Woke Comedy

Mike Bodnar will never do stand-up again...

Never again...

There's some comedy I did twelve to fifteen years ago that today would get me in trouble. Obviously I can't say what it was, because, well, see above. Let's just say that times have changed, and the woke brigade takes no prisoners.

Were I to tell you the plastic bag joke, for example, the crowd would be baying for me to resign as a comedian. They'd put up a statue to me just so they could tear it down in anger. I would be trolled on social media, and I would have to publicly apologise.

Then there's the 101 Dalmatians joke. Nope, can't tell you that one either sorry. All I can say is that no animals were harmed during the telling of it, but I would be reviled today. Maybe I could sell it to Roy Chubby Brown (although it would be a bit tame for him).

The point is, I can never do stand-up comedy again; I'd be too afraid. I would have to write, edit, and rewrite my material multiple times to ensure there was not an ounce of anything that could cause offence. So much analysis would have to go into my material that any humour would end up crumpled in the waste basket and I'd end up with a sermon instead.

Not that I've ever given offence. Not once did I ever write sketches with the aim of causing offence, and I doubt many comedians do (except RCB maybe). But today offence is too easily taken, and there's the thing: people take offence where it has never been given or intended. So who's to blame? The giver - who may not actually exist - or the recipient? 

A bar waiting for a joke to turn up

I could not, for example, even fall back on that good old stand-by joke that starts, 'A man walks into a bar.'

What?? I’m sure to offend someone from the get-go with that. A man? No no, no, that just won’t do. What if the man identifies as a woman? Or used to be a man but has undergone surgery and is now female? Exactly; I am presuming too much. And anyway, does the gender matter? Well it might further into the joke, but by then my woke audience will have walked out, or thrown something at me.

So, 'Someone walks into a bar'? No, that won’t do either. What if they’re gender fluid and can be more than one gender at any given time? They are therefore not someone, but sometwo. Or something. They have the right to choose their own pronoun, to which I am not party, which puts me at a disadvantage.

Seriously, I cannot say, 'Something walks into a bar' because that doesn’t conjure up the right image at all. I mean, that something might be a stapler. Or a dishmop. Person! Yes, that will do. Let’s start again.

'A person walks into a bar...'

But wait again. Walks? Uh-uh; this is not inclusive, because of course not everyone – or everything – can walk. I could therefore say that a person wheels into a bar, but that excludes those who can actually walk, unless they're a cyclist. Enters, then. Let’s go with that.

'A person enters a bar...'

The blackness of the audience. No offence.

Why does it always have to be a f****ng bar? something calls out from the blackness of the audience. And when I say blackness I’m referring to the fact that when a comedian is on stage it is usually very difficult to see any further into the audience than the first couple of rows due to the glare of the spot lights. That’s assuming of course that there are any more people beyond the first two rows. I should be so lucky. Anyway, don’t shoot me for being racist about dim light. I’ll admit to being lightist, but that’s it.

But in this case I know there are more people beyond the front rows because one of them has just shouted, 'Why does it always have to be a f****ng bar?'

Well, er, it’s because a barman features further into the narrative.

A barman? Oh pur-lease. I hear a seat flip up and the exit door slam.

Okay, okay (sigh), a bar tender. Or barkeep. Whatever.

The remaining audience is strangely silent, their own glares outperforming the spotlights. This is going to be hard work.

Bill Bailey: funniest man in the world

So let's have an interval. This is where I declare my admiration for the world's funniest man, Bill Bailey. He can stand on stage for two hours and not offend anyone. People laugh till they cry, and where Bailey does occasionally make an acerbic reference to some societal failure or political indiscretion it generally has the audience applauding and whistling in agreement. He does it with panache, and in the knowledge that anyone who has paid up to £80 for a seat in the venue is unlikely to want to be easily offended.

Unfortunately, many casual stand-up comedy venues don't charge admission, so those audiences have no investment in enjoying themselves and can bring all their attendant frailties and cultural worries with them.

I am of course at a disadvantage in that I can't play any musical instruments. Bailey can play an entire orchestra's worth and be funny at the same time. I can't wring a tune out of a tambourine. (But come to think of it, who can?)

So, leaving musical instruments out of it, here's my take on Bill Bailey telling 'a man walks into a bar' joke and getting away with it; interval over.

A person rides into town on their horse, dressed as a cowboy - the rider, not the horse, obviously - and stops at a saloon for a drink. They enter the bar. Not the horse - I'm using 'they' as an all-encompassing pronoun for the rider here. 

Unfortunately, the locals have a habit of picking on strangers, which this person is. When they'd finished their drink, they found that their horse had been stolen. They went back into the bar, deftly flipped their gun into the air, caught it above their head without even looking and fired a shot into the ceiling.

A man, or possibly a woman or something

“Which one of you sidewinders stole my horse?” the person dressed in cowboy garb yelled with surprising forcefulness. No one answered.

“Alright, I’m gonna have another whisky, and if my horse ain’t back outside by the time I finish, I’m gonna do what I dun in Texas! And I don’t wanna have to do what I dun in Texas!”

