I spent the back end of last year doing a stand-up comedy tour of the
British Isles – 69 gigs over a three-month period. One night in early
October, at the Cambridge Corn Exchange, I decided to conduct an experiment.
The tour had been going well but, 20 gigs in, there is a danger that an act
can become a bit too comfortable. Anything that makes it feel fresh or
unfamiliar is worth a try, I thought. So I removed a key element.
It hadn’t escaped my notice that in my 20-plus years as a comic, I’d been
variously described as “foul-mouthed”, “near the knuckle”, “earthy” and even
“neo-Swiftian”. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve always
sworn quite a lot during my stand-up act. At least I did, until that night
in Cambridge. I wanted to see what would happen if I removed all the
swearing from my set.
Not swearing threw me a little at first. The f-word, for example, has a
certain potency as an intensifying adverb, and some of my lines seemed a bit
undermined by its absence. Also, when you’ve done a gag several times, you
get used to its rhythm, its bom-bitty-bom-bom-bang! Every newly edited joke
that night became a little challenge; every hole where the syllable(s) used
to be, a possible pitfall.
But, after the first 10 or 15 minutes, I started to enjoy the journey - and I
made three basic discoveries.
First, the crowd didn’t seem to laugh any less at the clean material. I
suspect that, subconsciously, I’d always felt that the more cuddly of my
routines needed the odd swearword the way that chips needed salt and
vinegar. It occurs to me now that I swore during those family friendly
sections both to reassure my core followers that this wasn’t The News Quiz
and to give the routine my own individual sweary signature.
It seemed I needn’t have worried. For example, the following section, which
was well received on the night, had previously had a couple of f-words
bolstering its whimsy: I watched that movie, The Elephant Man, again the
other day, and about two-thirds of the way through it suddenly struck me,
after all these years, that, in truth, the elephant man looks nothing like
an elephant. I’d say, if anything, he looks like fresh ginger. Mind you, to
be fair, if you’re putting up posters to sell a freak show, you don’t want
them to say: “Featuring the Ginger Man”. Everyone’s just going to think,
“Well, okay, they're not the best-looking people in the world, but I’m not
paying to see one.” It still went down fine. Mind you, I should probably
point out here that the clean sections in my act are not overlong. So it is
possible that those in the crowd hungry for material of an adult nature
accepted the relatively inoffensive material in the same way as they are
happy to watch the arrival-of-the-pizza-delivery-man section of a
pornographic film (ie, they knew the hardcore stuff could not be far off).
When the act started to get rude, I made my second discovery. People who might
usually shudder at the more earthy material will accompany you much further
into the mire if you’re not swearing at them. The most graphic sexual
remarks can be sneaked into the mix under a cloak of not swearing. The
audience may be hearing filth, but it’s polite filth; and polite filth is
more cheeky than offensive.
Thus, a line that had previously caused some sections of the audience to wince
seemed to be embraced much more generally when the lead-up had been sheared
of its swearwords. One example of this was when I spoke about a
psychological phenomenon that I had read about in a women’s magazine, which
its resident sex therapist called clitorophobia - a condition suffered by
some men which makes them scared of the clitoris.
(I assured the crowd that I did not share this phobia. In fact, I said,
nowadays it’s one of the few things in a hood that I’m notscared of.)
Now, I should make clear, at this point, that I am not - nor have ever been -
a shock comic. My aim has always been to do sugar-coated smut - or offensive
material that doesn’t offend. I have always found that this sensibility
tends to shine through even a blizzard of swearwords.
However, the removal of the swearing seemed to oil the wheels of this process,
allowing the more self-consciously respectable members of the audience to
loosen their corsets and really enjoy themselves, despite the subject matter.
My third discovery was strangely reassuring, and seemed to prove that I had
not been barking up the wrong tree for all these years. Some jokes, and one
whole routine, went noticeablyless well sans swearing.
