Tickling the English Page 4
The comedy shorthands aren’t much use anyway, if you don’t have a lot of jokes about going out with no coat, which I don’t. In fact, I don’t tailor my show at all according to which city I’m in. It’s not like there are even really that many huge differences to play on.
When it comes to telling them jokes, the cities aren’t as different from each other as they are collectively different from the smaller towns and, most markedly, the southern suburbs. I’ve always found that big cities are just easy to talk to; the crowd has a strong sense of themselves and, at some subconscious level, when they answer a question from the stage, they speak on behalf of the city. It’s amazing how much a crowd raises its game when their collective reputation is at stake.
It could be that cities are more cosmopolitan, more out-spoken, more brash. Or it might be as simple as having a famous local football team. I will probably never mention the football team, particularly since there’s usually more than one and I don’t want to be in the middle of that civil war; but having a local team just means that the entire town is used to being represented and, by corollary, willing to represent.
Before I elevate this observation into some sort of general law, though, we’ve got four towns of repute to test it out in. First up, the Geordies.
Newcastle City Hall
1 man who teaches pharmacists
1 sixteen-year-old son of a man who teaches pharmacists
1 student of modern history
1 heating engineer
I’ve spent a lot of time in Newcastle, like I have in all these big cities. When you’re a circuit comedian, you do a lot of weekends away, killing afternoons in the large towns waiting for that evening’s show. I probably know the locations of chip shops and cineplexes in every major town in the UK. I know Newcastle well enough that it has even part-furnished my house, by way of a chair I stole from a certain Newcastle comedy club. I wrapped it in a black bin-bag to transport it, but the train was busy, so I sat on it all the way back to London.
Despite this history and even despite the modern benefits of satellite navigation, Damon and I got quite lost on the way to the show and ended up having to ask directions to the theatre from a member of my own soon-to-be crowd. Even then, we made the mistake of entering the wrong door at the front of the City Hall and found ourselves in a municipal swimming baths instead. Either that or the mayor likes his office clean. The tang of chlorine was wafting into my room all through the show, giving a pungent undertow to the entire event. The room was distraction enough, an assembly room in the Methodist tradition, bare boards, a balcony running along the sides and a giant pipe-organ at the back of the stage. Like I said about Cambridge, there are rooms in which to exchange corn…
Equally, there are rooms built for Protestants to preach to you about sin, in which centuries later Irish comedians will tell you jokes, and there is an uneasy intersection between the two. You can never quite forget that there’s a giant pipe-organ just over your shoulder. Particularly with your nose burning from the faint toxic fumes of the cleaning fluid.
Newcastle has an interesting take on identity. I’m not sure to what extent the average Geordie would recognize himself in any list of defining characteristics given for Englishness; and yet they were once at the front line, defending the nation from Cromwell’s Scottish allies in 1664. The city’s motto translates as ‘Triumph through brave defence’, and was given by Charles I after the city held firm against the Scots.
The city’s history as a border fortress goes back to when Newcastle was founded as a Roman fort, just south of Hadrian’s Wall. Repeated defences against attacks from the north were staged, including one at the end of the thirteenth century in which severe damage from William Wallace’s troops was sustained. As recompense, the town was presented with one quarter of Braveheart’s mutilated body after he was hung, drawn and quartered in London in 1305. It was then hung over the town sewer.
While it might not have been needed as a frontier town since the Act of Union, Newcastle retains a distance from the England it was protecting. I once saw a Geordie comic, John Fothergill, respond to a London heckler with, ‘Watch it, you. My ancestors were on a battlement for hundreds of years, protecting this country from marauding Scots, while your grandparents were at court… speaking French.’
