Musical comedy, to put it mildly, isn't the most popular of genres. I know comedy lovers whose teeth fur over when a stand-up reaches for a guitar. And there will be plenty of sceptics arguing that, when the all-new Musical Comedy award is inaugurated at the Pleasance Theatre next month, the trophy ought to be a pair of gilded earplugs.
But I've always loved a comic song. Am I alone? Or are their other connoisseurs out there? Challengers for the 2009 Musical Comedy crown include Howard Read – whose old Bon Jovi gag ("Shot through the heart and you're to blame / You give archery a bad name") I have long cherished – alongside the double act Adams and Rea and the so-called "gentleman rhymer" – ie, posh twit does hip-hop – Mr B. They join a healthy current crop of comedy songsters that includes Tim Minchin, Bill Bailey and, of course, the great Flight of the Conchords.
The stick with which musical comedy is often whacked is that it's neither one thing nor the other – that pairing jokes with tunes is a smokescreen for weak material. That's often true. A rhyme and a melody alone can't turn base comedy metal into gold. But at its best, musical comedy is more than the sum of its parts. It's a good tune plus laughter. It's skilled musicianship plus hilarious things to say about the world. It's wordplay and parody and craft, all in one. The problem with some stand-up is how lazy it can seem; it's just someone talking. I like the evidence of hard work, the effort that's been made to entertain us, that I find in good musical comedy.
I'm counting the seconds until I next see Flight of the Conchords live. I can't forget the giddy euphoria of hearing their Hiphopopotamus Versus Rhymenoceros number for the first time, with its top-heavy lyrics toppling over its restlessly inventive acoustic-gangsta arrangement. I've heard dozens of jokes about kiddie-fiddling over the years, but was there ever a funnier line on the subject than Otis Lee Crenshaw's "show me on the doll where he touched you"? And would he have come up with it if he hadn't been writing a song?
Musical comedy's best practitioners aren't confined to the comedy world. I get the same rush from hearing Cole Porter ("You're romance, you're the steppes of Russia / You're the pants, on a Roxy usher") – or that sublime piece of nonsense Was I Wazir? (I Was!), from the ropey Arabian musical Kismet: "I confiscated his brother and then did something or other involving his dissolving in a vat ... " Their modern inheritor is Chris Larner, who wrote lovely, loopy ditties for the double act the Right Size back in the 90s, then graduated to his own shows: the Translucent Frogs of Quuup and so forth.
Don't get me started on music hall. I'm a sucker for George Formby singing A Little Stick of Blackpool Rock. Then there's Flanders & Swann ("I'm a gnu. The g-nicest work of g-nature in the zoo") and Terry Scott singing My Brother. Even pop music has its musical comedy adepts, though I'm not very familiar with the most often cited, Tom Lehrer. What's clear, though, is that this is a venerable artform in itself, thoroughly deserving of the attention focused on it by this new award. Hopefully, it'll silence the sceptics and drive a generation of wannabe Victoria Woods and Ivor Cutlers straight to their pianos and harmoniums. Stay tuned.
