Teacher... or class clown?

Why do so many educators go into comedy, asks Tony Kinsella

‘That’s enough, everyone. Now shut up and listen.’

Teachers, eh? Attention-seeking control freaks, willing to stand up and show off, caught in the crosshairs of bored psychopaths with goldfish-attention-spans. In the Venn diagram of life, teachers and stand-up comedians overlap with increasing inevitability.

Stop chewing.

Teachers who sidestepped into stand-up span the generations, all the way back to Tom O'Connor and Jim Bowen. Whether Bowen got a cartoon Bully to check spellings in his dictionary or told the thick kids, ‘Come and look at the grades you could’ve got,’ I’ve no idea. But the career move from pedagogy to punchlines goes on …Frank Skinner, Hovis Presley, even Johnny Vegas, who relocated his potters’ wheel from the arts block to the comedy stage, and the rest is history. Followed by double maths and citizenship.

Citizenship? Sometimes this stuff writes itself. Aye, and therein lies the rub. Teaching mines a rich seam of potential material likely to strike a chord of common experience with every punter. Frank Skinner, a former English teacher, relates the night he took a bunch of Smethwick scallies to a production of Macbeth. As the eponymous actor threw himself into the ‘Is this a dagger I see before me?’ scene, miming his fear of the ghostly blade, there came an audible whisper from the ranks of pupils: ‘They should’ve ‘ad one on a string.’

Over the years on the Manchester comedy circuit, I’ve rubbed shoulders with fellow educators on a regular basis. Names like Sean Moran, Eddie Hoo, Daisy Connolly, Chris Roche, Louis Martin, who described parents’ evening in a state school as ‘speed dating with single-mums’. So why the overlap? What is it that attracts us teachers to tread the boards comedic?

And remember, there’ll be a test on this tomorrow.

Maybe teaching is the ultimate apprenticeship for a profession with no obvious qualification and training route. I taught for almost two decades before taking on my first comedy gig.

Eighteen years of standing in front of a group of people, urging them that what I had to tell them was worth hearing, preparing and delivering material in a manner that held their attention long enough so that I crawled out of that room with my dignity intact. Preparing and delivering a tight lesson plan, but having the quickness of thought to improvise and react to unexpected tangents. Oh, and dealing with hecklers with a blend of discipline and diplomacy. With laughter (or the lack thereof) as my instantaneous Ofsted.

Teaching has proved a frequent staple of an audience’s comedy diet. From Will Hay, to Jimmy Edwards’ Wacko, Please Sir and the execrably racist Mind Your Language, Rowan Atkinson’s brilliant monologue (‘If Shakespeare had meant it to be a comedy, he would’ve put a joke in it’), the St Trinian's films and Kes, with Brian Glover’s towering performance as an obnoxious PE teacher, Radio Four’s King Street Junior, through to higher education via The Young Ones, Campus and Fresh Meat. Maybe the three priorities of comedy are education, education and education.

And maybe this cuts both ways. Maybe, like Robin Williams’ Mr Keating in Dead Poets' Society, impersonating Marlon Brando and getting his kids to bark out poems within a Full Metal Jacket-style military mantra, all teachers need to employ comedy as a means to successful lessons. Natalie Haynes addressed this very topic in a documentary on the now defunct Teachers’ TV and I recently received training about the value of humour in the classroom via an organisation called Laughology, in a session led by Steph Davies, yet another teacher-come-comic I’d previously gigged with.

Perhaps everyone remembers their funniest teacher. Mine was my old English teacher Mr Plummer, who once asked one of my peers, caught finishing a piece of important coursework during registration on deadline day: ‘Did your dad promise you a new bike if you fail?’

I heard a group of my students chatting on the corridor the other day. It was F-in’ this, F-in’ that. No, they weren’t swearing, they were comparing their GCSE results. I’m here all week. But only until the bell rings.

  • Tony Kinsella, a former writer on The Unbroadcastable Radio Show at The Comedy Store, Manchester is a stand-up comic, performance poet and full-time English teacher at Salford City College.

Published: 3 Apr 2012

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