Atheists, Assemble! A stew of brilliant English and Irish comics for Easter

It’s all about the sharing of pop-culture obsessions in the Funhouse, and so I have to offer you one of my latest preoccupations, exploring the world of British standup comics. This particular excursion began when I encountered the work of a number of American standups who seem to be “children of Bill Hicks,” meaning they’re following in the path of the late cult comic who made some very great performance work of his own personal obsessions (that word again!) and insights.

I found a few really solid examples of standups over here who are following in Hicks’ footsteps, albeit with less of the poetic and whimsical touch (I tend to think of them as the “open wound” school of comedy). Their work is indeed funny and absorbing (especially when there is a “trainwreck” performance, as there seems to have been a few times with really hard-edged standups like Doug Stanhope). Since the extremely American Hicks became a cult figure in the U.K., though (his birthday was actually pitched to Parliament as a possibility for a holiday), I was curious to hear if there were similar comics over there.

And so I went back to (where else) YouTube and consulted the uploads of “Padraic 2001eire”, who is an Irish fan of Bill’s, and had put up some great (now unfortunately gone from YT for copyright reasons) compilations of how his work was stolen by Denis Leary and seemed to be “lifted” on occasion by George Carlin (whom I of course worship from way back — check this Deceased Artiste tribute, with many links now also sadly gone from the Net).

“Padraic2000Eire” clearly has a fine-tuned sense of comedy, and is also clearly inspired by intelligent arguments for atheism (but more on that below). His montage post ”My Top 10 Favourite Comedians” introduced me to the work of five English and Irish stand-ups whom I became instantly fascinated by (one other, David O’Doherty, I like, but he’s a bit “gentle” compared to the others in the list). And thus I provide below the fruits of my months-long excursion into the work of these gents, with many thanks of course to the posters on YT and blogger JimG, who continues to post some truly mind-warpingly rare old vinyl and CDs.

For those who are completely unaware of Bill Hicks’ work, I heartily, heavily recommend watching his best performance video here. Just to run down the aspects of his comedy I’ve seen in other standups of his age group and younger, I’ll note that the American comics who open their emotional closets on stage (Marc Maron, Doug Stanhope, Janeane Garafolo) owe a big debt to Hicks, as do those who analyze the process of standup comedy while performing their act (not the standard Johnny Carson/Borscht Belt acknowledgment that a gag has failed, but a literal deconstruction of their own standup set — as when the very funny Maria Bamford, a comedian who does dozens of voices in her act, has her “mother” chime in and summarize what she's doing: “we know what your act is: low voice/high voice. We’ve got it!”).

The other dominant characteristic of Hicks’ comedy besides its highly personal content (in this regard, he was preceded by the twin gods of Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, no question) was his fierce Left-wing politics and devout atheism. The English and Irish comics below are all in the same camp politically and in religious (or should that be “superstitious”?) terms.

Always best to start out with a song, so I’ll first spotlight the work of Bill Bailey, who plays the keyboard and various guitars onstage while he does comedy. He also has done a touring “Essential Guide to the Orchestra” which cannot be sampled on YouTube, sadly. In fact, YT contains very little of his standup, favoring his appearances on talk shows and the famous Never Mind the Bullocks gameshow. But you can check out his playing of a theremin on The Jonathan Ross Show, his bit on hard rock and the city of Milton Keynes, and his mock Brel/Scott Walker love-has-left ballad .

Here is a chunk of his stand-up, including the nice insight that certain types of jazz horn playing sounds like a “surrealist car alarm”:



From England we move to Ireland, and comic Dylan Moran, who is very straightforward and wonderfully deadpan, and discusses the more pleasant (or is that deadening?) forms of hypocrisy as his main theme. Here he summarizes religion as “people talking about their imaginary friend”:



Some more standard standup, as with this discussion of the battle of the sexes. Moran’s pleasant demeanor lets him get away with acidic insights:



And actually, there is one other element that links these comedians to Bill Hicks: their razor-sharp takes on Americans (Hicks’ standard line on whether he was proud of being an American was to note that the U.S. “was the place where my parents fucked”).



