayle, it
was something in which to deposit raw ideas: ‘The way I
worked was that I never scripted it as such … I would think
of a gag, and then I would make a note of it. I would make a
note of it in my notebook.’ Material from the notebook would
then be put into a list which he would have onstage with him:
‘I always had a running order. I had, like, a little box with me
props in on the floor, which was sort of vaguely built to look
like a sound monitor, and taped to the top of it was always
me running order.’17
Al Murray writes on a computer, which allows him to keep
 Material 421

a well-ordered electronic archive of all his past material. This

can be dipped into when he’s looking for inspiration for new
routines:

I’ve saved everything I’ve ever written. You know, if I

open my files in front of me now, there is a main file
called ‘Landlord’, there’s ‘Landlord Year One, Year Two,
Three’ … and every time I sit down to write a new show,
I go back over the old files and look and see if there’s
something I wrote in 1998 that I just couldn’t make work
then because I hadn’t got the character’s voice right or
whatever and have a look and see if there’s anything in it
at all that might be worth picking up and bringing with
me.18

Harry Hill works by spending ‘the first hour of the day’

writing, generating ‘books and books’ of notes. Most of what
he writes is ‘just rubbish, utter rubbish’, so he has a process of
sifting through it. Preparing for a tour means going through
his notebooks and making a note of the ideas he thinks are
‘worth trying’.19 He then takes these and tries them out in
a low-key gig, and the ones that go down well become the
material for the show.

Off the top of the head

Then there are the comedians who come up with material
whilst they are actually performing. This method was
popular among the sick comedians. Mort Sahl, for example,
remembers: ‘If they’d laughed at something, I would extend
it from night to night. In other words I’d write it in front of
them. The joke’d grow, like a house, but you couldn’t write it
by yourself, you had to be there with them.’20 Shelley Berman
says that of all the routines he recorded, only one was written
down on paper. The rest are ‘stuff that happened on the spur
422 GETTING THE JOKE

of the moment, and maybe had gone through some refinement

in the repeating, but they began purely as improv.’21
Many comedians still work in this way. Adam Bloom
says, ‘I go onstage with a rough idea of what I’m gonna say
and then it evolves on stage. I never, ever write it down.’22
Similarly, James Campbell says, ‘Almost all of my material
comes about through mucking about on the stage. And the
stuff that works is the stuff that sticks, and goes on to the next
day, basically … I never write anything down beforehand.’23
Phill Jupitus gives a detailed account of exactly how he grows
his material onstage:

I think that there’s the nut of the joke. I think the joke
is one idea, it’s like the joke is the punchline, and it’s the
route there that you let unfold onstage, really. And when
you first do it, the route’s very short. And then if it goes
really well, you make the route longer, and you find more.
You just find a longer and longer way to get to the end
of a joke. So it’s like the Star Wars show that I did in
Edinburgh started out as me saying to [fellow comedian]
Kevin Day in the dressing room, ‘I will do some stuff about
Star Wars.’ … And I think I had a Wookiee impression
and a joke about Darth Vader. And then the next week,
because you’ve thought about it a bit more, you have a few
more bits, and if they’re good and they work, I would just
remember them … It would grow very organically … so
within three months, that couple of one liners is a whole
20 minutes.24

Some comics use a mixture of techniques to generate routines

– scripting some in advance and developing others in front of
a live audience. Mark Thomas, for example, says:

Some stuff, I’ll write. And you sit down and … you worry
about it and you kind of try it one way and then you try it
another way and what have you. Other stuff, because it’s
based around events that actually happened, and people
 Material 423

who are there who are real … it’s like telling a story to
your mates or to people who don’t know. And quite a large
section of stuff is busked … you just kind of tell the story,
and in the process of telling it, bits drop out, or bits add in,
and you play around with things.25

For Milton Jones, the particular form his material takes is

crucial: ‘The stuff that I tend to do tends to be very honed.
And even an intonation can mess it up.’ He gets it to a honed
state by taking it through ‘lots of incarnations’ before he
finds the words he wants. The final part of the process falls
somewhere between scripting and improvisation:

What I tend to do is write what I think the exact wording

should be, and then not take that to the show, and see what
it comes out like. So I’ve rehearsed it as I think it should
be, but there’s something about facing an audience that
suddenly means you turn it round, or use fewer words, or
you see it from the audience’s point of view, because of the
adrenaline, for some reason.26

Planning a show
When comedians reach a certain level, they stop playing short
sets in comedy clubs and start touring their own show. This
adds an extra dimension to the process of generating material,
because when a new tour starts, rather than having to come
up with a new routine or a few new gags, the comic has to put
together an entirely new full-length show. Jo Brand plans her
shows section by section:

[F]or a longer show which is an hour, I roughly kind of

divide it in my head into twelve five-minute chunks. And I
think, “Well if I can write … six of those, and then that’s
kind of half an hour.” Then hopefully I can expand on
424 GETTING THE JOKE

a couple of them and they’ll expand into seven or eight

minutes, maybe, and then I’ll see how I’m doing.27

Although Ross Noble’s material is more fluid and improvisa-

tional, he also tends to build his shows from separate chunks,
albeit fewer of them: ‘What tends to happen is, I’ve noticed
that when I’ve looked back at previous note books, each kind
of two-hour, two-and-a-half hour show I’ve done seems to
always consist of eight words.’28
For some comics, the fluidity is part of the show’s structure.
In Billy Connolly’s Hammersmith Apollo show, he starts
telling an anecdote about something that happened to him in
Dunedin, New Zealand. He strikes off on a number of lengthy
tangents, and each time he returns to the story – ‘So, we’re in
Dunedin …’ – the audience laugh, and sometimes clap. It’s a
technique he shares with a number of other performers, from
Eddie Izzard to Henry Rollins, and it’s difficult to say why it’s
so pleasing. Perhaps it’s the incongruity of having drifted so
far from the story? Perhaps it makes the audience feel clever
at being able to tune back into the anecdote so easily? Perhaps
the tangents are seen as part of the comedian’s endearingly
chaotic way of thinking? Whatever it is, the ability to dip in
and out of a routine in this way shows an impressive mastery
of the material.
Steven Wright uses a different kind of fluidity. His act is
made up of a large number of short jokes. It is structured not
by having a fixed running order, but by having a set of jokes
which are brought out in the order he sees fit, depending on
how the audience are reacting. Dividing the gags up into three
categories – A, B and C – according to quality, he alternates
between the different categories in response to the laughter
he gets.29 Milton Jones has a different way of categorising his
jokes:

If I do ABC, it tends to be more in terms of formula.

Because, you know, some stuff I do, it’s either a pun or a
reversal or a concept, but if you do too many of the same
 Material 425

formula in a row, the crowd find it easier to guess what’s

coming … suddenly the scaffolding is there, and you see
how the thing is put together.30

He also explains that having his material made up of tight,

compact gags rather than longer, more fluid routines poses
problems when planning a full-length show:

[I]f you’ve got over a hundred one-liners, and often

they’re 200 in a longer set, it’s literally too much infor-
mation. And what I have tried to do in the past … is
just vary the angle of attack, so that even though it isn’t
a rest, it feels like one … You can’t put a number on the
gags, but if I do more than ten minutes, fifteen minutes – I
think that’s the magic number actually, fifteen minutes of
bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang – you can feel the
audience going away. Because blood comes out of their
ears, they can’t quite cope. And if you keep that up they
will come back, at about 30 minutes, but you’ve sort of
lost a bit in the middle there. So if you can find a way
of stopping and starting again, fooling their brains into
thinking that you’ve pressed clear, I’ve found that to be
helpful.31

Jones has a number of tricks to vary the angle of attack to

fool the audience into thinking they’ve had a rest from the
barrage of gags. In between sections of straight stand-up he
will intersperse set pieces with a different format – perhaps
gags delivered in character, material underscored with music
or visual jokes on a flipchart.
One method of developing a new full-length show is what
Eddie Izzard calls ‘this roll-over thing’.32 This involves starting
a tour with the old show, then gradually changing it bit by
bit. For Victoria Wood, this means replacing old bits with
new 20-minute sections week by week until the new show is
complete. Jo Brand likes the security of keeping a bit of old
material in the show:
426 GETTING THE JOKE

I always have to have an overlap, a sort of, a bit of old

stuff to make me feel safe, that I know’s gonna work, you
know. And then build on that. So most shows I do tend to
be, like, three quarters new stuff, eventually, and a quarter
of an hour of old stuff which I’ve just kind of clung on to,
really. Like a drowning man.33

The danger of the roll-over method is that it carries the risk of

presenting an audience with material they have already seen.
Perhaps ‘danger’ might sound a bit strong, but in 1999, the
consumer programme Weekend Watchdog was contacted by
punters complaining that Eddie Izzard’s Circle show largely
consisted of material they had seen on the previous year’s
Dress to Kill video. The report they ran seemed slightly
tongue-in-cheek: ‘We’ve counted up all the gags on this
video, 55 in total, and we’ve put them here on our Weekend
Watchdog Eddie Izzard gag count. Now we’re going to send
in our gag accountant …’34
Nonetheless, it was a serious matter. Mick Perrin, Izzard’s
tour manager, later recalled, ‘It ended up with Eddie getting
a letter from the Office of Fair Trading saying, “Don’t do this
again or you will end up in court.”’35 Izzard was stung by the
furore, sending up the thinking behind the complaints: ‘It’s
like going into a rock and roll concert and saying, “We’ve
heard the Stones, we’ve heard these fucking numbers before.
You’re on Watchdog for fraud.”’36
Since then, big name acts have taken much more care to
avoid repeating material in their full-length shows. Jimmy
Carr’s DVD Comedian, for example, has an insert tucked
inside the box advertising the following Repeat Offender live
tour. In keeping with his professional, business-like approach,
the insert assures the potential punter: ‘The Repeat Offender
tour is new material – it’s different from The Jimmy Carr
Comedian DVD you’ve just bought – I wouldn’t try and sell
you the same thing twice.’ Clearly, stand-up has come a long
way from the days when comedians could get away with
touring the same act for years.
 Material 427

Notes
1 Kitty Bruce (ed.), The Unpublished Lenny Bruce, Philadelphia:
Running Press, 1984, p. 16
2 Interview with Josie Long, Horsebridge Centre, Whitstable,
18 February 2012
3 Interview with Sarah Millican, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury,
23 April 2012
4 Interview with Jimmy McGhie, Whitstable, 30 August 2012
5 ‘I Didn’t Know how to Love You’ on Marc Maron This HAS
to be Funny, Comedy Central Records, 2011, CCR0122
6 Interview with Jimmy McGhie, Whitstable, 30 August 2012
7 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 August 2012
8 Quoted in Alison Oddey, Performing Women: Stand-ups,
Strumpets and Itinerants, Houndmills and London: MacMillan
Press, 1999, p. 21
9 Face to Face, BBC Two, 12 January 1998
10 Kitty Bruce (ed.), The Unpublished Lenny Bruce, Philadelphia:
Running Press, 1984, p. 22
11 Interview with Josie Long, Horsebridge Centre, Whitstable,
18 February 2012
12 Interview with Rhona Cameron, by telephone, 19 March 2004
13 Garry Mulholland, ‘When Eddie Met Henry’, Time Out, 2–9
December 1998, p. 25
14 Interview with Omid Djalili, by telephone, 28 June 2004
15 Billy Connolly, Too Old to Die Young, Carling Hammersmith
Apollo, 29 September 2004
16 See Bob Monkhouse, Over the Limit: My Secret Diaries
1993–8, London: Century, 1998, pp. 171–2, 244
17 Interview with Alexei Sayle, University of Kent, Canterbury,
21 November 2003
18 Interview with Al Murray, by telephone, 2 April 2012
19 Interview with Harry Hill, by telephone, 26 August 2004
20 Funny Business, BBC Two, 29 November 1992
428 GETTING THE JOKE

21 Interview with Shelley Berman, by telephone, 5 August 2004

22 Interview with Adam Bloom, by telephone, 29 June 2004
23 Interview with James Campbell, by telephone, 25 August 2004
24 Interview with Phill Jupitus, BBC Broadcasting House, London,
6 June 2004
25 Interview with Mark Thomas, Clapham, 27 February 2004
26 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 June 2004
27 Interview with Jo Brand, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1 April
2004
28 Interview with Ross Noble, Orchard Theatre, Dartford, 24
June 2004
29 John Hind, The Comic Inquisition: Conversations with Great
Comedians, London: Virgin, 1991, pp. 51–2
30 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 June 2004
31 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 August 2012
32 Kate Mikhail, ‘Eddie Izzard, Comedian’, Observer Magazine,
22 September 2002, p. 22
33 Interview with Jo Brand, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1 April
2004
34 Excerpt included in Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story, 2
Entertain, 2010, 2EDVD0592
35 Ian Burrell, ‘Izzard Breaks Records with Rock and Roll Tour’,
the Independent, 22 September 2003, p. 6
36 Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story, 2 Entertain, 2010,
2EDVD0592
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Performance

Rehearsing
When I used to compère the Last Laugh comedy club, I
would always spend half an hour going through my material
out loud to myself. This would allow me to finalise the
structure of the gags I was going to start the show with,
to get an idea of the actual words I would use and to fix
them in my memory. It was a deeply unpleasant, enervating
process, bringing down upon me an almost irresistible urge
to collapse into a heap. Although I was alone in the room,
I would always imagine someone was outside, listening,
finding what I was saying the unfunniest thing they had
heard in their life.
Preparing to perform my 20-minute set at another venue
would be less unpleasant. I’d write out a running order, and
later I’d run through it in my head whilst driving to the gig.
I had no idea if I was the only comedian who rehearsed in
this way, as I never really discussed the matter with other
performers.
The front cloth comics of the variety era would certainly
have rehearsed. In spite of wanting to come across as being as
natural and unaffected as if he was one of the audience who
had climbed on to the stage from the front stalls, Ted Ray
prepared meticulously for performance:
430 GETTING THE JOKE

Every night, hour after hour, I would stand in front of the

mirror in my bedroom, grimacing, smiling and winking
with the idea of getting the most effective expression for
putting over a joke … Every inflection of voice and every
shade of emotion as reflected in a comedian’s voice do
count tremendously and I was determined that if hard work
and ceaseless rehearsal would help, no trouble on my part
would be too great.1

Frankie Howerd – who, like Ray, strove for a greater

naturalness of delivery – also rehearsed meticulously. A
1990 documentary shows him wandering through fields, near
his home, obsessively going through pages of script, whilst
surrounded by grazing cows.2 The footage intriguingly reveals
the careful crafting that lay behind the apparent spontaneity
of his stammering delivery.
Nowadays, this kind of careful rehearsal seems to be rarer.
Asked if he rehearses his act, Al Murray replies:

I’ve never done that. I mean if I’ve got a tongue twister I

need to learn, or like I used to do a thing with a huge chunk
of Shakespeare, then I’ll sit down and learn that, but I’ve
never stood in front of a mirror, never rehearsed. I’d feel so
stupid. [laughs] Putting on the jacket and jumping around
in my front room, I mean it’s not going to happen!3

For many comics, it’s more a question of mental preparation

than actual rehearsal, and the idea of doing the act in front
of the mirror as Ray did is widely rejected. Jeremy Hardy
explains, ‘I try and run through things in my head, but I
don’t rehearse saying things.’4 Adam Bloom takes the same
approach: ‘[I]t’s all in my head. I have an idea, I think of it
to myself. It bounces round in my head. So I’m hearing my
voice in my head.’5 For Rhona Cameron, rehearsal is simply a
matter of getting the material to stick in her memory: ‘I would
have the list a few days before the gig on a huge piece of paper,
poster size, at the end of my bed or when I’m lying in the
 Performance 431

bath, Blu-Tacked to the wall, because you have to memorise

the list.’6
There are, though, still some comedians who rehearse in
a more tangible way, by talking the material through. This is
how Omid Djalili gets new jokes ready: ‘I write them out then
perform it to myself. Never in a mirror, but just say it out to
myself and just visualise myself on stage.’7 Milton Jones takes
a similar approach, and explains his reasons for doing so:
‘I rehearse in so far as I sit at my desk and I go through the
words. But I don’t stand with a microphone at a mirror, as
it were … But I do feel like I need … the muscle memory of
going through the words.’8

Outside eye
When Alexei Sayle was doing stand-up regularly, he would
primarily work on new material with an audience, impro-
vising and working in new routines as he went along. Later
in his career, he would only perform in big tours, and this
meant having to rehearse offstage: ‘The last few tours … I’d
rehearse in front of my wife. We’d be sitting there, in the
conservatory, you know, in the front room or something, and
I’d do the show for her … Her and the cat would sit there,
and I’d do the act, you know.’ This conjures up a pleasingly
bizarre image, given Sayle’s unique performance style – all
that surreal comic fury raining down on his wife and cat in
the conservatory.
It also raises an important point. Whereas most actors are
guided through the process of creation by a director, stand-ups
usually have to find their own way – but in some cases, they
can get some informal direction from someone close to them
acting as an outside eye. Sayle is careful to explain just how
important his wife was in this respect: ‘I’ve always said my
wife Linda is as responsible for my career as I am … because
it’s very difficult to find somebody who knows … what works,
432 GETTING THE JOKE

and also will be honest with you.’ She was helpful not just in
the rehearsal process, but also in performance:

When I came offstage, for my first encore, she would

remember the whole show, and she would tell me anything
I’d left out … We never actually … discussed it, it’s just she
fell into doing that … She would say, ‘You haven’t done
that bit’ … and I’d go out and do it in the first encore.9

