INTERESTING words from Ade Edmondson last weekend, on the subject of comedy.
"When people say 'comedian', I think 'stand-up', and I find stand-up immensely dull," he said in an interview. "I don't know why people bother going to watch it. You can have wittier conversation around a dinner table."
Twenty minutes of a show was all right, he added, "but then I wish they'd bring on the spoon-bender or the dancers ... Going and seeing a comic for an hour, then going for a drink, then ... watching him for another hour? You think: -----, will this never end? ... An hour's enough."
It has been years since I last went to a comedy show. The last one was Billy Connolly, and I hate to think how long ago that was. Since then, I have seen only a couple of Fringe stand-up comedians. They were not up to much, to be honest (and they seem in retrospect to bear out Ade's admonition) but I nevertheless admired their self-confidence.
And then, two nights ago, I went to see Connolly again, at the Armadillo.
He was on for two hours, this septuagenarian with long flowing white hair (as someone described him recently). Two hours, and rarely, if ever, did it stray near Dullsville.
His act ebbed and flowed; he made light of his illnesses ("you're only doing that because I'm not well", he said in response to our opening applause) and, more than once, he made a joke about consulting his notes before embarking on his next routine.
There were several of those joyous, freewheeling moments when he allowed himself to be sidetracked from the subject at hand, like a dog suddenly going off in pursuit of a rabbit. Finally - "Where was I? Oh yeah..." - he returns, and picks it up again.
Connolly really got into his stride in the second hour: his soaring stories about flying in a tiny plane across Mozambique, about the side-effects of certain slimming treatments, and about a practical joke once played on a stranger on a train, were all vintage Connolly.
All around me, people's shoulders were shaking, and tears were being wiped from eyes. One woman in front of me was laughing so hard I began to worry for her.
And at that moment I appreciated, for the first time in years, the true comedian's gift: of being able to have a crowd of people, whether 2,000 or 12,000 strong, helpless with laughter, unable to control their reactions.
The Big Yin still has it.
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