Don’t bully me I’ll comedy
In March 2023 I reached a boiling point over the growing anti-trans rhetoric splashed across UK media, so I started making online comedy.
I noticed this growing obsession with trans women in bathrooms. And it was attempting to take centre stage as rational debate.
I can only assume the ‘trans debate’ is a convenient distraction from more pressing issues.
Guaranteed, every time Rishi Sunak says ‘100% of women don’t have p*nises’, he’s actually saying ‘The UK government just granted 100 new licenses for North Sea oil & gas exploration’.
It’s a really neat way of admitting you don’t care about LGBTQ+ people or the environment. Nice one guys!
Laughing in the face of danger
So in March I knocked together my first online comedy sketch ‘Are you peeing next to a trans woman?’
I didn’t really give it much effort, it really was chucked together.
I stole the script from a picture I’d captioned the day before, filmed a couple of little bits in the bathroom of one of my favourite cafes in Norwich edited it with a pretty basic app and whacked it online.
It immediately sparked, completely unexpectedly, racked up hundreds of thousands of views and sent me into a two weeks of insomnia, heart palpitations and excited anxious waves of nausea.
I’d been performing standup and musical comedy since 2011, and aside from one pretty embarrassing teenage dirtbag parody which went viral in my hometown, I’d never really had any of my comedy take off before.
But here we are about 7 months later, and now there’s fucking loads of you. It’s mostly wonderful but also kind of terrifying and weird.
Why are you so stupid
For the last decade, a little bit of me has always hoped my work might get suddenly noticed. But a larger part of me never believed it would.
I just joke around in the face of conflict because it comes naturally, and I don’t feel that talented at constructing a decent argument.
For me, comedy is a convenient shield because I can point at the issue, do a bit, and it addresses the problem in a way I can’t hope to achieve with a well researched, logically and ideologically watertight essay. I’m also not very good at committing to succinct hot takes, so I avoid them.
I am, however, ok at gurning, doing stupid voices, and childishly mimicking the opposition. Pretty much like the house of commons. AMIRITE!? SATIRE PEOPLE!
I never meant this to happen
One thing that shocks me about queer comedy, is how many people it helps.
It was never my intention to help people through joking around, but it kinda happened by accident.
I just started making sketches, because I felt powerless in the face of transphobia, alt-right populism, the Brosphere, racism, the LGBA, and a rapid return to the anti-gay smear campaign of the 1980s which has evolved into anti-trans scapegoating.
To be honest, the UK government continues to shock me with how low it’s willing to go to save it’s own arse.
But, every day I’ll get a message from someone who finds comedy healing in some way.
In June, I was recovering in a hospital bed doing a Matt Glove van man bit ‘I think they got the tooth out’. People tell me it’s helped them lose their fear of FFS surgery.
Or consider van man’s existential crisis over whether he’s a ‘bloke wot likes being girly’, or a trans girl in denial. It’s helped people understand their own gender, and even unpick some learned hyper-masculine behaviour they use to hide their closeted transness.
None of it was planned, but each character authentically shares a truth, dressed up in jokey clothing.
How about the gate-keeping receptionist? Trans or otherwise, we’ve all met someone who made us feel like an inconvenience at the doctor’s. But especially if you’re genderqueer.
What about Mx Genderbend, the ultra liberal professor? They’re a manifestation of every paranoid conservative parent’s worst nightmares about queer education.
For how outrageous some of the characters are, there’s a bit of truth in every one.
Degenerates
It’s a favourite word of the alt-right.
Queer people are degenerates, we’re contributing to the downfall of an otherwise pure and righteous society.
When we celebrate queerness, we’re corrupting society. When we marry each other, we’re cheapening the institution of marriage.
That’s why I named my new comedy night Degenerates. Because hey, it’s our word now!
I started Degenerates because Norwich is in desperate need of a queer led comedy night. I cut my teeth in predominantly straight comedy clubs, open mic nights, pubs, student nights. And I could count on one hand the number of openly queer comedians who I crossed in over 10 years.
What I’m doing is nothing new though. The 1980s saw the rise of alternative punk comedy in London. Oh the 1980s? The timing is no coincidence. The London Alternative comedy scene actually formed in protest and rebellion against offensive comedy. They thought it was actually way more radical to create laughter that wasn’t at a minority group’s expense.
Working men’s clubs in the 1980s were rife with sexism, racism, and hack jokes where minorities were the punchline time and time again. In the 2020s, trans people are the punchline for comedians like Dave Chappelle, Ricky Gervais and jokers like Rishi Sunak (for non UK readers, he’s our unelected prime minister).
Wealthy, powerful men joking about queer people. They’re not being rebellious, or sticking up for the principles of free speech, or railing against the established order. They are the established order.
In a small way, that’s what I’m hoping to address with my first Degenerates comedy show on 15th November
I’ve pulled together 8 talented queer artists from the worlds of avant-garde, drag, music, standup, and cabaret. Let’s make the 2020s alternative queer comedy scene of Norwich go down in history.
It’s a time for protest, rebellion, laughter and healing.
Meet the Lineup