Similarly, Omid Djalili uses his wife as a sounding board for

new material: ‘I try it to my wife. I tell my wife, “What do
you think of this?” and she often finds a better word. I think
it’s good to collaborate with other people where you can find
a correct word, a funny-sounding word.’10 He credits her
with coming up with the word ‘halitosis’ in the ‘oil, phlegm
and halitosis’ joke – originally, he had used the phrase ‘bad
breath’.
More recently, stand-ups have started bringing in profes-
sional directors to help them develop their full-length shows.
Tiernan Douieb admits that he was initially ‘very opposed’ to
the idea of working with a director, but acknowledges that ‘a
lot of people do it now’. He has brought Paul Byrne in to direct
his Edinburgh shows, and explains how this has worked:

I had an hour and I was just running through it and he’d

go, ‘No, no. Slow that bit down.’ You know, he gave me
specific instructions for my first show like, ‘Take a sip of
water then … Sit down then.’ And it really is directing
because it just paces everything out differently. Often …
I’ll do a couple of previews without him early on, and then
he’ll come and watch one and he’ll just sit down and go,
‘That bit doesn’t quite fit there,’ or ‘What is it you’re trying
to say here?’ or ‘Where do you want to go with this?’ and
just gets my mind into structure.11

Similarly, Jimmy McGhie articulates what his director Adam

Brace has brought to his Edinburgh shows:
 Performance 433

I’ve worked with Adam on each show, and on the second

show, his input was a lot less. He came in right at the end
towards the previews, and just watched the previews, and
then said structurally what he thought and things like that,
and gave me a few pointers, and a few ideas obviously … I
put him on my poster as a credit and I’ve seen a few other
people actually start to credit their directors … I mean it’s
an hour long show, essentially it’s like a piece of theatre.
There should be no reason why you shouldn’t have a
director on it. And given how many popular stand-ups have
writing teams and have people writing for them anyway,
I just can’t see why it would be a problem. You can tell
an Edinburgh show that has been directed. You can feel
it, because it just feels tight and well structured because
an outside eye has come in. It’s so difficult when you’re
onstage to know how you should be going.12

Test gigs
The most public form of rehearsal is a test gig, where the
material is tried out in a low-key show in a small venue.
Stephen K. Amos explains, ‘If I’m doing a tour or a radio
thing, I try and just try out ten minutes at little comedy clubs
all over London … ten minutes of written stuff where I will
not deviate, I will not fall back on tried and tested stuff,
I’ll just do it.’13 Mark Thomas developed the material for
Dambusters during a run at the Soho Theatre: ‘[O]ver the
ten weeks, the stories just changed and developed … But the
essential ingredients of it, the big changes happened within
the first three weeks … and then the rest was refining it …’14
In order to be effective, the test gig has to be carefully set
up. Harry Hill used to make appearances around the London
comedy circuit, but found it ‘quite difficult to try stuff out’
because ‘really they want you to storm it’, something that’s
hard to do with untested material. He now tends to try out
434 GETTING THE JOKE

new jokes and routines supporting fellow comedian Ivor

Dembina at the Hampstead Comedy Club:

I can do 40 minutes, and basically, the rules of engagement

are that the audience know I’m floundering around trying
to find out what’s funny, so they give me a lot more rope.
You know, a lot more leeway. And I can really get a lot out
of it quite quickly …15

The ‘rules of engagement’ are established by making the

process of trying out material completely open. At a test gig
for a TV series in May 2004, Jack Dee tells the audience at the
Stag Theatre in Sevenoaks exactly why he’s there, explaining
that they shouldn’t think that his career is on the skids just
because he’s playing in a small, out-of-the-way venue like this.
He has a big sheet of notes with him. It’s placed on a stool on
the stage, but he doesn’t refer to it much. However, when a
routine gets slightly less response than he’d hoped for, he goes
over to the paper and makes a note of it, saying aloud what
he’s writing: ‘Never do that bit on stage again. In Sevenoaks.’16
In a show at the Battersea Arts Centre – a rehearsal for the
filming of An Audience with Harry Hill the following Sunday
– Hill has his set list taped to the monitor at the front of the
stage. When he forgets where he’s going, he makes a joke of
it. ‘Where was I?’ he asks, then very obviously leans forward,
making it clear he’s looking at the list. ‘Oh yes. I’ve remem-
bered now,’ he says. At one point, he comes out with the word
‘fucking’, then gets a laugh by saying, ‘We won’t be doing that
on Sunday night.’17
For Josie Long, test gigs are a way of not just rehearsing
material but also writing it. Before the previews for her
Edinburgh shows, the material only exists in the form of a
spider diagram:

I take that onstage and just try and splurge as much as

possible and record that. And then actually the adrenaline
of that will usually mean that I’ve more or less got the show
 Performance 435

… And then more and more laughs come the more you do
it … because you just naturally improvise. So for me it’s like
I do most of it onstage.18

Sarah Millican, on the other hand, uses the fact that she’s got
a test gig coming up as a spur to write new material:

I have a new material night booked in my diary and I do

them regularly so it usually is only a 10-minute spot. And
there’s one at the Glee in Birmingham that I do, and I do
the Comedy Store in Manchester quite regularly and that
deadline makes me go, ‘Bugger! I need to have 10 minutes
of new stuff by then.’19

Test gigs allow comedians to spend time with an audience,

and for many this is extremely valuable in its own right. As
Al Murray puts it, ‘I’m a real believer that stage time is the
ultimate preparation, that five minutes of stage time – if you’re
thinking about what you’re doing rather than trotting stuff
out – five minutes of stage time is worth, you know, a day
sat at the computer trying to write’.20 Ross Noble prepares
to perform simply by constantly performing – even between
tours, while supposedly taking time off, he will regularly do
off-the-cuff gigs in trusted small venues. He explains, ‘It’s less
about sort of coming up with a show, and more about just
getting up to match fitness, you know. Just mentally – well,
physically as well as mentally – just being in that headspace.’21
Making a slightly broader point, Sarah Millican argues that
getting time onstage with an audience is a crucial factor in
helping a new act to develop quickly into a fully-fledged
comedian:

I think you progress at a certain rate. So if you do one gig

a month, you’re going to progress at that rate. If you do
three in a week, you’re going to progress at that rate. You
know, so I just think it means you can shrink down the time
it takes to get good if you just do it as much as possible.22
436 GETTING THE JOKE

Pre-show rituals
Having generated the material – and possibly rehearsed it
– the next step the comedian faces is to mentally prepare
for actually going onstage and performing. Pre-show rituals
vary from common sense things, to the strange and quirky.
At the sensible end of the spectrum are comics like Omid
Djalili:

I have my set list written out and I find that if I don’t really
study it a good hour before, for a good 20, 30 minutes, and
go over it, and go over things in my head, the gig suffers,
really. Especially when I’m doing touring, but even [doing]
20 minutes. I remember back in ’97, ’98, I always had
my computer print-out of all the bullet points and going
through it over and over again in my head.23

But even apparently rational pre-show rituals can have an

obsessive element to them. Alex Horne stretches his mouth
and moves his tongue around to prepare himself for speaking
clearly, but he also engages in more compulsive behaviour:
‘And I’ll always go through just my opening line, over and
over again. I don’t know why, but I guess that’s a supersti-
tious thing. To make sure I know exactly what I’m gonna say
straight away.’24
For some comics, the pre-show ritual is there to get them
in the right mood, or to generate performance energy. Phill
Jupitus says: ‘I had to listen to very loud rock music before I
went on, I would like the sort of physical psyching up …’25 At
one stage, Mark Lamarr’s pre-show ritual was to avoid doing
anything special to prepare:

[F]or years I would’ve literally been sat chatting in the

dressing room and someone would go, ‘You’re on,’ and you
get up and walk on. Not that it meant little to me, but that’s
always been very, very important to me, to be natural.
 Performance 437

And so I think it was that, maybe that’s my process, is not

preparing.

However, he has also found it necessary to generate perfor-

mance energy before going on:

Because I don’t have a process … for sort of five or ten

minutes before I go on, I’ll probably start pacing up and
down, just to work myself up. Because otherwise, I’m just a
bloke. D’you know what I mean? Yeah, otherwise, I’m just
… not gonna put any effort into it. That’s the only thing,
probably, and that’s not a superstitious thing, that’s purely
for performance … I try and get some kind of adrenaline
going, ‘cos otherwise, I wouldn’t really be that interested in
talking to a roomful of strangers.26

Getting into the right state of mind to perform can involve

pre-show rituals which seem to veer away from the rational
and towards the metaphysical. Some comedians actually pray
before going on stage. Milton Jones is a Christian, but for him
the prayer is more about performance than his faith:

I do pray before I go on each time. I mean, sort of, a general

sort of focusing and just clearing my head. It’s always tricky
in a dressing room. I try and just have some time on my
own before I go on. And that’s not even really a super-
stition, that’s probably a drama school thing.27

Shelley Berman is emphatic that for him, prayer is not

motivated by religion: ‘I don’t want people to go off thinking
that I’m some sort of religious fanatic, but at least for the first
ten years, 15 years of my work, I never went on without a
little prayer. That was to myself, and it had nothing to do with
anybody else.’28 Only the agnostic Adam Bloom acknowledges
that pre-show prayer might have a religious aspect:

I say a little prayer. Despite not being overly religious. When

438 GETTING THE JOKE

I first started, I was fascinated with the whole concept of,

‘Is there a God?’ which is surely the biggest question there
possibly is to ask. So … because I was kind of dabbling in
the idea that He was there and you could talk to Him and
He can hear your thoughts, I thought I’d have a little prayer
… I still say a little prayer. Also, it’s talking to someone
inside yourself, you know? If man invented God, it still
wouldn’t be a bad thing to talk to the person you invented
in your head, because it’s bringing yourself together, isn’t it?
It’s no different to just going, ‘Come on, Adam,’ you know,
it’s the same thing. Whether God’s, you know, outside of
you or in you, it’s still something that helps you get through
your gig. And the thing is, in a particularly rough situation,
you know, very late show, crowd are tired, it helps you
focus, so that’s 50 per cent superstition and 50 per cent …
some kind of mental strategy.29

Beyond prayer are those kinds of pre-show mental strategies

we’ve already seen, which veer off into pure irrationality –
whether these be wearing particular pair of trousers or putting
nine sections of green toilet paper in your pocket.

Onstage
The intense nowness of stand-up comedy means that the
actual moment of being onstage is all that really counts. The
process which leads up to it may be important, but only if it
makes this moment right. As discussed earlier, most comedians
use a mixture of prepared material and improvisation, and the
moment of performance requires them to juggle these different
elements, putting them together in the moment to make them
work in the best possible way for that particular show.
Mark Lamarr tried to contain as much of the creation of
his act as possible within the performance itself, believing that
‘doing it onstage’ was ‘the organic way’:
 Performance 439

I would tell a bit, and each night it would grow or diminish,

you know, as it deserved to, and I never, ever wrote any of
it down … even then I always sort of thought, ‘If you don’t
write it down, it looks like you’re making it up.’… And it
would make me laugh myself, you know, ‘cos there’d be a
bit, you’d think, ‘God, I forgot that line, that’s a fucking
killer line, I haven’t done that for three months!’ And you’ll
suddenly be talking, and it’s like ad libbing it even though
you’ve done it before, because … it just comes out, you
know. And, yeah, that was very important to me, to make
sure I didn’t do it as a written piece, you know, after those
first few years of being really tied to words.30

Many experienced comics share this fluidity of material,

cutting routines together in response to the audience. Alexei
Sayle says: ‘To edit, I threw a lot of stuff out, did a lot of
new stuff, you know. A two-hour show or something … that
I edited on the fly, you know, while at the same time still
working to an audience.’31
To be able to effortlessly piece a show together whilst
performing it suggests that comedians achieve a very sophisti-
cated mental state while onstage. Eddie Izzard says that when
he’s performing, his brain is ‘almost like a split screen’, so
that he can play to the audience and ‘work things out at the
same time’.32 Other comics share this ability to analyse what is
going on at the same time as actually doing it. Victoria Wood
says, ‘While one side of your head is performing, the other
half is thinking, “Oh, that didn’t go so well, I’m going to miss
out the next bit,” or, “I’d better speed up, some quick laughs
are needed!”’33 Alan Davies gives a similar description of the
mental process: ‘You’re rarely thinking about what you’re
actually doing … it’s the next thing and the next thing. That
line didn’t work, so the other one in 20 minutes probably isn’t
going to go down too well either …Why’s that person not
laughing?’34
Paradoxically, the other half of the two-level mental state,
which co-exists with this detached, analytical side, is instinctive
440 GETTING THE JOKE

and often ecstatic. Victoria Wood describes the feeling when a

show is going well as being ‘like flying’.35 Performing stand-up
myself, I found that good shows were almost trancelike. I felt
confident, free, fluid, engulfed by my train of thought but just
aware enough to react if something unexpected happened.
I completely lacked uncomfortable self-consciousness. Time
seemed to go very quickly. Sometimes somebody would come
up to me after shows like this and tell me about something I’d
said onstage. It would be a pleasant surprise, because before
they reminded me of it, I’d have forgotten saying it.
This is a common experience, as genuinely spontaneous
moments in stand-up disappear often into thin air as soon as
the show is over. Phill Jupitus says, ‘I’ve lost two Edinburgh
shows of spontaneous thought that just happened on the night
and I didn’t write down.’36 Jeremy Hardy agrees:

I can never remember when I come off stage. I might

improvise something really good, and I’ll have forgotten it.
And I lose quite a lot of stuff because I write things down
in note form and often things are never actually properly
written out in full, so I forget the end of things, and I can
never get it back again, which is annoying.37

Bad shows create a different state of mind. I’d feel trapped

and exposed, and time would seem to go more slowly,
allowing me to take in every horrible detail. Ironically, this
kind of extreme self-consciousness improves the memory. I
had no trouble remembering the stupid, unfunny things I’d
said to hecklers after a bad show. Phill Jupitus shares this
perception:

The funny thing is, is I bet most people you talk to could
tell you, like, the temperature in the room, what they heard
when they died … You can’t capture moments from a good
gig … I think good stand-ups’ brains switch off. Conscious
thought abandons you … whereas you are nothing but
conscious brain when you’re dying, it is all conscious,
 Performance 441

absorbing every fact, facet, you know. It’s all front brain
when you’re dying.38

Trial and error

The forgetfulness that follows a good gig is inconvenient,
because part of the experience of performing is seeing what
works so that it can be re-used in future shows. Most
comedians seem to agree that developing a stand-up act is
simply a question of trying things out. Phill Jupitus says,
‘[W]ith stand-up you throw anything at the wall and see what
sticks … It’s just when something works, you know it works
and you do more of it.’39 Adam Bloom makes a similar point:
‘Honing [material] in is the best way to get something, because
it evolves through trial and error.’40
This suck-it-and-see methodology is yet another thing that
links stand-up with the music hall. Max Beerbohm describes
how Dan Leno would work in a new routine:

A new performance by Dan Leno was almost always a dull

thing in itself. He was unable to do himself justice until
he had, as it were, collaborated for many nights with the
public. He selected and rejected according to how his jokes,
and his expression of them ‘went’; and his best things came
to him always in the course of an actual performance, to
be incorporated in all subsequent performances. When, at
last, the whole thing had been built up, how perfect a whole
it was!41

The material isn’t the only thing that can develop by trial and
error. For Shelley Berman, the distinctive overall style of his
whole act came about by accident rather than design: ‘It’s a style
that just happened. It was never something I thought of. It was
just something that happened.’ Even the trademark barstool
came about more through a particular set of circumstances
442 GETTING THE JOKE

than a carefully thought out strategy. His earliest stand-up

routines were one-sided telephone conversations which he’d
originally done with the pioneering improvisational group the
Compass Players. Performing them in a stand-up environment
meant making certain adjustments:

I sat on a chair when I first did these things, and then I

realised that some of the nightclubs that I was working in,
the audience couldn’t see me in the back if I sat down on a
chair. So I asked to borrow a barstool. So I’ve been sitting
on a barstool ever since.42

The essential element of trial and error means that the final
stage of a stand-up’s methodology is to think back over how
the act has gone once the show is over. Ken Dodd used to
keep detailed notebooks, filling in details on every show. A
particular entry might include information on the length of the
act, the size and character of the audience, even the weather
outside. Then there would be two columns, one listing each
joke that was told, the other containing notes on how well
each of these had gone down.43
A more common method is to make an audio recording
of the show and listen back to it afterwards. This dates to at
least as far back as Lenny Bruce, who bought a reel-to-reel
tape recorder when such items were still relatively uncommon.
Similarly, Steve Martin has recalled that in the 1970s he
would tape his shows ‘with a chintzy cassette recorder’ in case
he ‘ad-libbed something wonderful.’44 Recordings allow the
comic to assess the performance objectively, check the exact
wording of a strong new joke, notice mistakes and consider
different ways of arranging a routine. Harry Hill regularly
makes audio or video recordings of his act: ‘[S]ometimes
watching things back … at the time I haven’t thought they’re
very funny, then sometimes watching them back you think,
“Oh, well yeah, no, that is quite funny,” or, you know,
“Here’s something you could do” … exaggerate it, or do
something extra on it.’45
 Performance 443

Recordings are also useful, given that many comedians

keep minimal notes, or avoid writing down anything at
all. Phill Jupitus says: ‘I used to do The Square [a venue in
Harlow, Essex], ‘cos they had an A/V set up and so you could
record your act, and I’d keep The Square videos and would
watch them back, and would remember pieces.’46 Similarly,
Jeremy Hardy says:

If I haven’t gigged for, like, three or four months, then I

have to do quite a lot of work trying to remember [it], and
sometimes I will find a tape of a gig I’ve done and listen to
it through. If I’m doing gigs reasonably regularly, there’s
enough in my head that I can choose from.

