Read How I Escaped My Certain Fate Online
Authors: Stewart Lee
How I Escaped My Certain Fate (38 page)
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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 stand-up 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 Edinburgh 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?”’
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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 Stand-Up 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 stand-up 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.
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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 know 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 stand-up 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.
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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 stand-up ever, it doesn’t
necessarily
count for anything. What does it mean in real terms, being the 41st best stand-up 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.
Even as I said that, I realised, ‘Ah, there’s a potential market just …’ But they are though, aren’t they? It’s awful, Channel 4, awful. It used to be good, didn’t it, in the old days, but not any more, it’s rubbish. Last year they had this twenty-fifth anniversary, when Channel 4, it used to screen all the brilliant programmes it used to make twenty, twenty-five years ago. Channel 4, it’s like a syphilitic old man leafing through a photograph album of all the
society
beauties he used to romance, all of them now dead. Because of him, because of what he did. Channel 4.
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In Edinburgh, the Udderbelly venue that I was in was sponsored by E4, a subdivision of Channel 4. But I still said it because I don’t do what the Man says I should, even when the Man is trying to help me in a mutually beneficial relationship. Fuck that shit!
I don’t like television generally. I’ve got nothing against
the medium of television, right? It’s great, it’s just colours, lights, shapes and sounds, God knows we all love them, don’t we? Over here, the people over here like them, over there, they like them one at a time. All together, it’s a bit much, isn’t it? A bit much. Have to ration them out … The problem with television, I think, is it’s increasingly
incapable
of dealing with anything thoughtful or serious, yeah? And a good example of this was this time last year, the
Celebrity Big Brother
racism scandal. You remember that? There was an Indian woman in the house and, er, everyone picked on her. Now, it was awful but I was kind of
fascinated
by it ’cause it showed us how television can’t cope with a serious thing. And I sort of love the
Celebrity Big Brother
racism scandal for that. I loved it for three main reasons.
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In 2007, Channel 4’s flagship atrocity, Celebrity Big Brother, was caught up in a scandal when other contestants were supposedly
racist
to the Indian actress Shilpa Shetty. The glamour model Danielle Lloyd called her ‘a dog’ and said she should ‘fuck off home’. Erudite pundits have pointed out that the real clash was about class, and that Lloyd and Jade Goody, who back then was alive and loathed rather than posthumously beatified, would inevitably have been rubbed up the wrong way by the gentle Shilpa’s perceived airs and graces. This was no doubt envisaged by the cynical Channel 4 scum who put Celebrity Big Brother together, but I have chosen to ignore the class clash and concentrate on the supposed racism in order to contrive this routine.