Comedy is a two-faced coin
Anti Semitic abuse. Shout it in the street and get a kicking. Try it on in public and get arrested. Give it a go in the name of stand up comedy and get away with it. So it seems. The National Talent Hunt had came to the York Comedy Festival and in association with The Other Side Comedy Club, Harkers Bar put on a week long showcase of the new kids on the ‘funny’ block. As I sat sipping my pint and keenly awaiting an evening of laughter, you can perhaps imagine my surprise when the first act of the evening kick started his act with a few cracks about the Holocaust. This was the third heat. I am, admittedly, hopeless to speculate as to the quality of the comedians who didn't make it past the initial stages. Who knows what they might have joked about? Apart from some jokes about Israel bulldozing Palestinians and a little abuse directed towards a table of Americans, the rest of the evening passed without further race related comment. Which, judging by the audiences reaction to the Holocaust jokes, was probably a blessing.
If the first act didn't score to highly as far as I was concerned, the second act was a little better. A small eccentric man, with no hair but with glasses larger than his head, clambered excitedly onto the stage. Producing a strange sitar-like device, he ingeniously broke his act into bite size chunks with a melodious blend of tuneless singing and frantic strumming. His comedy was pretty mediocre, and the audience reaction did reflect this. However, he did have a couple of hilarious one-liners which I will try to remember.
The third act was, in my opinion, by the far the best, standing out not only for being the only female participant, but because this comedienne demonstrated the rarely found, but seemingly essential, ability to maintain a common theme. Her comedy was grounded in her every day experience as a school teacher, and so she was able to make us laugh about the things with which are all too familiar.
Suddenly, some maniac bounded up onto the stage. Thinking him to be a poor victim of attention deficit disorder, I turned to try and find his mother and ask her to administer the ritalin. This lunatic, apparently released from his usual secure environment and going by the name of Russell Kane, was the fourth act of the evening. His act was random in a way which combined the humour of Harry Hill and the behaviour of an LSD induced night in Ikon Diva. I have to confess that he didn’t particularly make me laugh. However, everyone else in the audience though he was the best thing since comical sliced bread, so I was ostracised as a miserable arse, and so Kane won the heat and progressed to the National Talent Hunt final. If I remember correctly, as a child I was always told not to laugh at people like that as it only encourages them.
I then left. I couldn’t take any more. Stepping out into the warm summers evening, I was incredibly grateful that I didn’t have to sit and watch people attempting to get laughs from an audience when it would be easier to draw blood from a stone. I’m not really sure what possesses people to become stand up comics. Some of those who performed were fantastic, and deserve to go far. Others, however, should never ever have been handed a microphone. Boring and unfunny people should get jobs in the JB Morrell Library, racists should be put behind bars and lunatics should be strapped securely into a straight jacket. Well, yes, I probably am miserable. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to find my slippers, make myself a nice cup of tea and settle down for the evening. I might even have chocolate digestive biscuit, but that could be too much fun all at once.
Loading ...