The Return Of Ben Elton: Comedian

[TheMonk]

Good on him. Can't be easy, he'll know the knives will be out.
Still think his old stuff had some wonderful writing amongst it.
Truly curious to hear what he thinks of the mess the world's in.
https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/arts/ben-elton-stand-up-uk-tour-2019-shows-a4010011.html

[biggytitbo]

"Nick Curtis"

[Captain Crunch]

He was class back in the - bugger me, 1990?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0bUbki0dgY

[Bronzy]

Ben Elton: Cuntbag

[Autopsy Turvey]

Didn't he have a stand-up special on Dave a few years ago? I remember being pleasantly surprised, there was some good stuff about what a shit name Dave is for a TV channel, which I've never heard anyone else say on Dave.

[TheMonk]

Ben Elton: Cuntbag

Is this the name of the tour?

[Tony Tony Tony]

Date from Elton tour -9 October 2019 — Scunthorpe: Baths

I knew Typhoo put the 'T' in Britain and know we know who put the 'cunt' in Scunthorpe (and when).

[Bronzy]

Is this the name of the tour?

It's one of the poster quotes

[Bennett Brauer]

Hope to get a double seat for this.

[thraxx]

Hope to get a double seat for this.

Surely you're not that obese?

[Glebe]

[tag]There is A MOUNTAIN of beer cans in the front room... there's pubic hairs on the butter, y'parents are coming home, Thatch is in power... ladies and gentl'men, please![/TAG]

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Imagining the 2019 Ben Elton: "...If Brexit happened any slower, it'd go into reverse....So many immigrants, now, that job ads say 'poor English skills essential'....If Jezza Corbs gets in, taxes'd go through the roof-or where the roof was, before Muslim bombers'd blown it off.  Wo! Bitta politics there,,,,!"

[Oliver Mardy]

I had an LP of his standup which I played a lot in 1992. Very funny, I thought, if a bit Rik-style shouty and right-on.

But then he did a joke - probably on The Man From Auntie - which was spectacularly, ball-kickingly bad. It went (approximately, but pretty closely): "When I was growing up we thought a canape was a can of peas with only one pea left in it".

The way he spells out the connections at every step. The fact that those connections are clearly the process of deliberate thought, and not instinctive. But most of all is The Clunk. It is so clumsy, so contrived, that the joke was stillborn; it had no chance at all of emerging with any sense of natural rhythm, or even an approximation of language that a human being might use. It's like Elton had a big 1950s computer called 'The Jokebot 2000' in a room, and he pressed some buttons and pulled some levers, causing the Jokebot to spit out a piece of paper with this printed on it.

I hope it's the Ben Elton from that LP who returns to standup, and not the other cunt.

[TheMonk]

But then he did a joke - probably on The Man From Auntie - which was spectacularly, ball-kickingly bad. It went (approximately, but pretty closely): "When I was growing up we thought a canape was a can of peas with only one pea left in it".

It made me smile.

[Oliver Mardy]

It made me smile.

It's the way he used "pea" (or what I guess you could call its homphone within the joke: "pe") three times. Gargh. Properly shudders my shoulders it does.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

But then he did a joke - probably on The Man From Auntie - which was spectacularly, ball-kickingly bad. It went (approximately, but pretty closely): "When I was growing up we thought a canape was a can of peas with only one pea left in it".

Then there was a joke he did in the early 1990s, involving the Tax Exempt Special Savings Accounts the Tories had established-TESSAs, for short.  He alluded to these then referred to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as a 'silly tessa'-tessa/tosser, geddit?  Similarly laboured and lacking in wit.