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Tonight in Shrewsbury I was on in the almost sold out smaller venue, whilst West Country legend Jethro played the sold out larger venue. He started thirty minutes before me and for some reason the audio from his show was pumped into my dressing room, so I got to listen to the first half hour of his show and to find out what I’d have to do to become exactly twice as popular as I am.
It’s basically to do some hoary old jokes, but to make them my own, by putting my own name into them and maybe try a regional accent. I tried out his gags at the start of each half of my show. The first half one was “I went to the doctors and she said “Jethro, you’ve got to stop masturbating” and I said “Why?” and she said, “I’m trying to examine you.” You might think that’s an old one, but Jethro had added the word Jethro and thus made it his own. The jokes were mainly pull back and reveal “then I got off the bus” jokes (one of them almost literally that, although Jethro stayed on the bus in the joke). Earlier today I had been thinking that the kind of deconstruction of bad comedy that many comedians think marks them out as clever (and I count myself very much in this group of smart arse comics) are actually pretty hack themselves: it’s a well trodden path and parodies something that I was thinking maybe doesn’t even really exist. Sure some bad comics might do some lazy “28 years old, I was” gags, but they don’t tend to do very well and the more successful observational comedians are a lot more subtle and cleverer than that. I had been thinking that we’d all be parodying something that didn’t really exist. But then I heard Jethro.
To be fair, he’s an old school comic and though racist and sexist elements certainly did enter the set, it was largely well-performed and charming and I felt pleased that this 68 year old man was still making a living, even if I wondered how artistically satisfying it is to go on stage and just tell old jokes (or like his support act, sing standard songs). They were both great at what they did, but shouldn’t we be striving for more? I am not sure. Maybe just selling tickets and reminding people of old jokes and songs is enough.
Jethro is definitely wittier than someone like Chubby Brown and toes the line of what is acceptable and what nearly isn’t very well. He made me laugh despite myself with a horrible joke about his friend’s wife doing the splits in the bathroom and finding herself stuck like a plunger to the floor. There was some graphic and unpleasant imagery, which still had invention in it given the route one nature of some of the other gags and the punchline surprised me (as Jethro goes to get a tool to pull up the floor, his friend stimulates his wife in the hope that he will be able to slide her across on to the cheaper tiles). I mean it doesn’t make sense. Does anybody’s bathroom have two types of tile on it that cost different money? But I just didn’t think the joke was going there.
In one joke Jethro had a tiny almost non-existent penis and the next it was like a chimney - of course consistency was not important, as long as there was a punchline that all that mattered.
I wondered if there was another smaller venue in the theatre where a younger comedian was being relayed my show thirty minutes before he started and then mocking my old-fashioned tropes to his hip young crowd.
Because ultimately Jethro is doing better than me and has been doing this for longer than me and it’s amazing that he’s still on the road and still getting the crowds in. So there is much to admire. Though part of my admiration is that his stuff isn’t as horrible as that of some of his contemporaries. Which is a bit of a negative positive.
I had a weird sense of dejavu about all this, and remembered that I had played in the next venue to Jethro before. But on checking the blog I find out I’d had nearly the same experience. Jethro had started 30 minutes before me and for some reason his show had been relayed into my dressing room and I’d listened in. I can’t remember that ever happening anywhere else, usually if you have a relay backstage it is of the theatre you are playing. It makes me wonder if Jethro insists on having his show broadcast into any opposing comedian’s backstage room before their show to intimidate them. Or just to give them a couple of gags.
Still in the last 13 years my tour average has gone up by about 100 or so people. So that's some progress for you. Jethro and me are both still going too. That is our separate victory.
