You Look Stupid

If You Perform For Comedy Unleashed

If you don’t know what “Comedy Unleashed” is - it’s basically a comedy night in London, which started in apparent “opposition” to the “super-woke snowflake liberal” comedy scene. It prides itself on being an authentic “Free Speech Comedy Night” where you are safe to say the unsayable. Many have graced it’s stage at the BackYard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green over the past few years - usually using their allotted time to make fun of minorities, particularly transgender people, which as you know - is something absolutely unheard of at any other London comedy club.

One thing that Comedy Unleashed does do that is unusual for a “professional” comedy club though, is that it allows amateurs to perform at it. Any old-school, white male gatekeeping comic worth his weight on the club scene will tell you that if you want the chance to do the big rooms, you’re gonna have to start at the very bottom - eating metaphorical shit for at least 5 or so years, and then maybe if you’re just performatively edgy enough, you’ll be able to do an open 5 spot. But Comedy Unleashed has thrown that logic out of the window - allowing publicity hungry YouTubers like “Count Dankula” and even the living embodiment of smarmy cuntiness, Toby Young to do sets, which I would have guessed they didn’t write themselves - although they’re so bad it’s hard not to believe they might have. I guess a big part of the “Unleashed” philosophy is not only to promote absolute free speech, but to also nurture the very worst of it.

Today though, a poster was doing the rounds on Twitter - promoting “Comedy Unleashed On Tour” and a lot of people seemed surprised by some of the names who’ll be representing the club. There’s the soft and cuddly panel show man Reginald D Hunter, Canadian clown Tony Law, Mrs. Doubtfire’s Scott Capurro and many, many others who are apparently “quite nice people, actually!”. In fact, there are a fair few acts on the tour who I myself have gigged with over the years, who all (in my company, at least) managed somehow to seemingly say whatever the hell they wanted to, in front of audiences who didn’t seem to bat an eyelid - as did I. We didn’t need a special, designated comedy safe space then. But for some reason, they do now.

There are people on the tour poster who I have had off stage conversations with, and generally like as people, and think their comedy is mostly pretty good - which is why I wanted to write this. Hopefully, if you’re one of those people, and you’re reading this now - I just want you to know that you look really, really, really fucking stupid. Not “stupid” in a cool sort of, wacky “oh my gosh he’s making this all up as he goes along” Tony Law way - but stupid in a kind of “Leo Kearse trying his best to come across as smart on a GB News panel” sort of way.

I know some comedians have the philosophy that “a gigs a gig!”, but I hate to break it to you - not every “gig” is actually a “gig”. Sometimes, a “gig” is a manufactured piece of propaganda, started by a few truly hateful, and dejected young men who get a kick out of saying cruel things on stage, not for the purposes of comedy, but for a specifically curated audience of similarity hateful and dejected losers. And being associated with it, at the very least - isn’t a great look for you.

I’ve known acts who did Comedy Unleashed in its earlier days, and I think it’s fair to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they thought it was something it wasn’t? But a lot of those acts have subsequently attempted to shake off the association, and distance themselves from the club - to varying levels of success. But when you become the face of something like Comedy Unleashed, you give it authenticity and you become known for it.

Yes, you get the opportunity to say absolutely anything, no matter how racist, homophobic or sexist on stage. That’s free speech, I guess? But don’t think for a second that the rest of the stand up scene isn’t also using it’s right to free speech to call you a stupid, stupid, stupid idiot behind your back.

When you appear on a Comedy Unleashed lineup, you look like you’ve given up. You read only as someone who has had to turn to Unleashed because no other options are open to you. And it’s weird, because for a lot of these acts - that simply isn’t the truth. But it sure as hell looks like it, please believe me when I say that.

I’ve thought a lot about it over the past couple of years, and sometimes I wonder if the acts who do Comedy Unleashed genuinely don’t view the club in the same way I do? Is it possible, that their lives are so devoid of hardship, or at least any real awareness of the way normal people are feeling these days, that they truly cannot see it for what it is?

I think, even if that were the case - I still couldn’t perform along side Lewis Schaffer in good conscience.