Comedy politics

God us lefties are so humourless. What with our not liking sexist, racist or homophobic jokes. You can’t insult anyone these days.

Of course, on the other hand, left wing humour is everywhere. And it’s so powerful! Look how all those jokes about Boris Johnson’s dishevelled hair changed the course of the election. They wouldn’t have dared to make such jokes about Jeremy Corbyn.

Hypocrisy isn’t the preserve of the right, but they do — as with so much else in politics — get away with both doing it more blatantly and with less scrutiny. Right wingers will happily invoke both of the above arguments, even though both are provable nonsense.

There are quite a lot of left wing comics who will skate quite close to the insult comedy of the 1970s, but they do it to hold a mirror up to an audience’s own prejudices and have them laugh at themselves. They don’t do it for cheap laughs at the expense of those who spend their days taunted anyway. Good comedy punches upwards to the establishment but also inwards to the psyche. It questions itself as much as it questions the social environment.

There is also very little actual power in satire. The power to shock in comedy arguably used to sit with those invoking anti-establishment views, but I don’t think that’s been true since the 60s and the end of deference. Spitting Image and Ben Elton didn’t bring down Mrs Thatch. 2DTV and Mark Thomas didn’t bring down Tony Blair. People spent most of yesterday complaining that the TV show that arguably made Boris Johnson’s national career is left wing.

This debate about left-wing / right-wing comedy avoids the really interesting questions around the future of arts output in the UK, something that is in deep peril thanks to the ongoing indifference of the government. Instead we’re back to the same old nonsense about the politics of comedy.

I’ve done a bit of stand up. Not a lot, but enough to have seen the circuit at its rawest end. Let me tell you what works when you’re in front of a tough, rowdy and drunk crowd huddled in a club under a damp railway arch in Bow: being funny.

It’s that simple. If you construct a good joke, with a workable internal logic and tell it with the right timing, you get a laugh. Belly laughs work like that. They don’t get filtered through your morality. The feeder stream of people that courses through stand-up comedy and the panel-based shows originates in these brutal experiences.

In my experience, there are two types of comedian who tended to fail. The first were the ones who tried to prove what good people they were before they tried to prove what funny people they were. If you think comedians succeed because they’re left wing, you just haven’t seen enough failed left-wing comedians. There are thousands. People in that Bow club might nod along sagely to their invective, but they didn’t giggle, they didn’t guffaw and they didn’t go back to your act.

The second were the people who thought that being shocking offensive was the same as being funny — the legion of Frankie Boyle wannabies. I’m not a massive fan of Boyle, but he at least perfected this art when few (beside the incomparable, and largely unbroadcastable, Jerry Sadowitz) were doing it better.

Neither of these types — whatever you will read in the Daily Mail — are going to get through the sharkfest that is the comedy circuit and onto your telly.

There are definitely questions to be asked about the current state of TV comedy. “Have I Got News For You” is almost as old as I am. It’s cosy, repetitive and hasn’t been appointment TV for at least a decade if at all this century. Repackaging it with more pussy jokes and calling it “Mock the Week” didn’t help either.

So if what is being discussed is a refreshing of the formulaic approach to comedy, bring it on. End the dominance of HIGNFY and invest instead in fresh new comedy. But the BBC is the home of so much more than panel shows. It’s Mrs Brown’s Boys which I loathe and Fleabag which I love. And that’s right, because the BBC isn’t supposed to be just for me. (Mind you, Fleabag is probably considered left wing — after all, she did crack one out over Obama.)

But if what is meant instead is to lower the quality threshold of the same tired old formulaic shows to make them even less funny, then I’m sorry, but you’re (not) having a laugh.