Comedy 2009-10: All About Taste

It was all done in the worst possible taste, as the late, great Kenny Everett didn’t say: 2009 started with the fallout of the mother of a ruckus over a radio broadcast that probably three people actually heard when it went out, but more than 30,000 individuals felt they should complain about in the ensuing row. I refer, of course, to the Russell Brand-Jonathan Ross telephone-message jape concerning elderly actor Andrew Sachs. Ross returned to his BBC One chatshow and Radio 2 programme at the end of January 2009, and the ripples still run as we enter 2010. Much has been said or written on the subject, so I won’t add to the blather here - what is more interesting is the incident’s fallout.

Brand left the BBC (but he probably would have anyway) and he remains a stellar talent who, I think, just hasn’t found the right fit yet. I would love him to do more stand-up because he’s brilliant at it; Better Now, his show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2004, which dealt with his bad-boy behaviour and his recovery from heroin addiction, remains one of the best I have ever seen. I’m not sure television (or at least much of the stuff he has done so far) is always the right medium for him. Radio certainly isn’t.

Ross felt the real backlash - mostly, I suspect, because the majority view both within the industry and among licence-fee payers was that he was hideously overpaid at the BBC (he has now negotiated a pay cut). A three-month ban from our screens was, in anybody’s judgment, a humiliation for a genuinely talented broadcaster.

The real winner was Michael McIntyre, a Marmite comedian if ever there was one. Previously a jobbing stand-up with a small fanbase, he was catapulted to national TV fame as presenter of one of the programmes - Live at the Apollo - that filled the gaps in the schedule during Ross’s ban, and 2009 has been an astonishingly successful year for him. How very fortunate for McIntyre that he belongs to the same management company as Ross, which also produces Live... and Ross’s chatshow. But then being in the right place at the right time never did anybody's career any harm.

But the brouhaha set the tone for 2009, as one comic after another pushed the boundaries of good taste. The Edinburgh Fringe was full of rape jokes, stand-up Jimmy Carr had to apologise for a gag about disabled servicemen, and Frankie Boyle was reprimanded for his jibe about an Olympic swimmer’s looks on BBC Two’s Mock the Week. In response to the Boyle and other incidents that caused complaint in 2009, the BBC Trust will issue new editorial guidelines in early 2010.

Comics now moan they’re being suffocated by television and radio executives, to which my response is: if you’re clever enough, subtle enough and inventive enough, you can get away with murder in comedy. Radio comedies from the supposedly prim past, such as Round the Horne and The Navy Lark, were filth personified but so cleverly written that their sly sexual references didn’t register with the censors.

And there is nothing new about this row. The late, great Max Miller was regularly on the radio but eventually fell foul of the censors with one of his double-entendre-filled gags in the 1960s. My favourite joke of his is, I think, one of the cleverest gags ever, because it's dirty only if you have a dirty mind: “I was walking along this narrow mountain pass - so narrow that nobody else could pass you, when I saw a beautiful blonde walking towards me. A beautiful blonde with not a stitch on, yes, not a stitch on, lady. Cor blimey, I didn't know whether to toss myself off or block her passage.”

What comics really mean when they complain about censorship is that they are no longer allowed to be offensive in any broadcast medium - but why should they be? Some of them will just have to learn (and Carr is a good example of this) how to moderate his material between stand-up and broadcast. He may push the boundaries in his live act, but knows not to bite the hand that so generously feeds him on TV.

On to nicer things: one of 2009’s unexpected joys - and coming out of genuine loss - was the new version of I’m Sorry, I Haven’t a Clue on Radio 4. No one could replace chairman Humphrey Lyttelton (who died in April 2008), but new chairman Jack Dee has made his own mark on the show, and that’s as it should be. I'm Sorry... has been given a new lease of life, and long may it continue.

In 2010, there is much to look forward to. Peter Kay is doing his first live dates in seven years, opening with a staggering (and unprecedented) 20-night run at the MEN Arena in Manchester in April at the start of his national tour.

Other stand-ups theartsdesk.com will review are Sean Lock and Lee Mack, two solid comics of the old school who work hard on their material and are never less than good value, but who don’t get the media coverage they deserve; Richard Herring, who is touring Hitler Moustache, his 2009 Edinburgh Fringe show, one of the best of the year; and two rather cerebral comics, Chris Addison (Ollie in The Thick of It) and Dave Gorman, who do really original and inventive shows. And a real bonus to those who love intelligent comedy comes in the guise of Dara O Briain, back on the road for the first time in two years.

On television, Miranda Hart appears in a second series of her eponymous sitcom (BBC Two), while Stephen K Amos has his first sketch show for the same channel, which will be broadcast in the autumn. Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller have been commissioned for a third series of their consistently brilliant sketch show on BBC One (and, by the way, are also on tour in the autumn).

Watson and Oliver, the best female duo working today, start filming their first TV series (on BBC Three) in spring. Ingrid Watson and Lorna Oliver will be saddled with the label “the new French and Saunders” but their often daft and surreal sketch comedy is their own, and very, very funny. I have long been a fan of their work and I predict by the end of 2010 many, many others will be too.