Listening back to recordings of the act is not necessarily a

pleasant process. Hardy says it’s ‘unbearable … it’s just so
tedious to listen to, for me.’ Then he laughs, adding, ‘I hope
not for the audience, but –’47 Stephen K. Amos doesn’t use
audio recordings, because he doesn’t find them helpful: ‘Well
I normally go out when I’m doing new stuff … with my
very good writing partner and friend who is there making
notes. Because I don’t think I can ever repeat it the same
way just by listening to it.’ Nonetheless, these notes can
provide useful, detailed information, even about the minutiae
of delivery: ‘[T]he only way that I know that’s different is
if someone in the room that I trust has made a note. And
it can be a slight nuance. It could be a pause, it could be
the word “a” that I’ve just added accidentally that makes a
difference.’48
As we’ve seen, some of the private recordings comedians
make to develop their act have found their way into the
commercial market, and some comedians even use commercial
recordings of their acts to revise for a gig. A documentary
from 2000 shows Alan Davies travelling to a show in a van,
going over routines by listening to his audio cassette Urban
Trauma on a personal stereo. ‘It’s been a while since I’ve
done a gig and I don’t have any scripts. Nothing’s scripted.
444 GETTING THE JOKE

So the only way to remember routines is to listen to tapes,’ he

explains, noting down gags in a list.49

Laziness
Talking to stand-ups about how they work, an interesting
tendency emerges. As they become experienced, their
methodology become more and more minimal. There is less
preparation, and the job starts to involve little more than
the actual act of performance. Dave Gorman says: ‘It used
to be very written. At the beginning, when I was deadpan,
there were a lot of one-liners, which would be very precisely
worded. There was one way of telling them. But then as it got
more storytelling and stuff towards the end … I never wrote
them down.’50 Jo Brand gives a more detailed account of how
her preparation has decreased:

How I generate material’s kind of changed over the years.

I have to be honest, I was a lot more conscientious when I
started. I would sit down and I’d write it all down, sort of
word for word, and I would learn it, you know, almost like
a poem, really. And kind of over the years … I, personally,
have just found I’ve got a lot lazier about it … I’ll have an
idea in my head, and think, ‘Well that might be a funny
punchline,’ and I’ll just try it out. And if it works sort of
50 per cent, then I’ll just keep trying it and refining it until
it does, really. And I’ll have it on a bit of paper as just one
word, whereas before I would have kind of had five sheets
of paper very neatly typed out with the whole thing, you
know.51

Words like ‘conscientious’ and ‘lazier’ suggest Brand feels a

twinge of guilt about having to spend less time preparing.
It’s a twinge shared by Andre Vincent, who accuses himself
of laziness, although he has never written material down. He
 Performance 445

tends to generate new jokes by going through the Evening

Standard, and circling stories, then taking the newspaper
on with him and busking routines from it. He says of this
method: ‘[I]t is really bad of me, really lazy. I’m so lazy. That’s
the worst thing.’52 Harry Hill shows a similar hint of guilt
about his aversion to rehearsal:

I don’t rehearse, I can’t bear rehearsing, I can’t rehearse

really, no. I mean, normally on the way to a gig I would
do it in the car, you know. I’d have a sort of list on the
passenger seat, and run through it like that. But I think
probably I should rehearse, I think probably, you know, it
wouldn’t do you any harm, would it?53

While some comedians may feel guilty about their apparent

laziness, others realise that with experience, preparation
becomes unnecessary, even counterproductive. The very idea
of rehearsing stand-up is rejected. Eddie Izzard says, ‘You can’t
rehearse it. This is the terrible and brilliant thing of stand-up
… I think you rehearse in front of paying audiences.’54 Dave
Gorman puts his argument beautifully: ‘It’s impossible to
rehearse. It’s like a guitarist rehearsing by playing air guitar.
The audience are actually the instrument.’55
The fact that comedians can reduce the amount of prepa-
ration they do and still perform as effectively – or possibly even
better – when they are faced with an audience, is a testament
to the skills they have acquired. The idea of sketching down a
few notes, going through it in your head, then going onstage
and doing it might make stand-up seem like the ideal job for
the lazy person, especially with working hours of between 20
minutes and two hours a night. However, in most cases it only
becomes a slacker’s profession after years of experience, and
the learning process is a long, hard slog.
446 GETTING THE JOKE

Notes
1 Ted Ray, Raising the Laughs, London: Werner Laurie, 1952,
p. 69
2 Arena (‘Oooh, er Missus! The Frankie Howerd Story’), BBC
Two, 1 June 1990
3 Interview with Al Murray, by telephone, 2 April 2012
4 Interview with Jeremy Hardy, Streatham, 1 April 2004
5 Interview with Adam Bloom, by telephone, 29 June 2004
6 Interview with Rhona Cameron, by telephone, 19 March 2004
7 Interview with Omid Djalili, by telephone, 28 June 2004
8 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 June 2004
9 Interview with Alexei Sayle, University of Kent, Canterbury,
21 November 2003
10 Interview with Omid Djalili, by telephone, 28 June 2004
11 Interview with Tiernan Douieb, Gulbenkian Café, Canterbury,
17 March 2012
12 Interview with Jimmy McGhie, Whitstable, 30 August 2012
13 Interview with Stephen K. Amos, by telephone, 18 September
2012
14 Interview with Mark Thomas, Clapham, 27 February 2004
15 Interview with Harry Hill, by telephone, 26 August 2004
16 Jack Dee, The Stag Theatre, Sevenoaks, 23 May 2004
17 Harry Hill, Battersea Arts Centre, 14 September 2004
18 Interview with Josie Long, Horsebridge Centre, Whitstable,
18 February 2012
19 Interview with Sarah Millican, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury,
23 April 2012
20 Interview with Al Murray, by telephone, 2 April 2012
21 Interview with Ross Noble, Leicester Square, London, 25
August 2009
22 Interview with Sarah Millican, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury,
23 April 2012
 Performance 447

23 Interview with Omid Djalili, by telephone, 28 June 2004

24 Interview with Alex Horne, by telephone, 6 July 2004
25 Interview with Phill Jupitus, BBC Broadcasting House, London,
6 June 2004
26 Interview with Mark Lamarr, Chiswick, 14 July 2004
27 Interview with Milton Jones, by telephone, 28 June 2004
28 Interview with Shelley Berman, by telephone, 5 August 2004
29 Interview with Adam Bloom, by telephone, 29 June 2004
30 Interview with Mark Lamarr, Chiswick, 14 July 2004
31 Interview with Alexei Sayle, University of Kent, Canterbury,
21 November 2003
32 Quoted in John Lahr, Show and Tell, Berkeley, Los Angeles
and London: University of California Press, 2000, p. 176
33 Quoted in John Hind, The Comic Inquisition: Conversations
with Great Comedians, London: Virgin, 1991, p. 98
34 Quoted in Ben Thompson, Sunshine on Putty: The Golden Age
of British Comedy from Vic Reeves to The Office, London and
New York: Fourth Estate, 2004, p. 109 fn
35 John Hind, The Comic Inquisition: Conversations with Great
Comedians, London: Virgin, 1991, p. 98
36 Interview with Phill Jupitus, BBC Broadcasting House, London,
6 June 2004
37 Interview with Jeremy Hardy, Streatham, 1 April 2004
38 Interview with Phill Jupitus, BBC Broadcasting House, London,
6 June 2004
39 Interview with Phill Jupitus, BBC Broadcasting House, London,
6 June 2004
40 Interview with Adam Bloom, by telephone, 29 June 2004
41 Max Beerbohm, The Bodley Head Max Beerbohm (ed. David
Cecil), London, Sydney and Toronto: The Bodley Head, 1970,
p. 377
42 Interview with Shelley Berman, by telephone, 5 August 2004
43 See Eric Midwinter, Make ‘Em Laugh: Famous Comedians and
their Worlds, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979, p. 202,
for more details on this
448 GETTING THE JOKE

44 Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, London:

Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, 2008, pp. 137–8
45 Interview with Harry Hill, by telephone, 26 August 2004
46 Interview with Phill Jupitus, BBC Broadcasting House, London,
6 June 2004
47 Interview with Jeremy Hardy, Streatham, 1 April 2004
48 Interview with Stephen K. Amos, by telephone, 18 September
2012
49 Stand-Up with Alan Davies, BBC One, 19 June 2000
50 Interview with Dave Gorman, by telephone, 29 June 2004
51 Interview with Jo Brand, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1 April
2004
52 Interview with Andre Vincent, Central London, 14 July 2004
53 Interview with Harry Hill, by telephone, 26 August 2004
54 TX (‘“Je Suis a Stand-Up”- Eddie Izzard Abroad …’), BBC
Two, 7 December 1996
55 Interview with Dave Gorman, by telephone, 29 June 2004
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

Why bother?

As somebody who teaches stand-up comedy in a university,

I’m faced with a nagging question – why bother? The comedy
circuit is purely market driven, and people who run comedy
clubs will only book acts they can be sure of pleasing the
punters. Unamused audiences may not come back next week.
It’s now more difficult than ever to get established in British
comedy clubs, and the only way to avoid months or years
spent slogging away in the amateur open mike clubs is to win
a competition or be spotted by an agent. Given this, a degree
certificate won’t cut much ice.
There’s also the possibility that trying to teach somebody
how to do stand-up might do more harm than good. As
Jo Brand puts it: ‘Having been to workshops for stand-up
comedians, I personally don’t think they’re a good idea. I
think they tend to bland everyone out a bit by making the
stand-ups uniform in the way that they approach the job.’1
Along the same lines, Stephen K. Amos rightly points out:
‘[T]here are now courses you can do in stand-up comedy
which may well teach you the techniques and the devices you
can use but if you don’t put them in your own voice you end
up sounding like someone else or being a generic comic’.2
Both of these arguments suggest that doing a course might
make people take a uniform approach to being a comic,
neglecting the individuality that’s so crucial to the art of
stand-up. They tap into a commonly held idea about teaching
450 GETTING THE JOKE

– that it is something the teacher does to the learner. What is

taught is simply passed on. The teacher is active, the learner is
passive. This idea is implicit in the current tendency to deper-
sonalise teaching in higher education. Learning outcomes are
published in advance, and ticked off one by one. Marks are
neatly divided up between the assessment tasks. Essays are
anonymously marked, feedback written without any idea of
who will be reading it. Somehow, not knowing the students
will improve their learning. They are customers who should be
given a standardised slice of the education salami.
There may be a danger that comedy courses might ‘bland
everyone out’, but it doesn’t have to be like that. To me, teaching
stand-up isn’t about imposing a fixed set of techniques on the
students, but helping them learn and develop for themselves –
to find their own way of becoming a comedian. This doesn’t
fit the impersonal model of modern higher education. I have to
understand the students and get to know them as individuals,
because their personalities and the lives they lead are the raw
materials they’ll be working with. Their work couldn’t be
anonymously marked unless they disguised their voice and did
the act with a bag on their head.
I do what happens in the professional world. I watch them
work and give them advice. I play Max Miller to their Bob
Monkhouse, Jack Rollins to their Woody Allen. I have to try
and understand who they are, and what makes them tick. I
have to spot what they’re doing that’s brilliant, interesting
or quirky, and encourage them to develop it further. I have
to notice where they’re struggling and try and help them get
through it.

Talent, perseverance and luck

It’s May 2011, and I’m compèring a show at the Gulbenkian
Theatre in Canterbury, featuring ex-students who have gone
on to make a living from comedy. Alongside razor-sharp
 Why bother? 451

improv comedy troupe the Noise Next Door and the brilliant
sketch group Pappy’s are two fine stand-ups, Tiernan Douieb
and Jimmy McGhie.3 Jimmy – the student we met in Chapter
1, with the routine about an unfortunate incident in a sleeping
bag in Thailand – graduated in 2002, and the route he took
to becoming a professional comedian was circuitous to say
the least.
He started off doing ‘the odd gig’ on the London open
mike circuit, and got to the semi-finals of the So You Think
You’re Funny competition in Edinburgh, where a routine
about a South African Muppet flopped. Knocked out of the
competition, he felt disillusioned and started developing a
career as a TV researcher, and later, a production manager he
was working with made him send off a tape of one of his old
university performances to a BBC competition for new acts.
He ‘sailed into the semis having done no gigs for about three
years’, and eventually this made him decide to give stand-up
another try:

I just made a decision to just get back into it properly, and

give it a good go, so I didn’t end up always regretting it.
And that would’ve been about four, five years out of uni at
that stage, so I was about 26. So I just started gigging and
it was my dirty little night-time hobby that no-one knew
about … I was just constantly exhausted driving from work
to gigs, getting back in the middle of the night, getting up,
going to work. But I just kept at it … and then eventually
it just got to a point where I thought I was going to have a
go at doing it professionally … I’d spent three or four years
trying to become a professional stand-up and then one
day just sort of woke up in a Travelodge in Nottingham,
and just thought, ‘Oh. I am one. OK … I’m a professional
stand-up. That’s all I ever really thought about doing.’ … It
took at least three years to sort of chip away at the bigger
clubs before I started to do opening twenties … It was a
long, slow grind and sort of weirdly the happiest but most
unhappy years of my life really. I loved it. I knew I was
452 GETTING THE JOKE

doing something that meant something to me but it wasn’t

easy.4

Tiernan graduated a year later, in 2003, and he also had to

work hard to become established, starting off doing a couple
of open mike spots a week, and gradually building things up:

The more you gig, the more promoters see you. My agent
Brett Vincent saw me when I was doing five minutes at the
Comedy Store, and then helped me out with gigs at his
then-club Bound and Gagged, and from that I remember
Off the Kerb saw me somewhere and they gave me a
paid 20, and it’s just a gradual build-up. I’d love to say I
remember my first paid gig, but I don’t … But it got to a
point where the one or two gigs every couple of weeks was
suddenly becoming three or four gigs a week. And then
that was slowly becoming one or two of those would be
paid, and suddenly they’re all paid. It took four years or
so before I could go full-time. And even then that was only
because I got a Carlsberg advert that paid me to live for six
and a bit months, and that gave me the confidence to go,
‘I’m quitting my job, let’s just go with this money.’5

It’s often struck me that to become a successful stand-up you

need three things – talent, perseverance and luck. There’s
nothing you can do about luck, but you can hone your talent
by constantly working on material and stagecraft. Even so, in
order to make it you also need to persevere, no matter how
hard or demoralising it may be. Jimmy’s and Tiernan’s stories
make this abundantly clear. Jimmy is happy to admit that he
had a rude awakening when he first started doing open mike
nights in London, having been ‘a big fish in a small pond’
while performing in the student comedy night: ‘I think that
it meant that I had a very lackadaisical and arrogant attitude
towards my own stand-up … So of course when I hit London
to do my open spots and to become a comedian I had a really
big slap in the face.’
 Why bother? 453

I ask them both what they got from doing my course.

Tiernan starts by saying, ‘I never would’ve thought of doing
comedy ever in my life before if I hadn’t done it as a course
here.’ Jimmy makes a similar point: ‘Stand-up was the only
thing I wasn’t spectacularly average at in my entire life. And
that year was genuinely … a watershed moment, where I
thought, “I can do this.” Up until then I’d never considered
stand-up particularly’.
Something else they both identify is being encouraged to
find their own voice. Tiernan recalls:

[Y]ou told me some of my material was me being me and

some wasn’t. And I just remember you saying, ‘You’ve got
to be yourself,’ and, ‘What is it that you like?’ And I still
hold that now. I don’t do any material about stuff I don’t
believe in now, I don’t, I refuse to do it … And I think that’s
really important …You helped me with joke structure and
things like that but I think ultimately that just making-me-
be-me is the most important thing you could do, really.

Jimmy argues that the course gave him a sense of space to

develop away from the pressures of the circuit:

It gave me a sense of freedom that I still have, which I think

if you didn’t do a course like that and you just started doing
gigs in London off your own bat, you may find that you’re
constricted faster by the idea that you have to be slick or
you have to do a tight five. I kind of almost luxuriated in
a creative freedom which I think is still in me now and I
think has only been a help to me. So I didn’t sort of go in
and already kind of conform. I think a lot of new acts, you
know, you can tell who their heroes are, who they like as
stand-ups, because they’re essentially aping them. Whereas
I don’t think I ever really did, I think I had my own voice
from the start, because I was encouraged to have it, by
you and by the way the course was designed … So in that
respect that’s probably my most cherished quality, is that
454 GETTING THE JOKE

I’m still quite freewheeling and I’m still quite passionate

about doing it the right way because I had that instilled in
me quite early.

