The Worst Comedian In The World

When I was in Cuba I got a bus from Viñales to Havana. For some reason the bus company decided to subject us to a DVD of the worst comedian in the world. He is some American cockfarmer who tells lamer antediluvian jokes and does ventriloquism with puppets. At one point he played that "Could you hear us? We could hear you!!!!" gag on some unfortunate member of the audience who had just come back from the toilet. My research suggests that this joke was already old and tired when the following piece of dialogue appeared in Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona:

Enter Margate.

CLOWN: Good morrow, sir! Tell me, whilst thou wert away, attending to thy business, wert thou able to hear us engaged in our merriment?

MARGATE: Marry, sirrah, I heard you not.

CLOWN: Well sir, we heard thee right well, and thou in stool.

I gather something similar appears in the third tablet of Gilgamesh.

But back to the worst comedian in the world. His politics seemed as conservative as his humour. Homosexuality was something he kept coming back to, with his homophobic "jokes" having a distinct air of protesting too much. Racial stereotyping was another staple of his craft, with one of his puppets being a hilarious blaxploitation African American and another a Cuban. The latter in particular made me marvel at bus company Viazul's entertainment programming policies.

When the excruciating routine ended I felt a great sense of relief, only to have my hopes dashed by another concert recording of his starting up. The horror. Still, I reckoned I could handle it. But you know how it is when you are in a terrible situation – you slip in to thinking that things cannot possibly get any worse, and then they do. Thus it was on this bus of doom. The worst comedian in the world had been chatting away to one of his puppets about suicide bombers (a perennially fertile subject for comedians), when he said to the audience: "You know, there's been a lot of crazy stuff going on in the Middle East lately. I've often wondered what it would be like to talk to one of those suicide bombers… and now we have the chance! So ladies and gentlemen, say hello to Ahmed The Dead Suicide Bomber!"

Fortunately for everyone I was not wearing a bomb belt.

Other passengers found all this hilarious.

An inuit panda production

Frank Sidebottom, Chris Sievey

Frank Sidebottom has died, as has Chris Sievey, with whom he was closely associated. Frank was most popular during the so-called “Madchester” era of the early 1990s, when his fondness for high-quality ties was oft remarked on.

Chris Sievey, meanwhile, is perhaps most famous for his time in The Freshies, who almost had a pop hit with “I’m in love with the girl on the Manchester Virgin Megastore checkout desk” (subsequently re-released, reputedly following threats of legal action, as “I’m in love with the girl on a certain Manchester megastore checkout desk”).

They will be missed.

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The Bright Club

This was this odd thing I went to in London with Mr "Chocolate Socialist". It took place in a pub, featured people giving somewhat brainy talks about stuff, was compered by some comedian Johnny (whose name I don't remember, but I think he might be famous as I saw him on TV a few nights later), and it had some cockney geezer come on and force participation in a sing-a-long. I thought maybe the comedy-not comedy transition jarred a bit, but it was a conceptually interesting evening. The talks were about various London things – sewage disposal, bugs, Bloomsbury.

Oh, and there was also some guy reading a bit of his book, which was called Foxy-T. I took against him at the time, as the book was written in this patois that was oh-so-street, while the guy who had written the book was plainly not street. However, in retrospect I am a bit more fond of him. Maybe I will keep an eye out for his book.

I'm not so sure about Chubby Charley (or was it Cheeky Charley?), the cockney sing-a-long geezer. Although I am a cockerneee by birth, I was brought up away from Bow Bells, and being forced to take part in a "knees up" goes against my reserved nature. Or maybe I am just a curmudgeon who hates fun. These are not incompatible positions.

I wish I could remember the comedian's name, he seemed quite good. Maybe he was Mr Ince or something. He seemed like a pleasant enough person from his interaction with the audience, which seemed more like friendly badinage rather than a smartarse encouraging roffles at some unfortunate's expense. The great paradox of my life is that while I conceptually hate stand up comedy, I typically enjoy it when I encounter it.

Nightmare Before Christmas 2007, Sunday: John Cooper Clarke

(Centre Stage)

Mr Clarke is one of those punk poet fellows, though part of his act was oddly reminiscent of the kind of act you get in Working Mens' Clubs. I'm thinking about when he did a saucy strip-tease all the crazy jokes he was telling. All those man-comes-home-from-work-early* jokes… they sounded like they were as old as the hills, yet I had never heard them before (indeed, I had never heard of this category of jokes before, but then I am a stranger to the world of humour). But he did some punk poetry stuff too, most notably doing the well-known 'Beesley Street' and then doing it again as the gentrified 'Beesley Boulevard'. So yeah, very enjoyable, though I gather this was just a truncated version of the set he always does.

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*As in – A man comes home from work early, to find one of his mates shagging his wife. He grabs his mate, kicks the crap out of him and throws him out of the house. The wife then says "You'll have no friends left if you carry on like that."