Setting aside atheism for a moment (although I have the feeling this next comedian is pretty much on that page too), Padraic’s montage helped me discover the work of Robert Newman, who was part of a well-loved team with a comic named David Baddiel (and did impressions of British rockers like this one), but who has worked on refining (bad pun — you’ll see) one long and brilliant set of material on world history, and the U.S. and U.K.’s devotion to oil, into a really tight piece of television, called from “Caliban to the Taliban,” or “The History of Oil.” Some helpful soul has put the entire show on YouTube — the video and the audio are slightly unhooked (the video lags a few seconds behind), but the show is definitely worth your attention. Part one can be found here. Here’s part four of the “History of Oil” show, summing up Newman’s political take on politics in the 2000s:



And now, we hit the comedy team that was a major discovery for me, Lee and Herring. The team did some amazingly funny work for BBC Radio and TV — their “Inexplicable World of Lionel Nimrod” show is just excellent, and they co-scripted episodes of "On the Hour," the absolutely brilliant Chris Morris radio news send-up that spawned the Alan Partridge character.

Stewart Lee has become an utter obession for me in the past few weeks, but his ex-partner Richard Herring also does top-notch standup, and he qualifies as the U.K. comedian who seems the most interested in delving into joyously blasphemous waters (I have no idea what his upbringing was like, but the man is obsessed with puncturing Christianity, and for that I salute him). Herring’s onstage persona is that of a sort of chubby shlemiel, but as a result of that playful-dolt front, he can get away with some terrifically nasty humor. Here is a sample of his standard, non-atheist standup, on the ever-popular topics of the phys. ed teacher at school and sexuality:



Herring did an entire set of material about Jesus, called “Christ on a Bike,” that can be found at the “Fist of Fun” website,” which contains lots and lots of free downloads of audio material from Herring and Stewart Lee. The opening part of the “Christ on a Bike” show can be found (as audio with a still picture) on YT here:



Herring has professed his love of the genius comedy of Cook and Moore in their “Derek and Clive” guises, and the single most Derek and Clive-ish bit of material I’ve heard him do is this slice from his “Collings and Herrin” podcast with fellow comic Andrew Collins (their blogspot blog is here). UPDATE: Since I wrote this, I've discovered Herring's solo podcast, As It Occurs to Me, which is a fast-paced sketch series that he writes and gives away for free on the Net (I love these kinds of artists!). You can download that terrific show here. And now back to the regularly scheduled slice of blasphemy from the "Collings and Herrin" 'cast:



And an amazing piece of stand-up by Herring, where the title is only the beginning of the gorgeous blasphemy. This is some of his latest material, with you-know-it’s-2009-or-10 references to Susan Boyle and Tiger Woods. And Rich asking Christ, “wank me off with your stigmata”:



Finally, there is Herring’s ex-“straight man,” Stewart Lee. Lee is one of the most deadpan comics and one of the funniest I’ve seen in years. His comedy is smart, yes, but he also works a concept thoroughly, through wonderful repetition and a sublimely straightforward sense of the absurd.

One of his nastiest routines routines about the English (he’s also done some superb U.S.-bashing) is a longer piece on the commemoration of the death of Princess Diana. He also weighed in on the Harry Potter phenomenon. As for Lee’s own reading habits, he is indeed a fan of William Blake, and also loves comic books — one of his interview “scores” was Alan Moore, whom he’s talked to more than once. Audio of a radio interview of Moore by Lee is here .

His tale of meeting a homophobic taxi driver is a fine piece of post-Hicks storytelling that also has much resonance for Americans, if one thinks of the “party of no” and their crappy debate tactics:



Lee tackled the touchy subject of joke-stealing in this terrific routine. I’ve never heard of the comics involved (although a Michael Redmond clip on YouTube is worth a look), but I’ll forever know the name of Joe Pasquale now.




The Pasquale routine, like another one Lee does on a comic named Tom O’Connor, shows his superb way of driving home a comic point. Here he works in a similar vein, eviscerating the Celebrity Big Brother show, and the TV advertisers:



One of Stewart’s most durable routines, which he’s reused and even done a fourth-wall commentary on, is a bit called “Jesus is the Answer”:



Lee wrote and hosted a serious tele-docu meditation on religion in modern society, “Don’t Get Me Started,” that can be found in its entirety here. Lee goes on about his own connection to Jesus in this routine (audio only). The “not him, I’m not” stuff is just terrific:



The fullest comic flowering of Lee’s thoughts on religion is this episode of his show Stewart Lee’s Comic Vehicle:



And because I’m posting this two days before Easter Sunday, and yes, because I was raised Catholic and now really don’t want anything to do with the religion, I offer a link to the YouTube poster named “Atheist Reference”, who seems to have quite a large video collection, including much “heathen,” non-believer comedy.

