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Click here to read SSP's Editor, Josh Widdicombe's response
More Twee Vicar?
Spitting in the face of bouncy, happy comedy, Henry Barnes salutes those that keep it miserable
"Hello there! Thanks for stopping by! I love you. X", gushes comic author Danny Wallace in the introduction to his website. Two exclamation marks and a kiss in three sentences? That - even for a man of Wallace's relentless positivism - is pushing it.
Wallace makes his comedy crust by taking the 'what if' questions you only ask when you're drunk or boring to their literal conclusions. What if I were to say "Yes" to everything? According to Wallace, you'd travel a lot and poke a Buddist monk live on telly. What would it be like to start your own 'happy cult'? Hard work but lots of cuddly fun, he says. Is it really dangerous to put plastic bags over your head? Unfortunately, he's yet to try this one.
Wallace's comedy is so light you could swallow his books and barely feel them tickle your throat on the way down. And his work is regrettably symptomatic of a wider movement in UK comedy towards matey, non-threatening light entertainment bereft of any misery or anger.
In recent years the terrestrial schedules have been swamped with a tide of twee. On the Beeb The Mighty Boosh cavort around with friendly polar bears, while over on 'edgy' Channel 4 an assortment of 'what if?' comedians like Wallace attempt to prove they're the next Louis Theroux by hosting 90 minute programmes on their quest to find their testicles. What on earth happened? Where's the anger? Where's the pure bloody bile?
Stand-up has traditionally been the stomping ground for the miserable and the disillusioned. Woody Allen; the über-nerd, obsessively picking at his own inadequacies; Bill Hicks, a tangled mass of rage, indiscriminately lashing out a just about everything and Lenny Bruce; a viper-tongued satirist who pummelled the institution in his trademark laconic style, fought for freedom of expression and thrilled audiences, often as an after-thought.
Today give-us-a-hug comics like if.commedie award winner Josie Long bumble onto stage as everyone's best mate. They apologise in advance if they don't raise a laugh and spend their set pointing out things that are nice (in Josie's case, charity shops, arts and crafts and Boggle). No arrogance, no God complexes, nothing to suggest that they're anything other than normal people with perfectly happy lives. This just isn't right. I want my comedians clad in black, screaming with rage and not giving a fuck if the audience is with them or wants them dead, not handing out home-made badges in 'I Love Books' jumpers.
Thankfully there's some refuge from the don't-worry-be-happy morons. Noted scriptwriter and Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker mercilessly pulls the legs off popular culture in his brilliant BBC Four television review Screenwipe. The fact that Brooker, one of the precious few comedians bringing much needed spite back into UK comedy, has been stowed away on an 'arts' channel is indicative of popular demand for comfy comedy with a positive message.
Brooker is of the opinion that we watch comedy with a fun or aspirational bent because the world's an increasingly nasty place and TV is our escape from it - gently soothing our anxious minds into complacent mush with hyper-cheerful whimsy. If he's right then no wonder comedians with material rooted in the rich seams of envy, self-loathing and regret are struggling to sell to mainstream audiences. Maybe the naïve fantasy worlds fashioned by the Boosh boys et al are exactly what we need to stave off the nagging worries inflicted by modern living. God help us all.
Click here to read SSP's Editor, Josh Widdicombe's response
