by Stewart Lee
In fact, ladies and gentlemen, Tom O’Connor has now been performing standup exclusively at sea for so long that he has developed scurvy. Yeah? That’s a sea-based illness, isn’t it? My wife wrote that joke, it’s not one of mine. No, she did, my wife wrote it, it’s not the kind of joke I would write, it’s too … It’s got a good kind of rhythm, hasn’t it, conventional sort of rhythm to it, it’s good but it’s not the kind of thing I would do. Um, but I put it in because it’s better than most of what I would do.*
* It occurs to me as I reach the third transcript in this book that all my best jokes have been written by, inspired by, duplicated independently from, bought off or suggested by other people – Dave Thompson, Simon Munnery, Ian Macpherson, Michael Redmond, Louise Coates, Kevin Eldon, Richard Herring and my wife, Bridget Christie. I begin to sympathise with people who think I am a charlatan. In fact, the good jokes in my set are starting to stick out so obviously by this stage in my career that it even feels necessary for me to attribute them to their writers, live onstage during the show, as they are so clearly not of a piece with my own interminable and self-regarding material.
Now, my mum saw Tom O’Connor doing standup on a cruise, and whenever the subject of standup comes up, she never stops talking to me about Tom O’Connor. She goes, ‘Oh, he was amazing, Stew, Tom O’Connor, take your feet off that quilt, it’s not finished. He come out, Stew – he’s a comic, like you – he come out, Stew, on the cruise, Tom O’Connor, and he said to this chap in the front row, “What do you do for a living?” And the man said that he worked for Esso or Shell, one of them firms, you know. And Tom O’Connor, Stew, he was, oh, he was quick, he was quickwitted. He said to him, off the top of his head, he said to him, “Are you a sardine?” It was hilarious, Stew. [long pause] I have remembered it wrong, yes.*
* There are few things funnier than the frustration engendered by my mother, or indeed any civilian non-professional comic, failing to tell a joke properly by getting all the details in the wrong order. I love it. It’s like someone’s given Georges Braque a ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ set-up and he’s handed in a painting of a road that looks like a chicken with crosses for eyes. My favourite example of this was a Liverpudlian cab driver trying to tell me a joke set on a building site, during which he became totally bogged down in the idea of ‘the camaraderie of the building site’ and kept stressing it at every point, mistakenly imagining it was somehow an important element of the joke, the entirety of which I have since forgotten, except that it involved ‘the camaraderie of the building site, you know, the camaraderie, of the lads, on the building site … the camaraderie of the building site, the camaraderie, it was because of the camaraderie like, the camaraderie of the building site’. I am pretty sure I hijacked his weird and strangely hypnotic rhetoric to achieve maximum tedium in the telling of the sardine joke here.
Since doing this set, I’ve found a new mode of being onstage, which is to take on the persona of an old lady – not strictly based on my gran in any real sense, but channelling elements of childhood memories of many dotty aunties and neighbours – who is trying to tell a story in a mild Midlands accent about something she does not really understand. This has been the key to me being allowed to ramble incoherently around various subjects for minutes on end, and resulted in the ‘Rap Singers’ routine on the first episode of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, during which section of the show, viewing figures record, 300,000 people switched off or died of boredom.
‘Yeah, he come out, Stew, Tom O’Connor – don’t touch those bits of felt ’cause they’re cut into the shape of lions, for a jungle scene to go on it, it won’t just be … – he come out, Stew, on the … Tom O’Connor, yes, he’s like a comic, and he said to this chap, “What do you do for a living?” And the man said, Stew, he said, “I’m in oil.” Tom O’Connor, he was … He was quick, Stew. He was quick as a fl– … he’s like lightning, coming out of a dish. And he said to him, “Are you a sardine?” No, he wasn’t a sardine, Stew, he was er … he was a man. Why? Well, if he’d been a sardine, it wouldn’t have been a joke would it? It would have been a statement of fact.*
* The repeated image of Tom O’Connor being quick, like various animals and objects, is indebted to Julian Barratt of The Mighty Boosh, whose 2000 Edinburgh show with Noel Fielding, Arctic Boosh, I directed and essentially scriptedited. The free-form narrative approach I struggled to impose on Arctic Boosh later became the basis of the ungrateful duo’s multimillion-pound touring shows and many hit television outings, but during my tenure with them they accused me of being ‘like Hitler, stamping all over us in your jackboots … trying to make us write a fucking play or something’, and sacked me, like the jazzed-up wankers they are.
