"It's OK, you can laugh at it," says Josh Howie to his audience. And later: "People feel afraid to laugh." Hmm. Howie and I differ on why many of his jokes are met with silence. He thinks it is because he is teasing at taboos of which we, the repressed public, are afraid. I think it is because some of the jokes are awful and some of his delivery is too. But he has a great story to tell: Howie is the son of famed PR Lynne Franks, and thus the real-life version of Absolutely Fabulous's Saffy.
The show recounts Howie's bid for independence from "my overpowering mother". He discusses his confused Judaism, his experiments (at mum's behest) with Buddhism and native American religion, and an occasion during which he rebirthed in a hot tub with mum naked by his side. Small wonder he has the neurotic demeanour of Woody Allen and a propensity for petty acts of subversion. These include some unpleasant quips about the Jewish capacity for moral blackmail ("I think I took it too far when I asked if I could come on her tits for Auschwitz") and a refusal to fulfill his mum's dream that he be gay. But he did let her gay friends "help me with my homo work".
Yes, the jokes can be that bad. But they can also be very good. There is an eloquent line about a gentile woman he fancied being "basically a human-shaped piece of bacon", and a neat reversal of Chris Rock's famous "black people versus niggers" routine. But the latter is undercut by Howie's fluffed timing, and the eager-for-approval expression that often accompanies his punchlines. The approval will come when he learns to stop pleading for it.
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