Comedy was invented by Monty Python. Everyone knows that. Before the words: ‘and now for something completely different’ were uttered, no-one had ever laughed. There had been no jokes, no funny stuff, no nuffink.

Ok, comedy’s old. People want to laugh, its a lift from the mundane, from the burden, from the tedium. So the Romans entertained humorously, and if the comedians weren’t funny enough, they’d be fed to the lions; fair enough. Shakespeare was a master of comedy, both with a very subtle light touch and with the more slapstick, visual fools like Bottom and Falstaff.

Everyone loves to laaaaarrrfffff. Except the extremely religious. Not much fun in the bible.

And there was music hall, and there was Broadway and the Marx Brothers and the 1950s/60s axis of Jewish New York humour, with Sid Caesar and Mel Brooks and Woody Allen and Neil Simon and there was Lenny Bruce. Whilst over here we had Carry On films; same joke put into 59 different contexts, but it worked in a slapsticky, smutty, oops my skirt seems to have been ripped off by that nail, kind of way. Stand up comedy was basically telling mother-in-law jokes, golfing stories, peripheral kind of stuff.

And if comedy was painting pictures, these guys were the impressionists, those who take reality and give it their own signature, blur the edges just slightly.

Then Monty Python came along and they were the full Salvador Dali. They were the surrealist masters of laughter. And in fact still are.
But in the late 70s I first became aware of the Comedy Store; a place operating on Darwinian principles. If the comedian was good he stayed at the mike, if he was dull or bad he’d be shouted down and the next one took over. Brutal. Survival of the funniest. And the compare was a man called Alexi Sayle. Who was funny. Really Funny, with a capital F. And he became bigger than the venue so along with the best of the new breed of comedy from the Comedy Store, the Comic Strip was set up. At Raymond’s Review Bar, Soho’s oldest strip joint, hence the name. I went there sometime around 1980 (if you remember dates then you weren’t really ‘there’) and was simply blown away.

These comedians were young! They weren’t wearing suits and ties and holding glasses of whisky! They were fucking swearing!!!! And they spoke against the government and they hated the Prime Minister and they were anarchists and antichrists and a-a-a-a-… alternative. That’s what we’ll call it: alternative comedy. And it was young and our parents hated it and there’s no more acid test than that.

At the Comic Strip was Alexi, and French & Saunders, Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson, Keith Allen and The Dangerous Brothers. Adrian Edmonson and Rik Mayall. Who spent a 10 minute set just, basically, hitting each other over the head with all manner of rubberised hammers and cleavers and tv sets and concrete slabs, et cetera, et cetera. Sounds daft, slapstick, silly, but it somehow transcended that, and they were still doing it years later on The Young Ones, by which time Ben Elton had joined their tribe.

And now Rik is dead. The People’s Poet is dead. And that is indeed a tragedy. Shakespearian or otherwise.

Happy Sad Tuesday

A xxxx