British comedy is so wide-ranging – so in flux; so constantly evolving – that it feels redundant to even talk about the idea of an archetypal British comedy star. After all, what metric are you meant to use to measure such success?
Commercial appeal doesn’t seem like a bona fide route – after all, some of the most exciting comedians in the world right now are yet to receive their fair dues in the court of public opinion (Stewart Lee, a masterful performer who deserves to be selling out the O2 Arena, comes to mind as an example).
And anyway, commercial tides come and go so fast that following economic trends in comedy is rather like trying to set up your grandma’s fine china collection in the middle of an earthquake.
To celebrate David Baddiel’s upcoming tour, we’ve tracked British comedy’s evolution; to chart how its influences amassed and altered, creating something entirely distinct from the comedy style of those across the pond in the States. And what better way to do that then analyse the career of four of British comedy’s brightest stars?
Kenneth Williams
Acid-tongued raconteur Kenneth Williams has never really gotten his proper dues as a performer. Sure, he’s best known for his roles in the Carry On films – those defiantly buxom, bawdy mini-epics that took the flimsiest of premises and strung them out into 80-minute long punchline-fests that still to this day feel genuinely groundbreaking. But even in that context he’s still too often derided as nothing but an over-actor with a funny voice; a performer lacking in nuance.
To which I say: poppycock. Williams is one of the first comedians to properly harness the British capacity for politeness and fuse it with something distinctly grottier. Mixing civility with great, unmitigated rudeness, he set the scene for everyone from the Monty Python gang to more contemporary peddlers of distinctly subdued smut like Michael McIntyre. Any good comedian worth their salt has studied Williams more carefully than they’d maybe ever let on.
Tommy Cooper
The great Tommy Cooper, a magician and prop-based stand-up, was some unholy cross between a nightclub emcee and Salvador Dali. With his distinctive red fez and penchant for cigars, he created his own pitch-perfect comedic persona; a wry, winking caricature that never made the mistake of overstepping the mark and becoming dull and derivative.
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No, Cooper was, for all of his artifice, a disarmingly sincere performer. His aim, always, was to get you laughing with him – to have you chortling as you would at a favourite uncle around a Christmas dinner table, or with an old mate at after-work drinks.
Compare that to the style of American prop-based comic Carrot Top, a man whose set is so slathered in irony that it’s hard to tell what you’re even meant to be laughing at, and the difference between British and American comedic styles make themselves immediately clear.
Bob Mortimer
Bob Mortimer is the funniest man in the world. That’s not hyperbole, mind you; not for a second. An arch surrealist with a penchant for deconstruction, Mortimer – along with his comedic partner Vic Reeves – has spent decades subverting the British television comedy formula.
The pair pulled apart the panel show with Shooting Stars; injected a heavy dose of anti-comedy into the mainstream with Bang Bang It’s Reeves And Mortimer; and have spent the last few years earning a collective reputation as some of the funniest people to have appear as a guest on your show.
Importantly, Mortimer isn’t carless about tearing the status quo apart. Sure, he might be a master at carefully unpicking what punters think they want from a comedy show, but he makes sure to never isolate or alienate them. At times, his funniest jokes can be based on astonishingly familiar set-ups – it’s the punchline that warps, starting off his audience somewhere they can understand, before rapidly pulling the rug from under their feet. Oh, and what’s not to love about a man who performs his own dentistry?
David Baddiel
David Baddiel is a British performer in the classical mode. But that’s not to imply that he’s somehow staid or stuffy – far from it. Rather like Mortimer, a comedian with whom he shares a similarly tireless work ethic, Baddiel loves slyly subverting the set-ups and punchlines of traditional British humour.
Baddiel’s an expert at handling rhythm, making the audience feel as though they are privy to a private, relaxed conversation between friends, before dropping a perfectly timed tonal bomb. And his comedy sets are known for sudden detours into gnarled, unexpected paths; sudden jaunts into unchartered waters.
DAVID BADDIEL
Presented by Frontier Comedy,
Triple M and mix94.5