But there was one sentence in Arctic Boosh, typical of the boys’ approach, wherein Julian described himself, with the most brilliant throwaway timing, as ‘coming at’ someone like a particular thing, and this thing would be changed every night in the pursuit of spontaneity, and in order to remove definite cues so as to make the show impossible to tech in any meaningful way, and also making anyone kindly trying to structure it, for no fee, out of the goodness of their heart, feel like some kind of loser or fascist.
Most comedy happens in 4/4, or at least in a recognisable rhythm. The punchlines fall on the beat. But The Boosh are like Sunny Murray, the free-jazz drummer who reinvented time for Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor in the sixties. There’s a pulse in their heads, but only they can hear it, and the timing of the funny lines is falling all around it, like dried stalks of spaghetti being dropped onto a china plate. You’re laughing on the off-beats, and the on-beats are empty, glaring holes. It is brilliant, and disproves the rigour of accepted comic theory. But as with all art, you can only really do it wrong if you’ve first mastered doing it right.
Once, in the late twentieth century, when characteristically annoyed with their refusal to conform to my ideas of what comedy should be, I said to the two surly young Booshes, probably racked by my own bitterness and envy, ‘The problem is, you two think you’re Miles Davis and John Coltrane, but actually you need to realise you are Flanagan and Allen.’ But it turns out that Noel and Julian were The Mighty Boosh all along. And I was wrong.
‘Yeah, you don’t understand it. He come out, Stew – listen – Tom O’Connor, yes, from Crosswits. Don’t touch that. It’s a quillow actually. It’s both a … And he’s come out, he’s a comic, he’s like you, and he said to this chap, “What do you do for a living?” The man said, “I’m in oil.” And Tom O’Connor, Stew, he – oh, well – I think he saw the window of opportunity. And hurled hisself through it bodily. And he says to him, “Are you a sardine?” Yeah, you’re right, Stew, it doesn’t make sense, strictly speaking. Yes, you’re right. If you said to a sardine, “What do you do for a living?”, no, it wouldn’t say, “I’m in oil,” you’re right. No, it’s not its job, it’s not its job. Well, it’s swimming around, yeah. It’s not waged, no, it’s voluntary. Yeah, you’re right, Stew, the only circumstances under which a sardine would reply “I’m in oil” is if you said to it, “What substance do you expect to be preserved in for retail purposes in the event of your death?”*
* The ‘I’m in oil’/‘Are you a sardine?’ comeback could have been achieved nightly by O’Connor simply relaying back the supposed quote ‘I’m in oil’ through his mic, irrespective of the actual reply from the floor to his own question, presumably ‘What do you do for a living, sir?’ But it had enchanted my mother. It is a constant source of frustration to comics that you, the public, are often inordinately thrilled by things that we do which are quite easy, and baffled or bored by the stuff we are proud of, or else assume that our finest moments are errors or accidents. But it was ever thus.
Until fairly recently, most newspapers were so contemptuous of standup that they’d send a bloke who usually wrote about fishing or cake to review a month of it on the Edinburgh Fringe, despite the fact that he had never seen any live comedy before. In week one of the Ed
inburgh Fringe, the poor fool, leagues out of his depth, would file copy like: ‘The man came on. It was funny.’ By week two he’s progressed to: ‘He made fun of a bald man in the front row and said to a young heckler, “I remember when I had my first pint.” His mastery of improvisation was astonishing.’ Then by week three he’s learned the rules and is so jaded he only wakes up out of his coma if he sees Kim Noble masturbating a cat to death or Daniel Kitson visibly weeping at the childhood memory of some home-made biscuit onstage in a broom cupboard at three o’clock in the morning.