Some of the locals shifted uneasily. The rider, true to their word, had another drink, walked outside, and found the horse had been returned to the post. The rider saddled up ready to ride out of town. The bartender wandered out of the bar and said, “Say pardner, before you go… you mind tellin' me what happened in Texas?” 

The rider turned, spat in the dust and said, “I had to walk home.”

PS: I unreservedly apologise to all those who find walking difficult or can't walk at all. And those who can't ride or are allergic to horses. The bar, just so you know, also served food - vegetarian, and vegan choices were available, the bar nibbles were complimentary and were accompanied by a little sign warning that they 'may contain nuts.' There was a space reserved outside the front of the saloon for disabled riders, and the bar was wheelchair accessible. The firearm used in the joke fired blanks only.

Flight Path

Last October we bought a bird feeder, one of those clear tubes you fill with tasty morsels which dispense onto a saucer at the bottom. There are four wire perches hang around the edge so the birds have somewhere to hang on while they peck away. Apart from magpies of course, they’re too big to land on the perches, and instead glare frustratedly at the seeds as a child might gaze through the window of a closed sweet shop. Except a child wouldn’t be doing that from on top of a satellite dish.

The bird feeder was a miserable failure. Nothing came, not even a boring sparrow or two. The feeder was full, swinging in plain sight, beckoning to the local London avian population and open all hours as autumn turned into winter and the daylight faded earlier and earlier each day. Despite the onset of the cold and dark the birds totally ignored it.

Well, to be honest, a magpie did discover it, and tried in vain to find a way to access the seeds in the saucer, but magpies can’t hover, and as mentioned, their size precludes them from bird feeders such as ours. I took pity and chucked some seed onto the balcony’s fake grass, for which it seemed cautiously grateful.

An upstart crow

I’m not a bird-watcher particularly, never really understood the appeal of twitching and how it excites people like Bill Oddie and Bill Bailey, and probably many other less-famous Bills. But once we’d put the feeder up I desperately wanted to see it used; the magpie didn’t count. And then I realised, maybe we don’t have many birds locally in St. Ockwell. I began to view our local environment with a critical eye, and it dawned on me with a sinking heart that there are bugger-all birds in our neighbourhood; and if they are there they're all lesser-spotted.

Oh yes, there are seagulls and pigeons, and of course crows, but none of them can deftly land on the perches of our bird feeder either. I wanted tits, for example. Yes I know, snigger, snigger. How juvenile can you get. Bird watching is a ripe field for smut and innuendo, what with great tits, shags and boobies to entertain you. But if that’s what makes you giggle then you’re a right little bustard. I’d rather be a bird watcher than a word botcher. (See what I did there?)

Great Tit  (oh behave!)

No, the thing is, we don’t exactly live in the Forest of Stockwell; there’s a paucity of trees around our little pied-à-terre. If I look out from the balcony where the bird feeder is I can count exactly two-and-a-half trees, the half being more of an overgrown shrub with tree-aspirations – a Wannabe Tree. The majority of things flying overhead are Boeings and Airbuses, being as we are on the flight path to Heathrow.  Yet if I walk literally round a couple of corners into the posh part I am in tree-lined Georgian streets, with gardens that have trees in them also. That, I’m guessing, is where the birds are. I would be if I had feathers. Or loads of money.

All I needed was one bird, just one, to discover our bird feeder, and then it could go and spread the word. They would come in their thousands, or at least maybe a handful from the classy streets, I hoped. And then one day it happened; a sparrow called, grabbed a mouthful and flew off. Some days after, an indeterminate slim thing with a grey cap perched for a few seconds, and then – hallelujah – a great tit gorged itself before taking off in a blur of black and yellow. I know it was a great tit because I had my camera to hand, ready to capture any avian visitors, plus we have the RSPB’s guide book on the bookshelf. Definitely a great tit.

Need I tell you?

Since then word has indeed got around, and now almost every morning there’s a parade of sparrows,

a robin, the great tit (it always seems to be the same one)and – still feeding off the fake grass pickings – the magpie. They each make multiple visits. I am resisting naming them for fear of becoming boring, but tentatively they’re all called Bill.

To top that off, I got up in the middle of the night recently, thinking it must be close to dawn because I could hear a bird singing. Assuming this was the overture to the dawn chorus (or, in our neighbourhood, more of a dawn squawk) I didn’t pay much attention until I discovered it was only 2am. I’ve heard the bird on other nights too, and I now believe it to be a nightingale – there was magic abroad in the air. (I know what one sounds like because I had a close encounter with a nightingale at 11 o’clock one summer’s evening on a French canal, and here’s the recording to prove it.) Anyway, if one can sing in Berkeley Square, why can’t another croon on a council housing estate?

So now every morning at breakfast I sit on the couch twitching. I’m hoping more and different birds will come, as I’m propped there with camera in one hand, RSPB book in the other. I’m still not a serious bird watcher. Honestly. I’m only doing it for a lark.