No laughing matter

I just got an email from the Birmingham branch of the Glee Club, a chain of comedy venues.

Something didn't look quite right. Can you work out what it is?

OK so far?

Starting to twig?

I think a theme is starting to emerge. But let's read on. 

Yes, there's definitely something that links these performers. Are there any more? There are!

It's on the tip of my tongue… What could it possibly be?

It's coming to me. I'm almost there. One last push.

By George! I've got it!

Male comedians listed by Birmingham Glee Club in the six months from December 2016 to May 2017: 25
Female comedians listed by Birmingham Glee Club in the six months from December 2016 to May 2017: 4.
Male headline or solo acts listed by Birmingham Glee Club in the six months from December 2016 to May 2017: 18
Female headline or solo acts listed by Birmingham Glee Club in the six months from December 2016 to May 2017: 0.
Pictures of male comedians: 19.
Pictures of female comedians: 0.

Now, what are the possible explanations for this?
1. Women aren't funny.
2. They were all busy for half a year.
3. All female comedians have collectively decided that Birmingham is shit and they're never coming back.
4. The inhabitants of Birmingham are so sexist that the Glee Club is actually protecting women by not booking them.
5. Female comics hibernate for six months of the year. Do NOT open their cardboard boxes too early.

I did ask the Glee Club about this. They got a tad defensive.

Firstly: I'm no comedy expert. They have a professional team which looks for talented comics to book and that team has managed not to book any women. They have managed to book six women this year: not, to my mind, an astonishing number. They also said that they'll be announcing more acts…which makes it sound like women have to fit in the gaps left once the men have been booked. Or perhaps it's that they have booked women but didn't think it worth mentioning.

Finally, here's what happens if you unsubscribe from their mailing list.

That's right. It's not them. It's you. Or your nasty, stupid friends. You can't really want to opt out of their list. That would be incomprehensible. You heartless brute!

PS. As @MrSimonWood points out, the excuses are similar to those made in academia:

That Friday feeling

How I wish I was mentally living the weekend already - fat chance with a pile of marking and three lectures to write for Monday. I'm coping by playing very calming music (Tallis, Allegri) in the office and breaking off for the occasional peruse of my new Norton edition of Le Morte Darthur. Mmm.

Did anyone watch 10 O'Clock Live last night? Channel 4's homegrown version of The Late Show (and full marks for the imaginative title guys), intended to be a satirical take on politics and news for the 18-30s. With a cast of David Mitchell (his compulsory presence is a clause in all channels' charters), Lauren Laverne, Charlie Brooker and Jimmy Carr, I assumed it would be 75% good.

Oh dear. David Mitchell: informed, spontaneous, quite funny. Charlie Brooker did what Charlie Brooker does. Good, but hardly innovative. Poor Lauren, for whom I have a deal of respect, was badly used as eye candy and in terrible, terrible sketches. She's brighter than that. I really hope the scriptwriters up their games. They clearly hate Jimmy Carr (and fair enough). Why else would they have given him the lamest, oldest jokes they could find on the internet? Perhaps they knew it's the kind of material he's most comfortable with. At least it kept him away from his Gypsy material.

Live satire is difficult, and a first show always has teething problems - but it was still unwatchable.

Stand up and be counted

Last night a few of us went to our local quality venue for some stand-up comedy, headlined by Isy Suttie, best known as weirdo love-interest in Peep Show.

Because they have family and friends, let's pass over the supporting acts without naming them. Suffice to say, stories about your parents being slightly odd and coming from unfashionable areas of the country really shouldn't count as cutting edge comedy. On a more positive note, if their routines are good enough for a professional comedian, a new career unfurls before me.

Isy Suttie was therefore very welcome. Even if you aren't hugely into character comedy (and songs), it was a relief to see someone who understands how to structure and time an act. Her take on the world was slightly quirky, a bit Victoria Wood, with frequent dashes of something sharper which prevented her act being too cutesy.

A definite hit - catch her if she's in your area.

(And I wasn't made to have my photo taken with her. Whether it was this threat or the sight of The Dark Place that impelled her, she raced for the train as soon as she was off stage. I don't blame her).

A question for you

My friends from The Dark Place claim that there was a TV sitcom set in a Dark Place truckstop. The hilarious comedy stemmed from the two main characters - long distance lorry drivers - telling each other about the woman they were having affairs with, little realising that each was talking about the other one's wife!!!!!! ROFL LOL etc.

What was it called? Anyone seen it? It can't be as unfunny as Friends or Dharma and Greg anyway.

Update: I've found it. It was called Dogfood Dan and the Carmarthen Cowboy. It sounds utterly execrable. Did you watch it? I'd love to show you some, but apparently there are limits even to the rubbish Youtube hosts:

No videos found for “dogfood dan and the carmarthen cowboy”

Dogfood Dan and the Carmarthen Cowboy: Growing out of a single Yorkshire TV production in 1982 (screened in the series ITV Playhouse) and appearing as a one-series sitcom on the BBC six years later, Dogfood Dan And The Carmarthen Cowboy was a tale of two long-distance dogfood-carrying lorry drivers who, to the other's ignorance, are each having affairs with the other's wife. Although the men meet up on the road, exchange stories of their sexual escapades, and often talk to their wives about their travelling friend, the lies they spin and the false names they invent mean that neither the husbands nor the wives cotton on to the convoluted situation. Aubrey Owen likes to pass himself off as an MP, 'Aneurin', during his visits with Helen, while Dan claims he is carrying top secret 'abnormal' loads when pursuing the passionate Gwyneth. (Myfanwy in the 1982 version.) This was a complex, farcical idea from the ever-interesting David Nobbs, which employed sufficient detours and U-turns to make the extension from play to sitcom worthwhile.

So in its place, here's a highly appropriate clip from Porridge, the 1970s prison comedy.

I Am Dissing You. To The Max.

Stewart Lee is one of my favourite human beings - seemingly shy and retiring until he's driven to puncture the pomposity and stupidity of the rest of us, all the while deconstructing the concept of comedy as he goes along.









He and Jonathan Meades should rule the airwaves. And possibly the country.

I Don't Mind If I Do*

As the rest of the world seems to be going back to the worst aspects of the 1980s, I've decided to trump them. You may have noticed, from my George Formby and Gracie Fields tracks, that I'm going back to the 1940s - the good bits, not the death camps.

This morning I'm listening to 40s radio comedy, specifically It's That Man Again and Much Binding in the Marsh. ITMA was a wartime sketch show, one of the first to mock public figures - 'That Man' was Hitler. Much Binding was set on an RAF base which became a country club after the war, and features much cross-class humour and pop culture references which are still actually funny.

Listen in to some (not many survived as the BBC couldn't afford to record much) here.

*Colonel Humphrey Chinstrap of ITMA turned every question into an offer of a drink.

Politics-free post

For light relief, some totally untopical humour. I love Joyce Grenfell - her monologues and appearances in comedies like St. Trinian's. Followed by Sandy and Julian from Round the Horne - they specialised in polari, the romany-inflected gay slang which allowed them to say pretty much anything on prime-time 1960s radio.