Tiernan is first on at the Gulbenkian, and his act has all

the qualities that define his comedy – cheery likeability, a
penchant for puns and an ability to encompass both childlike
silliness and left-wing political anger. A routine about his
annoyance at the way his bank handled his credit card being
defrauded provides a good example:

Several days after it happened, I got a call from my bank

going, erm, ‘Did you use the cash machine down at the
end of the road where you live?’ I was like, ‘That was me,
yeah.’ ‘And, er, ten minutes later than that, did you go to
the Starbucks near where you live?’ ‘Oh yeah, that was me
as well.’ ‘And, er, in between those two transactions, did
you er fly to the Philippines and draw out £200?’ ‘What
the fuck do you think??’ [laughter] I mean really – really. Is
it, is it worth asking me? [laughter] And – ha! And surely,
surely if I said yes to that, there’d be bigger problems afoot
as to whether or not my card had been frauded, and more
how on earth have I learned to travel at the speed of light!
[laughter]6

His delivery and the way he structures his ideas have the
sheen gained by years of experience, but his conversational
rhythms are very recognisable from the performances he gave
as a student. Looking back to those times, Tiernan recalls,
‘When you did the course, the other thing that was very
useful which I think a lot of people don’t have is just having
an outside eye’. It took him a few shows to really start being
himself onstage. Initially, he was lively and energetic, but I
felt he was a bit too eager to please, talking about things that
he thought the audience would like to hear rather than what
really interested him. I encouraged him to talk more about
himself, and he started to explore a quirkier mix of references
 Why bother? 455

– hip-hop, clubbing, diabetes, vegetarianism, animals, cult

movies.
About halfway through the first term, he really loosened
up and the way he spoke onstage suddenly sounded pretty
much the same as his everyday speech. The laughs got bigger
and getting them seemed much more effortless. I remember
one week in particular, when he talked about going to see the
drum and bass artist Roni Size at Fabric. He made fun of the
club’s bouncers, and in particular their slack attitude, turning
a blind eye to drug taking whilst being surprisingly vigilant for
more minor misdemeanours: ‘And you go into the club, and
people are rolling up and popping and snorting, and they go,
“Don’t stand next to the speaker!” [laughter, some clapping]’7
There’s an echo of this in the gag about the person dealing
with his credit card – both pick up on the ridiculous thinking
of somebody in a position of authority.
Jimmy opens up the second half of the Gulbenkian show.
Towards the end of the act, he starts talking about the
emptiness of his life, spending the days by himself and not
really having anyone else to talk to:

The closest relationship I have right now is with Anil –

[laughter] who is the night manager of Balham High Road
Tesco Express. [laughter] ‘Cos I see him every single day
without fail, every single day, and of course every single
day I put a new basket of produce in front of him and he
can identify more and more dark emotions – [laughter]
about my life, you know, and I can see him scanning my
stuff just looking really upset, just sort of going –

Now he imitates the Tesco manager scanning his purchases

into the till – boop! – breathing heavily as he does so.

You know, and sometimes I can see he just wants to say

something, just like boop [breathes heavily] ‘Four cans – of
Magners. Two bags of Toffee Crisp Clusters. [laughter] And
a bag of Haribo Starmix.’
456 GETTING THE JOKE

There’s a quiet, fluttering laugh, which extends to fill the

pause, then the manager continues:

‘What’s happened? Yesterday you came in here, you had

you gym bag with you, you bought a fucking pomegranate,
didn’t you? [laughter] Individual bags of salad and an
Onken Biopot. [laughter] What’s possibly happened in 24
hours for you to fall so spectacularly? [laughter]’8

As with Tiernan, there are distinct echoes of his student perfor-

mances here. Ten years ago, Jimmy got consistent big laughs
from the audience in the student bar with his anecdotes, struc-
turing them well, and always acting them out evocatively with
great characterisation. I encouraged him to follow this line,
touching on as many areas of his life as possible. He filled the
stage with stories about bullying at school, a trip to the GU
clinic and what his mum thought when she found a can of
butane gas under his bed.
He always had a sharp eye for the telling reference, and
a line from a routine about his military father co-ordinating
a group of animal rights protestors provides an excellent
example: ‘Right – Mingey, Manky, Swampy, Crusty and
Fuck – you go all the way round the back and break in. And
I’ll stay in the Renault Espace operations room. [laughter]’9
It’s the contrast between the cartoonish names of the animal
rights crusties, and the qualities a Renault Espace conjures up
– large, dependable, respectable, perhaps slightly boring – that
gives the joke its comic bite.
The Tesco Metro routine shows Jimmy’s eye for refer-
ences has only sharpened over the years. The basic gag is
simple – that someone can judge his emotional well-being
based on what he’s buying. What gives it its real flavour is the
perfectly-judged choice of references to indicate depression
and a craving for comfort – Magners cider, Toffee Crisp
Clusters, Haribo Starmix – as opposed to an optimistic desire
to adopt a healthy lifestyle – a pomegranate, bags of salad,
Onken yoghurt. Behind the gag is something else he showed as
 Why bother? 457

a student – honesty, a willingness to explore his own vulner-

ability and peek behind the facades of pretention.
Thinking about how Jimmy and Tiernan started out and
the comedians they have become makes me realise what I like
about teaching stand-up. My job is to help students express
themselves as individuals. It’s a joy to see them facing an
audience with their own quirks, anecdotes, peeves, obsessions
and conspiracy theories, and to hear the laughter echo around
the room in reply. The course may not magically open the
doors of professional comedy clubs to them, but as well as
giving them some stage experience and material to face the
open mike circuit with, it should – as Jimmy points out –
discourage them from starting out by simply imitating their
comic heroes.10
Ultimately I’d answer the question ‘Why study stand-up
comedy at university?’ by saying ‘Why not?’ It only seems
wacky because it’s a comparatively new idea. The idea of
formalised training for actors would have seemed bizarre 200
years ago, when most of them learnt their skills – as Lupino
Lane did – through teaching carried out within theatrical
families. RADA was only founded a 1904, and it wasn’t
until 1947 that Bristol became the first British university to
establish a drama department.
Stand-up comedy is a vibrant, popular form, which attracts
far bigger audiences than many of the playwrights and
performers who are routinely studied in universities. At its
best, it manages to balance popularity with cutting edge
inventiveness, daring and profundity. It can encompass an
individual revealing intimate secrets to a group of strangers, a
performer-audience relationship so intense that it can literally
descend into violence, a challenging of taboos so serious that
the authorities intervene, and the most painful moments being
transformed into occasions for laughter. Surely something that
exciting is worth studying?
458 GETTING THE JOKE

Notes
1 Alison Oddey, Performing Women: Stand-ups, Strumpets and
Itinerants, Houndmills and London: MacMillan Press, 1999,
pp. 108–9
2 Interview with Stephen K. Amos, by telephone, 18 September
2012
3 Two members of the Noise Next Door – Sam Pacelli and Tom
Houghton – did the stand-up course. Pappy’s weren’t actually
on the stand-up course, but Matthew Crosby and Tom Parry
both did a lecture-based module about stand-up which I taught
at the time, and both were regular punters for the weekly
comedy night featuring the stand-up students
4 Unless otherwise stated, all quotes from Jimmy McGhie in this
chapter are from interview with Jimmy McGhie, Whitstable,
30 August 2012
5 Unless otherwise stated, all quotes from Tiernan Douieb in this
chapter are from interview with Tiernan Douieb, Gulbenkian
Café, Canterbury, 17 March 2012
6 Monkeyshine: The Professionals, Gulbenkian Theatre,
Canterbury, 20 May 2011
7 Tiernan Douieb at Mungo’s bar, Eliot College, University of
Kent, 20 November 2002. An audio recording of this routine is
included on the CD: various artists, Monkeyshine 2001–2011,
University of Kent, 2011, K-LAF 002 (available to order from
the University of Kent online store. Go to https://store.kent.ac.uk/
and search for Monkey Shine)
8 Monkeyshine: The Professionals, Gulbenkian Theatre,
Canterbury, 20 May 2011
9 Jimmy McGhie at Mungo’s bar, Eliot College, University of
Kent, 15 November 2001. Another of Jimmy’s student routines
can be found on the Monkeyshine 2001–2011 CD – it’s the
one about his mum finding a can of butane gas under his bed
10 In fact only a small minority of my students want to do
stand-up for a living in any case – but I’d argue that they come
away from the course with a great set of transferable skills.
After doing a year of stand-up, having to address a meeting,
present an award or give a best man’s speech will be easy by
comparison
 APPENDIX
Exercises for teaching
stand-up comedy

These games work best if carrying out in the spirit of casual

messing about. The students should have fun carrying out
what they’ve been told to do, rather than strain too hard to
be funny. Funniness should gently grow out of the activities
rather than being forced into life. The person leading the class
shouldn’t be too worried if the exercise in hand veers off into
casual banter, because this can also spark off ideas – but try
and learn how to judge when there’s been enough banter, and
take the students back to the game in hand. Students should
always have a notebook handy to write down any ideas for
gags and routines that arise from the exercises. They should
also record anything they do that involves getting up behind
the mike, so they can listen back to it and mine it for potential
material. The art of leading a class like this is to be able to
pick out anything the student has done that might be useful
onstage – a gag, a routine, an idea, a well-chosen word, a tone
of voice, a gesture, a stance, what they happen to be wearing,
etc. – and feed this back to them.
460 Appendix

Microphone Conversations
How it’s done
This is a devilishly simple exercise. The students arrange their
seating so that they form a small audience. The microphone
stand is placed in front of them, to form a stage area. One
of the students then gets up behind the mike, and simply has
a conversation with the audience. There’s no requirement to
be funny, or to assume any kind of formal stage attitude.
This should be as much like a normal, everyday conversation
as possible, in spite of the microphone and audience. The
student can ask questions of the audience, and vice versa. The
entire group should acknowledge the reality of the situation,
rather than pretending that this is a real stand-up gig where
the comedian doesn’t know the audience. All of the stuff they
talk about to each other before the workshop begins can be
used in the exercise. The subjects discussed can range from
the banal (what you had for breakfast) to the profound (your
philosophy). One potential hazard of the exercise is that
sometimes it descends into members of the audience talking
among themselves, and if this happens, the student behind the
mike has to sort it out and restore order.

What it’s for

Microphone conversations is the best way I have found of
getting students used to the feeling of being onstage and
addressing the audience directly, without the crutch of a fixed
script. Their confidence increases, and they start to define who
they are in relation to the audience. Because the exercise is so
easy, the students relax and often manage to make the rest of
the group laugh. There are also times when a tangible sense of
excitement is generated, when something comes up in conver-
sation that can form the nugget of a gag or a routine. This is
 Appendix 461

also a great way of starting to work on stage persona, because

the individual quirks of each student will be magnified by the
situation. The teacher should look for these and feed them
back to the student concerned.

The Attitudes Game

How it’s done
Again, the basic set-up is a student behind the mike facing the
rest of the group arranged as an audience. The player is given
a series of subjects, and has to give his or her honest opinion
of that subject. I usually print out little slips of paper, each
with three subjects on, and give these out a few minutes before
the students do the exercise, so that they have a bit of time to
think about them. Their responses should prioritise honesty
over gratuitous funniness, and might encompass deeply held
political beliefs, prejudices, pet hates, relevant anecdotes,
even the admission that they have no strong feelings on the
subject. Subjects given should be as varied as possible, and
move between the trivial and the serious. Some examples: a
band you like; pornography; God; things you find embar-
rassing; a stupid thing you’ve had to do as part of your job;
your parents’ house’; Facebook; plastic surgery; things that
keep you awake at night; a film you’ve seen recently; the
government; something you spend too much money on; moist
toilet paper; the human capacity for evil; picnics; a celebrity
you hate; washing up.

What it’s for

The Attitudes Game makes the student think about who they
are and the relationship they have to the rest of the world. If
modern stand-up is often about sharing a world view with the
 462 Appendix

audience, it helps if you actually know what your opinions are.

This exercise can help student to define who they want to be on
stage, as well as generating basic ideas for gags and routines.

Find the Link

How it’s done
The students sit in a circle, and the sequence moves clockwise
around it. Person 1 starts the sequence by suggesting a
subject, say, superheroes. Person 2 (to the left of Person 1)
then suggests a second, completely unrelated subject, say,
arson. Person 3 (to the left of Person 2) then has to find a link
between the two subjects. This can be anything:

MM A simple, factual link (e.g. you could use superhero

comics to start a fire)
MM A personal association (e.g. I used to be slightly scared
of superhero comics when I was very young – and I’m
quite scared of arson now)
MM An imaginative connection (e.g. the Fantastic Four’s
Human Torch would be brilliant at arson)

Then the sequence starts again, with the person to the left of
Person 3 suggesting a new first subject. The game continues
until it runs out of steam. Not all the links will be funny, but
some of them will. It’s important to come up with subjects
and find the links as quickly as possible, because thinking
too much about it robs the game of spontaneity. There’s no
way anybody can lose, because no link can ever be wrong.
Sometimes the sequence is broken, for example, if the second
person gives a subject which is clearly related to the first
(Person 1: ‘Pants.’/Person 2: ‘Vest’). This doesn’t matter: a lot
of comedy is made by breaking sequences. In fact, it’s good to

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 Appendix 463

vary the format. Let anyone come up with a link, even when
it’s not their turn, if they think they’ve got a better one than
the first one suggested. Make everyone except the two people
who suggested the subjects come up with a link. Try taking
the sequences anti-clockwise around the circle for a change.

What it’s for

Find the Link is designed to encourage the kind of associ-
ative, lateral thinking that happens when comedians think of
ideas for material. It encourages reversals, incongruities and
jarring contrasts. Students enjoy playing it, so it’s a good for
warm-ups, because it creates the right atmosphere – relaxed
and playful. It also starts to suggest rhythm and structure.
The basic three-part sequence mirrors the rule of three, which
many jokes are based on.

Rule of Three
How it’s done
A variation of Find the Link. The students sit in a circle and
the sequence passes around it, but this time Person 1 simply
says one word, Person 2 says a second, related word, and
person 3 says a word that’s as unrelated as possible to the first
two. For example: Person 1, ‘Pants’; Person 2, ‘Vest’; Person
3, ‘Genocide’. Then the sequence starts again, with the person
to the left of Person 3 suggesting a new first word.

What it’s for

Obviously, this is about the students starting to think in
threes, as so many jokes are based on that number. Not all the
464 Appendix

sequences will be funny, but when they are it demonstrates

the comic power of three. Again, this is good for warm-ups.

Playing with Words

How it’s done
Each student is given a slip of paper with a word on it. They
have to think of as many ways as possible to mess about with
it. For example, they might find other words hidden within
it, use it to make puns, find weird ways of pronouncing
it, try saying it with an accent, make an acrostic out of it,
suggest made-up definitions for it, etc. Let’s say the word was
‘conjugate’. The words ‘con’, ‘jug’, ‘ate’ and ‘gate’ are all in
there. It might suggest a jug that ate a con[vict], and thinking
about it, ‘jug’ is old slang for prison. You can conjugate a
verb, but conjugal rights are to do with having sex. Maybe a
conjugate is a gate you go through to have sex? ‘Etagujnoc’
is conjugate backwards. You could pronounce it ‘conjugarté’.
Conjugate could stand for ‘Come On Nigel, Jump Up – Go
And Tell Ethel.’ And so on. The students go behind the mike
to share their ideas with the group, and they can also talk
about the whole process – perhaps they didn’t know what the
word meant, or didn’t know when to stop, or got really fed
up with the whole exercise. Some words you might use for
the game: acrobat; salami; meteorite; angel; twee; anemone;
happy-go-lucky; mosquito; baguette; catastrophe; billy goat;
carnival.

What it’s for

Wordplay is a huge part of comedy, and this gets the students
to start looking at words for the creative possibilities they
contain.
 Appendix 465

Surreal Instant Character

How it’s done
The students stand in a circle. Somebody starts off by
nominating somebody and telling them something daft to
impersonate, ideally involving a daft juxtaposition (e.g. a
suicidal toaster, a happy monk, an angry guinea pig, a cannibal
typewriter, a depressed baby, etc.). The nominee then has to
act this out as an instant character, as if in a stand-up comedy
routine. Having done so, they then nominate the next person,
and tell them what to impersonate. The game continues until
everyone’s had a go. It’s best if it’s all done in a throwaway
fashion, with simple gestures and a casual energy, rather than
treating it like a proper acting exercise. Even the way the
students react to the suggestion they’ve been given is part of
the game, as the expression on their face will give away a lot
about what they think of it. It’s best if they remain standing to
do the characterisation, rather than sitting or rolling around
on the floor or whatever – after all, most stand-ups stand up
for most of their act. The game should be quick and snappy –
don’t let any characterisation drag on too long.

What it’s for

This is a great warm-up exercise, because it’s good fun. It
also gets the students used to practising instant character, and
might spark off ideas for those whose comedy tends towards
the whimsical or surreal.
466 Appendix

Nominated Instant Character

How it’s done
This is another game with a student behind the microphone,
facing an audience. This time, the student behind the mike
has to describe someone they know. The group nominates the
person they will talk about, and it should be someone known
to them. Suggestions might include: a sibling; a parent; a
teacher they had at school; a friend; somebody they’ve worked
with; somebody they really dislike; etc. Unlike the previous
exercise, the suggestion shouldn’t be surreal, but should be
someone from their life. Normally, it would be a human, but
it could conceivably be an animal (e.g. a childhood pet). The
student’s impromptu performance has to involve some instant
character, so that they actually characterise the person they’re
talking about, and practise switching between character and
narrator.

What it’s for

Instant Character is about practising a basic performance skill
common to most stand-ups. It might reveal a hidden talent
for voices and impressions, or the characterisation might be
imbued with the student’s attitude to the person, as in Jack
Dee’s ‘You smoke – I choke’ routine.

Writing Exercises
Most of my classes are taken up with students getting up
and performing something for the rest of the group which
they’ve been primed to prepare in the previous workshop. I
try to make the briefs for these writing exercises as open as
possible, to allow each student to produce something that fits
 Appendix 467

their emerging style. Examples include: an anecdote from your

conversational repertoire; an observational routine; a piece of
‘found comedy’; your manifesto for a better world; a piece
that consciously breaks the conventions of stand-up; a routine
that involves instant character. They are road-testing material,
so of course they should record their performance to see where
the laughs are. Feedback is crucial and sometimes takes longer
than the performance itself. It’s great to get students to give
each other feedback, because that helps to increase their own
understanding as well. One exercise I set early on is simply
– ‘Write some jokes.’ This puts them on the spot a bit, but
it’s a good way of getting them to think about what exactly
constitutes a joke and also makes them realise that stand-up
material is more than just formless waffle. The danger is that
that they all come in with a series of simple puns that don’t
fit their style, so warn them in advance about this, and get
them to discuss what a joke is before going off and doing the
exercise.
 GLOSSARY OF
COMEDIANS

This glossary is here so that you don’t lose track of who I’m
talking about when you read the book. It’s not meant to
be some kind of definitive list, and not every comic in the
book gets a mention here. I’ve only included people who are
mentioned more than once in a reasonably substantial way.
Entries are designed to remind you who everybody is, and the
length of each one in no way reflects the importance, status or
longevity of the comedian it describes.

