Tim Minchin’s been doing the publicity rounds recently, talking about the new comic book of his rationalist beat poem Storm. And in two separate articles, the angle taken on Minchin’s career was that he’s moving on from comedy. One was headlined The satirist who ran out of upwards to punch, and in the other, Minchin volunteered the opinion that “comedy is often a short career because you get to a point where you are no longer a small thing punching up at targets, you are the big thing, and it’s hard to write from that position.”
I find that a provocative point of view, which says a lot about Minchin and plenty about comedy too. Perhaps more than for any other artist, the onset of fame and acclaim is complicated for the comedian. Since the Greeks – for whom tragedy was the domain of the illustrious – comedy has traditionally been the preserve of the underdog. It’s an oppositional art form, best practised from the outside of the tent, pissing in – not the other way around.
Now Minchin is not only filling arenas with his live comedy but also scoring West End blockbusters and directing Hollywood movies too. And he doesn’t find that an easy or appropriate perspective from which to make standup comedy. I admire his candour and self-awareness, even if it’s deployed from a privileged position – not all successful comics can afford to burn bridges to the art form that made their name. But most of them wrestle with the dilemma Minchin describes, in their own ways.
A current Time Out interview finds Stewart Lee fretting along the same lines. Discussing the difficulty he had breaking in his 2012 live show Carpet Remnant World, Lee explains “I didn’t know who the character was. Was he the person who’d won Baftas and was hugely acclaimed? Or was he someone whose BBC2 series had been cancelled? Was I going to be arrogant? Or aggressively disenfranchised?”
Arrogance is one way to represent the experience of success in one’s comedy. Alternatively, you can pretend success hasn’t happened, that you’re still the put-upon nobody (cf Lee Evans.) An act like John Bishop will acknowledge fame and fortune has come their way, but insist on the continuity of their bloke-next-door, everyman persona. Other comics see the dangers coming, and run in the other direction – like Doug Stanhope or Jerry Sadowitz, who’ve flirted with success, then scared it off by the force of their misanthropy and bloody-mindedness.
The bigger comedy gets, the more millions its proponents can now make, the more acute this question becomes. Can you be “the big thing” and retain what made you funny in the first place? It’s certainly hard if, like Minchin (and unlike, say, Michael McIntyre) you see comedy as being about “punching upwards”. A comfortable life, the mainstream’s embrace – these can definitely blunt a comedian’s sharper edges.
But it’s not impossible. I’m reminded of Russell Brand having to defend himself against the accusation that he’s a millionaire dilettante, whose anti-capitalism is undermined by his wealth. As Brand would surely argue, there’s more to all of us than where we sit on the spectrum of status and success. Wealth and acclaim don’t stop you being a human being, with opinions about how the world is and could be.
To the comic with a dissenting sensibility (the best ones, in other words), success and celebrity pose a challenge. But they’re an opportunity too, to explore a new experience of life that might even fuel the satirical imagination. I hope reports of Minchin’s retirement are exaggerated. If he’s running out of upwards to punch, there’s still sideways, which alone should supply targets enough for a long and happy career in guttersnipe comedy.
