Yianni on the topics guaranteed to make a crowd turn

Sometimes our best attempts at humour run smack bang into the collective decision by an audience that you have gone too far and crossed ‘The Line’. This can happen at any time, but there are certain topics that are more risky than others. Here’s my Top 10 ways to run afoul of an audience.

10: Ticket Price

Often at a Fringe show, some people will have paid full price whilst others got 2-for-1s. Thus mentioning ticket prices can result in the atmosphere rapidly morphing, as half the room realise they’ve overpaid.

9: Boasting

This is a quintessentially British taboo. I once watched a touring American comedian ask the MC to whip the crowd up by listing the highlights on his comedy CV before bringing him on; fairly standard procedure back in the States. He walked on to a cynical Scottish audience with stony faces that screamed ‘Gan shut your geggie ye daft Yankie bawbag’. The MOST British part was that the compere conveniently ‘forgot’ to disabuse him of this poor idea.

8: ’You’re punching above your weight’

It’s a classic comedy trope: telling a man that he’s doing better than he could reasonably expect to, in having wooed such a beautiful woman. Everyone, including the man in question, generally has a laugh. However switch the roles and say it to a woman and you’ll find a room full of starey faces judging you for your insensitivity!

7: Women’s age

Similarly, for some completely baffling reason, society’s constant pressure on women to remain young forever (in complete opposition to the laws of nature) has led to women’s age being a bit of a sensitive issue. Guessing the age of a female audience member celebrating a birthday, is the comedy equivalent of Russian Roulette.

6: Islam

Mentioning Islam often causes a wave of unease to sweep over some Fringe audiences. This might come from a general lack of knowledge since in Malaysia (a predominantly Muslim country) I watched most audiences laugh heartily at jokes about Islam. They laughed at Christian jokes too.

5: Telling an audience they’re wrong

As hard as we try to avoid it, sometimes the audience just won’t like one of our jokes. But the WORST thing you can do, and I speak from experience, is trying to ‘pull rank’ and tell them they’re wrong. Produces a similar ‘fuck you’ vibe to the American getting the MC to announce his Letterman appearance.

4: Racism

Such is the sensitivity about race in this country, that sometimes just mentioning race is enough to make an audience uneasy enough for a joke to die. This effect tends to be larger in villages with no black people. Ironically, audiences are much readier to laugh at race based material in the US, where there are arguably bigger race problems than here.

3: Jimmy Savile

I was once given ‘In defence of Jimmy Savile’ as a topic at Set List, the show where stand-ups have to improvise routines. I asked the audience to sympathise with Savile's unfortunate defence lawyer having to come up with SOME argument for his innocence and solving that unenviable task by arguing that he was guilty of no crime worse than impatience. People laughed in shock, I’m sure only because (1) it was improvised and (2) I’d had the topic forced upon me. Generally though, while you can generally get away with mentioning Rolf Harris, Savile’s name brings up wounds so deep that his name has become comedy cancer.

2: Cancer or death in general

Speaking of which, cancer usually has a Savile like effect on a room. Strangely, Aids seems to work as a punchline as does almost any venereal disease. But cancer is, well, cancer. Similarly, trying to joke about dying or death often hastens the arrival of the comedy reaper.

1: Rape

Possibly the most controversial of all topics for jokes within the comedy industry, the online debates on it’s appropriateness could fill volumes. With three in ten women having suffered some form of sexual violence, you’d better make sure your joke is (1) sensitive and (2) GOOD.

• Yianni: Why Did the Chicken Cross the Line? is at Stand 2 at 15:40.

Published: 7 Aug 2015