WHY I STOPPED BEING A STAND-UP COMEDIAN

Chapter 1

One of the first nails in the coffin of my comedy career occurred when I directed a stage show of the poem Whale Nation by Heathcote Williams.

 I'd like to quote from the end-section of Whale Nation that gives sources and quotes for the poem. This is from Walter J. Hickel, former governor of Alaska and ex-Secretary of the Interior.

            I decided to act on the whales. The showdown came with representatives of the State Department and the sperm oil industry. When I had disposed of the majority of their arguments, they produced an argument I had not expected. A state department official said, “We have to have whale oil for the space programme.”

            Without hesitation I demanded, “What are you going to use when the whale is extinct?”

            Taken aback, the official stammered, “I suppose we'll have to find a substitute.”

 This is by Roger S. Payne, quoted by Faith McNulty in Lord of the Fish.

            It was a small whale, a porpoise about eight feet long with lovely subtle curves glistening in the cold rain. It had been mutilated. Someone had hacked off its flukes for a souvenir. Two other people had carved their initials deeply into its side and someone else had stuck a cigar butt in its blowhole. I removed the cigar and stood there for a long time with feelings I cannot describe.

By F. Bruce Lamb from The Fisherman's Porpoise, Natural History magazine. (Which has one of the best opening lines I've ever read.)

            Whenever Amazon fishermen gather, someone has a porpoise story to tell. The fresh water Amazon river porpoise, known locally as Bouto, is credited with many natural and supernatural powers. Boutos are reported to come ashore in disguise during the many fiestas in the Amazon river villages. They reputedly enjoy the fun and dance with the girls and many a fatherless child is credited to the Bouto.

                                                                                                         There are three things about Whale Nation that I've always liked. 1) It tells you how good whales are. 2) It tells you how poor men are. 3) I've always wanted to meet a Man from Mars. And whales are about as Martian as you can get. You don't get fat whales swimming in one part of the sea while thin whales starve in another. You don't get one whale charging another whale Water Tax. You don't get whale comedians in a room full of other whales saying into a microphone, “The thing I hate about sharks is …”

 They are alien beings. They are not like us.

 E.T. is a film about an alien being. An enjoyable film. A popular film. But it is a total waste of time and money. Because when we watch E.T. we experience empathy for a funny little creature with a highly expressive face and a different language spoken in an inarticulate voice. And to have that experience we shouldn't go into a cinema and watch E.T. We should go into the ocean and swim with a dolphin.

 Whale Nation has been described as “the most moving long poem in English since the Waste Land.” If any of you ever saw my stand-up comedy routine, you'll know that what I did on stage went roughly like this:

            Sex sex sex sex sex. Drugs drugs drugs drugs drugs. Sex sex sex sex sex. Masturbation. Sex.

Given that that was the kind of act I used to do, I was the obvious choice to direct “the most moving long poem in English since the Waste Land.”

 On rehearsing Whale Nation my first problem was: how do I identify with the whales? How do I feel like them? How do I get myself into a state of liquidity?

 I found the solution.

 I got drunk.

 For each rehearsal I would drink large quantities of Dark Rum (a sea-faring drink, after all). From then on (as I kept on saying) everything went swimmingly.

 Now, I should explain that I know a lot about being drunk. A lot. And one of the first things that I know about being drunk is that when you are drunk, your perceptions are altered – but only altered a bit. They are not altered radically.

 What usually happens when you're drunk is, you have a conversation with someone and you haven't the faintest idea what they're talking about but you do know that they're wrong. At the same time, you don't know what you're talking about either, but you do know that you're right.

 What does not happen when you're drunk is that you walk into a bar and think you've met a Man from Mars.

 There were many rehearsals and try-out performances of Whale Nation, but the first performance proper was in Glasgow, during the annual festival in May, cleverly entitled Mayfest.

 The performance went well. Afterwards, I was on a high. And full of rum. I went to a hotel that was used as a Showbiz Bar for the various performers that were in Glasgow at the time, and there they all were: my fellow performers. Doing what performers always do in Showbiz Bars: Look over each other's shoulders while talking about themselves in the hope that someone more famous might come in who they can talk to about themselves while simultaneously appearing a bit more famous and thus a bit more important while still talking about themselves. But no. I came in. And every single performer in the room thought, “Oh no. It's Dowie. And he's drunk. And now he's going to come over and tell us we're all crap. Again.”

 Which was my intention. But it didn't happen. Because I was waylaid by a table full of foreigners. Funny foreigners. Funny foreigners from Norway.

 One of them was wearing a wig.

 I'd never seen a wig like it. It was a comedy wig of the highest order. It was the kind of wig that Spike Milligan would die for. It rolled all over his head. He looked one way. His wig looked another. But he didn't care. He was roaring with laughter. He was obviously drunk. He was certainly in a state of liquidity.

