From sleazy dives in Soho to the Edinburgh Festival, audiences bored with and insulted by conventional comedy shows are experiencing a rare treat — stand up comedians who are actually funny. They vary considerably in style and in politics. But they all try to make people laugh without resorting to cheap mother-in-law jokes and anti-gay gags. it has been called 'new wave humour', or 'alternative comedy'. You can catch it in pubs, clubs, colleges, festivals even radio and television — all over the country. BEN ELTON is a relative newcomer to the alternative comedy scene. I chose to interview him not because I expected the most advanced political [illegible] humour, but because in my opinion he's the funniest [illegible].
[illegible] alternative comedy? Is it really 'new wave'?
My only definition of alternative comedy is that it's not racist, sexist, anti-gay, or bigoted towards oppressed minorities. So I suppose it's what it's not. Really, we just tell jokes that comment on the unfair world we live in, But women, blacks, or, say, Irish, aren't the source of our jokes. Our humour is based either in the [illegible] attitudes, or it's simply 'clean', 'non-obscene' humour that [illegible] offend anyone, except maybe your 'first impression' [illegible]. [A] hallmark of alternative comedians seems to be cynicism about the world. Anyone who's pretending to be something new [illegible] to be cynical, But there's no 'new' way of making people laugh — we haven't gone back to Freud and found a new way of telling a joke. Lenny Bruce was prepared to shock an audience into realising its own bigotry a long time ago. Maybe in 1981 there's a few more people doing it, that's all. I grew up in Guildford thinking the world was divided into two classes — stockbrokers and traindrivers.
My jokes are about things that amuse me which are also the things that make me angry. I try to put across the other point of view, because the media and the press, even the dear old Guardian never ever do that [illegible]. Like on current affairs. When Lech was in vogue I talked about the Tories' and the press' wonderful new attitude towards unions as long as they're Polish. And poor old Len Murray, rushing over to Somerset House trying to prove his grandma was from Cracow. No problem, Margaret — just fighting for my freedom!
So your material is specifically anti-Tory, or at least has anti-Tory assumptions?
Really, what I'm saying is 'isn't it amusing that everything is just completely falling apart?' It's not so much anti-Tory as just sensible. I'm criticising the most unbelievably obvious things I [illegible]. It may be anti-Tory in that, of course, they are the party in power, the party identified with capitalism [illegible] when they were in power [illegible]. If I have a pet hate, I suppose it's the press. Now I have [illegible] with the Labour Party, but I just weep for them in their battle against the press. And poor old Tony, they really don't give the poor guy a chance.
Sometimes I put on a beer gut, slick back my hair and take the piss out of [illegible] all the stand up comedians you see in clubs, mainly in the north. 'Took my wife to a jumble sale — somebody bought her'. Who wants to laugh at that? But the acts which [are] dearest to my heart and actually about my politics, are my anti-sexist pieces.
Don't you run into problems as a male comedian doing anti-sexist routines? Do you sometimes feel that you're on foreign terrain, or does your audience, particularly the women in the audience, have that reaction?
I try to make it clear that I'm well aware that I'm unqualified to comment from experience [illegible]. I try to get across that this is a sympathetic and dumbfounded sketch — dumbfounded because my intelligence is also insulted by what we're asked to laugh at on the telly. For example, I do one sketch explaining how I tried to learn to be funny by watching the popular telly sitcoms. To my 'amazement', entire sketches are based on one 'joke' the size of women's breasts. 'I couldn't see [illegible]' [illegible] do the sketch in an [illegible] proving of course that women are every bit as funny as men. But if you're a woman comedian in an ordinary club you've got to be infinitely better than any man just to stay on stage. Part of the audience will instantly start up with 'get your knickers off, luv' even before you begin your act.
Secondly, conventional humour is based on male attitudes. So subject matter becomes a problem for women, For instance, fucking from a male point of view is considered perfectly acceptable and 'funny' material, But when I've heard women comedians do jokes about periods or coils in an ordinary club, the immediate reaction is 'ugh, another feminist trying to gross us out, how disgusting'. Things about women are considered taboo, unless they're presented through male eyes.
Even if there's 50 per cent women in the audience, women comedians are expected to play to the men to the male attitude which [is] prevalent in our society. So if a woman is playing to a non-sussed audience, she has to get over the initial audience hostility, and secondly she is expected to deal with material that she may find offensive, because it is offensive to women. It's somebody else's sense of humour. It belongs to a different world, a male world. And not that many women particularly want to do that.
Are you trying to change or 'expand' the consciousness of your audience?
As a stand up comic, I don't feel I can actually change consciousness directly, or perpetrate [illegible] political theory. But through humour, I can win the audience over to an availability to that theory, to make them think, and then let them make the obvious connections.
An alternative comedian has a lot of ground to make up for, because the bigotry in conventional humour is so well established. Irish people are 'stupid'. So you have to practice counter-discrimination. Sure, in an ideal world it would be possible to make a joke about a stupid person who happens to be Irish, But we don't live in that world. It's not good enough to say, 'I know the Irish aren't really stupid, it's only a joke' because then you're just perpetrating the myth. You have to go further the other way to dent it at all.
Sometimes I'm accused of inverse bigotry, because my targets are the captains of industry instead of women and blacks. Or often I'm accused of being a prude ('hey, come on tell us a real joke'). And certainly, I often get 'Why do you always go on about politics?' Well your conventional acts are about politics, too, But from the other side. I'm quite prepared to define my targets according to [my] beliefs. I don't mind giving an absolute tongue-lashing to the manager of Barclay's Bank. There are certainly enough subjects around!
An example of 'nice' politics? Isn't it something the way the party in power could lose its deposit in Warrington, and yet it's still a crushing defeat for the opposition?
How do you get your humour and your politics across to a 'non-sussed' audience?
My first principle is to be funny, But maybe one of the reasons I'm a comedian is because I want to get certain points across [and] I do it through being amusing, through cynicism, through comical juxtaposition, Like with the Warrington [illegible]. It's pointless going out there and assaulting your audience. They just won't listen. You've got to work your points in humorously, So I never end up saying: 'This is why you should be a socialist', or 'this is why [illegible]'.
Finally, how do you define yourself politically?
I'm in the frustrating position of being certain about everything I hate, and very uncertain about what I want. People say we'll never have socialism because people are too selfish. Well, we need people to be a bit more selfish, to expect more than they're getting out of life.
Perhaps I hide behind my humour, because it's a lot easier to show what is silly in the world rather than what's positive, I make my point by showing the idiocy of the present [illegible]. People on the left seem to stand for exactly the same things I stand for, So that's where I [illegible] myself [illegible].
London audiences will be able to see Ben regularly at a new club, Come Cabaret, opening at the Boulevard Theatre in Soho on November 13. Don't miss it!
All photos: COLIN HEADWORTH