Prepare to be amused

AJP TAYLOR famously said: "History gets thicker as you approach recent times." So does comedy. When, as part of the London Comedy Festival, London Underground, South West Trains, Connex, Thameslink, Thames Trains and Anglia Trains offered to donate pounds 100,000 worth of advertising space in their carriages to a selection of modern jokes, they promptly received a deluge of witticisms from the festival organisers.

Commuters will note that the series - which goes under the banner Mind The Gag - contains no jokes about late-running trains. A busking joke has crept in, but it's clear that it's not one of those problematic Underground buskers. Policeman: "Excuse me, sir, but do you have permission to play the violin in the street?" Busker: "Well, actually no." Policeman: "In that case I must ask you to accompany me." The busker then delivers the punch line, which you may attempt the small - very small - challenge of guessing.

And there are no really mucky jokes. The list did include a gag by the lugubrious London comedian John Moloney about how he had an affair with a posh bird "and caught a dose of lobsters". That was rejected, but, by way of compensation, another gag on the seafood/ sex interface has made it on to the carriage walls, courtesy of Billy Connolly: "Have you heard the one about the oyster who went to the disco and pulled a mussel?"

In the face of their public-spiritedness in allowing Mind The Gag to go ahead, it's impossible to begrudge the railway executives their small acts of censorship. Why should they lay themselves open to the possibility of letters of complaint? But then again, I Have A Gentil Cock - an incredibly disgusting 15th-century poem appeared on Tube trains in 1990 as part of the Poems On The Underground series, and not a single eyebrow was raised.

Poems On The Underground has gone down well with the travelling public, and London Underground is sure that the Mind The Gag posters will do likewise. But can they pass the severest possible test: raising a smile from rush-hour commuters?

We all know that delicious feeling when you can't stop a smile in a crowded railway carriage. The last time it happened to me, I was returning from interviewing the brilliant American comedian, Steven Wright, and thinking about one of his lines: "I bought a decaffeinated coffee table."

That's not on the approved list, but another of his bon mots has made it: "I was hitchhiking the other day and a hearse stopped. I said, 'No thanks, I'm not going that far.'" The London Comedy Festival runs 18-26 May.

Information: 08700 119611 www.londoncomedyfestival.com EDITORS' and producers' constant need for a "light touch" or the dreaded "sideways look" have given comedians a passport into all areas of the media.

Dominic Holland, who will be reading excerpts from his recently completed first novel as part of the Libraries for Laughs strand of the festival, believes his publishers were initially wary of him for this reason. As a well-known stand-up comedian he was likely to promote resentment from literary types.

This, he thinks, would be unfair.

As comedians we're prepared to suffer the brutality of the circuit, so Laughing in the library maybe we're entitled to a few breaks." It would also be unfair because Only In America is a good read, with a clever plot.

It tells the story of a Hollywood executive's search for the author of a script that has accidentally landed on his desk (which reflects Holland's own attempts to place a film script in the mid- Nineties).

The narrative is laced with musing on the minor perplexities of life Holland, after all, is a raconteur who can talk for hours about how you can tell when to stop peeling an onion.

Stratford Library, E15 at 7.30pm on 20 May.

Admission free. Tickets: 020 8430 6890

THERE'S a flavour of a medieval joust to the talent competition that, for the second year running, is a component of the London Comedy Festival. The heats of the Wilkinson Sword Allstars will be staged among milling crowds in Hackney Town Hall square, in the nearby Ship Inn and at the Bullion Theatre Room in the Hackney Empire this Sunday. The finals, compered by Steve Frost, are in the Bullion Room in the evening.

"Performers must prove they can be funny in a variety of venues," says one of the organisers, who admits there will be a sadistic element to watching the hundred or so unknowns fight for fame. "It's almost as much fun watching a bad comedian as a good one," he muses.

The winner of the Allstars, though, will be on the fastest known track to comedy fame: one week later on 26 May, he or she will appear at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane for the festival's highlight, the Breakthrough to Laughter show, sharing the bill with Jo Brand, Bill Bailey, Jenny Eclair and Al Murray among others. Last year's

If you're funny, then prove it winner, Shazia Mirza, now has to endure being stopped by strangers in Tesco, and has endured the dubious accolade of being punched by an unamused punter while walking in Brick Lane for her jokes about 11 September.

As one of the world's few Moslem female comedians, she did not drink champagne after winning the Allstars. "But I knew it was the start of something big." This year's winner will need to be every bit as confident.

To compete in the Allstars, call 08700 119611 for an application form.

Tickets for the final from Hackney Empire on 020 8985 2424. Tickets for Breakthrough to Laughter: 020 7494 5092.

Copyright 2002
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