Warming Up

Oh this is quite exciting. A week or so ago I was asked to be interviewed about the phrases “punching up” and “punching down” as applied to comedy. It's become quite a saying in the States recently, but the journalist involved was looking for where the whole thing started and the earliest written records of it being used in this way come from me and Paul Sinha in blog posts discussing one of the Frankie Boyle furores, from before he went all PC and stopped joking about disabled people and his enemies being sexually assaulted. Hey look, we've all joked about stuff that we wouldn't joke about now. And we've all been in trouble with someone for overstepping their own personal line.  Let he who is without sin clear the first stone.

This is the blog post in question. I don't think it's that contentious really and as with the similar furore that occurred with Ricky Gervais, I was really just discussing the fact that all comedians (including myself) need to think a little about the impact of their jokes and question whether their joke is good enough. And asking comedians to consider disablist language in the same way they would racist epithets.

I was and am a huge fan of Frankie and he used to like me too and (though he later claimed I was forced upon him) he got me booked on Never Mind the Buzzcocks and a pilot of his own show. He is no longer a fan of mine, I assume because of this blog post. He has blanked me when I've met him since and called me a cunt and if I remember rightly imagined me being assaulted in one of his books.  None of that makes me like him any less. I think he's ace. Comedians are a strange bunch though (including me) and many of us don't enjoy criticism.

Maybe I did something else to upset him. I don't know what's going on. I love him and don't care that he has been abusive towards me. But maybe I am weird in that way. Boyle is not the only comedian who is very critical of others but then gets angry if anyone dares question him. You know who I am talking about. Loads of comedians.

Anyway that's all by the by. Even though I was right about the laziness of many comedians' disability jokes (and most of them wouldn't do them in 2022, the cowards), what is interesting is that I was the first person (along with Paul Sinha) to use the phrase punching up (though I said upwards) when referring to comedy. Did I invent the phrase?

Somehow telepathically with Sinha?

Of course not. It was something that was doubtless being referred to in comedy green rooms - though as I say in the podcast I do have a vague memory of hearing it a lot more after I'd blogged about it and wondering if everyone had copied me. I don't think I invented it though (but I might have). But it's exciting to be the source. So let's say I invented it and then Paul Sinha read my blog and refined it. And this podcast about it all is very well put together and it's an interesting history of the swinging pendulum of comedy. The Noughties was a very different time to the Twenties and though in some ways we've tied ourselves in knots over this stuff, I think the Twenties is ultimately a better place for comedy, as much as I loved doing my own more offensive shows in my late 30s. 

The pendulum will swing back and forth. Do you ride the pendulum or wait for it to come back to where you are? 

Went for an evening stone clear and was hit by a flurry of polystyrene snow. Listen here.