The story of Adam and Eve, like all myths that shed light on our universal psychological human condition, is the story of women and stand-up comedy.
Here’s the happy couple living contentedly in the Garden of Eden, where God gets the best one liners and man is guaranteed a world of harmony as long as he is an appreciative audience and keeps the lady in line.
But Eve – like Pandora before her, or even after her – is a curious creature who is fed up of watching life from the side-lines. One day she finds a microphone stand lying in the beautiful grass, put there by Satan, wiley purveyor of vain dreams and X-Factor. As microphone stands do not yet exist in human consciousness Eve perceives it as a snake, and having eaten plentifully of the fruit of the mushroom, the snake seems to talk to her: “Eat of the apple of knowledge” it tempts her, and as we know knowledge requires observation and observation leads on to comedy.
The apple is the microphone and Eve opens her mouth unto it. We all know how horribly wrong this will go, even down to the suddenly finding yourself on stage naked, which most of us only have nightmares about. But for Eve this is the awful reality. As a result, womankind never tries stand up again, even though getting chucked out of Eden Jongleurs by bouncer angels and cursed to bear children and have periods could provide her with endless material.
And thus it ever was until about nineteen eighty-something, when I wandered into the bowels of The Drill Hall off Tottenham Court Road, an arty art centre that played host to everything eclectic from surreal Czech clowns to a young Birthday Party era Nick Cave. And there, on a low stage, behind a mic stand, in a packed room, with no juggling balls or white mime gloves to give her permission to be there, was female stand-up comedian Jenny Lecoat. The things she talked about were her things, the life was her life, not some formalised archetype panto character that traditional stand-ups dealt in. She held everyone’s attention for over an hour, just her and her real life observations, and she was very funny.
At the time I had just run away from my job in advertising to join the circus. I’d had to form the circus as well. I just wanted to be on stage and be funny; I found all that acrobatics and juggling really hard but had wearily learnt the rudiments, yet only the bits in between where it went wrong and I panicked and talked about it (breaking the sacred vow of mime silence) were funny. Now at last I could see you could do it so it was just the talking. It was a revelation.
These were the early days of Alternative Comedy where we found our voice by making mistakes. Some became famous comedians on telly, some went back to the day job, or became scriptwriters, novelists, artists, and some went insane.
To find out which category I fit into, come and see my show CHARMIAN HUGHES – WHEN COMEDY WAS ALTERNATIVE (THE LAUGHS AND LOVES OF A SHE-COMIC) at The Blue Man Queens Road Brighton at 7pm 29th, 30th, 31st May and 1st June. For more information and tickets click here!
