Being a Right-wing comic is one tough gig
In his new routine, Geoff Norcott does something that’s almost suicidal on the stand-up circuit – admit he votes for the Conservative party
It isn’t unheard of for a stand-up comic to vote Conservative; what makes me unusual is that I’m one of the few willing to talk about it on stage. Before my latest show, I had tentatively dipped my toe in Right-wing waters, but now, in my current show Conswervative, I’ve taken the arm-bands off and am front-crawling against the tide of the comedy Left.
The first thing I did when I started writing it, was to try to work out how someone who should be a red, ended up a blue. I grew up on a council estate in south London and Dad was a trade union man. But, although I was in my thirties when I fully figured out my place on the political dial, I’ve always been inclined towards the centre-Right.
When Margaret Thatcher took away my free school milk I was disappointed but respected her need to curb spending. At home, I was like a political Billy Elliot, hiding my copy of
The Daily Telegraph inside Socialist Worker. However, it was when I worked as an English teacher in the mid-Noughties that I had my political awakening – after seeing how liberal intentions can easily go awry. I taught for five years at comprehensives in Brixton, Watford and, finally, in rural Bedfordshire; I found that the more middle class the area, the more liberal the learning environment, and the less they extended the kids.
One day, the head of faculty at my Bedfordshire school told my class, “There are no wrong answers”. For the next hour, loud kids with the wrong answers took turns expounding on their various mistaken ideas, to the detriment of the quieter students who had a proper grasp of the subject. Think of it as an early victory for the social media generation.
At the same time, the country’s political mood was changing too: the idea that “things can only get Blairer” was losing currency. My Right-wing resolve strengthened and started to filter into my act. In 2013, when I mentioned to my wife that I wanted to talk about something different, she said: “Well, you vote Tory, that’s a bit weird.”
Weird or not, I went away and wrote a routine in which I acted as an apologist for the coalition government – and I found myself nominated for best new show at the Leicester Comedy Festival. Con-Dem politics was at least good for something.
Being a Right-wing comedian is not easy, however. For a start, you can come across as mean.
A few years ago I got fed up with everyone bemoaning “the death of the high street” and blaming it on greed and “the corporations, man”. In fact, the main people responsible for the death of the high street was us; the moment that big Tesco opened on the edge of town we scarpered there like the bargain-craving monsters we are. Loyalty to your local butcher was nothing when you could save literally £1.20 in parking. It’s the same with the big tax avoiders. The only thing we hate more than Google’s tax avoidance is having to use search engines that aren’t Google.
One of the toughest crowds I’ve experienced was at a trendy bar in Oxford. I walked in to a sea of berets, fair-trade wine and the kind of shabby chic favoured by those embarrassed by wealth but keen to exhibit good taste. It was the strangest death I’ve ever had. Instead of heckles there were sighs. You normally get booed off stage, but I left to a chorus of tuts.
But, surprisingly, trendy young Lefties are not my most vocal critics; my views are exactly the ones they expect from a person who reeks of a mortgage and middle-age. In fact, it tends to be the older socialists who really take umbrage. Thatcher casts a long shadow for them and no number of Ken Clarkes or Heidi Allens (the Tory MP who led the 2015 backbench revolt against welfare cuts) could convince them “Tory” is a noun that can exist without “bastard” affixed to it.
And being a Leaver is even worse. At last year’s Edinburgh Festival, where I premiered Conswervative, one woman took me to task for voting to exit the EU, then stormed out. The irony was so rich that the audience thought she was a plant, reflecting a middle-class conviction that true spontaneity must be ruthlessly planned.
Actually, as the show has developed, I’ve toned down the bit about Brexit. I still think Britain will be OK outside the European Union, but I don’t share David Davis’s view that this country’s “best days are ahead of her”.
Whatever happens, it’s not going to top the Empire and might even struggle to equal Britpop. However, I am excited about a future where trade deals can’t be scuppered by a small hamlet in Belgium.
I’d never think my comedy could “make a difference” (even writing that made me queasy), but I do want to articulate something worth hearing: there are working-class Leave voters who made an informed and fair choice. I’ve watched Brexit drag the class debate into antiquity.
Beyond Brexit, I also want to puncture the stereotypes of Left and Right, which are often dressed up as “good versus bad” whereas, in reality, British democracy is usually a choice between the lesser of two evils: you are going to get waterboarded, but you get the option of sparkling or still.
My most startling career moment – and the single most daunting moment of my political comedy journey so far – came in January when I was asked to appear on Question Time. I was already nervous the night before when they tweeted the line-up and my Twitter exploded. For a bloke who usually thinks four retweets is “good traffic”, 156 people calling me “a tosser” was a sobering moment.
What surprised me was how well everyone got on together backstage.
It seems obvious now, but I was dumb enough to expect that the Conservatives’ James Cleverly and the SNP’s Angus Robertson would have to be held back like boxers at a weigh-in.
One consequence of declaring my views in this way on BBC One is that they’re now logged on the web in perpetuity. I look again at my son, confidently anticipating his inevitable Left-wing phase at university. If he comes across my articles and clips I suspect he won’t like them. However, I hope what I’m doing now will have helped pay for him to work out how he sees the world instead.
I guess that’s what underpins a Tory: unpopularity is water off a duck’s back, but a heckle that would really sting is to suggest that I’m not a pragmatist.