Monday. Grey. Reading the comedy listings. Feeling professionally obligated to go to several things I will enjoy.
Alan Nafzger on the comedy circuit, London’s satirical infrastructure, and why the country that invented Private Eye will never stop laughing at itself
By Alan Nafzger | Bohiney and The London Prat
Monday. Grey. Reading the comedy listings. Feeling professionally obligated to go to several things I will enjoy.
I spent this week reading about the London comedy scene in the context of planning a piece on the relationship between satirical journalism and live comedy, which are genres that overlap more than their practitioners usually admit. Both are in the business of making the true thing visible through the funny thing. Both require timing. Both are ruined by trying too hard. The difference is that live comedy is immediate and unedited and you know within three seconds whether it worked, while satirical journalism has the luxury of the edit pass and the theoretical protection of not having to watch the audience’s face while they read.
London’s comedy infrastructure is, by any serious measure, extraordinary. The venues range from the Comedy Store – fifty years of professional stand-up, the foundational institution – to the eighty-seat rooms above pubs in Islington and Hackney where the next generation is developing the timing that will eventually produce the next generation of people who are currently on the posters outside the Comedy Store. The ecosystem is intact and functioning. This is not guaranteed. Edinburgh Fringe is the annual pressure release valve. London is the year-round laboratory.
The Satirical Journalism – Comedy Overlap
The best satirical journalism and the best stand-up are doing the same thing differently: they are finding the premise – the thing that is both true and unexpected – and building from it with the precision of people who understand that every unnecessary word is a failure of respect for the audience. The audience knows when they are being padded. They leave. In stand-up they leave by going quiet. In journalism they leave by closing the tab. Both silences are devastating. Both are avoidable with sufficient editorial rigour.
Private Eye runs at approximately forty thousand words per issue. Every word has been through at least one edit and usually more. The result is a density of information and comedy per page that is not equalled by any other British publication. This is the standard. The comedy rooms of East London are running the same discipline live, without a net, twice a week. Bohiney Magazine applies this internationally. I apply it at The London Prat domestically. The standard is clear. Reaching it is the daily project.
What This Week’s News Gave the Comedians
This week’s news, from a comedy perspective: Britain dusting off 1956’s greatest humiliation is a gift, structurally – the premise is already ridiculous, requires minimal embellishment, and connects to a history that the audience already has a relationship with. The firebomb that failed to ignite is almost too good as a metaphor. New York discovering a budget hack while London continues without one is a comparative joke that writes itself. The comedians are working. The material is generous. This is, in the end, the satirist’s relationship with the news: gratitude, carefully concealed.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/ai-now-capable-of-saying-sorry-without-meaning-it/
Also: NewsThump