Wasn't comedy better when it said something? | Alex Blower thinks stand-up's gone backwards

Wasn't comedy better when it said something?

Alex Blower thinks stand-up's gone backwards

Airing on Channel 4 in the Eighties, Friday Night Live brought groundbreaking alternative comedy performance to living rooms across the nation. It launched the careers of comedians like Ben Elton, Jo Brand and Craig Charles and was a much-needed breath of fresh air for a performance genre that had become limited to fat white blokes in tuxes being a bit sexist. These new comedians brought a long-lost sense of purpose back to comedy, in terms of commenting on what was going on in the world around them, and became almost overnight successes.

Back then, was there was no swearing in the performances. Fair enough – in the 80s the word 'shit' uttered on TV could have probably caused old people's heads to implode. But it was amazing the impact that the comedians' sets had while still being 'clean'.

Instead of making the comedy boring to watch, this lack of ‘shits’, ‘arseholes’ and ‘buggers’ actually served to drive home the intention behind the humour. In some of the performances, none of the audience members even laughed. This wasn't because the content of the material wasn't witty, brilliantly timed or funny, but rather that the material resonated so much with the audience, they felt thunderous cheers were a more apt response.

Back then comedians had a whole munitions factory full of material for satire to draw from in the form of good old Maggie Thatcher. Responsible for the miners’ strikes, nicking of milk from toddlers and the North of England being pissed off in general, she certainly made it easy for people to be angry.  Thatcher however, was just the first piece of British culture which was brought under the comedic microscope in this new alternative era.

Before his days presenting Robot Wars and playing a Corrie cabbie, Craig Charles was a poet – and although it seems unlikely now, he was very good at it. What Craig Charles brought to the table was a peephole for the public to see what it was like to be a young mixed-race male growing up in Liverpool. While he made the audience laugh with his poetry's witty puns and rhymes, he also drove home a powerful message about a section of society which at the time, lacked the means to get themselves heard.

Now we’ve seen why Friday Night Live was bloomin marvellous, let’s have a look at how today's televised stand-up stacks up. Seeing as everyone in the UK at least knows about it, we'll use Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow. While at first glance it seems pretty similar in its content and the types of comedians performing, there are some key differences.

Jo Brand has performed on both shows, so we may as well use her as a case study. In the Eighties her content was strongly feminist and was resented by a great majority of white van drivers for appearing anti-male. Nowadays, although her material's generally still seen as coming from a female perspective, she is widely liked and is a household name. Why? Because alternative comedy isn't really alternative anymore. The reason that the new wave of acts shot to popularity in the 80s was because they were fresh to the public eye, and had messages behind their comedy that were worth delivering.

A lot of the most prominent figures in British comedy today are from this school of 80s comedians, and the majority of more recent comedians have followed their formula because it worked. But this means that the freshness that alternative comedy once had has been depleted, as has the meaning behind it. Yes, people still laugh at the acts on the Comedy Roadshow, but how often do people cheer at the powerful critique of the things that are wrong with society?

Unfortunately comedy today seems to be slowly progressing to the space that fat blokes in tuxes occupied in the Seventies, talking a lot, making people smile, but saying very little.

• Alex Blower tweets at @TheComedyWorm.

Published: 2 Jul 2013

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