If I ever write a sitcom about me and my family, I’m going to have such a tiny part. I seem to be away all the time at the moment. I’ve managed to mess up my kids’ holiday by being away for two weeks of it. No wonder so many performers are crap at keeping their family together. I’m in Manchester today which I’m beginning to warm to after coming here for the last 7 or 8 years. I used to play the snivelling pathetic Londoner up here and yet last night I felt quite free to moan about Northern relatives hating London – and I didn’t get hassled for it. Thank God!
Saw an excellent act last night called Ed Patrick. Very very good gags. look out for him in the future. Tommy Campbell was also great. He’s a Canadian comic and actor who keeps on getting cast in movies as a tough soldier. He’s in the last twenty minutes of ‘Green Zone’. Mick Ferry was on first and he’s in ‘Looking For Eric‘. I fancy being in a movie again. If only Merchant Ivory would do another period piece and I could play a tubby vicar or the man that the beautiful heroine has been forced to marry when she’s really in love with the rugged young gorgeous bastard who’s just out of drama school and already on his way to Hollywood….. and breathe.
I see Frankie Boyle’s upset someone with his Down Syndrome jokes. I fully understand this woman’s feelings, as her daughter has DS. Maybe it should be a lesson to all of us, including that woman, that when you’re laughing at paedophilia, rape and old people, you must expect that one day that ‘edgy’ comic is going to get laughs out of something that you actually are affected by and do not find funny. We all, to a greater or lesser extent, laugh when a comic breaks a taboo but sometimes those things are taboo for a good reason. Kind societies have taboos. I can’t really get on my high horse about this as I have an Alzheimers joke about the name sounding like a terrorist group – a woman came up to me after one gig and said that she was glad I found Alzheimers funny because her dad had just died of it. She walked off before I could explain that I’ve always felt that I thought that Alzheimers is common enough for most of us to have experienced it in our families and to fear it for ourselves – so a joke about it might help lessen that fear. I don’t feel that my joke picks on a suffering minority (it’s more about terrorism). I also think that sometimes people are looking to be offended. I did a gig last week where I joked about the fact that I was near the BNP centre at Welling. I insinuated, not seriously, that there were BNP sympathisers in the audience (of course there weren’t – the BNP don’t appreciate comedy as it requires insight). I got a very polite e mail from a member of that audience where he said that my BNP jokes were a bit thoughtless as he was upset by their presence nearby and I wouldn’t do jokes about paedophiles in Soham! No, I wouldn’t, but a ridiculous right wing political party is a subject for comedic abuse when little girls being killed is not. It seems a strange comparison.
But maybe I don’t have a leg to stand on. I realise that all comedians walk a bit of a tightrope on these issues but, if you’re like Frankie Boyle or Jimmy Carr, and you decide to be outrageous and say the unsayable as a form of entertainment, then sometimes you will come across as a real bastard when actually, like all us comics, they’re nice thoughtful guys.