Tony Allen (1945–) UK

The founder member of Alternative Cabaret, and one of the
original alternative comedians, Allen started doing stand-up
comedy in the late 1970s, after working with Rough Theatre.
His comedy was daring, often dealt with difficult subject
matter, and was informed by his anarchist politics. He doesn’t
do much stand-up any more, instead running the Performance
Club, appearing at Speakers Corner and teaching and writing
about stand-up and similar subjects.

Woody Allen (1935–) USA

Originally a successful comedy writer, in the early 1960s
Allen started performing clever, surreal, very funny stand-up
routines, initially in small venues in Greenwich Village. By
the middle of the decade he was a well-known comedian, and
released a series of comedy albums, before moving into the
movie business and becoming the legendary film director he
is today.
470 Glossary of Comedians

Stephen K. Amos (19??–) UK

Since making his Edinburgh debut in 2001, Amos has enjoyed
a highly successful stand-up career in live shows, radio and
TV – notably fronting The Stephen K Amos Show. A black,
gay Briton of Nigerian descent, his lively, engaging act plays
on various aspects of his identity. Amos deliberately refuses to
reveal his age, saying, ‘I don’t want any labels at all, so that’s
why I avoid it.’

Bill Bailey (1964–) UK

Bailey started in London comedy clubs in the 1980s as part
of musical double act the Rubber Bishops. He went solo in
the early 1990s, and now performs surreal, cerebral, spaced
out stand-up dressed up in rock and roll stagecraft, drawing
heavily on his musical virtuosity – he plays guitar, keyboards
and even theramin in his shows. He was also a team captain in
the comedy pop music quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

Milton Berle (1908–2002) USA

After performing in vaudeville as a child in various different
acts, Berle found fame as a monologist. After the vaudeville
circuit died, he performed in nightclubs and appeared in film
and on radio, and became massively famous in the early days
of television in the late 1940s and early 1950s as the star of
the shows Texaco Star Theatre and The Buick-Berle Show,
where he became known as ‘Uncle Miltie’.

Shelley Berman (1926–) USA

Berman became a stand-up in 1957 after training as an actor
and working with improvisational theatre group the Compass
Players. He performed his act seated on a barstool, and many
of his routines took the form of imaginary telephone conver-
sations, although he also did a nice line in observational
comedy. One of the sick comedians, he had huge success with
a series of comedy albums, starting in 1959 with Inside Shelley
Berman.
 Glossary of Comedians 471

John Bishop (1966–) UK

After working in sales and marketing for a pharmaceutical
company, Bishop started in stand-up on the Manchester
comedy circuit in 2000. After building his reputation as a live
act, TV appearances on shows like Live at the Apollo, Michael
McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow and John Bishop’s Britain
have made him successful enough to be able to play arenas.

Adam Bloom (1971–) UK

Bloom has pursued a very successful stand-up career in British
comedy clubs from the early 1990s onwards. His delivery is
frenetic, his jokes often clever and offbeat. Three series of his
show The Problem with Adam Bloom have been broadcast
on BBC Radio 4. He’s known on the circuit for being almost
obsessively analytical about his comedy (and comedy in
general).

Frankie Boyle (1972–) UK

Boyle started as a stand-up in the mid-1990s, and has become
extremely successful in the last few years due to appearances
on a number of TV shows, particularly as a regular on Mock
the Week. His comedy is scabrous and misanthropic, deliv-
ering a series of well-written, deliberately offensive jokes and
engaging in insulting banter with individual punters.

Jo Brand (1957–) UK
After a career as a psychiatric nurse, Brand moved into
stand-up in the 1980s, originally working under the stage
name ‘the Sea Monster’. Much of her early comedy dealt
with her physical size, and since then, she’s been unfairly
criticised for basing all her comedy on this one subject, as
well as being regularly vilified by the right-wing press for
her feminist politics and left-wing sympathies. In fact, her
comedy is based on a gleeful outrageousness which takes in
broad ranging targets, and both her live act and her TV work
have deservedly made her a big star, and earned her a devoted
following.
472 Glossary of Comedians

Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown (1945–) UK

Brown originally started as a drummer in the working men’s
clubs in the 1950s, before turning to stand-up. He has
enjoyed much success by doing ‘blue’ (i.e. sexually explicit)
material, touring big theatres and selling shedloads of videos.
His trademark costume is a garish, multi-coloured suit and a
leather flying helmet.

Lenny Bruce (1925–66) USA

A legendary stand-up, his act was extraordinary for a number
of reasons: he improvised, dealt with obscene subjects, used
expletives, talked about illegal drugs and attacked racism and
hypocrisy. His willingness to delve into taboo areas in his
comedy (and, it must be said, his drug use) led to legal diffi-
culties which destroyed his career, and probably contributed
to his early death from a drug overdose.

Brendon Burns (1971–) Australia

This Australian comic has built his stand-up career in Britain.
His performance veers from cheeky to aggressive, and his
material is often deliberately provocative. His award-winning
2007 Edinburgh show So I Suppose This is Offensive Now
climaxed with a truly remarkable coup de théâtre in which a
pair of hecklers turned out to be not quite what they seemed.

Rhona Cameron (1965–) UK

A Scots comedian who started in the early 1990s, Cameron’s
delivery is assured, her material observational and autobio-
graphical and, as she puts it, ‘my lesbianism show[s] itself
in a comedic way’. She moved out of the comedy clubs into
touring her own show, and has also worked on TV, e.g. as a
presenter of Gaytime TV and a contestant on the first series of
I’m a Celebrity Get Me out of Here!

James Campbell (1973–) UK

Having started his career as a storyteller in schools in the
mid-1990s, Campbell gradually found that the stories were
 Glossary of Comedians 473

disappearing in favour of more tangential material until

he realised he was performing stand-up comedy for kids.
Although he has performed for adult audiences in comedy
clubs, he now mainly works in theatres, touring interna-
tionally to audiences of children and parents.

George Carlin (1937–2008) USA

After some success as half of the clean cut double act
Burns and Carlin, he reinvented himself in the early 1970s,
adopting a hippy image, aligning himself with the politics of
the counterculture and talking about drugs. Later, his style
mutated again, and as an older comic he became increasingly
cynical, gleaning comedy from a grumpier, more misanthropic
world view. He was a giant of American stand-up, an influ-
ential and highly respected figure.

Jimmy Carr (1972–) UK

Carr started on the comedy circuit in 2000, and has enjoyed
much success with a middle-class persona, deadpan delivery
and a series of short, well-crafted gags which are often calcu-
latedly offensive. On television, he has presented numerous list
shows and currently hosts the panel show 8 out of 10 Cats.
He is a hardworking live comedian, regularly touring and
releasing a series of popular DVDs.

Jasper Carrott (1945–) UK

Originally a folksinger, Carrott ran a folk club called The
Boggery in his native Birmingham. Gradually his act mutated
into stand-up comedy, and he’s enjoyed much success with his
live act, various TV projects and a series of successful comedy
albums starting with Rabbitts on and on and on … in 1975.
His classic routines include ‘Car Insurance’, ‘The Mole’ and
‘Nutter on the Bus’.

Margaret Cho (1968–) USA

After starting in stand-up whilst still a teenager, Cho has
worked in film and TV as well as pursuing her live career. Her
474 Glossary of Comedians

solo shows – including I’m the One that I Want, Notorious

C. H. O. and Beautiful – are rooted in her own life and experi-
ences, involving anything from anecdotes to polemical jibes.
She sometimes focuses on her Korean background, frequently
impersonating her mother, and more frequently her experi-
ences in the gay community.

Louis C. K. (1967–) USA

C. K. began working as a stand-up in the 1980s, and in recent
years has built a reputation as one of the finest live comedians
of his generation, with an autobiographical style that takes
a painfully honest approach to anything from his divorce to
his relationship with his children. He stars in, writes, directs
and edits Louie, a semi-autobiographical comedy drama series
about the life of a stand-up.

Billy Connolly (1942–) UK

A Glasgow-born comedian who was a shipyard worker and a
folksinger before his act slid into stand-up comedy. Connolly
built up a huge following, originally in Scotland, and subse-
quently in the rest of the UK thanks to a series of interviews
on Parkinson in the 1970s. As well as various TV projects and
film acting roles, he continues to tour internationally to big
audiences, and constantly produces high quality new material.
A consummate performer, his act can be angry, tender, wistful,
sick, scatological and joyful.

Steve Coogan (1965–) UK

A successful impressionist on the comedy circuit in the
late 1980s, Coogan moved into character comedy in the
early 1990s, winning the Perrier Award (jointly with John
Thomson) at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1992. His characters,
which appear in various TV shows as well as his live act,
include drunken Mancunian lad Paul Calf, minor TV person-
ality Alan Partridge and no-hope comedian Duncan Thickett.
 Glossary of Comedians 475

Dane Cook (1972–) USA

Cook built a huge following for his stand-up shows by culti-
vating his audience on social networking sites like MySpace
and Facebook, and is one of the few American stand-ups
to play arenas. His delivery is serious and energetic as he
shares silly ideas like having a superpower of being able to
squirt spaghetti into people’s faces. He has been criticised by
a number of other comics who argue that his comedy lacks
substance.

Bill Cosby (1937–) USA

Probably best known for starring in the highly successful
1980s sitcom The Cosby Show, Cosby has also pursued a
successful stand-up career dating back to the early 1960s. In
his early career, what was unique about him was that he was
an African-American who didn’t deal with race in his act.
Instead, with a gentle, anecdotal style, he told stories about
his childhood and early manhood.

David Cross (1964–) USA

This bald, bespectacled comic emerged from the American
alternative comedy scene, and has appeared in TV on Mr Show
and Arrested Development. He benefits from a beautifully
engaging conversational style, and his material is intelligent
and politically outspoken. His stand-up CDs and DVDs have
been released by the cult Seattle-based label Sub Pop.

Rhys Darby (1974–) New Zealand

Darby started out on the nascent New Zealand alternative
comedy scene in the second half of the 1990s, regularly
appearing in and helping to run Christchurch’s first comedy
club, touring his own shows and starting to work on TV. He
moved to the UK to further his stand-up career, before finding
fame in the Flight of the Conchords’ eponymous TV show,
playing their manager Murray. He continues to work as both
comedian and actor.
476 Glossary of Comedians

Jim Davidson (1953–) UK

After various childhood forays into showbusiness, Davidson
began performing stand-up in pubs and working men’s clubs
in London, and became well known nationally after winning
New Faces in 1976. His mainstream TV work on shows like
The Generation Game contrasts with his live stand-up act,
featuring ‘blue’ material and racial gags which many would
find offensive.

Jack Dee (1961–) UK

Dee is a highly skilled deadpan comedian who started in the
London comedy clubs in the late 1980s. His act transferred
extremely well on to TV in two series of The Jack Dee Show
in the early 1990s, and since then he has continued to work as
a live act, on TV, radio and in various acting roles. His image
is that of a sophisticated, besuited entertainer with shades of
the Rat Pack, and his comedy is based on a kind of weary,
sometimes scathing cynicism.

Phyllis Diller (1917–2012) USA

Diller was 37 when she first started in the 1950s, and was the
first female stand-up to become a big star. Her act was based
on the premise that she was the opposite of society’s image
of womanhood, and she joked about her looks and lack of
domestic skills. Her delivery was dominated by her extraor-
dinary laugh, her material made up of a string of short gags.

Omid Djalili (1965–) UK

A British-Iranian comedian who threw himself in at the deep
end in 1995 by taking a show called Short Fat Kebab Shop
Owner’s Son to the Edinburgh Fringe despite having no
previous experience of doing stand-up. Subsequently, Djalili
has built up a successful career as a live act, initially in the
comedy clubs, then touring his own show. He also works as
a character actor with cameos in such movies as The Mummy
and Gladiator, and starred in two series of The Omid Djalili
Show on TV.
 Glossary of Comedians 477

Ken Dodd (1927–) UK

An eccentric Liverpudlian comedian who started in the latter
days of the British variety circuit. Dodd’s act encompasses
comedy songs, sentimental ballads, ventriloquism and quick-
fire gags ranging from the whimsical to the surreal. He has
an extraordinary image, with spiked-up hair and prominent
teeth, and uses a duster known as a ‘tickling stick’ in his
shows. Still a hardworking touring comic, his shows are
famous for being extremely long.

Tiernan Douieb (1981–) UK

Since completing the University of Kent’s stand-up comedy
course, Douieb has become a busy working comic. He set up
the Fat Tuesday comedy club, which he ran and compèred for
several years. In 2009, he put together the Twitter Comedy
Club, the first stand-up event using that platform. He is now
the resident compère of the Comedy Club 4 Kids. In recent
years his stand-up has become more overtly political, as seen
in his 2011 Edinburgh show Tiernan Douieb vs. the World.

Ben Elton (1959–) UK

Starting on the alternative comedy circuit of the early 1980s,
by the end of that decade Elton had become well known as
a sweary, motormouthed comedian in a spangly suit and
glasses, mixing observational and scatological routines with
satirical jibes against the Thatcher government. Once quite
a controversial figure, in recent years he’s moved into the
mainstream, although he has not jettisoned his leftish political
beliefs.

Zach Galifianakis (1969–) USA

As well as starring in movies like The Hangover, Galifianakis
is a successful stand-up on the American alternative comedy
scene. A dishevelled-looking, bearded figure, his delivery is
slow and laid back, and he sometimes accompanies his surreal
one-liners with ponderous piano instrumentals. He appeared
in Patton Oswalt’s The Comedians of Comedy tour.
478 Glossary of Comedians

Dave Gorman (1971–) UK

After working as a clever deadpan stand-up and comedy writer,
in the late 1990s he moved into autobiographical one-man
shows in which he chronicles a series of challenges like finding
a given number of people who share his name (Are You Dave
Gorman?) or using the Internet to find ten Googlewhacks in
a row (Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure). In 2009,
he returned to straight stand-up in a touring show called Sit
Down, Pedal, Pedal, Stop and Stand Up.

Dick Gregory (1932–) USA

A groundbreaking African-American comedian whose big
break was a highly successful appearance at the Playboy
Club in Chicago in 1961, to a predominantly white audience.
Before this, Gregory had worked only in black venues. With a
cool, relaxed style, his stand-up act aimed sharp satirical barbs
against racism and hypocrisy, and as the 1960s progressed he
became increasingly involved in the Civil Rights movement, as
well as running for president in 1968.

Jeremy Hardy (1961–) UK

Hardy started on the alternative comedy circuit in the early
1980s, and won the Perrier Award in 1988. His satirical
stand-up act is superbly written and performed. Originally,
his acerbic left-wing views were nicely counterbalanced
with a tweedy, slightly cuddly middle-class image, but more
recently he has tended to play on being grumpy and out of
touch with modernity – which works equally well. He also
writes newspaper columns and appears regularly in such
radio shows as The News Quiz and Jeremy Hardy Speaks
to the Nation.

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) USA

Hedberg started his stand-up career in Florida in the late
1980s. He had a genuine gift for surreal one-liners, which he
delivered in a style that was somehow both spaced out and
slightly staccato. This long-haired comedian played on his
 Glossary of Comedians 479

rather druggy image, with gags like: ‘I used to do drugs. I still

do, but I used to too.’

Lenny Henry (1958–) UK

In 1975, at the tender age of 16, Lenny Henry won the
TV talent show New Faces with an act based on comedy
impressions. With very little experience of performance (or
life), he was launched into a comedy career playing working
men’s clubs and summer seasons, and even became the only
genuinely black person to appear on The Black and White
Minstrels. In the early 1980s, seeing acts like Alexei Sayle
at the Comic Strip led him to change his style, rejecting the
self-deprecating racial gags in favour of a more positive style.
Since then, he has become one of Britain’s most popular
entertainers.

Richard Herring (1967–) UK

After enjoying success in the 1990s as half of the double act
Lee and Herring (alongside Stewart Lee), Herring went solo
with a series of imaginative, often thought-provoking themed
stand-up shows like Christ on a Bike, The Headmaster’s
Son and Hitler Moustache. His DVDs are released on the
pioneering indie comedy label Go Faster Stripe.

Bill Hicks (1961–94) USA

After growing up in Houston, Texas and starting to perform
stand-up whilst still in his teens, Hicks forged a career by
working hard and really pushing at the boundaries of what
it was possible to do with the form. His act took in spiritu-
ality, smoking, rock and roll, conspiracy theories, the evils of
American God-fearing capitalism and UFOs, amongst other
things, veering between the sick, the tender and the thought
provoking. He worked in the UK as well as the States, and
received more recognition here than in his native country.

Harry Hill (1964–) UK

Doctor Matthew Hall gave up his job in 1990 to pursue a
480 Glossary of Comedians

stand-up career in London comedy clubs, after performing

in medical revues. Originally taking the stage name Harry
Hall, he then became Harry Hill, a surreal comedian with
a unique style involving quirky catchphrases, running jokes,
non-sequiturs, pop songs quoted out of context, and a
distinctive costume with beetle-crusher shoes, an enormous
collar and pens protruding from his jacket pocket. His series
Harry Hill’s TV Burp (2002–12) became an institution on
British television. He continues to tour his live show around
large venues.

Wil Hodgson (1978–) UK

This former skinhead hails from the Wiltshire market town
of Chippenham. His autobiographical comedy covers such
topics as his former career as a professional wrestler and his
penchant for collecting 1980s girls’ toys such as Care Bears.
He used to sport a distinctive pink mohican haircut. His
DVDs are released on the pioneering indie comedy label Go
Faster Stripe.