 As I entered, the funny foreigners started shouting at me: “Come and be our spy. We need a new spy. Come and spy for us.”

 Now, if you're the kind of comedian who specialises in telling other comedians that they're crap, and you've just had a successful first night after months of concentrated work, and you're full of confidence and rum, and you've just been hailed by a table full of funny foreigners one of whom is wearing a wig, what you tend to think is: I'll sit down here, then. Give these boys a good kicking. And when I've run out of funny one-liners like "Norway's crap, isn't it?" – well, I've always got the wig to fall back on.

 So I sat down, large rum in hand, and after a few introductory jokes and chat a man in the middle of this group – he told me later that his name was Finn – turned to look at me…

 Full in the eyes…

 And he continued to look… and as he looked all the other people at the table sort of slowly swam away… leaving me alone with this man – Finn – looking at me.

 And time and space went mad.

I looked across the room to where my friends were. The comedy crowd. And they seemed about a hundred miles away. There was no sound. I could see my friends but they seemed to be a long, long way away, surrounded by a tiny bubble of light. Meanwhile, I was getting a subliminal message from Finn. It said, “It might get a bit heavy from now on. But any time you feel like leaving and joining your friends – all you have to do is get up and go.”

I decided to stay.

Here is a quote from another poem by Heathcote Williams – Falling for a Dolphin.

            It returns

            to move up and down your body,

            spraying each section of it with a barrage of echo-locating clicks;

            penetrating your brain, hearts, lungs, stomach, groin, legs and feet;

            Seeming to gauge each in depth …

            Mapping your body's geography

            in punctilious detail.

That's how I felt when this man – Finn – looked at me. I didn’t feel that he was mapping my body’s geography in ‘punctilious detail’ – rather my mind.  Because when he was looked at me I felt that he was looking at the whole me. Not just the grown-up me. Not just the me who was drunk. He also saw the five year old me. He saw the clever me. The stupid me. The kind me. The nasty me. And he saw the dirty stuff. The stuff I suppress. He saw the potential child molester, the potential murderer, the potential rapist. And what was so moving about this was – there was no judgement. He simply saw and accepted.

 This was the moment I burst into tears. Then I asked a question. A question I thought sounded stupid. A question I don't normally ask complete strangers in a bar in Glasgow.

 I said, “Are you Christ?”

 And he said, “No. I'm not.”

He could have said, “Don't be daft.” Or he could have said, “Yes. I'm Christ. What's the problem?” But he simply said, “No. I'm not.” And the implication was: “But I am something.”

 So the question, “Are you Christ?” didn't seem such a stupid question after all.

 The stupid question was the one I asked next.

 I said, “What am I supposed to be doing with my life?”

 He didn't answer as I'd hoped. He didn't say, “You don't have to do anything. You're a brilliant comedian. You should have your own series on Channel 4.”

 Instead, he said, “You have a child, don't you?”

 Which hadn't been mentioned. 

I said, “Yes.”

He said, “Well … why don't you bring him up?”

I have two sons. At the time of this story the eldest boy was three. And, at the age of three, he'd come up with three great jokes. I was then thirty eight and I'd come up with about seven.

                                              The First Joke.

He used to eat frozen peas – they helped him when he was teething. One day he was eating frozen peas from a small bowl when he noticed his little plastic chamber pot. He bent down, dropped a pea into it, and said, “Pea in the potty.”

                                              The Second Joke.

He was splashing around in his bath. I was watching. I said, “Are you being a fish?” He said, “Yes.” Then he held up his hand. “Look,” he said. “Fish fingers.”

                                              The Third Joke.

We were walking by some tennis courts where people were playing. He said, “I'd like to do that one day.” I said, “Well, when you're a bit older, I expect you'll be able to play tennis.” He said, “Yes. Then I'll be Tennis the Menace.”

 I thought his jokes were good. But then I saw his act.

 It was raining. It was cold and windy. We were standing at a bus stop with his baby brother, then about six months old, in a buggy. The baby was not having a good time. So his big brother decided to cheer him up by putting on a show. It was fabulous! The show consisted of marching up and down while beating himself on the side of the head and singing:

 Yompy bompy bo!

Yompy bompy bo!

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Yompy bompy bo!

I thought, “Why can't I do shows like that? See someone at a bus-stop in the pouring rain, freezing cold and miserable, go up to them, march up and down singing “Yompy Bompy Bo,” while banging myself on the side of the head?” And if I did – what's the worst thing that could happen to me? Not get laughs? Well, I'm used to that. Or maybe afterwards I'd end up in some little room somewhere, sitting on my own for an hour or so … Well, so what? That usually happens before I go on.

