Can't Stand Up for Sitting Down (8 page)

This is
because when people are in the manic phase, they have something called
‘pressure of speech’ and ‘flight of ideas’ which means they splurge out the
first thing that comes into their head, and the rate of their speech is so fast
and difficult to follow that it can appear like a surreal comedy routine. I
remember a manic patient who was a quite delightful posh bloke who had been ill
on and off for years, being admitted under a section of the Mental Health Act,
which meant he was detained against his will as he was a danger to himself or
others. An hour or so after he got there, he came up to the hatch where we were
serving up lunch …

His
speech went something like this:

Him:
‘Splat that on, darling, splat it on, splat it on, come on, come on
… and I’ll have a spoonful of those little green fuckers [peas] yes, yes,
yes, more green fuckers than that, more green fuckers, crikey you’re fat, been
eating your green fuckers, have you?

You’re a big
girl, you’re a very big girl … give me some of those little bastards too,
will you, the yellow bastards, come on, the yellow bastards [sweetcorn]. Come
on, custard as well …‘

Me:
‘But you normally have custard with pudding.’

Him:
‘Not me, love, I have it all on together, pour it on.’ STARTS
SINGING: ‘Pour the fucker on, pour the fucker on … ee-i-addio, for fuck’s
sake pour it on.’

Me:
‘I can’t, it’ll taste horrible.’

Him:
‘Don’t care, darling, don’t give a flying fuck…’

AT THIS POINT, HE
POURS CUSTARD ON HIS HEAD AND STARTS TO DANCE, SINGING TO THE TUNE OF ‘KNEES UP
MOTHER BROWN’:

‘Custard on me
head, custard on me head …‘

We
nurses then distract him and someone takes him off to get cleaned up.

I’m not attempting an
exhaustive investigation of types of jokes here, but a slightly more scattergun
analysis of the sort of jokes I do.

Most
comics do the traditional form of stand-up which involves a build-up to the
joke and then the punch line, which is usually a reveal or something
unexpected.

For
example, an early line I did was, ‘I’m anorexic,’ (hopefully people laugh at
this point because I’m obviously not), and then I follow it up with, ‘because
anorexic people look in the mirror and think they look fat, and so do I.’

Anorexics
thinking they look fat has to be a well-known symptom of the illness or else
the audience won’t get the joke. I have had some complaints from people who are
relatives of anorexics, but I’m not having a go at anorexics, I’m having a go
at myself.

Comedy Poems

On occasion I have written
comedy poems. When I’m writing them I always think it’s important to combine
two genres, so the clash between them adds even more humour.

For
example, a few years ago I was asked to perform something different’ at a
benefit that I would never normally do, so I wrote an ode to the menopause
which was based on Shakespeare.

It went
like this:

ODE TO THE CHANGE

But hark! What light through
yonder window breaks?

Oh no, a day that heralds
wing-ed towel,

Transforming me into a
vicious hag,

With all the bonhomie of Mr
Simon Cowell.

Oh will this hellish torment
never end?

When will my meno ever
pause?

All I want for Christmas is
a

Day off periods, please
Santa Claus.

Hurry, menopause, and take
me over,

I don’t care any more, just
do your work,

So my ovaries ain’t gonna go
no more,

I couldn’t give a flying furk.

Strange symptoms 1 am told
must be expected,

I will embrace them, love
them, use them well

As surfing on the gushes and
the flushes,

I bulk-buy gin and slap on KY
^®
jell.

For the quality of mucus is
not strained, it dries, hair falls,

And ends up on your chin,

And when you saunter to your
local pub,

They shout, ‘Hooray! Brian Blessed’s
in.’

If HRT’s the lubricant of
love,

I will transform into a
stoutish Barbie,

Although my beloved may well
say

That I remind him more of Mr
R. Mugabe.

Then I’ll sit in bed all day
and call for chocolate,

Hurrah, I hear the sound of
husband’s door key

Now is the winter of my
discontent,

Made glorious summer by this
bar of Yorkie.

This was performed at a
benefit show at the National Theatre and the audience weren’t particularly
impressed by my idiot’s guide to Shakespeare.

And
here’s another poem I performed for a bit after Princess Anne’s son Peter
married a Canadian called Autumn Kelly It’s called:

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR

Marry me, Autumn Kelly,
we’ll have a massive party and get pissed.

I’d love to, but you silly
sod, you’re not on the Civil List.

We can’t afford a lavish do,
we haven’t got a bean,

Oh fuck it then, let’s flog
the pics to
Hello!
magazine.

We’ll get your nan there,
Pete, with her crown on, what a lark.

And your granddad will, I’m
sure, spew out the odd racist remark.

And your Uncle Charlie will
be running round, all prissy and manic,

Sniffing at the vol au vents
in case they’re not organic.

And security will lurk
about, behaving like the Stasi,

And perhaps your cousin
Harry will dress up as a Nazi.

And giggling debs and
vacuous chinless wonders will abound,

As the great ship of the
monarchy begins to run aground.

And will our grasping and
our greed not be seen as a bad thing?

No, the public will just
love it, they’ll all admire your bling.

We sip champagne all night
and raise two fingers to the twats,

They’re as bloody daft as
one of Cousin Beatrice’s hats.

But it might have the same
effect as
It’s A Royal Knockout.

