Opinion: Comedy – A Serious Business

In October’s Skinny, Scottish publishers Canongate unveiled a list of the 40 storytellers they thought would define Scotland over the next four decades.  It was a list compiled by the great and the good of Scottish arts, with the assistance of this magazine.

And it was a great list.  A phenomenal list.  A list that would make you weep with patriotic pride.  “Look!” – it said – “look at the calibre of Scotland’s storytellers”. I could not fault the selection panel. Everyone deserved to be there.

But there weren’t any comedians. No stand ups, no comedy writers, nothing. Odd, isn’t it?  If ‘the nation has been thoroughly scoured for the very best storytellers’, surely that should include a comedian or two?

That it doesn’t, can mean one of two things:

1.)  That the panel scoured the nation for storytellers across all mediums and didn’t find a comedian who defined the nation…

Or

2.) They didn’t consider comedians. It didn’t cross the panel’s minds to think of including any comedians.  

It has to be reason 2;  it can’t be reason 1.  If you scoured the nation you’d want to include Limmy.  You’d maybe think of Kevin Bridges or Susan Calman or Greg McHugh or Frankie Boyle or Janey Godley. You might look at future stars like Matt Winning, Susie McCabe, Eleanor Morton, Fern Brady or Richard Gadd.

It just has to be reason 2.

And that’s sad because in the same way Billy Connolly, Rikki Fulton, Stanley Baxter etc have defined Scotland’s identity, home and abroad for 40 years, surely we can expect comedians to continue this between now and 2053?

Comedy isn’t taken as seriously as it should be by the arts community in Scotland.  It’s not thought of as an art.  It receives little funding in the way that other arts do.  I would be amazed if any local authorities support it as they support theatre, photography and writing groups.  Even the arts media barely regard it as an art.  In the recent Scotsman’s A-Z of arts autumn highlights there wasn’t a single comedy gig mentioned. We have the Scottish Album of The Year, the Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland, The Scottish Book of The Year, but nothing for comedy.

In fairness there is undoubtedly a lot of dull stand-up – dull jokes about nothing, performed by people who only want to be liked and don’t have anything to say (I am as guilty of anyone at playing-it-safe when faced with a bunch of drunks in some dark room in a pub on a Friday night).   Comedy isn’t helped by the BBC, who ask that commissions be as broad and as accessible as possible.  Maybe it’s very hard to get past that.

But this dull safeness isn’t exclusive to comedy.  There is plenty of dull, safe music and theatre.  Yet music and theatre as art forms aren’t written off in the way that comedy is because of this.

Ultimately Canongate’s list doesn’t really matter; creators will create regardless. But it is important. Scotland is a nation defined by her storytellers.  The image we show to the world, to the rest of the UK and to ourselves comes from the stories they tell.

In this year of referendum and sport when the world is watching us it’s up to the storytellers to explain to the world who we are.  It’s up to the storytellers to explain to us who we are.

It’s not all knob jokes.