Is there an affinity between comedy and medicine? Certainly, a notable number of comedians used to work in the medical profession. One of them, Adam Kay of Amateur Transplants fame, has now signed a publishing deal for the book of his show about life as a junior doctor. Kay has spent most of his comedy career avoiding the subject of doctoring. Now he’s addressed it, he’s enjoying his biggest success since the viral London Underground Song that made his name.
On one level, it’s easy to explain why doctors, surgeons et al might make good comedians. As – to cite one recent example – Scott Gibson’s award-winning show demonstrated, life in the hospital ward is rich with comic potential precisely because it’s so deadly serious. Here is human life in extremis, all privacy and delusions of nobility stripped away (and that’s just the doctors – boom boom!). That’s what comedy often does too – it reminds us that we’re animals and punctures our pretensions to decorum or lofty self-esteem.
Doctoring is also about death, or the looming prospect thereof – and laughter (if only of the “if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry” variety) is never far away when humans peer into the abyss. I haven’t yet seen Kay’s show, which launched at last year’s Edinburgh fringe, but it apparently trades in squeamish stories of patients with compromising conditions, as well as ludicrously overworked medics with our lives in their wearied hands. By doing so, it treads in the footsteps of Dr Phil Hammond, say, or Toby Williams’s alter ego George Ryegold.
But comedy specifically about medicine – and you could include under that banner a raft of sitcoms, from Only When I Laugh to Green Wing and beyond – is only part of the story. The most famous doctor-turned-joker is Harry Hill, whose act has never had anything to do with medicine. There’s such a thing, Hill once remarked, as “a doctor’s gallows humour. [And] my humour is the opposite of all that – a reaction to it.” Perhaps the same could be said of The Goodies’ Graeme Garden, or the Pythons’ Graham Chapman, or ex-junior doctor Simon Brodkin – who briefly performed (in black-face) as “bungling medic” Dr Omprakash before settling into life as the not-remotely-medical faux-geezer Lee Nelson. It seems that medical practice is a good training ground even for comics uninterested in medicine as a laughing matter.
Who knows why? Maybe there’s an overlap between the types of people attracted to working in medicine and comedy; an ability to see people through an anthropological lens, perhaps. Maybe working, however briefly, in medicine makes such a mockery of propriety that Harry Hill-alike lunacy is the only appropriate response. But probably the same could be said of any sober-minded career. There are comedians who are ex-teachers – Greg Davies is prominent among them – and social workers, of whom Jo Brand is the most famous. If you’re in a job where significant things are at stake, and you’re obliged to be serious about that, and so there’s minimal outlet for your clownish spirit – well, small wonder if comedy starts to seem an appealing escape route.
I look forward to seeing Kay’s show when it comes to Soho theatre later this spring – not least because it reportedly has a political, pro-NHS agenda aside from the punning songs and gags about objects up patients’ bums. And beyond that, let’s hope the medical world keeps up its production line of comedians. The alternative – coming round from anaesthetic to see big-collared Harry Hill looming over you with a scalpel in his hand (“What are the chances?!”) – is too terrifying to contemplate.
Three to see
James Acaster
As if it wasn’t enough to have created one of the most consistent runs ever of terrific, idiosyncratic standup shows, beady Kettering man Acaster now tours three of them simultaneously. His so-called Trelogy tour stops for three nights in each town, where he performs Recognise, Represent and Reset (all three Edinburgh comedy award-nominated) consecutively.
• Old Market, Hove, 8-10 February. Box office: 01273 201801. Then touring.
Leicester comedy festival
The UK’s second biggest comedy festival kicks off with another cracking roster of comedy events, including shows from Jimmy Carr, Johnny Vegas, Ken Dodd and Sue Perkins, a documentary about the Edinburgh panel prize-winning event Iraq Out and Loud, and the final of the UK Pun Championships.
• Starts 8 February.
Whoopi Goldberg
For the first time, and for just one weekend, the comedian and movie star brings her standup show to the UK. No advance news on what that show will consist of, but judging by recent headlines she’s made Stateside, President Trump might just feature.
• Palladium, London, 11 February. Box office: 0844 412 4655.
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