Now I’ve got that moaning about my health out of the way, I can catch up with happier things.
Recently I went to The Albany to see the comedian Natalie Haynes’s new solo show. I should have contacted a friend in time to accompany me, as going to comedy gigs alone really is a strange affair. It’s not like seeing films or concerts or art shows. Stand-up comedy is all about crowds and company. If you go to a comedy gig by yourself, it’s very hard not to feel you should be elsewhere.
The manic Ms Haynes is worth it, though. Thanks to an excellent Radio 4 programme on comedy she presented a year or so ago, I know that her heroes include Dorothy Parker, Jessica Mitford, Fran Leibowitz, Rebecca West, and Cynthia Heimel. So it’s no surprise her style comprises intelligent, acerbic and often bittersweet observational humour, while not caring about being liked in return. Which of course, is an entirely likeable trait.
Her new show is ostensibly about her addiction to US TV detective shows, particularly “Diagnosis Murder”, but the highlights for me are her tangential rants about the joy of childlessness, unabashed middle class pride, campaigns to be nicer to paedophiles, her fear of bats, and her affair with a 17-year-old boy from the school at which she taught. Although her stand-up persona may be a gabbling anti-social compulsive-obsessive, she’s at pains to point out she’s happy with it. “Bear with me, there will be cake”, she announces at one point. And there was: tubs of those Marks & Spencer mini-flapjacks and party cakes handed around after her set.
The only slight on the occasion was her highly naff choice of intro and outro music: hits from The Wonder Stuff circa 1990. I ask her about this at the gig, and she explains it’s due to her Midlands upbringing. Not good enough, frankly. There must be other groups from the Midlands that don’t make one want to explode into a volley of execrations. Felt and Denim spring to mind.
After the gig, I also get to chat to Sue Perkins, another favourite comedian of mine. She buys me a drink. She and Ms Haynes often appear on those radio and TV panel games and pundit shows, discussing the news or reviewing something in the arts. Some people think this trend of comedians being instant TV experts on everything can be unhelpful and annoying. To which I would say: yes, if they’re lazy, obvious and unfunny with it.
Ms Haynes and Ms Perkins are definitely witty exceptions to this blanket complaint. I find they tend to perk up an otherwise dull show. I happened to catch a recent edition of the Channel More4 debate programme “The Last Word”. It really does illustrate Mr Coward’s adage that TV is for being on, not for watching. Except when Ms Haynes is on it.
On this occasion she upstaged the otherwise irredeemably dull preceedings (featuring the entirely unnecessary Mr Dominic Lawson) with a brief explanation on why she regarded the word ‘c***’ as far less offensive than the word ‘vagina’. She explained it was due to their relative Latin stems (the former being ‘triangle-shaped’, the other ‘sword sheath’).
I’m all for etymological debate in modern comedy. Well, it makes a change from telling a crowd how funny it is getting the ‘munchies’ while being ‘high’ in the small hours.
