Like jokes about
bankers or scandals involving bankers there seems no end to the number of
articles that can be written on the subject of “Are women funny?” From the
semi-serious sociological overview to the deliberately provocative polemic all
the way through to the world-weary-and-yet-somehow-still-apparently-necessary
riposte that of course some women are very funny and can we please talk about
something else for a bit, it is a well that never runs dry. A bit like Somerset
at the moment.
But in the midst of
all of these discussions perhaps the bigger question remains unanswered: Are comedians funny?
At first glance it
seems obvious. Of course they are. That’s their job. Being funny is quite
literally what they do for a living. But are they all funny? All of the time?
And if not, should we really be allowing them on panel shows?
Anyone who has spent
any time in comedy, either as a comedian, audience member, promoter or (most
valiantly of all) the partner of a comedian, knows that comedians are often not
funny.
Offstage, comedians can
be a mess of nerves or social awkwardness, sometimes disguised by
over-compensatory brashness, otherwise known as “being a bit of a dick”.
Comedians are always
thinking about their last gig or their next gig. What did they do wrong, what
can they do better next time? Who do they need to call or email or tweet? Could
that thought they just had about bankers be turned into something funny? Is it
worth trying it out in conversation just to see? Is that funny? No.
Of course, it is
onstage that comedians are supposed to be funny, but even here the evidence is
patchy. Every comedian has had good shows where they were funny. Even the most
apparently deluded open spot has stormed it (on their own terms) at least once.
That is the drug that keeps
drawing them back. That feeling of power, of control, of having a physical
effect on a group of other people just using their words, appearance and
(sometimes) hand-made props.
For some acts the
experience of laughter is a rare treat, for others a regular occurrence. But
every comedian has good nights and bad nights. Every car journey to a gig is enlivened
by stories of disaster and misunderstandings: rooms with no PA system, rooms
with no audience, rooms with audiences who weren’t pointing in the right
direction, rooms with large dogs wandering around or children sitting at the
front, or stag parties or hen parties or office parties, or gigs that should
have been lovely but somehow turned to catastrophe because of a mis-said word or
an ad-lib that went wrong or because the compรจre called everyone a c**t. Funny stories about
comedians not being funny.
So, are comedians
funny? In preparation for this piece I did a bit of research (Googling) and
found an article written in 1919 in which the exact same question
is asked. It’s worth a read here: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/60039679.
With its mixture of weary,
patronising befuddlement and giving away most of the punch-lines it could sit
quite comfortably in the arts pages of any newspaper today, thereby proving
that whether or not women/men/comedians/computers/cartoons are funny, there
will always be a columnist ready to write that they aren’t.
