The Establishment Club – the legendary comedy club founded by Peter Cook and now fronted by Keith Allen and Victor Lewis Smith and being made into a TV/online show – rolled into town this week in search of the finest alternative comic voices in Edinburgh.
Eighteen comedians performed filmed sets aboard a specially adapted Routemaster bus, with the best of them set to feature on The Establishment Club’s upcoming television adaptation, which has been picked up by RTUK.
Some of the comedians took time out before or after their sets to give their opinions on the state of the comedy industry and revealed some forthright criticisms which revealed the need for more diverse, alternative, edgy and overall less conformist voices.
Dominic Holland, back at the Fringe after a long hiatus, bemoaned the lack of meritocracy in the desperate search for the ‘next big thing’:
“Comedy is all about ‘are you funny?’. I don’t care where you’re from, how old you are, what colour you are, what you do in the bedroom, it should only be about if you’re funny.
”I think comedy’s in a pretty parlous state, because I think now there’s a complete agenda from the media to promote people who aren’t necessarily funny.”
Ashley Storrie, part of the Fringe’s deadliest mother-daughter duo alongside mum Janey Godley, painted a picture of a posh, Anglo-centric, male-centric comedy scene:
“A lot of people come here, with their spikey hair, from England, like ‘oh yeah, there I was, w*****g with my mum watching’: there’s a million of you.
“There’s stuff that [young women] are really scared of, and nobody ever talks about because it’s ‘like, icky’, or weird, and I’d like to say, ‘it’s okay, I’ve done it, it’s fine, don’t worry about it’. I’d like to be that [person] for somebody.”
Chris McGlade, the Middlesbrough stand-up who has battled through personal tragedy to bring his raw, avowedly non-PC stand-up back to the stage, tore into what he saw as the commercialisation of the industry, saying:
“For me the Edinburgh Fringe is just a f*****g money-making mafia. It promotes and pushes the fortunes of a handful – maybe a dozen tops – of comedians who they want to have on TV and everything else.
“You won’t see one working men’s club comedian telling jokes in that old, working men’s club style that appeals to something like 33 million working class people.”
Rosie Jones, meanwhile, pointed out that overly PC audiences with sanitised world views, made it harder for her to gain acceptance as a disabled comedian:
“When I come on I kind of shock the audience because they are majoratively PC, and they go ‘ooooooh it’s a disabled lady, we should laugh at her because I’m feeling really awkward.”
When The Establishment Club’s television adaptation was announced, Keith Allen - who eschewed the Edinburgh leg of the trip due to his hatred of the Fringe - addressed a number of these issues, saying:
“The comedy circuit is in desperate need of a cattleprod in the bollocks, and to then be slapped about a bit with a fetid badger cadaver, just to make sure it’s fully alert. The Establishment Club is taking to the road to search for exciting new talent to deliver the beating the British comedy scene, kinky bugger that it is, so desperately craves.”
The Establishment Club starts on RTUK later this year with the Roadshow in search of the country’s finest comic talent hitting Manchester on 30 August and Newcastle on 6 September.
