Stand-up comics that have writers

[Whitey Grandad]

As Bob Monkhouse used to say: "They all laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian. They're not laughing now".

[pap]

Like you say no one remembers the actors from Shakespeare's day but this is due to media than people respecting creators.

 

There is very little of Max Miller available now, so he has pretty much gone from cultural consciousness. Where Chaplin, with his films, and an unmistakable image, has survived. We live in visual age of icons.

 

So what will survive are the icons of the age - you've already dismissed Elvis and Sinatra but they are significant figures in the history of the planet and will live on like Shakespeare, Elvis especially. They are creators, they created and it will survive.

 

This won't be true of, say, Hanif Kureishi, Ian McEwen or other contemporary authors - but Dickens, from the golden age of the novel, will. For the same reasons the Mona Lisa will be packing them in in 2075, Damien Hirst more of a curio.

 

Films have and will enter the canon - Life of Brian, for reasons on top of it being the funniest film ever made - this is some of the essential art of our age, more than any novel.

TV fits here too and there is a canon forming. M&W will be in there, as will Python and lots of other stuff - it's the dominant media post war. It's The Globe Theatre with electricity.

 

Ant and Dec, being unlikely to be rerun 30 years hence, won't be. Like Noel Edmunds, Des O'Connor and other light entertainers that aren't Morecambe and Wise. No one is going to produce not one but two West End productions (proper plays by "creators" no less) in tribute to Ant and Dec.

 

So no, these days it isn't about creators, or it is if you accept that the creation of an icon is creation in itself.

 

How this all fits in with Jack Whitehall using writers I'm not sure.

 

I've indulged a lot of your off-topic enquiries. Thanks for doing the same on this one, a good post, and one that I find a lot of agreement with.

 

You're right about the distillation of performers into icons. Marilyn Monroe is similar to Chaplin, in that everyone knows who she is, even if they haven't seen any of her movies. I'm also willing to buy Sinatra and Presley as the essential components of their respective creative teams. Were they creators? Definitely in terms of creating a performance, and building rapport with the audience, but the songs they sang came from another's head. Neither act has done anything wrong; all the song-writers were credited, but both will creatively play second fiddle to writer-performers, at least in my estimation. I assess bands today the same way.

 

Broadly, I can buy the idea that performers can be creators. Joe Cocker's cover of With A Little Help from My Friends is a cover of a Beatles song, but the difference in performance and arrangement is so pronounced that you could argue that something has been created. No-one is under any illusions that Joe Cocker wrote the song, and it's assessed in context - a great derived work rather than an entirely original creation. We're not banging his doors down asking for Sgt Peppers 2.

 

Are stand-ups who buy gags without attribution in the process of creation, or are they buying in competence? If it's the latter, it's a worry - because comedy by committee can lose the laughs all too quickly. The comics know they're doing wrong by not crediting, or squirreling away their help into vague categories like "program associate". I think at the very least, we can agree that the audience is being intentionally duped by the comic.

 

Authenticity is a big thing for a lot of people. Stewart Lee compares stand-ups who use unattributed writers to athletes that take performance-enhancing drugs. It's a provocative comparison, but it falls into the whole "pretending something you're not" category, like if I decided to wear heel lifts to be less of a shortarse.

 

I very much enjoyed your speculation on the future; can't say I agree with all of it, but equally, I'm really not sure how much technology has changed the landscape.

[swannymere]

Larry David, Peter Kay, Harry Hill.

 

Brand is a fat, white, female Lenny Henry. Unfunny to start with but then having the unbelievable talent to become even less funny. One trick pony beloved of TV because she's fat, ugly and bashes men.

 

Now you see i know Larry David, Peter Kay and Harry Hill are good at what they do but they don't appeal to me, it must be a taste thing. I like Stewart Lee, Stephen Hughes and Bill Cosby but i also like Jo Brand, Lenny Henry and Micky Flanagan.

[Halo Stickman]

Interesting discussion with good points made on all sides.

 

Whilst it’s obviously wrong for script writers to go unaccredited, sadly, this is something that occurs in all walks of life. People will be awarded gongs in the New Year’s Honours’ List largely because they are the public face of organisations with plenty of other people working hard and unaccredited in the background. The phrase: ‘OBE – Other Buggers’ Efforts’ springs to mind. However, having said this, script writers like Eddie Braben needed performers like M & W, Ken Dodd and Ronnie Corbett every bit as much as they needed people like him. But, at least Braben was credited for his efforts.

 

One of the main problems comedy script writers face is the fleeting nature of their genre. All art-forms suffer from the second telling/viewing/hearing syndrome, but none more so than comedy – no joke is as funny the second time round. And, whereas Shakespeare’s plays, Dickens’s books and Bacharach’s songs can be performed by various artists throughout the ages without losing their cachet, the same is rarely true for jokes or comedy sketches (although one of M & W’s most famous sketches – the Breakfast Sketch – was originally performed by Benny Hill). For this reason, creators (rather than just performers) of plays, books and songs have a better chance of being remembered than creators of comedy.

 

Another problem with accrediting comedy writers is the fact that most jokes are simply reworking of gags that originated from some random bloke down the pub, or even some random bloke on SWF.

 

Have you heard the one about …

[OldNick]

Now you see i know Larry David, Peter Kay and Harry Hill are good at what they do but they don't appeal to me, it must be a taste thing. I like Stewart Lee, Stephen Hughes and Bill Cosby but i also like Jo Brand, Lenny Henry and Micky Flanagan.

Lenny Henry! I thought this thread was about comedians. Im sorry but IMO his success is nothing to do with comedy

[colehillsaint]

Now you see i know Larry David, Peter Kay and Harry Hill are good at what they do but they don't appeal to me, it must be a taste thing. I like Stewart Lee, Stephen Hughes and Bill Cosby but i also like Jo Brand, Lenny Henry and Micky Flanagan.

 

Lenny Henry!!! Perhaps he's good live is he? I can never remember anything funny he's said. He's always seemed like a weird PC crossover between the old style 70's comics and alternative comedy circa early 80's.

 

Think I've seen a fair share of live comedy. Loved Harry Hill on radio 4 but live, (twice), just seems to intimidate laughter from an audience. Ditto Reggie Hunter. French and Saunders had amazing presence when I saw them. League of gentlemen was good. Loved Ben Elton. Also Jack Dee. I don't know if he comes up with it himself but Bill Bailey would be my favourite for originality. Al Murray I can take or leave. Punt and Dennis was painful. Won't be a popular opinion on here but you won't see more laughs from an audience than at a Tim Vine show.

[tpbury]

While we dance around the galley kitchen at work, making coffee, toast etc I often (used) to say 'this is just like that Morecambe and Wise sketch'. I gave up when nobody knew what I was talking about. But it still makes me laugh whenever I see it!

[CB Fry]

Lots of Dave Allen stuff on TV tonight.

 

He had writers, you know. One of them was everyone's favourite activist Mark Thomas. Fancy that.