When you hear of a benefit gig for a
comedian who’s long slipped into obscurity, you fear the worst.
Thankfully, however, Ted Chippington is in rude health, and the gig
in his honour at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre was merely to raise
the cash for a four-CD retrospective. More importantly, perhaps, it
also raised his profile, prompting a raft of newspaper articles recalling
this pioneer of alternative comedy who jacked it all in to become
a truck driver in the States.
Chippington’s chief cheerleader has been Stewart Lee, who credits
his fellow West Midlander as inspiring him to take up comedy in the
Eighties, and the spirit of the night he put together in his name
was to evoke those distant times. Tonight we’re going to party
like it’s 1985.
Then, alternative comedy had little foothold outside central London,
and the rules – and audience expectations – had yet to
solidify. There mightn’t have been the venues back then, but
the church of comedy was a broader one.
So for Tedstock, the young acts of the time who’ve grown into
elder statesmen, dusted down their old routines. What other chance
do you get to see material written in the Eighties?
Well Jongleurs, obviously.
The difference here is that these artists have moved on and are rather
uncomfortable about dusting down this old material. See Phill Jupitus’s
embarrassment as he retells one of his Porky The Poet verses about
Beano characters growing up, hugely successful at the time, now cringingly
bad. Or Richard Herring painfully deconstruction of the ‘Jamaica?
No she went of her own accord gag’ from a hundred different
angles, none of them particularly funny.
It was a catalogue of bad jokes, ill remembered and clunkily performed.
Yet it was absolutely hilarious as the artifice of stand-up is stripped
away and we can simply enjoy a night of people having a laugh together
at stupid stuff.
Benign nutjob Josie Long – one of the new generation of comics
alternating with the old guard – nailed it with stupid, mundane
fantasies about dating hip-hop star Nelly. Then, a dreadful succession
of non-jokes about celebrities starting businesses appropriate to
their surname. This was truly in the spirit of Chippington, the self-confessed
‘anti-comedian’, but received the warmest of welcomes,
giving lie to the heckler who once devastated young Long with the
simple but brutal putdown: ‘You are doing it wrong.’
The material of Simon Munnery, who appeared in two guises as The Security
Guard and Alan Parker, Urban Warrior, has best withstood the test
of time. As the humourless guard, he deadpans dry one-liners much
smarter than they seem; as the aimless, angry anarchist he angrily
paces the stage, hectoring the system and subtly subverting adolescent
rebellion with every empty agit-prop slogan. The only problem is he’s
just too good, his expert rhetoric holding the audience in rapt attention
at every turn.
Elsewhere Bridget Christie, Lee’s wife, appeared as novelist
Dan Brown, retelling old jokes in overdramatic purple prose –
a satire which has its great lines but always seems more suited to
the printed page, like a Craig Brown parody, than performance. Wry
Scotsman Stephen Carlin entertained with his crackpot theories and
snooker obsession, the audience’s patience with his off-kilter
viewpoints rewarded with some strikingly original thoughts. And Simon
Amstell, said to have been brought in because none of the other acts
were popular enough to shift tickets, mixed his ever-reliable set
with a nostalgic attempt at recreating his naive first attempt at
drama-school stand-up, complaining about Cilla Black’s Surprise,
Surprise.
Then came the act most people had been waiting for – and it
wasn’t Chippington, who hadn’t initially been scheduled
to appear. Besides, few of the surprisingly young audience would have
remembered him. It was the reunion after seven years – though
it seems like longer – of Lee and Herring, promising a repackaged
trot through their greatest hits.
Actually they started – after a rapturous welcome – with
something bang up-to-date, mocking this week’s ubiquitous Mitchell
and Webb Apple adverts, Herring pitifully and angrily whining that
it should have been them enjoying such commercial, Lee’s implacable
indifference only making his partner even wilder and juvenile.
It was all knockabout fun, playing with the fact that both they, and
their audience, knew the material so well. Punchlines were pre-empted,
the comics mercilessly teased each other and the passage of time since
this was first performed rather brutally, but hilariously, exposed.
It might have only been a bit of self-aware mucking about, but it
served as a great reminder of how much we’ve missed them together.
Then, by way of an anticlimax, the man who this whole night had been
about. Despite the press coverage, it was still a surprise to see
just how unwilling Chippington is to deliver anything like a joke.
The profiles have concentrated on some of his more structured ‘I
was walking down the road…’ jokes, but here he just twitters
on, pretty much apropos of nothing. Even this savvy crowd were left
bewildered as the anti-comedian struck. This was supposed to be a
comedy legend?
I guess he’s just too willfully different to care much about
gags and punchlines. John Peel was a big fan, and you can see parallels
with some of the more extreme music he used to love – without
much in the way of tune, melody or lyrics.
Likewise, Chippington seems as if he’ll always too inaccessible,
too hardcore, for many.
Still, I bought the CDs. I’ll give this cult another go. After
all, anyone who inspired the impressive line-up that made tonight
such a laugh has to be worth some effort.
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
The CD set will be available from Big Print records, priced £15.
Emailbigprint@|hotmail.com
to order.
