Ben Elton’s all the time had rather a lot to say. You don’t write numerous sitcoms
(together with Upstart Crow, The Thin Blue Line, The Young Ones and
Blackadder), pen 16 novels, Four West End performs and 4 musicals (together with
Queen’s We Will Rock You should you’re not an concepts man.
And it’s contemporary concepts which have all the time pushed his floor breaking Stand Up
comedy routines loads of which might be being explored in Ben’s model new
stand-up tour – his first since 2019 (the earlier one having been 15 years
earlier than that). The present’s known as Authentic Stupidity, and it’s all in regards to the
ridiculous issues we people do and suppose.
“The tour title is a little joke about how we’re all saying that Artificial
Intelligence is this great threat to humanity, which of course it is, but I reckon
the biggest threat is actually Authentic Stupidity! Never mind AI, let’s start by
worrying about AS! But really all my tours could Have been called Authentic
Stupidity, because they’re always comic explorations of the essential absurdity
of existence. I think all good comedy is” explains Elton.
“I’ve always done that in my routines. Sharing my own fears and joys and
exasperations. Just being as funny as I can about the shit that’s on my mind”.
“Every part of my comedy is an exploration of human inadequacy,” he says,
utilizing Blackadder as one in all his earliest examples “Blackadder thinks he’s so
clever but his vanity, his jealousy and his ambition screw him every time. We
need to accept that we are not everything and that we don’t know everything. If
we did that I think we’d do less harm to ourselves and to the planet. The world
would probably be a lot nicer and safer if we all embraced our inner Baldrick!”
That’s to not say that is all misanthropy, although. “In some ways, the world is
better now. I think younger people have started to accept that weakness is OK;
that weakness is merely an acknowledgement that you might need help, that you
aren’t necessarily the thing you want to be or that people expect you to be. All
these things that we used to hide are coming out more.”
There are, after all, points of contemporary life which have emphatically not
improved, in his opinion. And whereas insisting he’s not a luddite, he’s acutely
conscious of the place expertise goes mistaken. (His most up-to-date novel, Identity
Crisis, has some intelligent themes about how expertise is deployed within the stoking
of tradition wars with nefarious intentions.)
“Personally, I would rather the internet wasn’t around because, although it’s an
ingenious and useful, it’s destroying democracy as we speak because we’re too
stupid to tell the difference between verifiable facts and undiluted arse
porridge,” he says.
“And now we’ve invented AI, I mean how stupid is that? If a terrorist went on
television and said, ‘We’ve come up with a machine that will literally make
human beings redundant we’d send in MI5! We’d think this is a genuinely
existential threat to the future of humanity. But because this is a bunch of tech
bros and billionaires in California, we’re all just going, ‘Oh well, apparently it’s
going to be able to write new Beatles songs.’”
So is he wanting ahead to his new tour? “Absolutely there’s just so much to
talk about. Finding the funny has never been more important”.
Interestingly, Elton doesn’t consider himself as being an important comedian performer;
for him it’s all about his writing, which he’s repeatedly confirmed himself to be
nice at, ever because the cult sitcom The Young Ones hit BBC Two in 1982.
“Look, I think I can be pretty funny in my delivery but it would be nothing
without the material. I’m not a natural clown who can get a laugh just pulling a
face”, He remembers taking his spouse after which younger youngsters to the house of pal
Rowan Atkinson, with whom he labored on Blackadder, The Thin Blue Line
and Mr Bean.
“Rowan was handing out the cakes and the cat was lurking nearby and appeared
about to pounce. Rowan removed the fondant fancies and then without any
knowledge of doing it, he did a little mime of an outraged cat,” he says. “For a
moment, he inhabited the creature in front of him and the kids and us fell about.
It was perfect. I couldn’t do that. I could be funny in conversation, but my funny
bones are all about the words.”
He’s doing himself down a bit although: he did a cracking job internet hosting the
one-off revival of Friday Night Live – the variability showcase of comedian expertise –
for Channel 4 in 2022. The present wouldn’t have received the Bafta in opposition to some
stiff competitors if he wasn’t an important performer. The Guardian described his set
as “bracingly topical and outspoken”, whereas The Times mentioned: “Elton has still got
it, oh yes he has.”
It’s fascinating studying how a comic’s early forays into stand-up can form
their persona. Those accustomed to immediately’s (comparatively) well mannered audiences would
blanche on the often-brutal ambiance of the Comedy Store in London, the place
Elton – together with the likes of Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, French &
Saunders and Jo Brand – reduce his enamel.
“Back then it was two shows a night, the early one at 10pm, then one at
midnight, in a strip club in Soho. It was 1981, Brixton was in flames, Thatcher
was starting her ten-year war on society and sometimes audiences were tense
and angry,” he explains.
“People weren’t tuned into what we now call alternative comedy, which I would
describe as the comedy of ideas, where you use your own principles and beliefs
to form your own comedy. That’s certainly what I did. People were used to
comedians who told jokes and part of the joke might be about dealing with
hecklers, so there was this idea that that was what a comic did – they dealt with
hecklers. I hate hecklers. I’ve never heard a witty heckle. They’re mythical.”
If you’re on stage making an attempt to make some extent, to ship a sophisticated concept utilizing a
riff that’ll attain a satisfying conclusion, you want individuals to pay attention. How on earth
do you do this with some drunk being authentically silly?
“I developed what was probably an overly combative style just to shut the idiots
down” says Elton. “It took me a long time to get out of the shadow of the
gong.”
But over a life time of massively profitable rise up he’s learnt to think about
audiences’ – partly as a result of they’re now paying to see him particularly, not like
in these days once they’d present up and be introduced with a line-up of
unknowns. “I learnt not to trust them, thinking that, if I paused, someone would
shout out,” he says. “I can pause a little bit now, but I still don’t pause much
because I’ve just got too much to say.”