There is even a linguistic school which claims that the absence of that Norman influence has meant that, in the north-east, they speak a language that is far closer to the original Anglo-Saxon than that spoken by their southern cousins. Their accent remains, along with the Scousers’ and the cockneys’, the most distinctive and addictive of all the English regional dialects. By addictive, I mean that, midway through a conversation with a Geordie, I will start to speak Geordie, even though I know how irritating it is when somebody does the Irish accent when they’re talking to me. In fact, if I’m talking to a Geordie there’s every chance we’ll have just swapped accents after five minutes and will finish the conversation like cartoon versions of each other:
Him: Ah, bejaney.
Me: Wy-aye-aye.
And so on.
The Geordie accent is too tempting even for international diplomacy. In 1977, US President Jimmy Carter visited Newcastle and enjoyed what must be the greatest single moment in modern Anglo-American relations, and possibly the greatest moment in history generally. Having been made a Freeman of Newcastle and having received the Keys to the City in a formal ceremony, he turned to the crowd of eight thousand and shouted, ‘Howay, the lads.’
Onstage, I fight the urge to do the voice. This is a good general rule, by the way. When speaking to people with an accent (particularly Irish) don’t do the voice (particularly Irish). This is because, simply, you can’t do it. This is worth bearing in mind at all times. You can’t do the voice. Are you an internationally renowned mimic? No. You can’t do the voice. It’s probably the phrase I most often utter in England. Usually barked rather than uttered, to be honest, as the person I talk to suddenly goes into some hideous Toora-loora voice in order to flesh out a story about some Irish person he met on holiday. ‘Don’t do the voice!’ I shout. ‘The story won’t be better if you do the voice.’
In Newcastle, I understand the urge to do the voice, and I resist. Instead, I focus on what we are talking about: what the rudest thing is to say to a burglar. This is because, in response to the crime question (Have you ever interrupted a crime?), a lady in the audience didn’t want to tell me what she said to an intruder.
‘It’s too rude,’ she blushed.
I pointed out that, earlier on in the show, I had used the ageless phrase ‘Do you mind if I pull out and jizz on your tits?’
(This seems cheap and tawdry out of context but, honestly, the routine in its entirety makes a very serious sociological point.)
The lady admitted that her phrase wasn’t quite that rude – it was ‘Get the fuck out of my house’ – and we spent some time discussing what the rudest thing to say to a burglar was. It was generally felt that when a stranger enters your home without your permission, frankly, all bets are off on the taste and decency front, and they have no right to be offended by any coarse language. In fact, we further agreed that the perfect thing to drive a burglar out of your house would be to shout, ‘Do you mind if I pull out and jizz on your tits?’
What the crowd that night will probably better remember, though, is the heating engineer who, when asked to recommend a type of heater, said, ‘Bison.’ I had a fit of the giggles onstage describing an old woman in her flat in winter, warming her hands on a buffalo and, the bit that tipped me over the edge, hanging her drying on his antlers. It’s a small room, with just space for the old lady, a small telly and a 400lb wild cow. Of course, now I could Google ‘Bison’ and find the full range of radiators, convection heaters and the like. But this wasn’t just whimsy. I once taught physics to agriculture students in university, and one of the exam questions I’ll never forget started: ‘If the surface area of a cow is 4m2 and the cow releases heat at a rate of
…’ so, you know, it could work.
After the show, we went out, because it was a Friday and going out in Newcastle is one of the thirty-five things ‘not to miss’ in this country, according to The Rough Guide to England. There were crowds; some had coats, some did not; we had some drinks; I went to a chip shop I know; and had started to stumble back to the hotel at about three o’clock. On the way, I saw a young man accost a group of people in front of me, chat briefly and then peel away angrily. He moved on to another group, and the same thing happened. He eventually got to me.
‘I’m sorry, mate, can you help me?’ he said in an Irish accent.
‘Hello, champ,’ I said, doing the voice, because I am Irish and therefore permitted. ‘What’re you in town for?’
‘I’m over to see the match tomorrow, but I can’t find my hotel.’
This guy was hammered, by the way. Hammered. More than any of the locals, I’ll admit.
