‘Dead’ Funny!
The Life and Death of a Funeral Comedian
and advice for anyone thinking of going into the same line of work because it can be difficult
by John Mort (funeral comedian)
Contents:
Introduction
Chapter One What’s So Funny About Death Anyway?
Chapter Two My Life Story
Chapter Three Advice For Any Aspiring Funeral Comedians Out There
Chapter Four Some Pretty Funny Anecdotes From On/Off The Job
Chapter Six Final Thoughts
Introduction
“Humour is the lowest form of wit.” – John Mort
‘Funeral’ and ‘comedian’ aren’t two words you normally hear together but as a funeral comedian I hear them together every day. Mostly it’s people asking questions like, ‘what’s a funeral comedian?’ or ‘you’re a funeral comedian? Really? That sounds like a terrible job. What, do you tell jokes about funerals or are you telling jokes at a funeral? Because both sound pretty shit. How is that really what you do? Who would even pay for that? The hell kind of a waste of time is that?’ that sort of thing. Well, I wanted to answer a few of these questions and share my unique perspective on the world in a humorous non-fiction (but semi-fictionalised for legal reasons!) memoir-slash-(auto)biography CHOCKED full of wheezers, rib-ticklers, set ups AND punchlines that’ll keep you chortling until you eventually pop your very own clogs!
Now, I don’t read. In fact, I hate reading unlike you (clearly. Nerd.). But I consider it part of my job to read comedians’ memoirs and comedy books as research. So, I’ve read pretty much exclusively that kind of book. You know the ones. Normally it comes from a comedian who’s just broken big and their agents need some other way to monetise this cash cow so they get the poor young lad who got into this line of work specifically because they’re not into books to bang out a rambling stream of consciousness thrown together in a couple weeks. You vaguely chortled at one of their jokes once so you get given a big hardback copy for Christmas with the discount sticker barely ripped off. The cover has them pulling a silly face so you know it’s going to be a laugh and the title’s something that plays off something they’re known for in case you didn’t recognise their face. You start to read it and it’s easy enough (short sentences, simple words) but you start to wonder if reading anecdotes about some stranger’s grandma’s knickers is really how you want to spend your brief time on this earth and so inevitably it’ll end up sun-tanning in a charity shop window. What a life.
Well, this is not one of those books. Firstly, I haven’t made it big yet and I don’t have an agent yet and I don’t think anyone’s chomping at the bit to read my memoir yet but that’s exactly why this is the superior product because it’s not cynical. I’m not in it for the money. I’ve written this book because I genuinely have a story to tell. I have things to say and write and I’m going to say them (and write them). Honestly, I don’t know why they do it the way round they do: get famous, publish a book. Really you should publish a book first. A manifesto. A stake in the ground. This is who I am like it or lump it. Then the book’ll be successful and you can sell it at gigs. That’s my plan at least.
So, I’ve done the research. I’ve read enough of those ‘funny’ books to know what to do and what not to do. Firstly, I’m not going to start like they all do talking about the book they’ve written and how they started writing it and how hard it was blah, blah, blah. I’ve been to enough funerals to know that half of the eulogies start with, “When Tim asked me to speak a few words I was absolutely bowled over and I didn’t know what to say.” It’s the lamest opening ever. Go in strong. Go in bold. Don’t explain yourself, just do. So, I’m not going to go all meta and talk about the book you hold in your hands as if I could possibly be talking about it because I’m writing it at this moment so it doesn’t exist yet. It’s just a tactic to make you feel guilty and read more. Ohhh, it was so hard for me, big rich famous comedian to write a book. Well, it wasn’t hard, was it? It was easy. You just had to press a few buttons on your solid gold laptop to send an email to a ghost writer. Oh, boo hoo. Well, I’m not a solid gold person, I’m made of the salt of the earth like you, dear, salty reader. And this took actual work. In fact, it’s the cumulation of three years of work, about a decade of mulling, planning and just general pondering and a lifetime of hard-won experience and expertise as a funeral comedian. I’m not going to say it was easy because it wasn’t. I won’t sugar coat it, writing this book was about as pleasant as shaving my crotch with a lawn mower. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t funny. It was hard work and I wish I’d never started. So, as you’re reading this just know I put more work into this than your tiny mind can possibly comprehend and if you’re not going to read it then you’re just pathetic. You hold in your hands (read ‘ears’ for the audiobook version) an object that I have poured my blood, sweat, tears and all my other bodily fluids into so the least you can do is read it. How long’s it going to take you? A week or two if you’re really paying attention and prioritise it like you should. Then add on a couple days cumulative for note taking. Maybe a couple more to sleep and pee break and such. Yeah? Well, that’s nothing this took me three years of work to write. Non-stop. And this wasn’t a side hobby this was my main hustle for a bit when the industry was slow at points. So, if you don’t like this book, you haven’t really tried. If you don’t laugh at this book, you have no sense of humour. And if you can’t even have fun reading this book then that’s on you not me.
