Rob Gilroy: Making A Stand #5
I’ve been thinking a lot about comedy recently. That’s sort of what I do. I wouldn’t say it’s ‘my thing’, as I don’t really have a thing. I have things, but apparently that’s not the same. I’ve always tried to have a thing of my own, y’know, to be that guy with the hyphened named.
“Do you know Rob?”
“No.”
“Course you do. Rob. Snake-charming-Rob. Bilingual-Rob. Emotionally-unstable-Rob. You must know him. He’s the guy with the asp who speaks Latin and cries while queuing for stamps at the Post Office.”
“Oh, that Rob.”
The problem with being a guy with a thing is that you have to work damn hard to keep the thing going. Look at failed ‘Big Brother’ contestant ‘Nasty Nick’ – he only achieved his title by cheating in the show, he wasn’t baptised that way. But to keep that public perception going he has to, as a matter of routine; tip waiters badly, park in disabled bays and write spiteful feedback comments on eBay. Some days he must look himself in the mirror and think ‘yeah, but is it worth it?’ And do you know what, Nick? It probably isn’t worth it. Not anymore.
So that’s why I don’t have a thing. What I do have, however, is a passion for comedy; a passion that leads my brain to think about comedy on a 24/7 basis, with next to no time off for good behaviour. Now, this is absolutely fine by me, I’m used to it. Sometimes it can manifest itself by trying to work out what the most inappropriate thing to say is at any given moment – answer: funeral and “it’s a shame, he always loved a good roast.” Other times it’s trying to get the inflection just right on the word ‘abdomen’. And sometimes it’s trying to remember the name of the failed BBC One sitcom about a dysfunctional Irish family that ran for one series in 2000. (It’s The Fitz, if you were wondering.)
All this thinking can have dramatic results on your state of mind. Mine is shot to pieces, that’s not an official diagnosis but I bet that’s what Freud would have made of it. If he wasn’t busy flirting with my mum. His mum, damn! You win this round; you old perv. I constantly find that I tie myself up in knots (there’s that Freud again) trying to work out what I think about comedy. It seems that every day now there’s a new “definitive” fact about comedy. Whether it’s that the sitcom is dead (they’re not), or the sketch show is dead (also not true), or that women aren’t funny (bollocks); it seems that people are keen to tie down what it is that makes comedy tick. Especially in this “climate of offence” that some suggest we’re in, we’re constantly asked to assess our view on comedy. Ever since Manuel rang Russell Brand up, drunk out of his mind, and proceeded to make lewd comments over voicemail, people (and by people I mainly mean the media (and by media I mainly mean The Daily Mail)) have tried to clarify what is too far or beyond the pail. Well, let me tell you something; it doesn’t matter how pale or far away something is, it can always be funny.
I’m always keen to read the latest opinions on comedy, just to get an idea of what other people think, but often all I’d end up doing is forcing someone else’s view of comedy to match with what I believe. I always try to make sure I’m doing it the right way. And when ‘the right way’ that week is ‘The Wright Way’ then that’s a very difficult idea to process. The thing I have come to learn from all of this – and this is my definitive,100% concrete, gospel-truth opinion on the subject of comedy – is that there is nothing about comedy that you can be definitively, 100% certain about. Every rule ever stated about comedy applies to it at some point, and completely contradicts it the next, so to have a concrete perception of what it is and how best to do it is futile.
I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to finally understand this but I’m glad that I do. It’s good to know that there is no set rule; it’s simply a case of trusting your instincts. I always have trusted my instincts in comedy but just recently I’ve started to doubt myself and with every man and his dog (it’s a saying, there is no talking dog) passing opinions about comedy; it’s easy to get swept up in a wave of opinion. That is something I did but now that I’m out of it I’m much happier for it.
So actually, when you think about it, maybe comedy is my thing. Unless you’re my GP, in which case my thing is what I’m using the cream for.
