Why I won’t be going to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2013

Moaning about the costs involved in taking a show to the Fringe nowadays are as much a part of the Edinburgh landscape as Arthur’s Seat and that alleyway on Cowgate that usually smells of piss, but these arguments persist for a very good reason: the Fringe is too expensive, and the generally-accepted model works in the favour of everyone but the performer and the audience. Never has this been as big a concern for me as it is now.

Some background:

In August 2012, rather than taking a show to Edinburgh, I got married. Weddings aren’t cheap, but my wedding – and a lovely one it was too, thanks very much, although I don’t think we ever got your card? – cost less than it would to put on an early afternoon show at one of the ‘Big Four’ comedy venues, and no one who attended had to pay upwards of £15 for the pleasure of sitting through a 55 minute show on an uncomfortable fold-out chair in a dank cavern.

Even before getting married, my thoughts had started to turn for the first time towards starting a family, and I planned a show with those thoughts in mind. I previewed that show in Camden just before the wedding, did a few work-in-progress shows in October and November, and looked forward to taking it to the Fringe in 2013. Not by agreeing to an unfavourable profit-split for a performance space in a university store cupboard or lobbing almost three grand at a half-page advert in the main Fringe programme, but by throwing myself wholeheartedly into the spirit of the Free Fringe.

The Free Fringe is excellent. Venues are free for performers, shows are free for audiences, and a bucket is brandished at the end in the hope of a donation or two. It offers a freedom of choice for all involved, especially those performers who don’t have the benefit of an agent or a production company to cover initial costs.

But I’m not going to Edinburgh in August 2013 to perform my show about coming to terms with the fact that I might one day become responsible for the life of another human being, because on August 7th 2013 (or thereabouts), I actually will become responsible for the life of another human being, and I sure as hell had better come to terms with it sooner rather than later.

I’m going to be a father, and I’ve never been more scared of anything else in my life. Excited, sure. But also scared. Very scared.

Now, every penny I spend on something frivolous like ‘pursuing a dream of a sustained career in the performing arts that has, if I’m totally honest, shown few signs of coming true over the last four years’ is a penny that could be better spent on something else. Stuff like nappies or building blocks or a bib or shoes or food or any number of other things that all of a sudden sound and feel a lot more important than the career I’d love to have but appears increasingly unattainable.

My show about thinking about having children is now a show about accepting that I will soon have a child, but that show won’t be going to Edinburgh this year, and we won’t be having that child up there either. All things being well, my wife and I will have a baby in the hospital near where we live in London. We already pay a fairly extortionate amount of money to rent a place there, and the idea of paying a grotesquely extortionate amount for a one-month rental in Edinburgh at the same time is too far beyond the financial capabilities of many youngish performers nowadays, myself included.

Thanks to the Free Fringe, we were at least able to contemplate the possibility of having a pseudo-Scottish baby. Perhaps without so many logistical concerns, going up in 2014 might not be impossible, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, there are more important things to worry about. Things like paying off credit cards and clearing space in our bedroom for a cot. Things like coming up with lists of names and working out whether or not we can afford to live where we are when we need to move to a two-bed.

And things like working out whereabouts in London I might be able to put on my show in mid-July, while everyone else is previewing and I have a fully-formed thing that has existed for almost two years, hopefully good enough to attract a bit of attention and provide a push that could lead to me being able to spend more time with my child as he or she is growing up, rather than stuck in an office from 9 til 5.30 every day. The industry might decamp to Scotland every August, but what’s to say that someone can’t grab some industry interest a fortnight before, demonstrating that it’s possible to get somewhere in the comedy world without having to jeopardise the financial well-being of a tiny human being?

What’s to say that someone couldn’t be me?

And what’s to say that people like you wouldn’t come to see it, too? Because, let’s be honest here: if you do come to see it, you will be personally contributing to my ability to pay to keep my flat warm, while also getting entertained in the process. What more could you want?

Details to follow. As is a baby.

Here is a blog about new comedians who aren’t doing a very good job

I stopped taking part in comedy competitions a few years ago, mainly because I performed terribly at every comedy competition I’d taken part in. They were always dispiriting evenings so I thought I’d strike a match and rid myself of the stench I was frequently responsible for creating.

Even now, almost four years to the day since I first held a microphone, I don’t particularly enjoy the idea of a comedy competition. This is down to bitterness, of course, and some acts I love have thrived in that environment, but the comedy industry itself creates enough competition at all levels of the game without having to create more competitions that label themselves as competitions and making new acts feel as though succeeding in these competitions is the only way to make it.

It doesn’t help that the definition of ‘new act’ has always been loose, at best. Most of these competitions call themselves ‘new act’ competitions but you always end up with a mix of people who’ve only done six gigs and some who’ve been going for years. A few years ago, a chap in his seventh year of comedy won a high profile new act competition. The BBC recently brought back their new act competition and I only just squeaked through their “you can’t have been doing comedy for more than two years” rule when I entered in 2010. I didn’t check the rules this year but, assuming they stayed the same, it was a surprise to see someone in the final who I did a gig with back in June 2009. At a new act competition.

