Carl Donnelly adds to the debate

I was going to write a long and well informed article debunking Chris McGlade’s view that the comedy circuit is dictated by class but unfortunately I’m from a working class background and don’t have a degree so when I started writing I got distracted by a butterfly. And besides, I had some windows to lick. I also tried to read Bethany Black and Matt Price’s intelligent, well-measured responses but couldn’t understand all the long words and there were no pictures.

I think the sarcasm above sums up what annoyed me most about Chris’s article. That is that it while clearly being intelligent himself; he suggests that the rest of the working classes are stupid, which I find highly offensive.

I grew up in a council flat in South London with working-class parents who for various periods of my youth were out of work and on benefits. That meant that for a large portion of my life I couldn’t even claim to be ‘working’ class but was actually part of the underclass that look up to those in low paid jobs. Despite this, I managed to do OK at school but never cared enough about it to go on to higher education. I did a collection of jobs following school before I drifted into comedy. If Chris’s article is to be believed, this background means ‘it is virtually impossible to get a break, get on TV or be accepted on the comedy club circuit’.

Yet in five years of doing comedy I have won and been nominated for a number of awards, been on TV and cemented myself on the circuit. Now either Chris has exaggerated the extent to which we working class comedians are kept down or I am living some sort of comedy Oliver Twist story? If anything, the comedy industry has welcomed me and allowed me to be a success in a way that none of my previous jobs allowed.

Obviously the common argument from people that make these claims about comedy being middle class is that it is the content as much as the performer that dictates which class it is aimed at. Again this does the working classes a disservice as it suggests they don’t have the brain capacity to understand anything other than pure base humour.

Chris himself says of good old fashioned comedy: ‘The comedy wasn't highbrow, there were no long words, you didn't have to think about it to get it.’

So what he is basically saying is that in the good old days, the working classes were no more advanced than children! If that is the case then I’m glad they don’t put that old shit on television anymore as it suggests that at least now commissioners have a modicum of respect for those at the bottom of the social ladder and give them enough credit to be able to think and laugh at the same time.

The suggestion that the modern comedy circuit somehow lacks diversity and we all sound the same is quite frankly ridiculous compared to the circuit of 30 years ago. I think there are still prejudices on the modern circuit against female and ethnic acts that need to be addressed, but compare them to the old working men’s clubs and most modern comedy club line-ups look like a United Nations meeting.

I think Chris has been unfair in his depiction of the comedy scene and also the viewing public. One of my many jobs before I started stand-up was for a company that compiled television ratings and it was there I saw that the statistics that go into TV commissioning are more often than not aimed at age groups. You often hear of shows aimed at the 18-25 demographic etc, but I assure you it is rare that a show is aimed at a particular social class.

Chris, I genuinely wish you all the best in Edinburgh as I know that it can be a daunting experience (as I will be there again this year too and should probably be working on my show right now!) and I hope you haven’t taken this as a personal attack, but merely a disagreement on a few points.

My tip from one working-class comedian to another is that you go up to Edinburgh not thinking of it as a middle-class festival where everyone will judge you based on class but as a comedy festival where you can do whatever you want to do.

Last year, I had a couple of reviews that suggested my material wasn’t clever or thoughtful etc which is fine as I’m the first person to say my comedy is pretty stupid, but at the end of the month I was nominated for an Edinburgh Comedy Award (as was Kevin Bridges who, as mentioned in Matt’s response, is a young, Scottish and working class). This goes to show that yes some people do want highbrow intellectual comedy but at the end of the day, even the judges for one of the most prestigious awards in comedy just want to be made to laugh.

Published: 8 Jul 2010