In the following pages you’ll find my life’s story and an account of some of the funny anecdotes that you might expect from this line of work (and believe me there’s more where that came from!). I’m really proud of this book. It’s definitely one of the best books I’ve read. Top three at least. Obviously, it’s only just been released but I think as time passes it’ll be up there with the great comedy books. I wouldn’t mind a dedicated cult following, but I think that’s about as low as I can go. IT’S A FUNNY BOOK, OK? That’s what I set out to do: make people laugh and if you can’t laugh then there’s something wrong with you it’s not my fault you have no sense of humour this stuff is objectively funny. If you’re not laughing, I can’t help you with that that’s not my problem it’s yours.
I cover all the most common questions I get. What is a funeral comedian? Why funerals? How did you get into this crazy old game? What are your top ten romantic rejections? How would I as an aspiring funeral comedian get into this crazy old game? What are your top (or bottom!) worst dates you’ve ever been on?
And remember, only you can put the FUN back into FUNerals. (that’s my catchphrase, keep an eye out for it later on in these pages!)
- John Mort, August 3rd, 1997
John’s original introduction is preserved here unedited out of respect for his wishes.
- J., October 23rd, 2019
Chapter One What’s So Funny About Death Anyway?
“Knock knock, who’s there? Death. Ah, come in my old friend, I’ve been expecting you for a long time.” – John Mort
When I was twelve years old, I saw my first dead body. First of many. It was a Tuesday and I was off school, wandering the woods behind my house on my own. I smelt a horrific smell, like someone couldn’t decide whether to puke or poo so had done both. I was curious because I liked collecting smells around that age. Tar. Wet rock. The puzzle section of the Sunday Times. But this was a new smell, so I followed my nose all the way to the grizzliest thing I’d ever seen (which is saying something because I saw a bear on holiday once!). I had heard about the strange man who lived in the woods, I’d sometimes passed a tent or discarded Wilderness Guide and wonder if perhaps it was him, but I’d never actually seen him in the flesh. Until today. He was sat upright against a tree stump. His hands lay on his lap. Wet carrot chunks down his front. His eyes were wide open, one looked the wrong way and the other looked right at me. His jaw hung open, his tongue stuck out. But it was what completed this strange image that really got me. You see on his head sat a squirrel nibbling a nut and the moment I rounded the bend to see the body it looked right at me and squeaked. And I couldn’t handle it. I cracked up. I started laughing. Proper uncontrollable laughing. I was creased. Guffawing. Real belly laugh. Rib tickly tum tum tum.
Anyway, my point is death is hilarious and I will murder anyone who says otherwise. If you can’t have a little giggle when Ol’ Grimmy Repo Man comes a knocking what can you laugh at?