So, a few years after swearing off comedy competitions, and almost four years to the day since I first picked up a microphone, I took part in a ‘new act’ comedy competition. I am a hypocrite.

It was an audition for what used to be known as the Hackney Empire New Act Of The Year. From a comedy competition point-of-view, no one is declared ‘the winner’ on the night. They just choose the best acts from all the auditions and shove them in the final and is, therefore, no more a competition than the industry as a whole. Have I now contributed to making the playing field uneven? Perhaps. I’m not a new act. I am as far as the rules of the competition are concerned, but that’s not enough of a hook to hang my ‘new act’ hat on. I signed up because this competition has history. I’d never entered before, and there’s no way I’d even consider throwing a ‘new act’ hat in the ring after almost five years so this was my last chance. There is no financial reward for reaching the final or even for winning. You’d get a nice gig in a theatre with Arthur Smith compering, but that’s about it. It’s as close to being just another gig as you can get so there we go.

So I did it, and I probably wasn’t good enough to make it to the final, and I’m an awful person for disregarding my own standards in the hope of getting on a nice big stage with Arthur Smith introducing me, but now we’re all agreed that I’m going to hell that’s by the by and we can move on.

I don’t often gig with new acts nowadays. I don’t often gig with anyone nowadays, actually, such is the nature of getting married and having a cat and going back to full time work to save for the Edinburgh Fringe, but it’s the new acts I’m concerned about. Not the ‘new acts’ like me who aren’t new acts, but the new acts who actually are new acts. Jay Cowle is a ‘new act’ like me, and he was there. He was very good. He always is. The guy who was in that competition in 2009 and the BBC final this year? He was there and good too.

I liked two new acts who might actually be new acts: a character duo by the name of Modern Dreams were a pleasant surprise, as was Austrian comic Alice Frick. They were bold and original and memorable and took risks, some of which paid off.

So, that’s four acts who stood out. Out of fifteen. Just three or four years ago, it wasn’t like this. The ratio was better. The ideas were bolder. The acts were more distinctive. Competition nights were dispiriting because I did badly. This time it was dispiriting because out of fifteen acts, only four deserve mention.

What’s happening? Things are different in November 2012, and I can’t quite work out why.

I’m not a professional comedian. I’ve been doing it for four years and if I make a couple of hundred quid every three months, that’s a good financial quarter. I don’t work the circuit, I’ve never won a competition, my best review in Edinburgh gave me three stars, and some people openly and actively dislike me. I don’t know how many new acts will read this. I don’t know if you want to listen to me or if you care what I think or even if what I have to say is of any interest but after sitting through that show, I need to get some things off my chest and offer some unsolicited advice. You’re free to ignore it. But I hope you won’t.

1.
Why does everyone have the same voice? Not in terms of tone, but in terms of message. There is a wealth of experience for you to draw on. The world is big. Massive, in fact. Look outside your little corner of that world or, at least, find something in that corner and look at it differently. Are you going to do a joke about going to the supermarket? Great. Now forget the bit you came up with about self-service checkouts unless you’ve got something new to say. They’re actually incredibly convenient and work brilliantly most of the time.

2.
If you’re going to do a joke about AIDS, you should probably think twice about doing a joke about AIDS. It’s not that AIDS can’t be funny – anything can be funny, with the right spin – but you’re probably going to include the words “hearing” or “bummer” and a million people have done it before you and almost all of those people dropped those jokes when they realised they’re not particularly funny or original.

3.
Male comedians: why do you hate your wives and girlfriends so much? They have to put up with your bullshit delusional dreams of making it as a comedian, so the least you could do is not call them a “fat bitch.” Half of most comedy audiences are women. Think hard about what you’re saying. At the gig in question, a young guy decided to talk about losing his virginity to a middle-aged woman “with hanging tits and nipples that looked like biros.” He chose to direct this tidbit of material to the left-hand-side of the well-lit room, directly to four middle-aged women who just so happened to be judges. Regardless of the setting, that joke had no purpose. What is it for? Who is it for? Why is it relevant? Consider all of these points before you say something. There’s a joy to be had in free association and improvisation but you still have to take responsibility for every word that comes out of your mouth, and if you don’t, you’re a fucking prick.

4.
Female comedians: if you start your set by saying “I know what you’re thinking: I’m one of those female comedians but don’t worry, I’m not going to be shit,” you’re reinforcing what should be a non-issue and it helps no one. Especially if you are then pretty shit. By saying something like that, you’re actively encouraging people who’ve never considered the possibility that women aren’t funny to think of women as not being funny. Women are funny! There are lots of funny women! Some people think there are no funny women, but those people are dickholes and the way to change the way they think is to be funny, not by saying “I’m one of those female comedians but not shit” and then being shit.

5.
Stop using the stereotypical voice of young urban black men. Especially if your ‘twist’ is that the person with that voice you’re impersonating was actually white.

6.
Stop talking about the Olympics or the Diamond Jubilee or London riots unless you’ve got something good to say. The comedy world moves quickly nowadays and almost every joke you’ve thought of was done on Twitter or in clubs at the time. You don’t have to be topical but JESUS CHRIST you’d better have something interesting to talk about if you’re going to dive into a topic like that. When most major DVD releases this Christmas contain Olympic/Jubilee/riot jokes and are getting torn apart in reviews for that very reason, you know you need to think of something else. Doing so is difficult and frustrating but that’s part of the fun.