The twilight of all-night radio: goodbye to "The Joey Reynolds Show"

An era in New York radio is about to end. The last refuge for old-fashioned entertainment on a commercial NYC station will disappear next Friday, April 2nd, when the Joey Reynolds Show is taken off WOR-AM, so we can have yet another outta town syndicated program running in the late evening hours.

Joey’s show is impossible to describe if you haven’t heard it, but let me make a vague attempt: it’s a four-hour talk show that runs from 1:00-5:00 a.m. (it was five hours long until recently) five nights a week, featuring an eclectic mix of guests (no phone calls!) that ranges from serious authors who’ve written tomes about dire subjects to, well, the “naked clown” depicted above. About two years ago I had some situations that had me down, and I can say without qualification that Joey’s presence on the radio dial late at night talking to cabaret singers, show-biz one-offs (like the clown or this “Miss Liberty” lady who wore her Statue of Liberty outfit, on the radio!), and, most importantly, old and classic comedians, was an instant pick-me-up. It was and is, simply, put old-fashioned entertainment that could be put down as corny (as was done in this snarky New York Times article). That it is sometimes, but this kind of unique, personality-driven radio needs to be preserved in this era of “telescoped,” scarily formulaic celebrity culture.

The Reynolds show is both a talk show and a radio variety program, where guests display their talents and occasionally wander off on glorious verbal tangents. Joey presides over it all with a chuckle in his voice that disappears only when the specter of politics comes up — the only time I haven’t enjoyed the program are when fringe Right-Wing authors speak in an uncontested fashion (whereas those on the Left usually are grilled summarily). That said, Joey has been surprisingly liberal on certain issues, especially in light of the fact that the station he’s on has gone from being a home of radio giants like Jean Shepherd and Bob and Ray to showcasing the hate speech of Glenn Beck and the now thankfully eclipsed bile-meister Michael Savage.

But, back to the variety: Joey presides over themed hours that range from the “Italian hour” (where one could hear master-actor Ben Gazzara in the company of Joe Piscopo and the hour’s staple, a Little Italy restaurateur and character actor nicknamed Cha-Cha) to the “gay hour” (where disco is played and quite a few penis jokes are made) to the gloriously shticky “Jewish hour,” wherein joke-machine Mickey Freeman holds forth, and the names of great entertainers (including Reynolds' friend, the recently departed Funhouse interview subject Soupy Sales) are mentioned with the reverence they deserve.

Sometimes, the singers are top-flight talents, sometimes they aren’t someone you’d pay to see — no matter, Joey moves the whole caravan onward, and who knows what the hell will be around the corner after the hourly newscast. It sometimes may seem like the radio cousin of the old Joe Franklin TV show, but there’s a greater intimacy about radio that Reynolds exploits to its fullest. He is indeed talking to the listener, not at him/her, and the eclectic guest roster is a joy in an era when the only, only, only radio talk shows worth hearing are on listener-sponsored NPR stations that strike me as oddly antiseptic. I doubt I would have ever rediscovered the fast and smart comedy of Chris Rush on Terry Gross' terrific but oh-so-very-staid "Fresh Air". (Great clips of Chris on Joey can be found here).

Reynolds’ five-decade career in radio has been pretty amazing — from his hometown in Buffalo, N.Y., to stints in numerous cities, including Syracuse, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit, Miami, Albany, and Wheeling, W.V. And, oh yeah, he was brought to WNBC-AM in 1986 to replace Howard Stern when he was pitched off the station long, long ago. Here is a rare recording of Joey at his Top 40 radio frantic best, on WKBW in Buffalo way back in ’64. And here are some equally rare airchecks, including the full version of the Reynolds theme song done by the Four Seasons.

Not many of the videos on YouTube convey the conviviality of the Reynolds show, but a few give a vague impression of it. There’s this visual recording of the “gay hour”:



And this bit of behind-the-scenes footage for the “Jewish hour,” which will be sorely missed when the show leaves us on April 2nd:



Two of the greatest icons to appear on the Reynolds show died last year. One was, as previously noted, Soupy; the other was the legendary Les Paul, who holds forth on Joey here:



The best resource for hearing Joey’s brand of classic radio talk is on the WOR site for the next week, an extensive archive of hours from his show going back to 2006. The archive doesn’t include the themed hours, but it contains many of the interviews that define the show, including Les and Soupy, frequent guest (and 95-year-old stand-up icon) Professor Irwin Corey, Ronnie Spector, Tommy James, Keely Smith, Pat Cooper, Tommy Smothers, Frank Gorshin, Tommy Chong, Larry King, Joe Frankin, and Funhouse deity Steve Allen.

Visit here before it’s gone forever.