IN DEFENCE OF LAUGHTER – NEW STATESMAN AUG 2005

In my capacity as a stand-up comedian, I was asked by Rosie Millard to produce a defence of comedy in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The problem was, like Josef K in The Trial, I wasn’t aware of the exact nature of the charges. Apparently, it turns out, “comics only attend Edinburgh in hope of snagging a TV gig, the proliferation of comedy has wrecked the Fringe's legacy as a hotbed for alternative theatre, and it has dumbed audiences down into stand-up leeches, only willing to go and see forty minutes of knob jokes, rather than forty minutes of Brecht”. What a shock. As a comedian myself, I assumed we were loved. Suddenly, I feel I have been living a lie

While it’s an exaggeration to say that many comics attend Edinburgh in the sole hope of snagging a TV gig, it is fair to say that most go there in the hope of some career advancement. Despite increased numbers of punters attending the Fringe itself, most shows still lose money, often thousands of pounds. It would be difficult for a young comedian to justify a personal loss of up to £10 000 on the basis of the sheer pleasure of performing alone. Without TV gigs, corporate work or bookings at chicken-in-a-basket chains like The Comedy Store or Jongleurs no stand-up makes enough to shrug off that kind of loss. Outside the Fringe, flair is punished. At best, most Edinburgh-bound stand-ups are hoping they may raise their profile amongst promoters, or simply become better comics, having had the luxury of performing their own hour in their own space for a month. Those of us who have been going for a while – I am on my 17th fringe – just want to do our own thing, without slipping any further down the ladder, or loosing too much money. Believe it or not, there is a huge camaraderie amongst comics, despite the spiky portrayals in Annie Griffin’s recent satire of the fringe, Festival, and there’s a genuine belief that the Fringe, as the world’s greatest arts festival, should be supported. Any TV executive who snaffles talent from the Fringe should be viewed with suspicion anyway. Most acts are working all year all over the country. A suit who snags them as part of their expenses-paid trip North probably isn’t really serious about their job, and should be spat at in the street.

Besides which, these days the TV deal isn’t what it was, and this fact dovetails into the second of the charges against comedy, namely that it is strangling the life out of theatre like some out-of-control Martian weed. Let’s assume that the Fringe’s ‘heyday’ for Alternative Theatre was in the 80’s, back in the days of three terrestrial TV channels and no cable. There’s a lot more televisual static that needs filling today, and who better to do it than stand-up comedians, who can work without a script, and will perform, literally, for peanuts. BBC3 comedy shows are being made on 1/3 of the budget we made BBC2 shows for ten years ago, and that’s without factoring in inflation. A working hack stand-up comic, with the kind of bland material that will play well at Christmas parties, Jongleurs or The Comedy Store, will make more in a year than a new comic on TV development deal, and twenty minutes of jokes will last them a lifetime. TV isn’t necessarily that attractive anyway, and there’s a whole generation of youngsters, to be found carving out their own alternative circuit in major cities, who view it with suspicion.

The proliferation of comedy at the Fringe is not self-generated. Comedy isn’t to blame for its own rapid reproductive rate. Remember, one of the wonderful things about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is that it does not have an artistic policy. There is no administrative body deciding what the Fringe should encompass. You pay for your space, and if people come, then you’ll come back to the Fringe again. The growth in comedy at the fringe is in response to public demand, and I doubt that it has been at the expense of theatre. The Fringe simply got bigger. The audiences comedy is drawing are probably not the same audiences theatre was drawing, though there will be some Venn diagram overlap. I will happily hang out in the physical theatre utopia of Aurora Nova as well as the bawdy dystopia of late night stand-up shows at The Stand.

Comedy may even inadvertently pull more punters into the city during the Fringe, actually sustaining theatre, which is weak and sickly and needs nourishment. There is actually more theatre at the Fringe than there was 20 years ago in real terms, though there is proportionally less, as the comedy section of the programme has been the Fringe’s main growth area in recent years. Even given that, the statistics remain deceptive. Shows like Jackson’s Way and companies like Peepolykus, who once would have been deemed devised theatre, are now re-branded as comedy, meaning they then attract larger crowds, scared off by perhaps disappointing experiences in the theatrical section of the program. And the comedy fan lunk-heads in Edinburgh have proven themselves to be far more adept at enjoying a diversity of approaches to comedy than their Comedy Store-going city centre counterparts, and laugh at much better and more sophisticated ideas than West End theatre crowds, who confuse mentioning contemporary issues with actually addressing them.

Personally, I am filled with horror at the suggestion that the proliferation of comedy may have damaged audiences for theatre, but if this is the case, and it isn’t, there may be reasons for this. Stand-up comedians from the British Isles are the greatest stand-up comedians in the world, and a visit to international festivals like Montreal or Aspen will immediately confirm this. London has the biggest comedy club circuit in the world, and the Edinburgh Fringe rewards comic risk-takers and innovators. Stand-up in Britain advances in leaps and bounds, and despite what you may see on television, gets ever more fascinating at a grass roots level. American and Australian and Canadian comics come here to work because they want to be a part of it. This gives the lie to the, admittedly arguably facetious, last point on the charge sheet, namely the idea that stand-up in the Fringe has dumbed audiences down into stand-up leeches, only willing to go and see forty minutes of knob jokes, rather than forty minutes of Brecht.

On the contrary, an audience that has seen Will Hodgson, Will Adamsdale, Simon Munnery, Josie Long or Daniel Kitson will probably have been dumbed-up. And surely, in the 21st century, we are beyond condemning a performance on the basis of its subject material. There are lousy knob gags. And there are sublime ones. There are knob gags that are infinitely superior to a poor quality production of Brecht, and that contain more poetry and wit than the average theatre production. All human life begins with a knob gag. There is much comedy can learn from theatre. But there is probably more, about pacing, accessibility, simplicity of staging. and the way to sell strange ideas to suspicious crowds, that contemporary theatre can learn from contemporary comedy. And I speak, albeit arrogantly, as an Olivier award nominated theatre director, as well as a working comic.

We are living in strange times. The government drip-feed us facts on a need to know basis and whole areas of discussion – such as suggesting there are links between the bombings and Iraq, or criticising religious belief – appear to be becoming prohibited. On the actual night after the last round of London bombings I saw a young Asian comic, Paul Chowdhury, talking onstage about how mass fear of Asian men finally meant he was able to get a seat on the tube, and in fact sometimes had the entire network to himself. Comedy can respond to events in this rapidly shifting climate with a speed theatre cannot. And even apparently apolitical absurdity is on some level an appropriate response to mass panic. We laugh in the face of death.

Perhaps there is too much comedy. And this piece is biased anyway. I have chosen the best examples to sure up the case for the defence, ignoring vast swathes of shit. The best way for the comedy community to answer the criticisms implicit in the commissioning of this piece is simply to be better, to raise its game to meet the challenge of the times. If we don’t, then we will die like dogs, and the shame of it will outlive us.