Do we need more stupidity in our lives? With the state of the world as it is, the obvious answer is that we most definitely do not. But what if we need more stupidity in our comedy? The actor and comedian Diane Morgan argued last week that there is a crisis of stupidity in on-screen comedy: “Mandy [her show about an idiotically unemployable woman] is stupid. I don’t think there’s enough stupid stuff. Most [comedies] have always got a bit of drama or a bit of romance … you can spend a lot of money on having something look nice, but it doesn’t make it any funnier. In fact, I think it sort of impinges on it.”
This is true. We need stupid, cheap, unpolished stuff. Also out this week is a new documentary celebrating the career of Steve Martin, one of the greatest standup comedians of the past century before he became known to a younger generation for Only Murders in the Building. Martin’s whole shtick as a comedian was in being as stupid as humanly possible. Arguably, this is the root of pure comedy: lack of self-awareness, the folly of existence, the inevitability of humiliation. We need to see more stupid people being stupid for the sheer joy of it. Not just because they are standing for public office.
Watching intensely stupid comedy makes you feel truly alive while also threatening to choke you to death because you are laughing so much. The two best live shows I’ve seen recently were exuberantly, unapologetically mindless. The Amazing Banana Brothers (starring Bill O’Neill and directed by Natalie Palamides) is about two brothers – played by the same man with and without a fake moustache – who are on a mission to slip on a world-record-breaking number of banana peels. Jody Kamali’s Ironing Board Man is about a man who falls in love with an ironing board, complete with re-enactments of Titanic and Dirty Dancing – only with ironing boards. You wouldn’t and couldn’t expect to see anything like this on television: it’s too funny.
Proper stupid laughs used, however, to be big currency on mainstream television as well. The comedy of Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French in both their joint and solo endeavours could be described as the comedy of joyous stupidity. This stuff crosses generations in terms of its appeal and stands the test of time. Currently doing brisk business on the Instagram algorithm are French and Saunders’ 1980s sketches of two daffy middle-class girls with floppy hair and rolling eyes behaving idiotically earnestly as they prepare for their weddings (when they do not yet have boyfriends), and pack dozens of suitcases with frenzied urgency to go on a holiday that has not been booked and never will be.
Pointless and silly comedy has been crowded out by algorithms and – in some ways – by its own innocence. There’s an irony to this: in some ways tomfoolery should be our saviour in divisive times because it’s non-partisan. But stupid comedy struggles to find its place in the hierarchy because (a) it’s not making a political statement signalling its own importance, and (b) it doesn’t generate the same volume of outrage clicks and shares that power so much of today’s “hate-follow” content.
Morgan’s own successful career (see also Philomena Cunk, After Life and the much loved but reportedly cancelled Motherland), is proof that someone, somewhere is putting beautiful stupidity at the heart of things. But she’s also right that there is increasing investment in glossier types of entertainment that deprioritise laughs. Reading between the lines, it seems she’s suggesting that it’s very hard to get shows that are “stupid” or experimental commissioned. After all, why underwrite the next French and Saunders when they’re creating their own content online without your help?
In some ways, we are living through a heyday for stupid comedy. But only as long as you want to consume your comedy in 30-second bursts on Instagram and TikTok – and only as long as there is a proliferation of performers who can continue to create this content for (mostly) no money. The problem is, there is plenty of creative stupidity around – especially on social media – from Ruairi McInerney’s intentionally terrible impressions of Trinny Woodall (“Hello, ladies!”) to Aurel Tattoo’s deranged 1980s disco dancing, but the people with the big bucks often don’t want to pay for it because it’s – perversely – seen as too risky. (Perverse because risk and stupidity are the whole point of comedy.)
The live circuit – where performers used to hone their stupid craft – is losing out to Netflix, Deliveroo and cheap supermarket alcohol. And the prerecorded comedy commissioned for our at-home entertainment is so expensive that it cannot afford to fail. Big names, big budgets and big ideas can get in the way of laughs. Morgan’s own work stands out because it is often self-consciously lo-fi and self-deprecating, or simply because it’s ludicrously deadpan. There are fewer outlets willing to take a punt on good old-fashioned silliness. And we really could with some silliness right now.
Viv Groskop is a comedian and author of Happy High Status: How to Be Effortlessly Confident
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