‘I’m trying to get to my hotel, but I can’t find it,’ he mumbled again.
‘Well, what’s the name?’
‘I don’t know. But I’ve got the key.’
‘Excellent. Show me the key then.’
He showed me the key. It was a plain credit-card-sized piece of plastic, white on both sides, with just the word ‘Vingcard’ written on it. It was a hotel room key all right, but the only information was the address of the Vingcard corporate headquarters in Arizona, and I doubt they have a help line for just this situation.
‘I’m sorry, mate. I think you’re in trouble, there’s no information on this.’
‘But this is the key! Where’s my hotel?’
‘This is a generic key. It doesn’t give your hotel name…’
‘Ah fuck off. Why don’t you all fuck off?’ he roared, and then wheeled away to grab another group of people and get the same bad news from them.
For all I know he’s still in Newcastle, wandering round, looking for the Vingcard hotel.
Manchester Lowry Theatre (2 nights)
1 dentist
1 thirteen-year-old boy with a newspaper round
1 finish operator
1 benefit fraud officer
1 project manager:
‘What’s the project?’
‘I’m building a firing range in Cheshire.’
‘What, a field with a target at the end? That’s a hell of a project.’
1 property developer
1 man called Brendan who bought the ticket on eBay
My wife travelled up to meet me in Manchester, and we checked into our hotel together. As we stood in the lobby, she looked around with a confused expression.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said.
‘This hotel is really familiar.’
‘Have you stayed here before?’
‘No, but it still looks familiar. Wait.’ She grinned, as it came to her: ‘This is where Leanne Battersby came when she was a prostitute.’
Welcome to Coronation Street country.
The hotel in question is a boutique hotel across from Granada Studios. It’s almost as famous now for the massive Christmas party the Manchester United players hosted there a couple of years ago. There are lots of places in Manchester to spot footballers: ‘This is the fancy new development that Ronaldo bought his penthouse in, this is the department store Rio Ferdinand was shopping in the day he forgot his drug test’ – that sort of thing. Not that I’m judging those tourists who like this kind of thing. I worked in Granada Studios once and ended up sneaking into the Rovers Return and stealing a bag of nuts. We moved house not much later and, when we were unpacking, they got thrown out, because neither of us realized they were the magic nuts. They just looked like an ordinary bag of peanuts. Next time, I’ll steal the sign from the outside of the corner shop. Or one of Jack Duckworth’s pigeons. Or Betty.
It would make a good crime story at least. We were crying out for one of them on the first night at the Manchester Lowry Theatre. I wasn’t in the best of form, and some of the new stories just weren’t working as well as they should. It all seemed to be 15 per cent slower than it should be. All through the show, this was frustrating me. The Lowry is one of the best theatres in the country, probably the best modern-build theatre.
I’ll come back to this a lot, but here’s the potted history of theatre architecture: slopey hill; amphitheatres; standing room only, no roof; here’s the roof, stick an arch over the stage, bring the seats close; Victorians introduce velvety chairs and painted ceilings and everything is perfect, just perfect (Buxton Opera House, Leeds City varieties, Bath Theatre Royal); somebody invents microphones and theatre designers start moving the seats back – nobody consults with the comedians; theatres are designed for utility and large-scale shows – comedian now yelling to an audience who are sitting a mile away (Liverpool Philharmonic, Bristol Colston Halls); some complete arse decides that orchestras are king and we need to build concert halls, audience now miles away and seated in the sky in a white, white room, impossible to light without seeing every face in the room – comedian starts to cry (Belfast Waterfront, Cardiff St David’s, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall); some complete fucker decides to go completely multi-function and create the ‘black box’ – comedian now ‘democratically’ on the same level as the crowd, has to spend entire show not looking at their crotches (Warwick Arts Centre, Windsor Arts Centre, a million new arts centres round the country).
Theatres are like Concorde. We had the perfect design for a while and everything since has gone backwards. Not for the touring show of Les Mis, of course. But for standing in a room and telling jokes, as a rule of thumb, everything pre-1900 is as perfect as it ever got.