‘He come out, Stew, Tom O’Connor – listen, don’t touch those pins, they’re holding the lions on – and he’s a comic. He is the same as you. And he said to this chap … The man said, “I’m in oil.” And he flew at him, like a wolf, Stew, and he said, he said to him, “Are you a s– …?” Yes, you’re right, Stew, they don’t always come in oil. They can come in tomato sauce, yes. No, he could have made that work, Stew. He could’ve … Tom O’Connor could’ve done, Stew, ’cause he’s quick like Zephyrus the wind, and he’d … and Mercury, and he would have said to him … If he’d said to the man, “What do you do for a living?” and the man had worked for Heinz and he’d said, “I’m in tomato sauce,” Tom O’Connor could still have said, “Are you a sardine?” And there would have been a pause while the audience thought, “Hmm … well, they normally come in oil, surely. Ah, but they can come in tomato sauce! I should never have doubted Tom.”
‘He come out, Stew – listen – Tom O’Connor, he’s the same … – don’t touch that, it’s the pattern. He said, “I’m in oil,” he said, “Are you a sardine?” Yes, Stew, it was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Yes, it was better than anything you’ve ever done. And you know why? ’Cause it was clean. He come out, Stew, Tom O’Connor, and he said to this chap, “What do you do for a living?” And the man, he wasn’t a plant. He said, “I’m in oil.” And Tom O’Connor, Stew, he said, “Are you a sardine? Are you a sardine? Are you a sardine? Are you a sardine? Are you a sardine? Are you a sardine?”’*
* All this stuff was different every night. Again, like Fred Frith said at the ICA when distracted by the camera flash, the key to this, the Ang-Lee’s-angry bit in StandUp Comedian and lots of the back end of ’90s Comedian was in the process of forgetting what was supposed to be funny about the story, even in the act of telling it, so that I could be genuinely surprised or delighted or confused by events and phrases as they unfolded out of my unknowing mouth. On a good night, I could repeat ‘Are you a sardine?’ at the end for minutes and take the crowd through waves of boredom, into hysteria, and back into boredom again. It was a rare source of some pride to me that I usually managed to sell this to many of the doubters who were now coming to see me off the back of three years’ good press and my official 41st-best rating.
The composer John Cage said, ‘If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.’ I am glad I found this quote, as the next time someone says, ‘This is boring,’ I can now say, ‘No. It isn’t. It is part of the tradition of the post-war avant-garde.’
Of course, what my mother doesn’t know is that since a nervous breakdown that Tom O’Connor suffered in the mid-eighties, as a result of having been outed by the tabloid press for allegedly having had an affair with a teenaged prostitute, Tom O’Connor has answered any dialogue he becomes involved in with the phrase, ‘Are you a sardine?’ And like a stopped clock, Glasgow, inevitably this means that Tom O’Connor will be right at least twice, and simple, grinding, tedious repetition will take on the illusion of genius. And yes, there is a subtext there, there is a subtext.* And, yeah? Oh right. The last time that Tom O’Connor was right to reply ‘Are you a sardine?’, the last time, was about ten years ago, and my mum saw him on a cruise. He came out, and he said to this man, ‘What do you do for a living?’ And the man said, ‘I’m in oil.’ And he said, ‘Are you a sardine?’ I don’t know if you remember that from earlier, from earlier in the show, way back, way back at the beginning? Yeah? Yeah, you remember that.†
* This is a signal to listeners that I know that the criticism of ‘tedious grinding repetition’, which is a phrase I actually took from a review of the fabulous Andy ‘The Red Clown’ Zaltzman, could be applied to me, and that many people think my supposed talent is an illusion propagated by journalists and pseuds.
† Having gone on too long about the same thing already, I knowingly insult the audience further and bait the bored ones by reminding them just how long exactly this section has been going on without any end in sight.
And the other time, the only other time that Tom O’Connor was right to reply ‘Are you a sardine?’ was in 1987. Now, to try and patch things up after the sex scandal in the tabloids, Tom O’Connor took his wife, Mrs Tom O’Connor, on a bargain-break weekend. And they went to Lisbon in Portugal, yeah? And while they were there, they were in a plaza, a piazza, a public square of some sort, and Tom O’Connor was approached by a small, oily fish. And the small, oily fish said to Tom O’Connor [falsetto Portuguese], ‘I am a traditional street festival snack of choice every year here in Lisbon on January the 19th, the feast day of St Cuthbert. But, Tom, I am also a traditional summer delicacy throughout all of rural Portugal as well. What am I?’ Yeah! That’s how they speak, that’s how they speak.*
* Here, I would normally climb up on a chair and try and take on the persona, voice, accent and physical movements that I imagined a Portuguese fish would have, which was an unexpected gambit from a comedian usually described as ‘deadpan’ and ‘inert’. This was another good example of, ideally, not needing to finish a joke off. I enjoyed playing the Portuguese fish and would like to experiment with the portrayal of more racially specific sea creatures in the future in an attempt to expand my range.