7.
Go and watch more comedy before you dive head first into gigging. People will often tell you that any stage time is good. That’s not true. You’ll often learn more from watching working comics than you will from peddling your same old five minutes. Watching other acts at new act/open mic nights doesn’t count unless they’ve got a good number of decent, established acts trying new material. This, I think, is perhaps the biggest problem with comedy at the moment – specifically in London. Because pro nights won’t shove open spots into their line ups, new acts are forced to work on their very own circuit that has almost no crossover with the real one. The only comedians they’re watching are other comedians in that same pool, and ‘real’ audience numbers are at a low so they’re performing to audiences full of new acts. No thinking, feeling human beings. Just other acts. Comedians think differently to normal people. They laugh at different things. They aren’t to be used as a true barometer of quality, especially not at that level, and especially if those new acts are all doing the same old shit and not going to watch professional comedy as regularly as they should. It’s easy to feel comfortable as a big fish in a small pond, but some time or other you’re going to be flushed down the toilet into the shit-filled sewer of frequent despair that is Real Life In The Comedy World Where You Never Get An Agent And No One Gives You A Paid Slot Unless You Can Drive The Headliner And Russell Kane Still Insists He’s In His Early Thirties When He Has Been In His Early Thirties For Many Years Now.

8.
If you aren’t very good and no one is laughing and no one has ever laughed and you’re not enjoying yourself, stop. You probably won’t get better. There is no timeframe on this. You’ll know when because the world will tell you and you should listen, even if ‘that audience just wasn’t for you.’

9.
Punch up. Don’t punch down. No one wants to hear your ‘chav’ voice. No one wants to hear your fabulously witty fake ‘chav’ baby names. Also, do you know we’re in a recession? Do you know that thousands of people every day discover they can no longer afford to feed their children? Do you appreciate that as we all get poorer – while a select few get richer – we’re all closer to being ‘chavs’ than ever before and your use of that word seems like a relic from a bygone age?

10.
Stop talking about rape. Unless you have something to bring to the table that isn’t some ridiculous pull-back where, shock horror, you were the hilarious rapist doing some funny raping after all! Haha! You legend! Let’s be friends now!

11.
We know what you mean. Stop asking.

12.
The more you tell us you’re telling a true story or that something genuinely happened or that a thing was literally the best thing of that thing you’ve ever seen or done or heard, the less I believe you’re telling a true story or that something genuinely happened or that that thing was literally the best thing of that thing you’ve ever seen or done or heard. Just tell your story. We’re less likely to question it.

13.
I don’t want to hear about your trip to Amsterdam. I have heard about lots of trips to Amsterdam over the years. Have you heard of Phil Nichol? He’s excellent. His was the best.

14.
Aim higher. This is different to punching up. This isn’t about choosing targets, but about choosing who you want to be and what you want to say. Just… aim higher.

15.
Caster Semenya jokes. Really? Come on. She didn’t really deserve it back in 2009. She certainly doesn’t deserve it now.

16.
I’m glad you went on a comedy course and I’m sure it gave you a lot of confidence and the skills you need to construct a set with an opening and callbacks and ending on your best joke which is great and I’m really happy for you so thanks so much for giving me absolutely no sense whatsoever of who you are or what you actually think beyond your robotic adherence to a structure and form that doesn’t really need to be observed (which you’d know if you ever watched some more interesting comedy). There is a whole world of chuckles out there, but if you stick to watching new acts (most of whom also went on your course) and the guys at the top with slick sets on Live At The Apollo you’re missing out on SO MUCH. Learn the rules, then teach yourself to break them.

17.
Don’t use ‘gay’ or ‘retarded’ as pejorative terms. It makes you look like an idiot and I will hate you for not growing up.

18.
Brilliant! I love Stewart Lee too! Let’s move on.

19.
Brilliant! I love Nick Helm too! Let’s move on.

20.
Stop putting ‘stand up comedian’ in your employment section on Facebook. Stop creating Facebook pages. Stop choosing Twitter account names with your real name then ‘comedy’ on the end. Earn it.

21.
If you’re going to do badly at a gig – a New Act Of The Year audition, for example, like the gig I was at, for example – and one of the judges calls you out on a poorly-judged rape joke, don’t go on Facebook and refer to the judges as “Middle Aged feminazis Germain Greer, miss marple, Jessica fletcher” [sic]. Not only is that sentence awfully composed, it also completely ignores the actual issue (that you weren’t very good and couldn’t justify your material) and attributes blame to the wrong people.

We all make mistakes. I made a lot of these ones when I was new, and I’ll make different ones going forward. The trick is to learn from those mistakes. The current open mic set-up doesn’t allow for that, so it’s more important than ever that new acts occasionally step outside of their comfort zone. Try it, fail, get better. Actually better, not open mic better. There’s a big wide world of comedy out there and there is (arguably) space for everything and everyone, but we/you need to think harder about what you’re doing, new acts. In those days before your fifth spot, don’t fret over whether this will be the night you get heckled or if your hand will shake or if you’ll forget that bit in your second set-up. Instead, think about why you’re doing this, what you want to say, and what you want to achieve. Take responsibility. Have fun. Experiment. Be bold. Be different, but justifiably so.