Bob Hope (1903–2003) USA

Although born in the UK, Hope was raised in the US, and
forged a phenomenally successful career as a comedian origi-
nally in vaudeville, and subsequently in radio, movies and TV.
His persona was that of a wisecracking everyman, his material
provided by a team of writers, some of which he kept on
even when old age stopped him from performing. A tireless
entertainer of American troops abroad, his vocal support for
the war in Vietnam led to difficulties with some of the soldiers
whilst performing shows there.

Alex Horne (1978–) UK

Since starting out in stand-up whilst still a student at Cambridge
University, Alex Horne has pursued an eccentric comedy
career with a series of imaginative shows, often collaborating
with Tim Key. These include Making Fish Laugh (recreating
a 1970s scientific experiment on laughter), Every Body Talks
 Glossary of Comedians 481

(a show about body language) and When in Rome (a show

about Latin, which toured around Roman towns). Recently,
he has been the lynchpin of musical comedy show The Horne
Section.

Frankie Howerd (1917–92) UK

After experience as an amateur entertainer before and during
World War Two, Howerd first toured the variety circuit in a
show called For the Fun of It in 1946. By the end of that year
he had started working on Variety Bandbox, the radio show
which very quickly made him a huge star. His stammering,
gossipy style was distinctly camp, as he reeled out far-fetched
tales of woe, heavily laden with numerous catchphrases. He
sprang back from a career lull in the early 1960s, largely
due to a highly successful season at Peter Cook’s venue
The Establishment, and continued to perform live stand-up
throughout the rest of his life.

Eddie Izzard (1962–) UK

Izzard started doing stand-up in London comedy clubs in the
late 1980s, after working in street theatre. His style is highly
distinctive: tangential, surreal and improvisational (but not
entirely improvised). His subject matter is eclectic, ranging
from jam to European history, from cats to religion. His stage
costumes are sensational, partly because he’s a transvestite –
although he does also perform in more conventional attire.
He’s built up a massive following through touring big venues
in the UK and internationally (including performing his act
in French in Paris), and his hugely successful live videos. His
British shows now tend to take place in arenas.

Milton Jones (1964–) UK

Starting at the very end of the 1980s, Jones became very
successful in British comedy clubs with a stand-up act based
on very clever surreal jokes, with a quietly unhinged persona
dressed in appalling pullovers or Hawaiian shirts, his hair
alarmingly gelled. His radio work includes The Very World
482 Glossary of Comedians

of Milton Jones and The House of Milton Jones. Recently, he

has benefited from appearances on TV shows like Live at the
Apollo and Mock the Week, allowing him to play to the larger
audiences he has always deserved. He was the very first act to
headline at my old comedy club, the Last Laugh in Sheffield.

Phill Jupitus (1962–) UK

Jupitus first became established as Porky the Poet on the
ranting poetry scene of the 1980s, then worked in the pop
music business, before becoming a stand-up at the end of that
decade. Physically large, the laddishness of his act was nicely
balanced by a more delicate side, skilfully acting out his ideas.
His Jedi Steady Go show in 1998 focused exclusively on Star
Wars, and was eventually almost as long as the film itself.
He put his stand-up career on hold to present the breakfast
show on BBC Radio 6 (2002–7), but has now returned to live
comedy as well as continuing as a team captain on the long-
running comedy pop quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

Daniel Kitson (1977–) UK

Bearded, bespectacled, lisping and stuttering, Kitson doesn’t
seem like an ideal candidate for a stand-up comedian, but
he’s a natural, improvising effortlessly, telling revealing
stories and criticising his own technique whilst being techni-
cally excellent. Starting in the mid-1990s, he’s built up a
big following in the comedy clubs and beyond, and he won
the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2002. He has
presented a series of soulful, groundbreaking solo shows
which prioritise artistic values over mass commercial success,
and as such he has become an important influence on the DIY
comedy scene.

Mark Lamarr (1967–) UK

Lamarr became a performance poet at the age of 18, having
had a poem published in a Faber anthology, but he quickly
abandoned the poetry in favour of stand-up and moved on
to the London comedy circuit. Sharply dressed with quiffed
 Glossary of Comedians 483

hair, he had an easy authority, playfully improvising around

conversations with the audience and the whole situation of
the gig, as well as having some strong material. He gave up
stand-up to concentrate on a career in TV and radio.

Stewart Lee (1968–) UK

Lee started as a stand-up in the late 1980s whilst studying at
the University of Oxford, and went on to work professionally
both solo and as half of the double act Lee and Herring
(alongside Richard Herring). He gave up stand-up for a few
years to create the musical Jerry Springer the Opera, but
revived his act when that project suffered from being targeted
by right-wing Christian groups. Since 2004, he has created a
series of extraordinary full-length shows, becoming possibly
the finest stand-up working today.

Dan Leno (1860–1904) UK

Probably the greatest and most popular music hall comedian
of his time, Leno’s comic patter was more important than his
singing, thus making his act a crucial evolutionary step in
the development of stand-up comedy. He was also the most
successful pantomime dame of his generation.

Little Tich (1867–1928) UK

A highly successful music hall comedian, Little Tich was only
4’6” tall, and the word ‘titch’, meaning somebody who is very
small, originates from his stage name. Most famous for his big
boot dance, he was also very skilled in performing songs and
patter routines.

Josie Long (1982–) UK

Long started performing stand-up as a teenager, and in recent
years has become a prominent figure in the DIY comedy scene.
Her comedy is marked out by passion and earnestness, with
a charmingly home-made feel which manifests itself in, for
example, showing the audience her own amateurish drawings.
More recently, her work has become more explicitly political
484 Glossary of Comedians

with shows like The Future is Another Place, and she has
worked with the anti-tax avoidance group UK Uncut.

Lee Mack (1968–) UK

Mack has enjoyed a successful career with an energetic,
physical style of straight, no frills stand-up. He also stars
in and co-writes the sitcom Not Going Out, and is a team
captain on the panel show Would I Lie to You?

Bernard Manning (1930–2007) UK

This rotund Mancunian progressed from singing to stand-up
comedy on the working men’s club circuit, as well as running
his own venue, the Embassy Club. Achieving national recog-
nition on The Comedians in the early 1970s, he established
a fearsome reputation by working hard in his live shows and
liberally dispensing gags which were offensive on the grounds
of race, obscenity or just pure abrasiveness.

Marc Maron (1963–) USA

The bearded, bespectacled Maron started his career in Los
Angeles, but went on to become part of the New York alter-
native comedy scene. His stand-up is fearlessly honest, mining
his family background, personal life and his own neuroses in
order to create painfully funny material. He also presents the
successful podcast WTF with Marc Maron, in which he inter-
views comedians about their work.

Demetri Martin (1973–) USA

An American alternative comedian who adopts a laid back
style and has an imaginative approach to presenting his clever,
surreal one-liners, often setting them to unusual music, or in
the form of drawings. He won the Perrier Award at the 2003
Edinburgh Fringe, and his folksy, home-made approach influ-
enced the UK’s DIY comedy scene.

Steve Martin (1945–) USA

Martin’s stand-up act was clever, wacky and stylistically
 Glossary of Comedians 485

subversive, and he built up a following so huge that by the

late 1970s, he became one of the first comedians to perform
in arenas. He found the rock and roll atmosphere of these big
venues unconducive to the subtleties of his art and moved into
starring in such films as The Jerk and Roxanne.

Jimmy McGhie (1980–) UK

McGhie was one of the first students on the University of
Kent’s year-long stand-up course, and since then he has
become a successful comedian, working in the UK and
internationally in Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Singapore,
Australia, India and Dubai. His anecdotal stand-up benefits
from a sharp eye for telling cultural references, and he has
created a series of themed Edinburgh shows including 2010’s
improbably-titled The All-Powerful Warrior Who With His
Endurance And Inflexible Will To Win Goes From Conquest
To Conquest Leaving Fire In His Wake.

Michael McIntyre (1976–) UK

McIntyre’s stand-up is characterised by his energetic, highly
physical delivery – he famously skips on to the stage at the
start of his act – and his observational routines, which focus
on the minutiae of everyday life. A key figure in the current
UK stand-up boom, McIntyre is arguably the country’s most
successful live comic – although he has also been publicly criti-
cised by a number of fellow acts. Michael McIntyre’s Comedy
Roadshow has become an important TV showcase, bringing
the guest comedians it features to a wider audience.

Max Miller (1894–1963) UK

Wearing a white trilby and an outrageous multi-coloured suit,
with an irresistibly cheeky persona and a penchant for daring
sexual innuendo, Miller was the most successful front cloth
comic in the heyday of the British variety circuit.

Sarah Millican (1975–) UK

After getting divorced, Millican attended a writing workshop
486 Glossary of Comedians

with Kate Fox, where she delivered a short comic monologue.

Encouraged by Fox, she started doing open mike spots in
comedy clubs, and quickly established herself as a successful
stand-up. With a distinctively high-pitched South Shields
accent, her deceptively rude comedy often involves chatting
with the audience. TV appearances on, for example, The
Sarah Millican Television Programme have made her one of
the country’s most popular comics.

Shazia Mirza (1976–) UK

A Muslim stand-up most famous for the post-9/11 gag ‘My
name is Shazia Mirza – at least that’s what it says on my pilot’s
licence’, her act was originally characterised by short, clever
jokes and a deadpan delivery. More recently she has adopted
a more expressive, anecdotal style.

Bob Monkhouse (1928–2003) UK

Starting as a comedian in the variety theatres, Monkhouse’s
career encompassed comedy writing and presenting numerous
TV game shows as well as his stand-up act. He continued
to perform stand-up throughout his career, but although he
had plenty of efficient material, his ‘smarmy’ delivery was
frequently criticised. In spite of this, he was a very popular
light entertainer, and an intelligent one, writing insightfully
about the craft of comedy.

Dylan Moran (1971–) Eire

One of the comedians who emerged from Dublin’s Comedy
Cellar, Moran moved to London in the early 1990s and
became a big name on the circuit with a charming, shambolic
style and an intelligent, literary gift for imagery. He won the
Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1996, and has gone
on to co-write and star in the sitcom Black Books, as well as
continuing to perform his live stand-up act.

Al Murray (1968–) UK
Murray performs his stand-up act in the irony-steeped guise
 Glossary of Comedians 487

of the Pub Landlord, a patriotic, pub-loving bar-room philos-

opher who takes common sense to the point of bigotry
and nurses a particular hatred of the French. The character
originated in Harry Hill’s 1994 Perrier-nominated show Pub
Internationale, and Murray went on the win the Perrier Award
for his own show in 1999.

Bob Newhart (1929–) USA

Having written some great material, Newhart’s record
company set up a gig for him to record his first album, in
spite of the fact that he’d never performed stand-up before.
The success of his comedy albums, starting with 1960’s The
Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart, allowed him to pursue
a career as a live comic, with an act made up of a series of
separate, individual routines introduced as if they were songs.
He has starred in sitcoms, appeared in movies and still tours
with his live show.

Rob[ert] Newman (1964–) UK

Originally an impressionist on the comedy circuit, Newman
became a big star thanks to the TV show The Mary
Whitehouse Experience, in 1993 becoming (with David
Baddiel) one of the first stand-ups to play the Wembley
Arena. In the late 1990s, he stepped away from the superstar
comedian role, instead pursuing a career as a serious novelist,
and a much more low-key approach to performing. His
current stand-up is intelligent, thought provoking and politi-
cally radical.

Ross Noble (1976–) UK

After starting as a juggling comedian at the age of 15, Noble
progressed through the comedy clubs to the point where he
now tours big venues with his own show. He has become
well known primarily by working hard with his brilliant live
stand-up act, which is energetic, highly improvisational and
surreal, often building ideas based on conversations with
members of the audience.
488 Glossary of Comedians

Tom O’Connor (1939–) UK

Before becoming well known as a TV quizmaster, O’Connor
was a stand-up on the Merseyside working men’s club circuit,
and was unusual because rather than simply telling a series
of pre-existing gags, he would do observational routines and
material about his upbringing in working class Liverpool. He
still performs today.

Patton Oswalt (1969–) USA

Oswalt started his stand-up career in the late 1980s and has
become a leading figure in the American alternative comedy
scene. His comedy encompasses autobiography, politics and
pop culture, with references to anything from Star Wars to
American hardcore punk. He was the prime mover in The
Comedians of Comedy tour, which took stand-up to indie
music venues, and provided the voice for Remy the rat in
Pixar’s Ratatouille.

Pappy’s (founded 2004) UK

A sketch group founded in 2004, initially under the slightly
longer name of Pappy’s Fun Club. Made up of Matthew
Crosby (1980–), Tom Parry (1980–) and Ben Clark (1981–),
they changed their name after the departure of the fourth
founder member, Brendan Dodds. Crosby, Parry and Clark
have all worked as solo stand-ups, and Pappy’s’ hugely funny
sketch shows incorporate a number of stand-up elements,
playing on the performers’ personalities, and generally playing
on the nowness of the situation in which they are performing.

Andy Parson (1967–) UK

A topical stand-up with a trademark look based on a shaven
head and a goatee beard, Parsons is a regular on the panel
show Mock the Week. He has released two stand-up DVDs,
Britain’s Got Idiots and Gruntled.

Richard Pryor (1940–2005) USA

Starting in the 1960s as an African-American comedian in the
 Glossary of Comedians 489

Bill Cosby mould, by the end of that decade, Pryor’s stand-up

started taking a more militant approach to racial matters as
well as encompassing obscene language and subject matter.
His work was exquisitely performed and searingly honest,
dealing frankly with events in his turbulent personal life,
tackling difficult topics and acting out scenes with a rare
delicacy. In America, he’s widely regarded as the greatest
stand-up comedian of all time, and he’s at his peak in the film
Live in Concert. He gave up performing in the early 1990s,
due to the effects of multiple sclerosis.

Ted Ray (1905–77) UK

After starting off as Nedlo the Gypsy Violinist, in the late
1920s Ray made an important innovation, rejecting theatrical
costumes in favour of an ordinary lounge suit, and becoming
possibly the first front cloth comic to perform as an ordinary
bloke, just like one of the audience. In addition to his live act
on the variety circuit, he also enjoyed big success with the
long running radio series Ray’s a Laugh and various TV and
film work.

Howard Read (1975–) UK

Howard Read is best known for his double act with a
computer animated boy, Little Howard, which is projected on
to a screen. The act was originally devised for an Edinburgh
show, as an attempt to artificially simulate spontaneity, and
since then it has been widely performed in front of both adult
and children’s audiences. Read has produced three series
of Little Howard’s Big Question for the children’s channel
CBBC. He also does a straight stand-up act, which often
features his distinctive comic songs.

Michael Richards (1949–) USA

Richards was once best known for appearing as Kramer in the
long-running sitcom Seinfeld, but in 2006 he was captured on
video shouting racist insults at a group of African-American
hecklers at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood. The footage was
490 Glossary of Comedians

posted on the TMZ website and quickly spread on the internet,

bringing him the kind of notoriety that’s hard to shake off. In
2007, he announced his retirement from stand-up.

Joan Rivers (1933–) USA

Emerging from the Borscht Belt hotels and small clubs in
Greenwich Village, Rivers gained national recognition through
a series of TV appearances starting with the Carson show in
1965. She has gone on to enjoy a successful stand-up career
which continues to this day, with a style based on calculated
bitchiness and a look based on plastic-surgery-style glamour.

Chris Rock (1965–) USA

Probably the most important African-American comedian
since Richard Pryor, Rock started in American comedy clubs,
released his first album in 1991 and had appeared in movies
and on TV by the time of his 1996 HBO special, Bring the
Pain, which made him a stand-up superstar. His material deals
fearlessly and controversially with racial and sexual matters,
and his delivery is loud, impassioned and sometimes angry.

Mort Sahl (1927–) USA

Sahl gave his first performance at a beatnik club called the
hungry i in San Francisco in 1953, and there developed a style
which would revolutionise comedy and lay the ground for
the modern stand-up style. His delivery was conversational,
his material intellectual and satirical, sometimes daringly so.
Although his career was damaged when he got caught up in
the investigation of the assassination of JFK, he continues to
perform stand-up to this day.

Alexei Sayle (1952–) UK

The original compère of London’s Comedy Store in 1979,
Sayle was one of the first alternative comedians. His act was
silly, surreal and satirical, with a manic, sometimes furious
delivery, his fat figure stuffed into a tight suit, his skinhead
haircut sometimes hidden under a porkpie hat. Although
 Glossary of Comedians 491

he called himself a Marxist, the jibes at Thatcherism were

interspersed with vicious gags at the expense of his left-wing
audience. He stopped performing stand-up in 1995, becoming
a respected author, but returned to it in 2011.

Sarah Silverman (1970–) USA

Silverman’s cleverly offensive jokes are undercut by her pretty,
airheaded stage persona. Her delivery suggests she’s almost
oblivious to the fact that what she’s saying is so outrageous,
and thus seems to send up the attitudes she’s supposedly
espousing. Her stand-up can be seen in the film Jesus is Magic,
which intercuts live footage with songs and sketches.

Frank Skinner (1957–) UK

Skinner cut his teeth as compère of the 4X Cabarets in his
native Birmingham in the late 1980s, and made a name for
himself in comedy clubs nationally, before winning the Perrier
Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1991. With a laddish charm,
he enjoys a warm rapport with his audience, and is extremely
deft with explicit sexual and scatological material. TV vehicles
like Fantasy Football League and The Frank Skinner Show,
as well as his live stand-up shows, have made him a big star.

Doug Stanhope (1967–) USA

Stanhope has built a reputation as a comedy outlaw with an
outrageous, outspoken act which veers from abusive invective
to gleeful exploration of obscenity to deft social commentary.
No stranger to controversy – or to people walking out of his
shows in disgust – he has been known to tell audiences that his
comedy is like going into battle because, ‘You’re not all going
to be here at the end.’

