You cannot fault Lee Evans. As far as stand-up comedy goes he’s on a complete walkabout. He’s not the kind of guy anyone would want to hang out with because he’d continually be showing everyone up. Yet one’s got to admit that his galloping commentary on the oddity of globalised culture is far more weird than the stuff he is really on about.
Shitting pigeons, oversexed GPS machines and broken cellphones are all part of his stock in trade. “My phone is so old you’ve got to chuck coal in it,” he says. And like others, he’s continually speculating about what his wife should do to make him a better man.
The point is that Evans packages himself as a sexual misfit, a revved-up orgasmic hysteric on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And it’s his sweat-drenched, streetwise athleticism that keeps one riveted, even when what he has to say doesn’t exactly blow one’s mind.
In his XL concert in Cardiff (2005), soon to be aired on BBC Entertainment, he tells us that, if his wife used the same sultry voice he’s used to on his car’s satellite navigational system, he may well dispose of the household trash without an argument.
When he finds junk mail in his letterbox he fills the envelope with excrement and sends it back, with the words: “You send me some of your shit and I’ll send you some of mine.”
The thing about British humour today is that it is still hanging on to that brutally honest, depressing portrayal of bad marriage that folks used to find alluring about Andy Capp and Flo. Evans himself does a full routine of the dissatisfied husband masturbating over late-night television while his wife is passed out upstairs.
The BBC’s upcoming stand-up comedy season is brimming with brilliant insights about what exactly distinguishes British humour from the rest, and the youngster Russell Kane puts it like this: “British people bond on the negative. This is the only culture where we get a little buzz up our spine when we moan. We get pleasure from it. Something in our brain goes ping!”
There is, of course, a conscientious edge in some British stand-up but one wonders when we are going to get past the stereotypical jokes about stereotypes and get into some new stuff.
In Britain, for example, there is a comedian of Iranian descent called Shappi Khorsandi, who is soon to appear with others in the series Live at the Apollo. Like so many, Khorsandi talks about the self-marginalisation of Muslims after 9/11: “When you’ve got a really long foreign name you’ve got to shorten it,” she says. “I have a cousin called Mahommed and he had to change his name to ‘It wasn’t me.'”
Lenny Henry, who also appears in Live at the Apollo, compares the hapless Bush to the optimistic Barak Obama: “It’s lovely that he’s a mixture,” Henry says. “His mom is from Kansas, his dad is from Africa and he is the first English-speaking president since Clinton.”
It is likely that Obama is the only recent turning point in history that has made any impact on stand-up comedy. Otherwise, it’s business as usual onstage.
The problem is not so much that the comedians are out of date. It’s just that the world is moving so slowly that the funny guys are just out there treading water, waiting for something to make new jokes about.
The BBC Comedy Festival runs from April 19 to May 14 on BBC Entertainment (channel 120 on DStv)