In these instances, the swearword element seemed somehow implicit, a
nonoptional ingredient in the gag. For example, in the George Formby-style
song with which I closed the show, I had tried replacing the f-word with the
more old-fashioned “blooming”. I thought this might work because the word
was so typically Formbyesque.
But, of course, the reason the f-word had functioned so well in that song was
because it was so very un-George Formby. The juxtaposition of a sharp-end
swearword with a cheeky ukulele song was where the comedy lay. Thus, for the
next gig, at the Anvil theatre, Basing-stoke, I reinstated the swearing for
the essential-to-the-gag category only. The result was even better than I’d
hoped. The swearwords, when they came, had a noticeably bigger impact than
at previous gigs.
If you watched a firework display every night, you’d soon stop oohing and
aahing. Less truly was more.The upshot of all this is that I see the recent
debate about swearing on the airwaves from a slightly different viewpoint
than most people.
One of the exciting things about going to a comedy gig 10 or 15 years ago was
that you heard things you knew you’d never hear on television. This gave the
show an added excitement, the sense of a secret, outrageous world that the
po-faced residents of middle England didn’t even know existed.
It was the same for a performer. The constraints of taste and decency made a
television appearance feel like a visit to elderly relatives: you could
still be a bit cheeky, but you needed to watch your step. A live gig,
however, was like a night out with your mates: you could completely be
yourself and fire on all cylinders.
Nowadays, those boundaries between television comedy and live performance have
blurred considerably. When I last toured, in 1997, the show was a raucous
contrast to anything you might see on the box. When I toured last year, I
didn’t have that advantage. The added 10% thrill that came from hearing
someone off the telly swearing was no longer available. Now you could hear
them swearonthe telly.
Bearing all that in mind, I realised that my live act had to be a bit
cleverer, a bit more crafted, and perhaps crafty, to compensate. Now, it was
almost as though I was spending the first hour reminding the audience what
comedy was like before the swearing boom, so I could then benefit from the
contrast when I introduced a few swearwords later in the set.
I’m not arguing that comedians should stop swearing on television in order to
restore live comedy to its old status of naughty delight. But the experiment
that began at Cambridge Corn Exchange has certainly made me reevaluate the
role of swearing in comedy in general.
To my horror, I find myself agreeing with Michael Grade and Terry Wogan that
there really is too much swearing on television. However, I think my reasons
are slightly different from theirs. That careful pruning of my stand-up act
had nothing to do with moral outrage or fear of the same. I love swearing. I
think it’s a beautiful aid to expression and I don’t understand why it’s so
ghettoised.
My girlfriend used to work in the Channel 4 comedy department, where part of
her job was to count the amount and severity of swearwords in each
programme; then to calculate, by some prescribed formula, whether the
announcer’s preshow warning should say “strong language” or “very strong
language”. No other legally broadcastable part of speech would get that kind
of treatment.
My fear for swearing, and I’m talking specifically about swearing in
comedy (I’ve always suspected that TV cooks swear a lot because, deep down,
they fear that large sections of the public view their occupation as
essentially “women’s work” – thus using foul language becomes a badge of
masculinity), is that it will be damaged by overexposure. Then comedians
would lose a valuable language tool that has been a friend to comic writing
since Chaucer.
I don’t want to sound like a grumpy old stand-up, but some young TV comics use
swearing like a kid uses tomato ketchup. The thing is, it’s lovely - but you
don’t want to plaster every meal with it. Pretty soon the grown-ups will
stop buying it and then we’ll all have to suffer.
I want swearing in television comedy to be carefully nurtured and protected.
It can be truly beautiful, if used properly. I really think comics, writers
and comedy producers should try the swear-surgery approach. It’s surprising
how few swearwords justify their presence; those that do should be fought
for to the death.
Frank Skinner on the Road (Century), and a new live DVD, Frank Skinner
Stand-up (Universal Pictures) are available now. For more details, see www.frankskinnerlive.com