Mark Thomas (1963–) UK

First taking the stage at the White Lion in Putney on 19
November 1985, Thomas made a name for himself on the
London comedy circuit for his biting political comedy. In
1996, the first of several series of The Mark Thomas Comedy
492 Glossary of Comedians

Product was broadcast on Channel 4, containing a brilliant

mix of his stand-up act and pranks played on politicians and
other worthy targets. He has presented a series of touring
comedy shows which are as stylistically inventive as they are
politically radical. These include Dambusters (about his role
in the successful campaign to stop the controversial Ilisu Dam
project in Turkey), It’s the Stupid Economy (in which the
audience proposed and voted on policies for his manifesto)
and Bravo Figaro (about his father’s love of opera).

Tommy Tiernan (1969–) Eire

After winning the Perrier Award at the 1998 Edinburgh
Fringe, Tiernan became a hero in his native Ireland for
a stand-up act which encompasses intelligent, sometimes
controversial material, and a performance style which can
range from mad-eyed shouting to nuanced subtlety and rapt
silences. For a few months in 2009, he held the world record
for the longest solo stand-up show after performing non-stop
for over 36 hours.

Andre Vincent (1964–) UK

After training at the Fratellini Circus School, doing a street
theatre act and working with Keith Johnstone’s Loose Moose
theatresports company, Vincent moved on to the London
comedy circuit in 1990. He did some stand-up work in
America in the early 1990s, before moving back to Britain and
establishing a name for himself as a hardworking circuit act,
with a penchant for topical material and sick jokes. In 2002,
he did an extraordinary show at the Edinburgh Fringe, Andre
Vincent is Unwell, about the cancer he was suffering from at
the time.

Holly Walsh (1980–) UK

Walsh took up stand-up after attending evening classes on
comedy writing, reaching the finals of both So You Think
You’re Funny and Funny Women in 2006. Her acclaimed 2011
Edinburgh Fringe show Hollycopter recalled her experience
 Glossary of Comedians 493

being injured whilst jumping off a pier in the Worthing

Birdman competition. She was once a continuity announcer
for the children’s channel CBBC.

Mark Watson (1980–) UK

Having grown up in Bristol, Watson took the unusual step
of adopting a Welsh accent for his stand-up act – convinc-
ingly enough to fool the Mirror newspaper – although he has
dropped this in recent years. His comedy is playful, garrulous
and extremely likeable. In 2004, he pioneered the idea of the
extremely long stand-up act, in a show called Mark Watson’s
Overambitious 24-Hour Show.

Henning Wehn (1974–) Germany

Wehn has built his stand-up career on the British comedy
circuit, dubbing himself the ‘German Comedy Ambassador’.
Much of his material stems from knowingly playing with
stereotypes, particularly the British image of Germans as
efficiency-obsessed Nazis – for example, getting a stopwatch
out ostensibly to time his act to the second. As well as sending
these stereotypes up, this also gives him licence to mock
British attitudes.

Jonathan Winters (1925–) USA

One of the sick comedians, Winters emerged from the New
York clubs in the 1950s. His stand-up was improvisational
and highly imaginative, often involving acting out scenes in
which he would play all the parts, as well as providing the
sound effects. He enjoyed a successful career with his own
syndicated TV show, live performances and a series of comedy
albums, and was a major influence on Robin Williams.

Victoria Wood (1953–) UK

Wood started out as a playwright and singer of cabaret songs
after appearances on the TV talent show New Faces in 1974,
and by the 1980s her live act had mutated into stand-up
comedy. TV programmes like Victoria Wood: As Seen on
494 Glossary of Comedians

TV, as well as her solo shows in big theatres, have made her
the first British stand-up comedienne to become a huge star.
She sold out a 15-night run at the Royal Albert Hall in 1993,
another in 1996, and a 12-night run in 2001.

Steven Wright (1955–) USA

At the age of 23, Wright started performing in American
comedy clubs, building a career on an act based on extraor-
dinary comic minimalism. With a rigorously deadpan delivery,
he dispenses a large number of short, bizarre, brain-frying
jokes. His live work has been supplemented by cameos in
numerous films and TV shows. His first comedy album, I
Have a Pony, was released in 1985, and its sequel I Still Have
a Pony was released 22 years later.

Henny Youngman (1906–98) USA

Known as ‘The King of the One Liners’, Youngman’s act
was a relentless stream of them. Starting in the Borscht Belt
hotels whilst still in his 20s, Youngman spent nearly 70 years
performing his stand-up act. His short gags were conven-
tional, his delivery an old-fashioned quick-fire bark. He’s
widely believed to be the originator of the gag, ‘Take my wife
– please!’
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People in the Name of Light Entertainment, Bob Monkhouse
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Nigel Farndale Tries to Work out Why’, the Sunday Telegraph
Magazine, 13 September 1998, p. 26
Franks, Alan, ‘Sorry: the one s-word you won’t hear from me’, The
Times, 3 November 2004, Times 2 section p. 4
Gifford, Denis, ‘Terry Wakefield: Film Funster’, Ally Sloper no.2
vol. 1, October 1976
Gilbert, Gerard, ‘So, did anyone miss him?; Three months after
“Sachsgate”, Jonathan Ross makes his comeback next week –
and already he’s receiving a frosty welcome. Gerard Gilbert on
why he’s got his work cut out’, Independent Extra, 14 January
2009, p. 6
Gill, A. A., ‘The Devil’s Work’, the Sunday Times, 9 August 1998,
Features section
Hall, Julian, ‘Edinburgh Festival 2003: Comedy: Shazia Mirza and
Patrick Monahan, Gilded Balloon’, the Independent, 21 August
2003, Comment section p. 14
Hall, Julian, ‘Not a classic Burns’ night Comedy; Brendon Burns: So
I Suppose This Is Offensive Now; Pleasance Dome’, Independent
Extra, 15 August 2007
Hamill, Denis, ‘Ghost Story Comes with Punch Line’, Daily News
(New York), 19 September 1999, Suburban Section p. 4
Hari, Johann, ‘Laugh? I nearly cried … Johann Hari toured the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe in search of Britain’s funny bone. He
left with the feeling that, behind the smiles, as a nation we are
dissatisfied with our lives and uncomfortable with each other’,
Arts & Book Review, the Independent, 24 August 2007
 Bibliography 503

Harmanci, Reyhan, ‘Funny Places To Laugh’, San Francisco

Chronicle (Sunday Datebook section), 21 October 2007, p. N18
Harrison, Andrew, ‘This Much I Know: Bill Bailey, Comedian and
Actor, 39, London’, Observer Magazine, 5 October 2003, p. 8
Hay, Malcolm, ‘Preview: Cabaret- Tirade Secrets and the
Low-Down on the Stand-Ups’, Time Out, 15–22 November
1989, p. 39
Hay, Malcolm, ‘Anytime, any place, anywhere? Terry Saunders
tells Malcolm Hay why charity shops, cafés, museums and
launderettes are the best venues for his comic vision’, Time Out,
27 June 2007, p. 54
Hellen, Nicholas and Flyn, Cal, ‘Rock on – comics rake in millions;
Peter Kay Heads A New Breed Of Comedian With Tour
Earnings That Match The Giants Of Pop’, Sunday Times, 12
February 2012, p. 3
Hicks, Bill, ‘Dear Bill’, Index on Censorship (The Last Laugh
edition), vol. 29 no. 6, November/December 2000, issue 197,
pp. 68–77
Kingston, Peter, ‘King of Comedy’, the Guardian (Guardian
Education), 10 August 1999, pp. 2–3
Johnson, Steve, ‘The hated Dane Cook wins over at least one fellow
comic’, Chicago Tribune, 13 May 2009
Jonze, Tim, ‘Laugh? I nearly DIY’d: There’s a new breed of
quipsters rescuing the comedy scene from stale one liners. Tom
Jonze meets their leader, Josie Long’, the Guardian (The Guide
section), 4 August 2007, p. 4
Krassner, Paul, ‘The Busting of Lenny’, Index on Censorship (The
Last Laugh edition), vol. 29 no. 6, November/December 2000,
issue 197, pp. 78–85
Lawson, Mark, ‘The Unforgiven: An Evening with Michael
Barrymore Was Bizarre and Unsettling’, the Guardian, 20
September 2003, Leader pages p. 24
Lee, Stewart, ‘A funny thing happened to comedy … Stand-up
shows are now big business. Floating in the stars’ slipstream,
Stewart Lee wonders if his art-form can survive such success’,
the Independent, 28 November 2010, p. 2
Lee, Veronica, ‘All Present and Politically Correct’, the Observer,
25 August 2002, Review section p. 11
Levy, Steven and Stone, Brad, ‘The New Wisdom of the Web; Why
is everyone so happy in Silicon Valley again? A new wave of
504 Bibliography

start-ups are cashing in on the next stage of the Internet. And

this time, it’s all about … you’, Newsweek, 3 April 2006, p. 47
Logan, Brian, ‘Be Truthful – and Funny Will Come. To Mark This
Year’s Inaugural Richard Pryor Award for Comedy, We Asked
a Group of Comics to Put a Question to the Great Stand-Up.
Brian Logan Introduces the Results’, the Guardian, 9 August
2004, Arts pages p. 13
—‘Edinburgh: How Was it for You?: As this Year’s Festival Ends,
Brian Logan Finds out Who Had a Blast and Who’s on the Brink
of Financial Ruin’, the Guardian, 30 August 2004, Features
Pages, p. 14
—‘Boom, boom: They’ve taken over TV, they top the book charts,
they appear on Question Time – and now they’re filling entire
arenas night after night. Brian Logan on the standup comedy
explosion’, the Guardian, 11 November 2010, p. 19
MacInnes, Paul, ‘Michael McIntyre: a comedian for the Cameron
age’, Guardian Unlimited, 20 November 2009
Meltzer, Tom, ‘Comedy show puts new slant on dark humour’, the
Guardian (G2 section), 8 October 2012, p. 2
Merritt, Stephanie, ‘Eddie? He’s Forever Changing Gear: After
a Few Serious Roles, the Comedian in Tights Returns in Fine
Style’, the Observer, 30 November 2003, Review p. 11
Middleton, Christopher, ‘Silly Billy’, Radio Times, 20-26 November
2004, pp. 34–5
Mikhail, Kate, ‘Eddie Izzard, Comedian’, Observer Magazine, 22
September 2002, p. 22
Mintz, Lawrence E., ‘Standup Comedy as Social and Cultural
Mediation’, American Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 1, Spring 1985,
pp. 71–80
Mulholland, Garry, ‘When Eddie Met Henry’, Time Out, 2–9
December 1998, pp. 22–5
Noble, Ross, ‘Edinburgh Festival: Be Unprepared: Why Would a
Comic Invent a New Act every Night? It’s More Fun, says Ross
Noble. Oh, and You Don’t Have to Remember any Lines’, the
Guardian, 8 August 2001, Features pages, p. 12
Norrick, Neal R., ‘On the Conversational Performance of Narrative
Jokes: Toward an Account of Timing’, Humor, no. 14, vol. 3,
2001, pp. 255–73
O’Connell, Alex, ‘Howard Read and Little Howard’, The Times,
22 August 2003, Features p. 21
 Bibliography 505

O’Connor, John J., ‘TV: Stendhal Drama and a Dance Series

Begins’, New York Times, 25 October 1982, Section C, p. 18
Phelan, Stephen, ‘Lager than Life’, Sunday Herald, 27 October
2002, p. 10
Philp, Myra, ‘Audience Jeers Connolly’s Sick Joke about Iraq
Hostage; That’s Just not Funny, Billy’, the Express, 6 October
2004, News section, p. 15
Quirk, Sophie, ‘Who’s in charge? Negotiation, manipulation and
comic licence in the work of Mark Thomas’, Comedy Studies,
vol. 1 no. 1, 2010, pp. 113–23
Russell, John, ‘Catch a Rising Comic at Four Showcases’, the New
York Times, 8 December 1978, Weekend section pp. C1, C27
Salmon, Barry, ‘Amazing First Week Silenced the Doubters’, the
Dewsbury Reporter, 2 October 1998, pp. 10–11
—‘Building the Dream’, the Dewsbury Reporter, 16 October 1998,
p. 8
Sanghera, Sathnam, ‘Funny Business; Some of Britain’s Funniest
People – Frank Skinner and Al Murray Among Them – Are
Managed by the Toughest Team in the Show Business World.
Sathnam Sanghera Meets the Men who even Frighten the BBC’,
Mail on Sunday, 10 February 2002, p. 36
Scott, Vernon, ‘Scott’s World; Newhart Adjusts’, United Press
International, 9 October 1984, Entertainment
Scott, Vernon, United Press International, 20 August 1991, BC Cycle
Snoddy, Julia, ‘Jongleurs founders sell stake to Regent for £7m’, the
Guardian, 8 August 2000, City Pages, p. 19
Spanton, Tim, ‘I’ve got a degree in Beckhamology’, The Sun, 14
August 2000
Strainchamps, Ethel, ‘Television and the English Language’,
Television Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 2, 1966, pp. 60–4
Sweeting, Adam, ‘It’s the way he tells ‘em – Adam Sweeting on
the contradiction that is Billy Connolly’, the Guardian, 13 June
1991, Arts section
—‘From Big Yin to Big Yank’, the Guardian, 2 December 1992,
Features, p. 4
Tapper, James, ‘What Prompted Comic’s Sick Tirade Against His
Top Gear Schoolmate?’ Mail on Sunday, 30 August 2009
Thorncroft, Antony, ‘Heard the One About: Antony Thorncroft
Looks at a 20-year-old institution, the London Comedy Store’,
Financial Times, 21 May 1999, p. 18
506 Bibliography

Tominey, Camilla, ‘TV comic’s slur on amputee soldiers; Fans

stunned as Jimmy Carr insults our Afgham heroes’, the Express,
25 October 2009, p. 1
Walker, Dave, ‘But Seriously, Folks; Comedy Store Veterans
Tell Their “True Hollywood Story” – and it’s not Always for
Laughs’, Times-Picayune, 8 April 2001, Living- On the Air
section, p. 1
Walker, Peter, ‘Mother stands up to comic over Down’s syndrome
joke: Theatre confrontation with Boyle is Twitter sensation.
Stand-up routine criticised as childish and ignorant’, the
Guardian, 9 April 2010, p. 5
Wansell, Geoffrey, ‘What killed their marriage?’, Daily Mail, 26
October 2002, p. 38
Ward, Victoria, ‘Carr Crass: calls for comic to quit after joke on
Forces’ amputees’, the Mirror, 26 October 2009, p. 7
Wareham, Mark, ‘Sick with Laughter’, Mail on Sunday, 3 October
2004, FB section, p. 80
Wigley, Allan, ‘Pulling Fast One on Death Never Works’, Ottawa
Sun, 22 May 2004, Showbiz p. 21
Williams, Brendon, ‘2 Funny for the Festival’, the Mirror, 24
August 2002, p. 7
Wilson, Ollie, ‘New degrees of comic learning’, The Stage, No.
6180, 23 September 1999, p. 27
Woods, Judith, ‘“Omega 3 Fatty Acids? Fantastic”; The Drink
Is not a Problem, the Weight Needs to Go and the Smoking
is Cher’s Fault. But Johnny Vegas Feels Good, He Tells Judith
Woods’, the Daily Telegraph, 26 November 2003, p. 24
Zito, Tom, ‘“The Sleaze” Is Pleased; John Belushi Is Finding Fun in
his New Movie- Star Fame’, the Washington Post, 8 September
1978, Style section, p. D1

Interviews
Amos, Stephen K., by telephone, 18 September 2012
Berman, Shelley, by telephone, 5 August 2004
Bloom, Adam, by telephone, 29 June 2004
Brand, Jo, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1 April 2004
Cameron, Rhona, by telephone, 19 March 2004
 Bibliography 507

Campbell, James, by telephone, 25 August 2004

Cho, Margaret, by telephone, 19 April 2012
Cho, Margaret, Leicester Square Theatre, 29 October 2012
Darby, Rhys, by telephone, 30 June 2004
Djalili, Omid, by telephone, 28 June 2004
Douieb, Tiernan, Gulbenkian Café, Canterbury, 17 March 2012
Gorman, Dave, by telephone, 29 June 2004
Hardy, Jeremy, Streatham, 1 April 2004
Herring, Richard, Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury, 14 February
2012
Hill, Harry, by telephone, 26 August 2004
Hodgson, Wil, by telephone, 12 September 2012
Horne, Alex, by telephone, 6 July 2004
Jones, Milton, by telephone, 28 June 2004
Jones, Milton, by telephone, 28 August 2012
Jupitus, Phill, BBC Broadcasting House, London, 6 June 2004
Lamarr, Mark, Chiswick, 14 July 2004
Lee, Stewart, Patisserie Valerie, Canterbury, 25 February 2012
Long, Josie, Horsebridge Centre, Whitstable, 18 February 2012
McGhie, Jimmy, Whitstable, 30 August 2012
Millican, Sarah, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, 23 April 2012
Mirza, Shazia, by telephone, 28 June 2004
Murray, Al, by telephone, 2 April 2012
Noble, Ross, Orchard Theatre, Dartford, 24 June 2004
Noble, Ross, Leicester Square, London, 25 August 2009
Pappy’s (Ben Clark, Matthew Crosby, Tom Parry), Patisserie
Valerie, Canterbury, 29 February 2012
Read, Howard, by telephone, 17 August 2012
Sayle, Alexei, University of Kent, Canterbury, 21 November 2003
Thomas, Mark, Clapham, 27 February 2004
Thomas, Mark, by telephone, 1 May 2012
Vincent, Andre, Central London, 14 July 2004
Watson, Mark, Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury, 31 October 2012

Live shows
Bailey, Bill, Part Troll, Wyndham’s Theatre, 18 October 2003, 3 p.m.
Biafra, Jello, Sheffield City Hall (Memorial Hall), 30 September
2001
508 Bibliography

