Comedy

It’s as sad a fact as ‘Big Brother’ but we have to face it: most alternative comedy is mainstream now. Audiences are less interested in social satire than they are in a comedy club’s late drinking licence. Uppity, arms-crossed Brummies pay for chicken in a basket with a side order of dick jokes. Anything peculiar, different or challenging is circumspect and met with stares. Backstage it’s crowded with comics, yet as silent as a glory hole. We’d all rather be somewhere else fulfilling our true potentials but the harsh reality is we all have a mortgage to pay. I’m as bad as the rest. Uninspired gags from long ago appear in my act, as I struggle not to lampoon the kind of embarrassed IT failures sat gormlessly in the front row.
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What’s even worse is that, since 9/11, everyone’s opinion is meant to be of equal importance – except, of course, those voiced by the working classes or, apparently, me. At a recent gig in London I was not only labelled a Holocaust denier but, to add insult to injury, the club manager informed me that veering away from my gay sex material was dangerous.

‘Flirt with the front row, that I can defend, but leave the Holocaust alone.’ So I can talk about cocksucking as much as I like because that’s as common as poverty but if I stray off that well-trodden path I’m in trouble?

A case in point: my set in Sheffield. Admittedly, it was doomed long before I stumbled on to the stage, but that’s not the point. The host, Toby, warmed up the crowd with several ‘poof’ jokes. That’s not offensive though, because as the whole world knows, we gay men have learned to go to Ikea and to dance our troubles away. Kick, two, three, four. However, when I mentioned the time George Bush had nonchalantly mumbled the word ‘Paki’ in front of the Queen – while Prince Philip, on hearing it, beamed with envy – I was labelled racist. That’s right – I was the one labelled a racist.

Racist? Did you hear the gag? ‘Nope,’ said Toby. ‘But I heard the word, and we’re funded. You’re fired.’

Fired? I was actually fired, for the first time in my whole career. Fired for being, as Jade Goody would say, ‘racial’? But how can I be racial? I’m a gay, black Jew from San Francisco. I’m every minority. At least, they’ve all been inside me.

I’m not a racist. I’m an American. Race doesn’t threaten me. Nor does graphically discussing the Palestinian I met in Cardiff (or the Arab, or whatever they’re calling themselves this week – ‘the enemy’) fill me with any of that prissy middle-class trepidation. I merely avoid labels, as would any other classically educated, world-travelled, erudite social commentator who not only has a keen interest in political theory but also has a bevy of Muslim booty calls he can make any night of the week.

However, I myself also have beliefs, and what I firmly believe is that good comedy is boundless and I’m prepared to prick audiences’ sensibilities because a) they’re strangers and b) that’s my fucking job. I didn’t tick ‘mime’ as a career choice, I ticked ‘clown’. So, I’m loud, nasty and annoying. Otherwise why would I be risking my life in my set by ‘joking’ that when I get an Iraqi into bed, they’re so desperate to have sex they’ll do just about anything? Like most religious extremists, fanatical Muslims spend so much time imagining what fucking a clean, crying virgin might feel like, anything I can do would only be anticlimactic.

In case you hadn’t realised yet, I don’t recognise taboos. Apparently Brighton does though, which strikes me as a little odd. All I said was, ‘People only really care about Maddy because her mother is hot and white, right?’

‘Too soon,’ a male impersonator growled. Then the other lezzies banged beer bottles to silence me.

C’mon ladies, I felt obligated to point out, admit it: black girls disappear all the time without anyone noticing, and not only because it happens at night.

You see, when an audience pushes, I pull hair. For instance I’m not a paedophile – in fact I hate children, they’re so needy – but I am an equal opportunity offender, and any resistance from a cautious crowd reveals a gold mine of comedy material. To me, whatever transgressions someone feels offended by are their issues. I’m not a therapist or a babysitter.

I might be comically autistic but, surely, if one lives in Britain shouldn’t we accept secularism as the norm and immunise ourselves from censorship. Otherwise, move to America, where everything, even healthcare, is suspect.

Diana was only funny the moment after she ate cement. And Aids jokes are hilarious if HIVIPs are lolling in the audience. Comedy is scary: it’s artistic cliffhanging, because a comic takes risks. Just because those drunk cunts at Jongleurs Bow wouldn’t know a political punchline if it raped them, does that mean I should whip out a guitar and sing a happy song?

What tune would I strum anyway? What would alert those queers in Croydon that feigned religious tolerance is misguided and, from an American perspective, 500 years too late? Wasn’t it the English who expelled the Puritans for wearing buckled shoes? But when someone kills their daughter to save the family’s status, we have to incorporate the misguided ‘honour killing’ tag into our vocabulary? Can’t we just say, or sing, ‘She was murdered by a bigoted, misogynistic, medieval old fuckwit’? What? That’s going too far as well? Really? In that case I fear the terrorists really have won.

Scott Capurro will be appearing at the Soho Theatre, Mar 21-29.