What’s that old joke? ‘Analysing a joke is like dissecting a frog, the frog dies and everyone laughs.’ Well, let’s take that apart. What they’re saying is that death is funny. A dead frog, doubly so. Jokes are about surprise. It’s the first rule of comedy in my Big Book of Comedy in fact. There’s nothing funnier tha-BAM! Ha! didn’t expect that now did you? Ok, maybe you saw it coming on the page because I put it in capitals well bam haHA now I got you. A sneaky surprise. Even funnier. Well, there’s no sneakier surprise than death, let me tell you. It can hit you at any moment, BAM, just like that, you’re dead.
So, I’ve always found death funny and maybe that’s why/how I got into this crazy old game. A lot of people think that’s weird. Other people don’t laugh at death or other people dying. No, that’s not done, that’s not polite, that’s not the done thing, that’s not good manners, that’s just not British, that’s not right, that’s not OK, so to speak. But why not? If I can laugh at people being born, why can’t I laugh at dead people? They don’t care, do they? No. Death is sad. And sad is slow and boring. If you’re fast and fun then you’re in the wrong place. Go get a real job, deadbeat.
Well, they’re all wrong, death is funny. You actually ask people why death isn’t funny and you end up with people saying things like everyone’s afraid to die or something. Ok, why are people afraid to die? Because it’s a fear of the unknown? Well, I don’t think it’s that. How can you be afraid of what you don’t know? Why would you assume it’s something bad? It could be something good. That’s just pessimistic of you. And it’s not the unknown because we know what happens when you die. …….You die. That’s it. What else do you want? The brain stops working so you stop thinking. I don’t know about you but if my brain stopped working, I’d stop thinking too (although sometimes a couple of beers is all it takes!).
So that brings me to why we’re really afraid of death because think about it, everything we experience happens in our brains, all our thoughts and senses and memories and feelings and dreams of owning an aston martin (a man can dream!) all happen in the brain, our whole REALITY is in our brains. Everything we experience happens in our brains, all our thoughts and senses and memories and feelings and dreams of owning an aston martin (a man can dream!) all happen in the brain. So, if you turn it off, from our perspective it’s not just that we die it’s that everything dies, the sunlight through the oak leaves, the first birdsong of a cold morning, everyone we’ve ever loved and everyone who ever loved us back, everything, it’s all gone. The stakes could not be higher. We don’t fear the death of ourselves we fear the death of everything. We fear the ultimate nothing.
SO THAT’S WHEN I COME ALONG to take a big old steaming DUMP on your fears. THAT’S RIGHT, this ain’t your GRANDDADDY’S EULOGY you know whhhhhyyyy????? BECAUSE YOUR GRANDDADDY’S DEAAAAAADDD! Awwww you sad that the irreplaceable uniqueness of a human life has ceased to be, leaving a void in your thoughts, routine and worldview? Well, tooooooo bad. At some point we all have to face the existential loneliness that comes from a complete absence of anything both for ourselves and others so better face it now in the absence of a someone else before you have to face your own mortality and the crushing erasure of your entire known reality. THAT’S RIGHT! Not only will you cease to be but from your perspective everyone and everything will cease to be too. SO come to peace with your obliviation in the smaller, bite sized dose of the passing of an entire person’s hopes and dreams and memories of people that have also long passed so when you confront your own death it will be only marginally more digestible. TOOT TOOT!
People die all the time, but not me, I've never died. Probably the closest I've come to death is the day I was born because before that I didn't exist which most will agree is pretty close to being dead.
Regular comedy is for cowards. Try something with some bite. Something with some edge something that's real. Try preforming comedy to a room of grieving widows. Try telling them that they're next. That's comedy. And don't let your agent tell you otherwise. Listen I'm serious about this. If you're serious hit me up. We have the internet now if you're interested in doing this kind of thing drop me a dm and let me know and I can pass on your name to half a dozen undertakers who aren't against this kind of thing. It'd be good to have more boots on the ground. Fight the stigma, show the world ITS OK TO DO STAND UP AT FUNERALS.