The Lowry is a modern build, but still manages to be intimate, which is a rare feat. It may be more to do with the locals than the architecture, I suppose. I once did a show here where, during the interval, the entire front row, none of whom had met each other before, swapped their seats round just to confuse me. When I came back out, ready to pick up the thread of chats I’d already started, everyone was sitting in a different place, grinning up at me.
After tonight’s disappointing performance then, I took the show apart, ditched the bits that weren’t working and tried some new configurations. This happens a lot during the first couple of weeks of a tour. It’s not dissimilar to being a motorbike enthusiast, I suppose, and stripping the machine down in the front room to give it a tune-up. Sometimes you just need to do the same jokes but in a different order. There was an Edinburgh Festival once where I was a full two weeks in before I realized that I was doing the show the wrong way round. One quick flip and bang! Much bigger laughs.
The following night in Manchester was a return to form. For a start, the dentist got caught bluffing:
Me: What’s in fillings these days?
Dentist: Composite.
Me: What’s that?
Dentist: Errr… composite.
Me: A composite of what, bluffer? Composite isn’t a thing. It’s a mixture of things. So, what is it? Fennel and grout? Zucchini and feathers? Bubble wrap and cornflakes?
He couldn’t recall. I had to look it up during the interval. (It’s fudge and tarmacadam.)
But the winner was the finish operator. Of course, you say, a finish operator will always be the most exciting person in the room. And you’d be being sarcastic and it doesn’t suit you. This man genuinely had the best job I met on this tour. He made the thin metal strips that go into ten-pound notes. Go on, take out a tenner and hold it up to the light. You see that dark line? I met the man who made that.
Liverpool Philharmonic
1 teenager who wants to be a barrister
1 credit controller
1 graphic designer
Liverpool deserves a funnier room than this. The Philharmonic is plush and grand and expertly run and, if I had the orchestra with me, I’d adore it. It’s just that people in the massive balcony can’t see anyone in the stalls, rendering audience chat sort of pointless. Can you imagine what a waste it is not to be abl
e to talk to people in Liverpool? I’m not saying it’s all gold up there, but they aren’t shy. Liverpudlians always tell me how Irish their city is, and indeed I can spot a fair few traits we might have given them. Religious competition, talkativeness, a sentimental streak and a tendency to separatism. Scousers share an Irish sense of uniqueness; an unshakeable belief that it is a unique birthright to have been born on the Mersey. This is always going to be a unifying force; if only because the rest of the population are pushed away, shaking their heads and wondering what makes them so special. I’ve had Scousers repeatedly tell me that X/Y/Z is uniquely great in this city (the people/the spirit/the comedy/the music, for example) and, in fact, it’s bollox of the highest order. X/Y/Z is usually just as good down the road in Manchester or Birmingham. What I love about writing that, though, is that, just like in Ireland, there’s going to be some Scousers who’ll read that piece of non-criticism (basically, ‘other towns have nice people too’) and be irritated that I haven’t given the city its due.
It’s a ludicrous piece of indoctrination, both for the Scousers and the Irish. And it works.
Identity can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. You tell people that they are unique, or beloved for their warmth, or defined by the tightness of their community, and they’ll live up to it. Just look at the difference between English football supporters and Irish football supporters at a World Cup. Before they’ve even left the house, one group is regarded as surly and belligerent; the other as fun-loving and friendly. We Irish constantly tell ourselves that we’re the greatest fans in the world. Chances are, we’re not (my money’s on the Dutch, or the Japanese, or the Brazilians); the point is, it’s a very enjoyable stereotype to live up to. These are all fun characteristics to have. Maybe that’s why English audiences never wanted to shout out their own national traits. The traits that are traditionally associated with the English are so dull and worthy – fair play, tolerance, stiff upper lip, all that malarkey – that nobody wants to adopt them.