Aim higher. Please.

–

I might update this with other stuff once my friend Jack De’Ath emails me like he promised he would but hasn’t yet because apparently he has “other more important things to concentrate on at the moment, if you wouldn’t mind waiting for a little while, thank you very much.”

–

Jack has now emailed me. He is a very impressive new-ish act who often finds himself at new act/open mic nights, so he’s well-placed to comment on this stuff. He also runs lovely gigs you should attend and yes, Jack, my diary is pretty empty next year, thanks for asking.

Here is Jack’s email:

Here is a list of annoying traits that open mic / new acts do. I have probably committed most of them myself. Well, not the bits about rape and sexism… and twitter and supermarket self-checkout machines.

Shock humour
Jokes about rape, incest and paedophilia, all told, lack any subtlety and nuance. They are only there in because they get a shock reaction.

Sex jokes
Sex can be very funny (see Thom Tuck’s routine about oral sex with a grape) but it is also a hot bed for lazy puns and stories that give us no insight into the person telling the joke. This is particularly true of wordplay using “Cum” / “Come”.

Telling the audience to be sympathetic
Comic: “I’ve recently broken up with my girlfriend” (comic makes a gesture to audience)
Audience: “…awww”
I’ll awww when I want to awww, stop telling me to feel sympathy for you.

Sexism
I have genuinely seen an act finish a gig “If I’ve offended any birds in the audience then I’m sorry… But who cares what you think you’re just a woman”. The audience laughed their heads off. I went on and did a bit about kingfishers. They did not like me.

Supermarket self-check out machines
If hear the punchline “The checkout goes ‘approval needed’… you think you need approval?!” I’m going to eat my fist.

Non-topical topical material
If you need to remind an audience of the context of you topical joke – “do you remember the London riots when people where robbing Lidl?” – then your joke is not topical. Unless it’s attached to a personal story of some kind that weaves into a full routine, drop it.

Inadvertently doing Tim Vine’s jokes
I’ve heard the joke about “crime in multi-storey car parks … it’s wrong on so many levels” so many times. If you do puns please google each one to make sure Tim Vine or Milton Jones hasn’t done it before.

Giving out twitter address at the end of a set
Stop it. Just stop it.

I think a lot of these habits boil down to a lack of confidence, which is understandable. This is my theory as to why open mic / new comics tend to do these things.

New acts are too scared of silence. So afraid of not getting a laugh for a joke they make the punchline as obvious as possible so everyone gets it. Unfortunately that means you can see the joke coming a mile off. It’s so frustrating to know the end of a joke before the comic has finished it. There is a complete lack of surprise.

Sara Pascoe explains it better in this joke on this episode of Stuart Goldsmith’s Comedian’s Comedian podcast: “Flying with Ryanair is like Marmite… very cheap.” (This occurs around 31.25)

The audience is expecting the traditional tagline of “You love it or hate it”, so when Sara says “very cheap” there is a release of tension resulting in laughter.

New comics can be so worried that their joke won’t get a laugh that they shoot straight for the obvious. Anyway that’s my theory. Maybe they are just crap. Of course this improves with time and as their writing improves.

A note about JWSHHASTTOSTTMOMNW

On October 4th, I did a work-in-progress show at The Hen & Chickens Theatre in Islington, London. It was an incredibly helpful experience, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

I am doing another work-in-progress show at The Hen & Chickens Theatre in Islington, London, at 9.30pm on Thursday 15th November, and I would like you to come. This is why:

The Hen & Chickens Theatre in Islington, London charges £110 to hire their theatre space for the 9.30pm slot. I have done one show, and am doing another show. That’s £220.

For this you get a stage and a dressing room and a decent sound/light system and an incredibly helpful set of venue staff, which is more than can be said for a lot of free rooms. It’s a worthwhile investment if you can afford it, which I can’t, but I am very keen on getting this show as good as it can be and needed the jolt of having paid for a space to push me to work on the show, because I am lazy, and would prefer to do nothing with my time.

As well as being lazy, I am an artist. As an artist who cares about the art and only the art but not the money I spent some money to get the art nice and arty.

I’d also like to make some money, to fund more art/crisps.

Tickets for my show cost £4 each, which includes venue membership valued at £1.50. I am entitled to £2.50 of every ticket sold, and in order to break even on venue hire, 88 tickets need to be sold across two nights, with an average of 44 people per evening.

The Hen & Chickens Theatre in Islington, London is a 54-seat venue.

Also, I bought a table-top flip-chart to use in the show last night, and because it was a last minute purchase, it cost more than I’d like to have paid: £39.99 rather than one I saw online for £24.99.

So, to make that money back on top of the venue hire costs I need to sell another 16 tickets. That’s 104 tickets overall, or 52 people per night, in a pub theatre that seats 54 people.

On my first night at The Hen & Chickens Theatre in Islington, London – last night – I sold 4 tickets.