In the end, I got sick of my mum going on about Tom O’Connor all the time. I said to her, ‘Look, Mum, when you’ve made a new quillow, I don’t say to you, “I saw a much better quillow than that on a ship,” and then make a joke about a quillow, do I?’ And she went, ‘No, Stew, ’cause you wouldn’t even be able to think of a joke about a quillow. Tom O’Connor could, Stew, he’s quick. He come out, Stew, on the cruise …’ I said, ‘Shut up, shut up about Tom O’Connor now.’ I said to her, ‘I’ll let you into a secret, Mother, a trade secret, right. I don’t want to break your heart, but in the trade of standup comedy Tom O’Connor is regarded as a ludicrous, absurd, sad figure, and here’s why,’ I said to her, right. ‘’Cause when he’s onstage, Tom O’Connor, his wife, Mrs Tom O’Connor, sits in the foyer behind a little kiosk they take round with them that Tom O’Connor’s made out of all plywood and hay and mud. And to try and grub up a few more pennies, like a pig in the dirt, Mrs Tom O’Connor sells – and this is true – she sells golf umbrellas with a drawing of Tom O’Connor’s face on them. And that is sad.’ And my mum said, ‘It isn’t sad, Stew, it’s good. And anyway, you haven’t even got a golf umbrella with your face on it.’ And she’s right, she’s right.*
* It was the comedian and potter Johnny Vegas who told me that Tom O’Connor was pushing golf umbrellas with his face on them. Apparently, Tom’s wife would sell them from a little portable booth they set up in the foyer after his shows. This may not be true. But for a comedian, the key to successful merchandising is knowing your audience and their interests. Robin Ince should sell Robin Ince bookmarks to his clever audience of readers. Paul Foot should sell nice tea towels with one of his witty sayings on them to his delightful fans. And Paddy McGuinness should sell mittens, tied together by string, with the words ‘left’ and ‘right’ written on the appropriate hands.
In the nineties, the comedian Simon Munnery, who once drove a pimped Robin Reliant all the way to Edinburgh to use in a show in a room the car was too big to drive into, used to sell women’s knickers with a photo of his own face, making an expression of bold, angry defiance, printed on the crotch. As I say, you have to k
now your market. Before she became one of the famous TV stars of the twenty-first century, the comedienne Catherine Tate once fled her Camden flat during a fire in the small hours and ran into the arms of a waiting and delighted fireman, whilst wearing only a pair of these Simon Munnery souvenir knickers. This moment remains the closest Simon has come to mainstream acceptance.
Simon and I were discussing merchandising opportunities recently, when the face-knickers came up. Simon was in his twenties when he made and distributed these arrogant pants, and back then they seemed rather charming. Now that Simon is a fortysomething married man with children, he agreed that it would be inappropriate for him to sell women’s knickers with a photograph of his own face on the crotch. In the words of the late, great comedian Jason Freeman, ‘context is not a myth’.
Twenty years, twenty years in the business. 41st best standup ever apparently. Yeah, I’d go to the golf-umbrella comedian-marketing manufacturing company. ‘Can I have my face put on a golf umbrella?’ ‘No. You’re just not getting the figures, son.’ Twenty years. Nothing to show for it. And we’ve just had a little baby. And that’s not cheap.*
* This was a heartfelt bit about the disparity between my critical acclaim and my ability to shift merch units, a problem that remains to this day despite having had a TV series, and one which Faber and Faber themselves will soon learn about, despite their claims to be ‘not about the bread, man’.
So all I’m saying, 41st best standup ever, it doesn’t necessarily count for anything. What does it mean in real terms, being the 41st best standup ever? It means nothing at home. And I thought, ‘Where was this list?’ It was on Channel 4, on television, Channel 4, the worst television station in Britain. Who I’ve just realised probably won’t be buying this for transmission.