We could risk opprobrium and
a palace lock-out.

The older royals might treat
us like we’ve got the lurgy,

Fear not, my sweet, that’s
an honour just reserved for Fergie.

Puns

Puns tend to be the stock
in trade of the traditional comedian, although occasionally I’ll bung a few in.
Here’s one:

‘My
ex-boyfriend came round last week — which was weird ‘cause I didn’t even know
he was in a coma.’

Pure Abuse

If I want to have a go at
people I don’t like, the abuse just needs to be comedied up a bit and delivered
with enough conviction. Add a bit of alliteration and you will find that even a
phrase like ‘Toffee-nosed, tedious Tory twat’ will get a laugh — although not a
very big one, obviously.

Funny Stories

Quite a few things that
have happened to me make me laugh, so occasionally I will take the risk that
they will make the audience laugh too. For example, a few years ago I received
some strange fan letters from a guy who also sent me several pictures of
himself. They were somewhat unsettling. Then one night, I was watching a
documentary about stalkers and there he was on screen, stalking a woman in
Essex. All I had to add was, ‘Two-timing bastard!’ to make a joke.

Heckle Put-downs

Prepared heckle put-downs
should be jokes in themselves and should be really funny i.e. funnier than the
original heckle if you’re going to take the hecklers on. Just thinking about
what sort of heckles I might get enabled me to write appropriate jokes for a
series of possibilities e.g. ‘Where’s your girlfriend? Outside grazing, I
presume.

Irony

Irony is a great staple of
the British comic and identifiable on the continent of America even though we’re
always saying it isn’t. Everyone gets it, so it enables me to do jokes like
moving the microphone out of the way at the beginning of my set and saying,
‘I’m just going to move this, or you won’t be able to see me otherwise.’

Shock Jokes

Shocking jokes get
journalists in the right-wing tabloids very hot under the collar. The
proponents of these sort of jokes these days are Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr,
and they shock because they have a go at groups who have made it clear they
don’t think it’s on to take the piss out of them — such as people with a
disability. I always tried to turn this round and point my joke gun at white
men, the most powerful group in our society thus:

‘I
think they should change the law and allow women to be armed. Then we would be
safer in public. We could shoot anyone at night that threatened us, and in fact
any bloke that got on our nerves.

This
‘misfired’ and didn’t go down too well with the unreconstructed males in the
audience, as I’m sure you can imagine.

I think
the joke I’ve done that most shocked people, judging by their reaction anyway
was a joke about the Jennifer (daughter of David) Lynch film
Boxing Helena.
I
never saw the film but the plot, very simply put, involves a surgeon amputating
a woman’s arms and legs and keeping her in a box.

I
explained this premise to the audience, who received the information very
matter-of-factly and then I said I was worried about how such a woman would
cope with personal hygiene without any arms or legs. I went on to ask them to
imagine what it would be like for her having periods, trapped as she was like
this in a box, and particularly if it was a cardboard box, how it would get all
soggy and revolting. At this point there would be, without fail, a noise from
the audience which signified their revulsion at the mention of periods and
sogginess. I would then say ‘Oh I see, you were quite happy with the idea of a
woman having her arms and legs chopped off and being put in a box, but you seem
to be completely revolted by the idea of her having a period. What’s the matter
with you?’

Some of
the audience would laugh and applaud; others would just continue to be
revolted. I was trying to make a point about how ridiculous some of our taboos
are. Even in this day and age it seems so pathetic to me that we have to shroud
periods in ridiculously euphemistic terms, but we are quite happy to see women
being mutilated for our entertainment. Funny old world, ain’t it?

As far
as actually thinking of and writing the jokes, it’s hard to put my finger on
how I actually do it. I very rarely sit down at my computer and write for hours
on end, because I simply don’t have the time (or the inclination) to do this. I
always have hundreds of half-filled little notebooks everywhere with scribbled
ideas for jokes, or stuff I have read in the paper that I think would make a
good routine. Jokes tend to ferment in my head over a few days rather than
present themselves on the page fully formed.

Sometimes,
I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with the most brilliant joke in the
history of the universe in my head and then go straight back to sleep having
failed to write it down. When I wake up in the morning, of course the bloody
thing has flown out of my brain, never to return. Sometimes I can’t find a pen
so I’ll write on my hand with eyeliner or lipstick, and many’s the occasion
when I discover a scrap of paper with a smudged bit of lipstick on it and
wonder wistfully if that would have won the Joke of the Year competition.

With
me, my jokes tend to be highly structured. They certainly were when I started.
Every single word in my set was pored over, learned by heart and parroted at an
audience in a pretty predictable way That’s why when I first started, my voice
sounded so stupid and flat. As I got more relaxed, so did my voice and I was
able to loosen up and not be so obsessive about learning everything
parrot-fashion.

These
days it’s difficult to do new stuff. Audiences have a certain expectation of
you, so if you do ten minutes of new material that bombs, they understandably
feel a bit short-changed and rightly so. Comics approach new stuff in different
ways. Some hide in tiny little theatres in the middle of nowhere and punt out
an hour of new stuff to a small audience who may just be pleased they are
there. Others disguise bits of new stand-up in their current routine, which is
what I tend to do. This means that sometimes I hang on to ancient material for
too long, but I am too much of a cowardy custard to replace it all in one fell
swoop with a potentially rubbish new set.