To break even I need to sell 100 tickets for my next show on Thursday 15th November at 9.30pm at The Hen & Chickens Theatre in Islington, London, even though it only seats 54 people.

I am not very good at maths/finances/business. But I am good at comedy. A bit. And I care about this show. A lot. And I want it to be excellent.

If only 4 more people turn up to The Hen & Chickens Theatre in Islington, London, at 9.30pm on Thursday 15th November, I won’t mind. Honestly. I’ll do the show and I’ll enjoy doing the show and those 4 people will enjoy watching it. But it would be lovely if more than 4 people turn up. It would be excellent if 54 people turn up. If 54 people turn up and another 46 people want to send money to my Paypal account that would be even better.

I would just like people to be there. As many as possible. People with eyes to see and ears to hear and mouths/throats to indicate whether what I’ve said is funny/not funny. I think this is going to be a good show. It’s not finished yet, but with your help, I’ll get a step closer. The money doesn’t matter. Really.

You matter, potential audience member. You matter a whole bunch.

I’ll hope to see you on Thursday 15th November, at 9.30pm, at The Hen & Chickens Theatre in Islington, London. Tickets can be purchased in advance from this link. Tell me you’re coming on Facebook, if you’d like.

Someone wrote another thing about rape jokes/women in comedy and it was a load of bullshit

Mike Sheer is a comedian who wrote a blog (which is what one of these things is) on his website (which is what one of these things that you’re reading one of these things on is).

Mike Sheer is a decent comedian. We’ve been on shows together a handful of times in the past and I like him. I don’t like the blog Mike Sheer wrote, though, and I don’t like that the blog Mike Sheer wrote was then published on the comedy website Chortle, which has a much higher readership than Mike Sheer’s blog on Mike Sheer’s website. Mike Sheer wrote a blog that was meant to be funny about rape jokes in comedy and women in comedy and it basically didn’t work. It wasn’t funny and it wasn’t ironic and it isn’t at all clear what sort of point he was trying to make. That wasn’t such a big deal on Mike Sheer’s website but it is on the Chortle website because now more people are reading it and talking about it and eventually writing other blogs about it because some people don’t write daily blogs any more and those people might have readership numbers that are completely in the shitter.

It’s only because I know Mike Sheer and I know Mike Sheer’s comedy that I know Mike Sheer doesn’t think women are unfunny and doesn’t think rape jokes are particularly excellent but that doesn’t really come across in the article. Which is a pity. So I’m writing a blog about Mike Sheer’s blog because that’s what people do nowadays, isn’t it?

Here’s the crux of the matter, though, and where I stop making stupid jokes for approximately seven or eight paragraphs:

Rape jokes are far too popular on the open mic circuit, especially in London. I don’t perform at open mic nights very often but occasionally host an evening or two, and it’s startling just how many new comedians – almost always white men, by the way, and as comedian Daphna Baram kindly pointed out to me, “it’s no accident that the more privileged men in society are the ones who do oppressive jokes” – seem to think alluding to a horrible, grotesque, invasive crime is a shortcut to a laugh.

In the almost-four-years since I started doing comedy, a few things have changed. This is one of them. In the space of those almost-four-years, ‘rape jokes’ have become an actual thing. Not just one of those “did you hear that awful rape joke that guy did?” things, but a “dear God, I’ve sat through 20 acts tonight and half of them did an awful rape joke and it was the same at that gig last week, too.”

It’s not a question of whether ‘rape jokes’ should be censored or not because, as any right thinking person will agree, all subjects should be acceptable fodder. Within reason.

That’s the key. Within reason. Theoretically, jokes about anything are fine, but it’s our responsibility as performers – nay, people, human beings, decent souls – to avoid subjects that are as emotive and awful and upsetting as rape. It’s not a question of censorship, it’s a question of not being an insensitive dickhead. There are ways to handle these subjects. The ways most commonly demonstrated are not the correct ways. Someone somewhere will find something offensive, no matter how inoffensive it is. But that’s no defense when what you’re saying is clearly designed to stoke some fires that don’t need to be burning in the first place.

Onto our next point: women are funny. Shut the fuck up if you think otherwise, you stupid fucking idiot. You’re wrong. This isn’t worth discussing any further.

There are now more comedians than ever, particularly in the capital. Scientists even claim that you’re never more than 10 feet away from an open mic comedian in London. Rather than trying to stand out by being a wanker, how about everyone just tries to not be a cock-end?

That’s about it. I saw a storm in a teacup and fancied drinking that bastard up before the biscuit on the saucer got eaten.

To read much better stuff about this sort of thing from someone far better qualified to write about comedy than me, head to Robin Ince’s blog. Lots of good words on there.

More knee-jerk bollocks from The Daily Mail

A raging fuckwad by the name of Rick Dewsbury is this week’s Samantha Brick, dragged out of the reactionary pit in which he was born to write some chundering cocksplurge about the Olympic opening ceremony. The Daily Mail do this to get you to click on their links. I did it. I contributed to their horrifyingly massive advertising profits, and it doesn’t feel good.

Instead of linking to the article, let’s rip it apart elsewhere. Here.

