Comedy verses Music

I like sit coms. Some dull witted journalist once said that comedy was the new rock and roll. A fatuous remark if ever there was one but for me that was absolutely correct. I have always preferred comedy to music. As me to name the members of the Rolling Stones and I’d struggle to get past Michael Jagger. But ask me to name the cast of Doctor in the House and I could do it without pausing for breath.

Barry Evans

Geoffrey Davis

George Layton

Simon Cuff

Martin Shaw (first series)

Jonathan Lynn (second series)

Robin Nedwell

And

Ernest Clark as Professor Loftus

Easy as pie. I could talk at length about which of the Doctor series spin-offs were worth their plasters and which were a waste of medicinal alcohol but can I offer opinions on which Beatles albums are works of art and which are flatulence on vinyl? Not on your nelly. I don’t know how this started. My parents are music fans. They have been known to go as far as Las Vegas to see the stars of their youth perform. Artists and audiences of such an age that if knickers were thrown they’d probably be the size of parachutes and the singers have no doubt forgotten what to do with them anyway. My brother has an extensive music collection too. He has “done” a few festivals and been to football stadiums to watch each successive “future of rock and roll” strum out their last album while under the influence of toxins. All the while I stayed home and learned everything I know from Yes Minister.

Perhaps it’s that music has a reputation for being about the parts of life that tended to scare me – feelings, emotions, experiences, pain, misery and love – while comedy was generally about someone losing their trousers or being covered in paint. I can associate with that. You know where you are with slapstick. Comedy provoked the kind of reaction that I wanted when I was growing up. Possibly to counter the then-undiagnosed headfuck, possibly just because I was weird.

For me the classics weren’t Revolver, Rubber Soul or The Best of Lulu – the classics were Fawlty Towers, Reginald Perrin and Yes Prime Minister. The legendary performances weren’t held at the Cavern or at Woodstock or in Las Vegas, they were the 1978 Morecambe & Wise Christmas Show and Beyond the Fringe’s stint in the West End.

Maybe it comes down to what I could and couldn’t do. I tried to learn the piano but I had the fatal combination of no enthusiasm and no talent. They say everyone has some talent but I was the exception that proves the rule. But comedy was different. Some small comedic ability lay dormant in me and by watching the greats I began to get a craving to follow in their footsteps.

Books were the same. I have written elsewhere about being thinly read (note that I chose to quote a stand up comedian rather than anyone more “respectable”) but I did read a lot of Wodehouse, Douglas Adams and other comic authors. Their use of language appealed to me. In every day life there is such a blandness of language. English is being suffocated by the wretchedness of advertising, the straight jacket of political correctness, the decline in basic education and the hyperbole of soap operas. One only needs to look at the witless oafs that fill reality TV shows to see that the ordinary person (if such a species actually existed before television decided to create it in order to make targeting ads that much cheaper) is so mind numbingly dull that Jeremy Spake stands out as Oscar Wilde for his generation. But the greats of comedy use language as a tool. Denied even melody, they work with words alone. Wodehouse wrote essentially the same book a hundred times and each one is separate masterpiece precisely because his linguistic style allowed him to find new ways to say things. Douglas Adams made an episodically written and poorly plotted science fiction novel into a satirical masterpiece because of both what he said and how he said it.

But I’m digressing slightly. Comedy gave me a way in that music couldn’t. It doesn’t really matter if you think what I write is abysmal. Most of what passes for music is abysmal but it’s still music. It is a subjective judgement rather than an absolute fact. I have no musical talent – absolute fact. I have no writing talent – subjective judgement. An important difference.

My final theory is that comedy doesn’t require a reaction beyond laughter. If something is funny, you laugh. Laughter is good. If you’re laughing along with everyone else then you become almost a gestalt entity while the joke remains alive. Music on the other hand should be danced to or sung along to or some other ghastly thing which requires self confidence. Even singing or dancing as part of a crowd requires conscious action while laughter is an unconscious reaction.

I am trying new stuff – I’ve acquired the recent Rolling Stones, Elvis and Beatles Best Of… novelty discs. But I’ve also been buying Two Ronnies DVDs and became excited at the prospect of a 4 disc Marx Brothers boxed set. I don’t think there’s any hope of me becoming a convert to the musical cause. Not without help at any rate…

Post script - after writing the above there was a moment at work which proved that I am beyond help. Two colleagues were discussing a vaguely remembered American sit com that was on during the school hols around 10 years ago. I not only knew the name - "Out of This World" - but could name the lead actress, the co-stars AND the uncredited voice of the main character's father. That is the kind of knowledge which, if it were medical and I was a doctor, would earn me vast sums of respect. It isn't, I'm not and it doesn't.

30th October 2003