Are comedians funny?

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 compère 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.

The Camden Heads Off

On Wednesday I performed for possibly the last time at The Camden Head pub in Islington. I was the final act, and as my set came to a close, I began to feel a little nostalgic.

It is a room that I have performed in many many times over the years. I did some of my very earliest open spots for The Comedy Brewhouse club there, including one where I had my first heckle (I can't remember what it was, but I remember that I told the heckler to fuck off and that seemed to work). I did my first ever 20 minute set there for a poetry and comedy night, and I learned how to compere there when I ran the weekly 99 Club Islington gig from 2005 until 2009. I previewed all of my solo shows there and tried loads of new jokes over the years, many of which never saw the inside of another club...

The Camden Head has hosted comedy nights in its upstairs room for many years. I'm not sure exactly how long ago it started, but I know that The Meccano Club used to be held there at least fifteen years ago. Since then dozens of promoters have run comedy nights and it has remained an important venue for comedy newcomers and acts in need of a good room to try new material. I always felt that the management of the pub didn't really understand what a good thing they had going with the comedy, which brought a large and diverse audience into their pub most nights of the week. If, as it now seems possible, they have finally decided to shut down comedy completely then another little piece of comedy history will be lost.

The Camden Head's upstairs is a good room for comedy. It has a corner stage, simple lighting and enough chairs and tables to seat about 40-50 people, although we sometimes squeezed in more than 70 on a good night. The audiences tended to be a mix of Islington folk and people from further afield, and were usually polite but not easy to please. I often heard it said that getting a laugh there was a good indication that material was strong: they wouldn't just go for any old rubbish!

I ran a weekly club in that room for nearly four years and saw many great acts perform there. Rhod Gilbert was a personal favourite of mine: he closed one early show with a blistering set including his Ryanair luggage routine that would soon make him famous. A couple of years later Wil Hodgson held a packed room spellbound with an hour preview of his hypnotic storytelling. Marek Larwood from We Are Klang experimented with all sorts of characters and routines, usually to hilarious effect. Simon Brodkin played Lee Nelson and many other personas as he produced prolific amounts of new material. Lenny Henry had an assistant set up an autocue at the back of the room and tried out jokes for a new TV show (which never saw the light of day).

One show in particular sticks in the mind: it was the night of the Champions League Final in 2006, and Arsenal were playing. The pub was showing the football and it seemed unlikely that anyone in Islington would want to come to our little comedy club. Then we got a call saying that Jimmy Carr wanted to try out some stuff and we were the only club listed as running that night. We sent some flyerers out with the information that a big TV star would be performing and gathered a small but respectable audience of football-avoiders. The gig itself was quite surreal. The bar downstairs was completely rammed and every movement in the game inspired huge cheers or groans. Upstairs it felt as though we were riding on top of a seething mass of lunatics who might break through at any point, and several punchlines were swallowed by the downstairs din. But the show happened, Jimmy tried his jokes and the audience and I laughed a lot. Then soon afterwards I saw Jimmy fall down the stairs. Which possibly made me laugh more. To myself. Later on.

There were times when I loved performing in that room. As the compere I felt like I held the night together and made friends with the audience, trying out new jokes and improvising brilliantly. Other nights were like wading through treacle: I couldn't connect with the crowd and had to work hard to raise even a smile. I learned so much about compering there: working the room, keeping it fresh, talking to people without scaring them, getting people to quieten down if they were too boisterous.

I undoubtedly had some of my best gigs in that room and some of my worst. There was the night when a large group of women were asked to leave because they wouldn't stop talking, and then one of them attacked the person on the door. Then there was the night when almost the entire audience was made up of Spanish students who smiled silently throughout the whole first half. When I asked them at the interval if they were having difficulty with the language one of them said: "No, we understand the words. We just don't understand why they are supposed to be funny." And I'll never forget the night when I was having difficulty getting much response at first, until I caught my foot on something on the stage and fell over in a properly slapstick way, which brought the house down. Marek still says that's the funniest thing he's ever seen me do. The bastard.

It's a pity that the Camden Head will not be doing comedy in the future, although there is already another Camden Head actually in Camden that also runs comedy, so maybe it will simply lead to fewer confused people going to the wrong place!

Comedy needs small rooms for new acts to learn their craft and more experienced acts to try new material, and I hope that this isn't the beginning of a trend. I wasn't a frequent visitor in more recent times, but it's sad to think that I'll never perform on that stage again. And never fall over on it again either.