I sometimes struggle to believe that writers for The Daily Mail agree with the things they’re asked to write for the paper. Heck, some of them may go to the editor and say “I fancy making myself look like a cunt, can you help?” but surely there are some people with a sense of decency with a desk in their offices? Right? You guys?

Even for The Daily Mail, though, this particular piece is pretty mindboggling in its gross distortion of facts and reality.

Let’s assume for a second that Rick Dewsbury actually believes in the things he has written. If that’s the case, Rick Dewsbury is an arsehole.

The wonderful nurses who volunteered to take part in the Olympic opening ceremony were not doing so because they wanted to be part of something special that celebrated the NHS, a service currently being torn apart by people who don’t seem to comprehend the value of free public healthcare. They weren’t kind people driven by a desire to help.

No. Rick sees things different.

“All around… pranced self-indulgent nurses who had volunteered to take a few days off to be a part of the ceremony.”

Self-indulgent nurses. That’s what Rick Dewsbury took away from this display. The sheer self-indulgence of these nurses. People who spend most of their waking hours looking after the sick, elderly, and infirm, Rick Dewsbury says, are ‘self-indulgent.’

Rick Dewsbury is an arsehole.

“And how long did this shameful propaganda last for? A whole 15 minutes at the top of proceedings before viewers dozed off to the procession of banana republics and far-flung destinations nobody has ever heard of or even cares for.”

Talking about yourself much there, Rick? Because I’m pretty sure people from those countries – real-life people with feelings and emotions and eyes and ears and fists to impatiently beat into their hands as they hear what you’ve said about them, Rick – care that they’re at the Olympics. That these ‘banana republics’ are competing on the same stage is exactly what the Olympics are about. And we care about them too. We care because they’re people, like us, trying to do what they love on the grandest stage of all. You may not have heard of these ‘far-flung destinations,’ Rick Dewsbury, but that’s because you’re an arsehole. As we’ve already established.

And as you continue to prove:

“But it was the absurdly unrealistic scene showing a mixed-race middle-class family in a detached new-build suburban home which was most symptomatic of the political correct agenda in modern Britain.”

Without meaning to go into too much detail about Rick Dewsbury’s misunderstanding of how the world works, white people don’t have *all* the money. Sure, they’ve got most of it, because a lot of them hide it away where no one else can get to it, but they don’t have so much of it that mixed-race middle-class people don’t exist. They do. You just don’t know any, Rick Dewsbury, because you’re wearing a pair of blinkers.

And because you’re an arsehole.

“This was supposed to be a representation of modern life in England but it is likely to be a challenge for the organisers to find an educated white middle-aged mother and black father living together with a happy family in such a set-up.”

This, Rick Dewsbury, is racist. I’ll be honest, we suspected you were a bit racist when you referred to countries you’ve not heard of (because you’re an idiot) as ‘banana republics,’ but this proves it. And before you get your knickers in a twist, I’m not part of a ‘PC Bridage,’ and you’re not any sort of martyr for an anti-PC movement, throwing yourself on the pure for the sake of your compadres. You are, quite simply, racist. A racist arsehole.

“Unfortunately the kind of politically driven multiculturalism we saw last night is the kind of social engineering we have come to expect.”

I, along with millions of others both here in the UK and worldwide, did not see any politically driven social engineering. We saw a weird, bonkers, nutty, excellent show celebrating a lot of what makes the United Kingdom such a wonderful place to be in 2012. We are better off, collectively, thanks to a rich and diverse collection of people who have gravitated towards these shores, whether through choice or through necessity.

I love Britain. I dislike some of it, but isn’t that what love is? Accepting the things that we dislike is part of the process of realising our love for a person or a thing or a place. Sure, it’d be nice if some of these things we dislike could change, over time. Things that, in an ideal world, shouldn’t be allowed to thrive. That money all those rich white people have hidden away? That money should be here, in the system, where it can help. That the NHS is a much-loved institution should be reflected in the decisions made by those who govern it, rather than threatening to change it forever, for the worse.

And you, Rick Dewsbury, should change, too. Ideally. You won’t, though, because you’re an arsehole. You’re a racist arsehole. But you’re allowed to spout your bollocks and pretend that you’re some sort of underappreciated genius because you’re brave enough to stick it to the man, and you’ll carry on doing exactly that, but you should know this, Rick Dewsbury:

You should know that you’re wrong.

Wrong about the nurses. Wrong about the NHS. Wrong about those countries you know nothing about. Wrong about the Olympics and all it represents for the people, not just of those countries, but of every other nation on the planet.

Wrong about families in modern Britain. Wrong about black people and white people and mixed-race people. Wrong about multiculturalism.

Just plain wrong.

Life on the bleeding edge

Okay. Right.

This isn’t something I particularly want to get into again, but it’s starting to get to me and I feel as though it’s worth saying.

A comedian friend of mine performed at a gig earlier this week and was unlucky enough to share the stage with someone I’m not a great fan of. In the few exchanges I’ve had with him on a personal level, he’s been nothing but pleasant. A decent guy, I thought. On stage, however, it’s a different kettle of fish. His material is filled with a bilious hatred of women. “It’s just a joke,” he’ll say. In fact, this very day on Twitter, he sarcastically said “my routine where I murder a woman and bury her in the garden is completely true and all comedy should be taken at face value.”