Brand, Jo, The Stag Theatre, Sevenoaks, 10 May 2004

Brown, Roy ‘Chubby’, Margate Winter Gardens, 24 February
2004
Campbell, James, Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells, 1 June
2004
Carr, Jimmy, Gagging Order, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, 23
September 2012
Cho, Margaret, Mother, Leicester Square Theatre, London, 29
October 2012
Comedy Store, Thursday 26 February 2004
Connolly, Billy, Too Old to Die Young, Carling Hammersmith
Apollo, 29 September 2004
Davidson, Jim, Vote for Jim, Winter Gardens, Margate, 25 October
2003
Dee, Jack, The Stag Theatre, Sevenoaks, 23 May 2004
Douieb, Tiernan, Chatback Comedy Club’s Kids Hour, Gulbenkian
Theatre, Canterbury, 17 March 2012
Herring, Richard, What is Love, Anyway? Gulbenkian Theatre,
Canterbury, 14 February 2012
Hill, Harry, Battersea Arts Centre, 14 September 2004
Kitson, Daniel, Brighton Dome Pavilion Theatre, 30 January 2004
Last Laugh Comedy Club, The Lescar, Hunters Bar, Sheffield, 4
May 1995
Lee, Stewart, Vegetable Stew, Whitstable Playhouse, 26 July 2010
Lee, Stewart, Carpet Remnant World, Leicester Square Theatre, 10
December 2011
Lee, Stewart, Carpet Remnant World, Marlowe Theatre,
Canterbury, 24 February 2012
Long, Josie, The Future is Another Place, The Horsebridge,
Whitstable, 18 February 2012
McIntyre, Michael, Showtime, O2 Arena, London, 27 September
2012
Merton, Paul, Out of my Head, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, 24
April 2012
Millican, Sarah, Thoroughly Modern Millican, Marlowe Theatre,
Canterbury, 23 April 2012
Moran, Dylan, Monster II, Brighton Dome Concert Hall, 28 April
2004
Murray, Al, The Pub Landlord, The Gulbenkian Theatre,
Canterbury, 31 January 2004
 Bibliography 509

Noble, Ross, Noodlemeister, Orchard Theatre, Dartford, 24 June

2004
Noble, Ross, Things, Assembly Hall Tunbridge Wells, 3 April 2009
Noble, Ross, Mindblender, Assembly Hall, Tunbridge Wells, 1
October 2012
Stanhope, Doug, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, 24 March 2012
Thomas, Mark, Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury, 8 December 2004
Horsebridge Comedy, the Horsebridge Centre, Whitstable, 28
September 2012
Laughs in the Park, Verulamium Park, St Albans, 23 July 2011
Mungo’s bar, Eliot College, University of Kent, 15 November 2001
Mungo’s bar, Eliot College, University of Kent, 20 November 2002
Monkeyshine: The Professionals, Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury,
20 May 2011

Vinyl
Berman, Shelley, A Personal Appearance, EMI Records, 1961, CLP
1512
Biafra, Jello, No More Cocoons, Alternative Tentacles Records,
1987, VIRUS 59
Carrott, Jasper, A Pain in the Arm, DJM Records, 1977, DJF 20518
—The Unrecorded Jasper Carrott, DJM Records, 1979, DJF 20560
—The Stun (Carrott Tells All), DJM Records, 1983, DJF 20582
Howerd, Frankie, At The Establishment Club & at the BBC,
Decca, 1963, LK 4556
Jones, Jimmy, All the Breast: Best from Jimmy Jones, JJ Records,
1979, JJ0002
O’Connor, Tom, Ace of Clubs, North West Gramophone, 1975,
NWG 75102
Sahl, Mort, 1960 or Look Forward in Anger, Verve Records, 1960,
MG V-15004
Sayle, Alexei, Cak!, Springtime Records, 1982, CAK 1
Walker, Jimmy, Dyn-O-Mite, Buddah Records, 1975, BDS 5635
Various artists, Fifty Years of Radio Comedy, BBC Records, 1972,
REC 138M
—Great Radio Comedians, BBC Records, 1973, REC151M
—Laugh with The Comedians, Granada TV Records, 1971, GTV
1002
510 Bibliography

Audio cassettes
Allen, Woody, The Nightclub Years 1964–68, EMI, 1990, ECC3
Brand, Jo, Jo Brand Live, Laughing Stock, 1993, LAFFC 21
Elton, Ben, Live 1989, Laughing Stock, 1993, LAFFC 16
Ray, Ted, Ray’s a Laugh, BBC Radio Collection, 1990, ZBBC 1117
Various artists, The Golden Years of the Music Hall, Saydisc, 1990,
CSDL380

CDs
Berman, Shelley, Inside Shelley Berman, Laugh.Com, 2002, LGH1111
—Outside Shelley Berman, Laugh.com, 2002, LGH1115
Bruce, Lenny, The Lenny Bruce Originals Volume 1, Fantasy
Records, 1991, CDFA 525
—The Lenny Bruce Originals, Volume 2, Fantasy, 1991, CDFA 526
—The Historic 1962 Concert when Lenny Bruce Was Busted,
Viper’s Nest, 1992, VN178
—The Carnegie Hall Concert, World Pacific/Capitol Records, 1995,
CDP 7243 8 34020 2 1
—To Is a Preposition; Come Is a Verb, Knit Classics/Douglas
Music, 2000, KCR-3019
—Warning: Lenny Bruce Is Out Again, SicSicSic Inc., 2002,
LBSU-666
—Let the Buyer Beware, Shout! Factory, 2004, D6K 37109
Carlin, George, Class Clown, Eardrum Records/Atlantic, 2000,
92923-2
Cook, Dane, Retaliation, Comedy Central Records, 2005, 300304
—ISolated INcident, Comedy Central Records, 2009,
COMC30085.2
Cosby, Bill, Why Is there Air?, Warner Bros., (no date given for CD
release, album originally released 1965), 1606–2
Diller, Phyllis, The Best of Phyllis Diller, Laugh.com, 2002,
LGH1112
Gregory, Dick, Talks Turkey, Vee Jay/Collectables/Rhino
Entertainment, 2000, COL-CD-7163
Hackett, Buddy, The Original Chinese Waiter, Laugh.com, 2002,
LGH1107
 Bibliography 511

Hedberg, Mitch, Mitch All Together, Comedy Central Records,

2003, CCR0024 [CD and DVD set]
Hicks, Bill, Arizona Bay, Rykodisc, 1997, RCD 10352
—Rant in E-Minor, Rykodisc, 1997, RCD 10353
—LoveLaughterAndTruth, Rykodisc, 2002, RCD 10631
—Flying Saucer Tour Vol. 1 Pittsburgh 6/20/91, Rykodisc, 2002,
RCD 10632
—Live at the Oxford Playhouse 11.11.92, Invasion Group, 2003,
INVACD 1001
Lee, Stewart, The Jazz Cellar Tape, Go Faster Stripe, 2011, GFS-33
Leno, Dan, Recorded 1901–1903, Windyridge, 2001,
WINDYCDR1 (available from http://www.musichallcds.com/)
Maron, Marc, This HAS to be Funny, Comedy Central Records,
2011, CCR0122
Martin, Demetri, These Are Jokes, Comedy Central Records, 2006,
CCR0044 [CD and DVD set]
Martin, Steve, Let’s Get Small, Warner Bros., (no date given for CD
release, album originally released 1977), 9 45694-2
Moran, Dylan, Monster – Live, Sound Entertainment, 2004, TLCD
53
Newhart, Bob, ‘Something Like This …’ The Bob Newhart
Anthology, Rhino/Warner Archives, 2001, R2 76742
Noble, Ross, The Official Bootlegs – Part 1, Ross Noble, 2001,
RN001
—The Official Bootlegs – Part 2, Stunt Baby/Brian Records, 2003,
RN002
Oswalt, Patton, Werewolves and Lollipops, Sub Pop Records, 2007,
SPCD 737 [CD and DVD set]
Pryor, Richard, …And It’s Deep, Too! The Complete Warner Bros.
Recordings (1968–1992), Rhino/Warner Bros., 2000, RS 76655
—Evolution Revolution: The Early Years (1966–1974), Rhino,
2005, 8122-78490-2
Rollins, Henry, Sweatbox, Quarterstick Records/Touch and Go
Records, 1992, QS10CD
—A Rollins in the Wry, Quarterstick Records, 2000, QS63CD
Sahl, Mort, At the hungry i, Laugh.com, 2002, LGH 1122
Seinfeld, Jerry, I’m Telling You for the Last Time, Universal
Records, 1998, UD-53175
Smith, Linda, I Think the Nurses Are Stealing My Clothes: The Very
Best of Linda Smith, Hodder & Stoughton Audiobooks, 2006
512 Bibliography

Thomas, Mark, Dambusters: Live 2001 Tour, Laughing Stock,

2003, LAFFCD 0136
Wehn, Henning, My Struggle, Laughing Stock, 2010, LAFFCD
0200
Williams, Robin, Reality … What a Concept, Laugh.com, 2002,
LGH 1104
Winters, Jonathan, Stuff’n Nonsense, Laugh.com, 2001, LGH 1059
Wright, Steven, I Have a Pony, WEA Records, no date,
7599253352 OMCD 1150
Youngman, Henny, Henny Youngman Himself, Laugh.com, 2001,
LGH 1008
Various artists, The Comedy Store: 20th Birthday, Uproar
Entertainment, 1996, UP 3669
—4 at the Store, BBC Audiobooks Ltd, 2004, ISBN no.
0563523077
—Gems of the Music Hall, Flapper/Pavilion Records, 1993, PAST
CD 7005
—Monkeyshine 2001–2011, University of Kent, 2011, K-LAF 002
—Music Hall Alive: Edwardian Stars Recorded on Stage 1938 &
1948, Music Hall Masters, 2003, MHM022/3
—Stand-Up Great Britain, Laughing Stock, 2000, LAFF CD 105

Videos
Connolly, Billy, Two Bites of Billy, VVL, 1995, 6362523
Dee, Jack, Live in London, VVL/Polygram, 1997, 0475823
Izzard, Eddie, Definite Article, VVL, 1996, 0431903
—Glorious, VVL, 1997, 0476043
—Dress to Kill, VVL, 1998, 0579863
Kaufman, Andy, Andy Kaufman Plays Carnegie Hall, Paramount,
2000, 839693
Kay, Phil, That Philkay Video, Colour TV, 2000, JW112
Lamarr, Mark, Uncensored and Live, VVL, 1997, 0474343
Lenny Bruce Without Tears, Vision Entertainment/Time Warner,
1992, 50328-3
Murphy, Eddie, Delirious!, CIC Video/Eddie Murphy Television,
1983, VHR 2162
Newman and Baddiel, Live and in Pieces, VVL, 1993, 088 4763
 Bibliography 513

Newman, Robert, Resistance is Fertile, Laughing Stock, 2001,

LAFFV 0123
Pryor, Richard, Here and Now, Parkfield Entertainment/Columbia
Pictures, 1989, CVT 21140
Thompson, Bobby, The Little Waster, Tyne Tees Television/
Mawson & Wareham Music, 1986, MWMV1003
Vaudeville, Winstar TV & Video, 1999, WHE71199

DVDs
Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story, 2 Entertain, 2010, 2EDVD0592
Bailey, Bill, Live: Cosmic Jam, Universal, 2005, 8236484
Boyle, Frankie, Live, 4DVD, 2008, C4DVD10161
Bruce, Lenny, Ladies and Gentlemen … Lenny Bruce, VDI Inc./Best
Medicine Comedy, 2006, 304327
Burns, Brendon, Live: So I Suppose This is Offensive Now!,
Universal, 2008, 8257671
Carr, Jimmy, Comedian, 4 DVD, 2007, C4DVD10160
—Telling Jokes, 4 DVD, 2009, C4DVD10294
Carrott, Jasper, An Audience with Jasper Carrott, Network, 2011,
7953436
Cho, Margaret, Notorious C. H. O., Matchbox Films, 2011,
MBF019
Comedians of Comedy, The, Anchor Bay Entertainment, 2005,
DV1510
Coogan, Steve, Steve Coogan Live: The Man Who Thinks He’s It,
Universal, 2000, 902 020 2
Cross, David, Bigger and Blackerer, Sub Pop Records, 2010,
SP883
Dee, Jack, Live Stand-Up Collection, Universal, 2006, 8246871
Herring, Richard, Hitler Moustache, PIAS Comedy/Go Faster
Stripe, 2010, PIASCOM104
Hicks, Bill, Totally Bill Hicks, VCI/4 DVD, 2001, VCD0162
Hill, Harry, ‘First Class Scamp’ Live at the London Palladium,
VVL, 2000, 9020192
Hodgson, Wil, Skinheads, Readers’ Wives and My Little Ponies, Go
Faster Stripe, 2008, GFS-10
Izzard, Eddie, Circle, Universal, 2000, VFC 39359
514 Bibliography

—Sexie, Universal Pictures Video, 2003, 8208905

Jupitus, Phill, Live: Quadrophobia, Universal, 2011, 8285413
Lee, Stewart, Stand-Up Comedian, 2 Entertain, 2005, VCD7210
—If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask for One, Comedy
Central/Real Talent, 2010, COMEDY01
—90’s Comedian, Go Faster Stripe, 2006, GFS-1
—Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, 2 Entertain, 2009, BBCDVD3010
—Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle Series Two, BBC/2 Entertain,
2011, BBCDVD3471
Long, Josie, Trying is Good, Real Talent/PIAS UK, 2008,
RTDVD001
Louis, C. K., Chewed Up, Anchor Bay Entertainment, 2008,
ABD4815
Mack, Lee, Live, 2 Entertain, 2007, 2EDVD0029
McIntyre, Michael, Live & Laughing, Universal, 2008, 8258740
—Hello Wembley!, Universal, 2008, 8270608
Millican, Sarah, Chatterbox Live, 4 DVD, 2011, C4DVD10358
Murray, Al, The Pub Landlord Live: My Gaff, My Rules, Universal,
2001, 8208892
—The Pub Landlord: Live at the Palladium, ITV DVD, 2007,
37115 26373
Noble, Ross, Nobleism, Universal, 2009, 8250595
Pryor, Richard, Live in Concert, Revolver Entertainment, 2004,
REVD1806
Rock, Chris, Bring the Pain, Dreamworks, 2002, 0044504009
Silverman, Sarah, Jesus is Magic, Warner Music Entertainment,
2006, 5051442978520
Vegas, Johnny, Who’s Ready for Ice Cream?, Universal, 2003,
8209129
Watson, Mark, Live, 2 Entertain, 2011, 2EDVD0645

Television
Allen, Dave, BBC One, Saturdays, 6 January–10 February 1990
Arena (‘Oooh, er Missus! The Frankie Howerd Story’), BBC Two, 1
June 1990
Bernard’s Bombay Dream, Channel 4, 26 June 2003
Bob Hope at 100, BBC One, 12 August 2003
 Bibliography 515

Face to Face, BBC Two, 12 January 1998

Friday Night Live, Channel 4, 26 February 1988
Funny Business, BBC Two, 29 November 1992
Hurrah for Cancer, BBC Three, 28 October 2004
Jack Dee Live, Channel 4, 13 October 1995
Jack Dee Live at the Apollo, BBC One, 27 September 2004
Kings of Black Comedy, Channel 4, 9 March 2002
Lee Evans – Wired and Wonderful, Live at Wembley, BBC One, 19
September 2003
Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth, BBC Four, 3 June 2003
Lenny – Live and Unleashed, BBC One, 27 December 1990
Live at the Apollo, BBC One, 17 December 2007
Live Floor Show, BBC Two, 8 February 2003
Live Floor Show, BBC Two, 15 March 2003
Mark Thomas Comedy Product, The, Channel 4, 29 March 1996
Pebble Mill, BBC One, 20 April 1994
Ross Noble- Unrealtime, BBC Two, 21 February 2004
Saturday Live, ITV, 1 June 1996
South Bank Show, The, ITV, 24 January 1991
South Bank Show, The, ITV, 4 September 1992
South Bank Show, The, ITV, 5 December 1993
South Bank Show, The, ITV, 15 September 1996
South Bank Show, The, ITV, 26 September 1999
Stand-Up America, BBC Two, 7 July 1987
Stand-Up America, BBC Two, 22 February 2003
Stand-Up America, BBC Two, 1 March 2003
Stand-Up America, BBC Two, 15 March 2003
Stand-Up Show, The, BBC One, 18 March 1995
Stand-Up Show, The, BBC One, 8 April 1995
Stand-Up Show, The, BBC One, 18 November 1995
Stand-Up with Alan Davies, BBC One, 19 June 2000
Stand-Up with Alan Davies, BBC One, 26 June 2000
Stand-Up with Alan Davies, BBC One, 3 July 2000
TX.: “Je Suis a Stand-Up”- Eddie Izzard Abroad…, BBC Two, 7
December 1996
We Know Where You Live. Live!, Channel 4, 16 June 2001
516 Bibliography

Radio
Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, 22 July 2011
In the Psychiatrist’s Chair, BBC Radio 4, 19 August 1987
Pillories of the State, BBC Radio 4, 28 January 2001

Internet
Anderson, Sam, ‘Irony Maiden: How Sarah Silverman is raping
American comedy’, http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/
culturebox/2005/11/irony_maiden.html [accessed 28 August
2012]
Associated Press, ‘Is Dane Cook Actually Funny?’, http://today.
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 Bibliography 517

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Other
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postcards.com)
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Tour programme for Eddie Izzard’s Sexie, 2003
518 Bibliography

Stand-up comedy is best experienced live. Many of the comedians

mentioned in this book are still alive and working today. Why not
go and see them perform live? Failing that, many of the audio and
video recordings are still available to buy. Why not buy yourself
some of the recordings listed here?