{"id":203,"date":"2010-06-04T13:03:22","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T13:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/?p=203"},"modified":"2010-06-04T13:03:22","modified_gmt":"2010-06-04T13:03:22","slug":"laughing-at-lembit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/2010\/06\/04\/laughing-at-lembit\/","title":{"rendered":"Laughing at Lembit"},"content":{"rendered":"

So who’d have guessed that an ex Lib Dem MP who writes a column for the Daily Sport<\/em> and once dated a Cheeky Girl would decide to become a comedian?<\/p>\n

Having lost his seat in the recent general election, Lembit Opik, the former Member for Montgomeryshire, made his stand-up debut earlier this week at London’s Backstage Comedy Club. According to reports, his performance was underwhelming, which is perhaps unsurprising. It’s rare for a first open spot to hit the comedy stratosphere, and it’s mildly unfair to have to lose your comic virginity in the glare of the media spotlight. On the other hand, only someone with a pre-existing media rep could secure an open spot at such an established club at such short notice if they had no previous experience \u2013 so it swings both ways.<\/p>\n

Lembit’s not the first to try and carve a career as a comedian having acquired fame \u2013 or infamy \u2013 through some other reason. In the early 1990s,\u00a0for example, John Wayne Bobbit famously had the end of his penis cut off by his wife, and was well known enough to secure a few bookings as a stand-up (as well as pursuing an equally unlikely\u00a0career in porn).<\/p>\n

But the tradition is much older than that. In the late 19th century, Arthur Orton became infamous as ‘the Tichbourne Claimant’, after he had fraudulently claimed to be the long lost heir to a fortune \u2013 in spite of bearing no real physical resemblance to the actual heir, Sir Roger Tichbourne, who had been lost a sea some years earlier. Having been released on bail, Orton started making personal appearances in music halls, apparently without much success. In spite of that, he was so well known that he indirectly provided one of the great music hall comedians with his stage name. Kent\u2019s own Harry Relph was only 4\u20196\u201d tall, and early in his career he thought it would be funny to name himself after the physically huge Arthur Orton. He started calling himself Little Tich, and became internationally famous. So much so, that he gave the world the word \u2018titch\u2019, meaning a small person \u2013 ironic given Orton\u2019s legendary girth.<\/p>\n

So if Lembit sticks with the stand-up, how far is he likely to get? In his favour, he\u2019s always come across rather well on Have I Got News For You<\/em>, with a nice line in self-deprecating gags. He\u2019s an eccentric, which is normally a good quality for a comedian. Also, political oratory has much in common with stand-up. In both, a single performer directly addresses an audience in the first person (without the mask of character), potentially has to deal with heckles, and seeks to provoke a particular effect. As Max Atkinson pointed out in his magnificent book Our Masters\u2019 Voices<\/em>, political speeches have little devices (known as \u2018claptraps\u2019) built in to elicit applause, the most obvious being a three-part list. Think \u00a0\u2018I came, I saw, I conquered\u2019 or \u2018Education, education, education\u2019.\u00a0 Many jokes work on a similar principle, being structured into a list of three, which Tony Allen has defined as \u2018Establish, reinforce, surprise\u2019. Here, the third item of the list cues laughter instead of applause \u2013 if you do it right.<\/p>\n

Successful comedians project an aspect of their personality when they perform, and it\u2019s the interrelationship of stage persona, audience and material which makes the act work. It can take years to create a stage persona \u2013 or to \u2018find your voice\u2019 as most comedians would put it \u2013 but Lembit\u2019s got a readymade persona. He\u2019s the nutty, Cheeky-Girl-dating ex-MP with the crazy name.<\/p>\n

On the tiny snippet of his act that I heard on the Today<\/em> programme, he didn\u2019t sound nearly as assured as he does on Newsnight <\/em>or Have I Got News For You.<\/em> He lacked the quality of ease \u2013 or \u2018stage repose\u2019, to use the old-fashioned term \u2013 which is so charming to watch. What this reveals is how bloody difficult stand-up comedy is. It all looks natural and spontaneous, but there\u2019s a huge amount of skill, artifice and experience that goes into making it look so effortless.<\/p>\n

Still, if Lembit sticks with it, he could get to the point where he comes across as his usual affable self whilst in the high pressure situation of a comedy gig. The problem is, what\u2019s he going to talk about when people have got fed up of hearing about being a Lib Dem MP and dating a Cheeky Girl? Do we really want to hear Lembit Opik\u2019s opinion on cats and dogs or the differences between men and women? Perhaps more importantly, will audiences ever let him talk about anything other than being a Lib Dem MP and dating a Cheeky Girl? I can\u2019t imagine audiences would have wanted to hear John Wayne Bobbit talk about anything other than having the tip of his manhood severed by his wife and thrown out of the window of her car (although the are questions they could have asked him, like, \u2018Did you really abuse your wife to the point where she would do something like that?\u2019).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a comedy album by Robin Williams, released in the late 1970s, in which somebody heckles him: \u2018Do Mork!\u2019 The rest of the audience join in, and he\u2019s left saying something along the lines of, \u2018No, I don\u2019t want to do that here\u2019 in a horribly plaintive voice. The fame built by\u00a0starring in\u00a0Mork and Mindy<\/em> must have boosted his stand-up career, but the price he paid was to have idiots shouting that at him.<\/p>\n

To his credit, Lembit went beyond the funny name\/ ex-MP\/ Cheeky Girl dating angles in his first gig. He also did a cod ventriloquism act with someone\u2019s shoe. Maybe that\u2019s the stuff to build a comedy career on and maybe not, but there can\u2019t be too many ex-politicians who have made it to the top as a stand-up.<\/p>\n

I certainly can\u2019t imagine him touring thousand-seater venues, putting out a best-selling DVD every Christmas, or even appearing on Live at the Apollo<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So who’d have guessed that an ex Lib Dem MP who writes a column for the Daily Sport and once dated a Cheeky Girl would decide to become a comedian? Having lost his seat in the recent general election, Lembit Opik, the former Member for Montgomeryshire, made his stand-up debut earlier this week at London’s … Continue reading “Laughing at Lembit”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":263,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1187],"tags":[1244,1245,1243,1246,695],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}