That’s the defence of the indefensible. It’s very easy to hide behind a veil of irony where serious subjects are concerned. For all his faults, Ricky Gervais does this rather well – while the line has become blurred in his last few stand-up shows, anything reprehensible that spilled out of his mouth on stage was clearly coming from the point-of-view of a rather pathetic character who didn’t quite know what he was saying. He played a character on stage, and he played it well.

This guy is different, though.

To give him the benefit of the doubt, he’s a new-ish comedian. Not incredibly new, mind. He’s been doing it for at least two or three years, now. Long enough to know better. There are very few jokes to speak of in the routines that don’t sit well and that’s a great pity because the ones that are there aren’t actually too bad. He reserves a special kind of ire for women, though, and that just doesn’t seem fair.

The thing with comedy is that no subject should be off limits as long as targets are clearly defined. I’ve touched on this before, but humour can bring levity to any topic. The difficulty lies in finding the right balance when saying something that someone might take offence to. It’s probably true to say that there is at least one person in the world who will find a way to be offended by even the most innocuous of jokes, but to use that as an excuse to banish all filters of taste and decency from the equation is childish and naive. There is little value to be found in a comedian who insists he or she is living life on the bleeding edge. They’re providing a service, they think, to say the unsayable. “They’re just jokes, yeah? They don’t really mean anything, these words. I’m on a stage, saying this stuff, but everyone knows I don’t actually believe it and it’s all just a laugh. We’ve got to break down these boundaries, though. It’s a freedom of speech thing.”

It’s not. It very rarely is.

The best comedians who live somewhere close to that bleeding edge have to know what they’re doing. Sometimes they step off the side of the cliff and plummet onto the rocky shores of full-blown, unjustifiable offence, but that’s the nature of their role, such as it is. They walk that line because it’s how they make their money. It’s a strangely marketable quality that the likes of Frankie Boyle and Doug Stanhope have tapped into, and I don’t particularly enjoy it because there are times when the point they’re trying to get at is unclear. Those previously-mentioned targets are sometimes poorly defined or, at worst, undeserving of any sort of disapprobation.

Most of the time, I get what Jimmy Carr is going for. Do I enjoy his frequent deployment of chavs and travellers as punchlines? Nope. But it’s all wrapped up in this character and when he makes a mistake or oversteps a line, he apologises. Ditto Ricky Gervais. Louis C.K frequently uses words we don’t tend to use and talks about things we often avoid but I’ve never once doubted his intentions or beliefs because he owns that material to the extent that you couldn’t for one second think he harbours any sort of hatred or dislike for those less fortunate or different than him, be they disabled or of a different race or whatever it is he’s getting at. It’s an incredible skill to have and one you have to admire. If ever a new act wanted to know how to say the unsayable and push boundaries without causing indefensible offence, Louis C.K is the guy to watch. On top of that, Louis is almost always the schlub. He’s the irresponsible single father who means well but doesn’t quite understand the world he lives in. He’s punching up.

That’s the key point I’m trying to get at here: any offence caused by Louis C.K is defensible. You can clearly define what point he’s trying to make and who the fall guy is. That isn’t the case with the chap now pestering my friend and claiming she’s saying vile things behind his back. She’s not. She mentioned on Twitter that another act was saying awful misogynistic things on stage. She told a few people in private who that person was. I was one of them, and other acts have held similar opinions about the material the comic in question does – in private – for a while now.

So here’s what we’re going to do: we’re not going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Comedians old and new learn on their feet and find their way in this big wide world at their own pace. All of those famous comics I just mentioned? They’re still working out new ways to get their point across. It’s a constant evolutionary process, being a stand-up, but it’s important to let your material speak for itself. With that in mind, here’s a routine that I don’t particularly enjoy.

I just don’t get the sense that there is a character here. There is no previous justification for what you’re seeing. Sometimes a comic will show themselves to be a bit of an idiot so they can then launch into another bit that might polarise an audience but still essentially sets themselves up as the punchline – this is the tactic Gervais employed so well in his first couple of stand-up shows. He was the idiot, so everything he said had to be taken with a pinch of salt. Not here, though. Our guy isn’t punching up or even punching down – he’s just indiscriminately punching.

So, what do you think about that? Doesn’t really have a point, does it? Was any of that stuff worth it for a joke about Madeline McCann? Does he think he’s sticking it to the man by claiming that the parents of an abducted child are just cashing in on her? That he then calls back to a joke about ‘an uncomfortable silence’ from right at the start of the set justify it all? Not really. Not in my eyes. I see it as hateful. It’s really quite awful stuff. I don’t care if he doesn’t really think these things are true – that he says them is the issue. There is no need for it. This is a seemingly-intelligent young man who could be doing much better things with his time than peddling this bullshit. This stuff is dickbaggery of the highest degree, and the comedy circuit would be much better off without this sort of nonsense being spouted to audiences who disappointingly seem to enjoy it every now and again.

None of this is about wanting to stifle free speech. It’s about wanting people to take responsibility for their words and their actions, especially when they’re offering this stuff up to an audience. Comedy doesn’t need this crap, and nor does the world in general. Women deserve better. We all do.