 So. Why don't I do shows like that?

 I don't do jokes about my mother-in-law because I haven't got one – I'm not married. I do have a mother-out-law, though. A very nice woman. She lives in the Home Counties. Comes from a slightly better background than I do. One day, when I was still performing, she said to me, “John, these things you do… I can never remember… are they called gigs? Or gits?”

 Gits, I told her. Every time.

One of the many reasons I was never a successful stand-up comedian is that I'm terrified of hard work. And if you want to be a successful comedian you have to work really hard. You have to go all the way to Edinburgh and play there for four weeks and win the Perrier award, then you have to go to Melbourne and Montreal, you have to have your own TV series, then you have to go to the United States and appear in films and live in L.A. and get a cocaine habit and overdose and die. You have to do all this and still people will come up to you and say, “Has anyone ever told you look like Jasper Carrot?”

 And I couldn't be bothered with all that. I was far happier in some tiny fringe theatre playing to seven people.

 I used to perform constantly in a tiny fringe theatre in Earls Court called the Finborough. I remember one git at the Finborough when I was playing to an audience of seven people, five of whom were from Sweden.

 Ten minutes into the act and it wasn't going well. I was working to the sound of my own feet. One of the Swedish women in the audience lit a cigarette then turned to her friend and whispered something. I stopped and I said, “No whispering when I'm on, thank you very much. If you've got something to say, share it with the rest of the room.”

 And seven people think, “Not only is this man not funny, but now he's taking it out on us.”

 And the woman said, “I'm very sorry. I was just saying to my friend – this is the first cigarette I smoke in seven years.”

 And this is after only ten minutes. I had about an hour left to do. What's going to happen by the end of the show? She'll be on heroin by then. We all will.

 Another problem I had with being a stand-up comedian was that I always supported the underjoke. My reasoning was that all jokes come from the same source. And why should I differentiate between one joke and another?

 If I'm prejudiced against someone because of their gender, that makes me sexist. If I'm prejudiced against someone because of their colour, that makes me racist.  So, if I'm prejudiced against jokes because of their content — what does that make me?

 A humorist.

 A joke popped into my head from wherever jokes come from. It went: Cats can speak, you know. Oh yes. Cats can say the word “immediately”. Ask a cat when he wants his tea and the cat'll say, “Naooow!”

 I know. But don't blame the joke. There might be an occasion when that joke could actually be funny. Hard to imagine I agree, but …

 Something all comedians have to face is that if you're funny in Liverpool and the next night you're in Manchester and they're not laughing then you're not funny. It doesn't matter if you were funny yesterday. If they're not laughing today then you're not funny. Furthermore, you've never been funny and you never will be funny. And there's no way you can convince an audience otherwise.

 I remember one poor comedian saying to a hate-filled audience in London, “You might not think I’m funny, but they liked me last night in Sheffield.” The people in the audience looked at each other, looked back at the comedian, then said as one, “Well, fuck off back to Sheffield then.”

 So, I was in a Polytechnic playing to an audience of about eight hundred metalwork students at 2. a.m. Half way through the disco. And the lager was free. And I was doing what I always did in those conditions: Swear a lot. Talk as quickly as I can. Sweat copiously. Plus my eyeballs were sticking out of my face like ping pong balls on sticks. And eight hundred metalwork students are looking at this sweating, swearing, bug-eyed maniac … and they can't make up their minds. Is he funny? Or is he mad?

 And then I found myself telling the Cat Joke. 

            “Cat's can speak you know.”

 And I think, “Not the cat joke. Don't tell these people the cat joke. These people don't even care if humans can speak, let alone cats.” But I was stuck with it. I'd started. I had to finish.

            “Oh yes. Cats can speak all right. Fucking hell. I should say so. Fuck  me. Yes. Cats can say the word "immediately". Ask a cat when he wants his tea and the cat will say, "Immediately". No! I mean – ”

 Too late. Eight hundred metalwork students all reach the same conclusion at the same time: He's not mad. He's fucking barmy.

 The reason why I always supported the underjoke was because I hate bullying (despite being a bully myself). And I always imagined after the gig the big, confident jokes – the ones that always got laughs – striding round the dressing room, snapping their towels at shy, timorous little jokes trembling under the sink, freezing cold and in tears.

 So, for me, the worst comedy cliché is “I started telling jokes in school so bigger boys wouldn't beat me up.” I've seen that said by virtually every comedian in every interview I've ever read. Don't ever say that. Please. Because all you're doing is legislating for more bullying. Even now somebody somewhere is hitting somebody smaller and saying, “I'm not beating you up. I'm making you into a brilliant comedian.”