Confessions of a Brexit comedian
Left-wing comics are finding their anti-Leave jokes aren’t funny beyond the M25. Simon Evans isn’t ‘I’ve never felt directing hatred at large swathes of people to be funny, especially if they’ve paid you to make them laugh’
One thing I’ve learnt as a stand-up comedian is that “the consensus of the car is not the consensus of the room”. Even if an audience laughs at what you’re saying, this doesn’t mean they agree with you; they just think you’re funny. If you’re lured by their easy assurance into sharing some of your harsher condemnations, however, you might encounter a more flinty reaction.
According to reports this week, many liberal, London-based comedians have been finding this out the hard way. Apparently, they’ve been startled to discover that anti-Brexit jokes aren’t necessarily popular outside of the cosy embrace of the M25, and that audiences have, let’s say, a more nuanced view of their own masochistic idiocy.
Writing on Facebook, Marcus Brigstocke – who has been touring the country with a set including 20 minutes of anti-Brexit material – said: “For the first time ever, I have people walking out every night,” and that the referendum result is proving to be “comedic poison”. Other industry voices back him up, arguing that comics are harming their careers by enraging regional audiences with jokes at Leavers’ expense.
I like Marcus a lot, personally and professionally. I also find it hard to imagine that anyone could go and see him perform and be unaware of his politics. He’s been on Questionstion Time, emphatically and angrily making the case for Europe.
But I have to admit to a grim satisfaction in hearing that, in some towns on the circuit, comedians are having to confront views other than their own, and can’t just spit “Brexit!” and get the entire crowd on side the way they could yelling “Thatcher!” in the Eighties. Apart from anything else, this is good for comedy. It means you have to sharpen your tools.
In fact, I can’t remember an issue in the last 20 years on which the comedy community has been so united in its consensus as Brexit. That consensus is this: it’s bad.
Brexit, they think, is madness, self-harm, the work of dupes, racists and career opportunists – a nation led astray by golfclub bores and some patent lies plastered on the side of a bus. Consequently, we are all doomed.
Whenever an article is written about the dearth of “Right-wing comedians” on television or radio, my name tends to crop up. It’s easy to see why: for my stage act, I speak in an enhanced, BBC Received Pronunciation, and inhabit the persona of a man slightly out of touch with the modern world (that part isn’t entirely an act). I appreciate that in the metropolitan, Left-leaning comedy landscape, I don’t quite conform. So it’s reassuring that one isn’t entirely isolated, at least among audiences.
In truth, I abstained from voting at all in last year’s referendum – not out of apathy but because I genuinely couldn’t decide. Like most people – even Nigel Farage – I fully anticipated a Remain victory. Waking up to the result, I felt weirdly unsettled, a feeling that took some while to dissipate – and that’s never a good mood to write jokes in. So at the Edinburghg Fringe last summer, I mainl mainly left the topic alone. Even with the relatively even-hand even-handed material I did manage t to write, I could sense the audience tensing up. It wa wasn’t too long after the Scot Scottish independence referen referendum, and felt like yet an another needlessly divi divisive issue. After a few nights of the run, I dr dropped the Brexit jok jokes altogether. O Others found they could couldn’t focus on anyth anything else, of cours course. One comic, Bridg Bridget Christie, rewrote her entire Edinburgh show from scratch.
I’ve never felt directing hatred at large swathes of the population to be particularly funny, especially if they’ve paid you to make them laugh. Unless, of course, the comedian knows their hatred is ridiculous, and is inviting you to laugh at it.
In the comedy community, the perception seems to be that Brexiteers are poorly educated, gullible and probably racist. In leaving, it was reckoned, we were letting the chimpanzees drive the circus truck.
My hackles rise at that suggestion. Apart from anything else, that’s my Dad you’re talking about. He’s 87 and he cast a vote that was as wellinformed and as evidence-based as that of any disappointed millennial who is afraid they will no longer be able to spend a gap year studying mime at the Sorbonne.
Of course, I’m no angel. I too have relied on characterisations to get laughs. But audiences will happily laugh at themselves if something’s insightful. If it’s a hackneyed stereotype, like telling an audience in Llanelli they like to pleasure sheep, you’re likely to get frost.
I used to do a routine about the postindustrial northeast, involving the idea that shipbuilders and steelworkers were struggling to adapt to office jobs after their plants closed down. It worked because, in Newcastle, they’re exceptionally good at laughing at themselves, and it was clearly rooted in affection; the joke was as much on me for being such a clueless old southern duffer, clumsily trying to express sympathy for the plight of the working man.
The same applies if you do material about the Islington elite and their hummus. Everybody eats hummus now. You need to work harder.
This is not to say you have to kowtow to an audience’s prejudices either. Kowtowing to the crowd is what politicians do, and that is not an association any comedian wants. For me, it’s just remembering that, ultimately, you are the fool.
I will be back with a new show for Edinburgh this August, and I’ll be glad if there has been time for the anger to drain away a little – on both sides of the Brexit fence.
I think it might be time we laid down our weapons and enjoyed a quick game of footie in No Man’s Land. The next engagement will be along soon enough.