Ray Presto

In December 2008, I started doing stand-up comedy. It was a fairly middling performance at the Lions Den gong show, but decent enough that I thought it was worth trying again. In January 2009 I did my second spot, and a handful more in February. By the time it got to April I still only had a smattering under my belt, but on the 2nd of that month I did pretty stonkingly well at a fairly established new act night.

This was a new act night at a club run by a larger than life character who hosts almost all his shows despite not having too many jokes to speak of and a style that tends to revolve around hitting on most female audience members. To his credit, though, this guy also runs a lot of shows and if he likes someone green around the gills at that new act night, he’ll pop them on at one of his pro nights. Thats exactly what he did with me, and a month later I was due to share a bill with the likes of Nina Conti and Hal Cruttenden. Barely six months into what was then just a hobby, I had a Saturday night spot alongside professional comics. I could hardly wait.

That Saturday night was one of the worst in my life up to that point. The pros all had other gigs to go to so they opened the show, and I foolishly claimed to have enough material to be able to do a longer set to close the night. The organiser praised me to the hilt in his intro and there was no way in hell I could live up to his billing. “I had all the top comics at my new act night before they made it big,” he said. “Noel Fielding. Harry Hill. Russell Brand. They’ve all done it, and I saw something in them, and I see something in this guy, too.”

It was far too flattering and I never had a chance. After floundering for five minutes, the compere crawled towards the stage and gestured for me to get off it, in full view of a crowd that was quickly turning against me. He called Carly Smallman back onto the stage – at this point she had been gigging for even less time than me – but she took the show by the scruff of the neck and dragged it out of the shithole I’d created. She was great. I was horrible. As a result of the booking that had previously made me consider comedy as a viable career option, comedy had all of a sudden become something that I was moments away from quitting altogether.

By sheer coincidence, just a few short days later I was set to go back to the very same new act night that started this whole sorry affair. I could have cancelled, but I didn’t. I turned up, ready to make it perhaps the last spot I would do. Moments before the show was about to start – with barely a crowd to watch it – the organiser was nowhere to be seen. I stood outside, wondering what the fuck was going on, and he turned up with a wet towel draped around his shoulders, his face a bright purple.

“Hello, John,” he said. He couldn’t remember my name. He still doesn’t remember my name to this day, but that’s not important. What is important is what came next.

“Would you mind running the night for me?”

I’d never run a comedy night before. I’d never hosted a comedy night before. Heck, after tonight, the plan was to never hold a microphone again in my life. He handed me a see-through book-bag full of change, told me to leave it behind the bar at the end of the night, and that was that. No running order. No pre-booked ticket info. No anything. It was a disaster in the making. I had planned on going out in a blaze of glory, but here I was in a half-empty room, not knowing if the people in it were there to perform or there to watch, and there wasn’t a chance that this would turn out to be anything but the dampest squib of a show in all of Damp Squibville.

Then Ray Presto turned up. An elderly man with the smartest hair I’d ever seen. His eyes were big and soulful, his smile broad and infectious enough to light up this dank Kentish Town basement. He walked with a slight hunch, possibly brought about by wearing a pair of trousers pulled up to nipple-height, but age had not got the better of Ray. He was as spritely as they come, and noticing the book-bag in my hand, he knew I was in charge. He spied an opportunity, introduced himself, and immediately asked if he could do longer than the five minutes we were all originally booked to do. With hardly anyone else having turned up, I said yes. Mistaking his age for comedic experience and longevity, I asked him to open the show. He said yes.

Ray Presto did fifteen of the most heartwarming minutes of comedy I have ever seen. It was stupid. It was absurd. It was ridiculous. The magic was bordering on amateur, the one-liners hacky enough to hold a position in the marauding back four of the 1980s Wimbledon team, but it was nothing short of brilliant. Prior to the show, Ray talked at length about comedy and magic and gave me – as I’m sure he has thousands of other people – “five pounds of his own money.” I still have it. More than that, I’m still doing comedy, and I’m doing it thanks to Ray Presto.

In December, my friend Natassia asked Ray to perform at her birthday party. A film crew was there to film it, safe in the knowledge that it was almost certainly going to be his final show. Age had finally got the best of him. The one-liners weren’t as snappy and the tricks weren’t as slick, but thankfully snappy one-liners and slick tricks were never part of Ray’s armoury so this was no great impediment. For one hour – one whole hour – Ray Presto held a room in the palm of his hand one again. Not for the first time, it should be said, but sadly, it was the last. I’ll forever be grateful that Ray Presto was a part of my life, however fleetingly, if only because the life I have now is what it is as a result of that night in Kentish Town. Ray was an inspiration, as I’m sure he was to every other person he encountered during the many years he knocked about on the circuit.

Ray (real name: David Shaw) died, aged 74, at some point over the last few days.

So it’s with great sadness that I extend my eternal thanks to the enigma that was Ray Presto. Thank you, Ray, from the bottom of my heart. Everything I’ve done in this industry and everything I have achieved is down to him. Quite appropriately, I’ve achieved relatively little so far, but I’ll keep plugging away in the hope that might change.

Think of that as my tribute to this wonderful man.