You make a lot of enemies in comedy. Particularly if you're doing it right. Religions. Various ethnic groups. Most margAnlised peoples. Animal/ human rights activists. Whoever the funeral ring leader is. But they say you can tell a lot about a man by their enemies and a lot about an enemy by their friends but my enemy’s enemy is my friend but they are still my enemy by definition so it can get confusing you don't know whether to go on for a handshake or a hug and it can be very awkward. My point is being an edgy comedian can be hard. Being a comedian on the edge is even harder. Being a comedian WITH an edge is the hardest thing of all. You'll be chewed up, spit at and booed off stage and you're not allowed to cry because you can't show them that they've won. I cried at a funeral once. It was so embarrassing. I was in the middle of a set and I'd been heckled for a solid 37 minutes. Really nasty stuff too. Real personal stuff mostly about my weight and premature hair loss which is perfectly natural. But then someone threw a hymn book clean at my head and it bounced off my temple and I just snapped. I dropped to the floor I was screaming and wailing people tried to drag me up but I sort of wriggled away (if there's one thing you need to know about me it’s that I don't like being touched) and I hid under the table that the coffin was on and I think they were too worried to bump the coffin or something so they just left me there for ages and you know when you commit to something a little too hard and the moments over but you can't really quit or go back so you just have to wait under the coffin until the police come? Yeah, me too. Lucky it was just a warning and a fine. But anyway, my point is this is why I'm not telling my wife about this book because if she found out even half the things that are in this book, I'm not sure she'd even want to read the other half. So yeah, I would say you make a lot of enemies in comedy just hope they never find you.
Comedy.
Chapter Two: My Life Story
“Life’s a pretty rough deal when you think about it. I give life everything and what does life give me in return? A kick in the nuts and a get well soon card? Noo, thank you!!” – John Mort
When I was a young lad there was a woman who lived next door called Pam who liked to make her own clothing out of old fabric. When I think of her I see her in a jumper that had been stitched together from unwanted jogging bottoms. My sisters found her so funny that they would dress me up in mismatched clothes, grandma’s knickers for a hat, that kind of thing, and call me Fashion Pam. One day they were playing this game and told me to go knock on Pam’s door and do a little twirl and say, “I’m Fashion Pam and fashion is my jam!” and I wanted to impress them so I did. I waddled down the street to the next door along and I knocked and waited feeling cold in my tights and itchy in my backwards jean jacket. Pam opened the door wearing a salmon-coloured leather scarf and I will never forget her face as it morphed from surprise, into confusion, then embarrassment and finally to deep, deep shame as I finished my little dance. She didn’t say a word but she seemed like she wanted to spit at me. She slammed the door and I scuttled back to my sisters who were giggling hysterically. I never saw Pam wear her homemade clothes again.
And that was my first introduction to comedy.
My family were right in the middle of the middle class and so, by extension, I was a little lower than that which means I’m still allowed to make jokes about that sort of thing. My mum hated other people and would often say so out loud to other people. Just a really nasty woman. My father made it worse and somehow made her problems everyone else’s problem. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It’s not funny, it’s just how it was.
My childhood was pretty unexceptional. I didn’t really like school and didn’t much get on with any one there. I had one friend called Charlie who was a bit weird. He had the thickest glasses you ever saw, a lisp and always got nosebleeds to the point that I’m pretty sure he could give himself a nose bleed through sheer force of will. Man, that kid just didn’t give a fuck, he was always getting into fights the wirey little bastard. His signature move was throwing fists like a fucking tornado then when they’d back off, he’d jump on them and bleed out the nose all over their faces. Normally it was for nothing either. Everyone called him psycho but I kind of liked him. Or at least he liked me. Or tolerated me, I don’t know, he didn’t attack me so that’s saying something. Man, he was weird. I remember one time he stuck a firework up his ass and lit it, he couldn’t walk for a day. He liked to lick doors, he said different coloured doors had different flavours to them. I thought he was the funniest person in the world when I was a kid and I always looked up to him. I wanted to be as funny as him but I think I was always in his shadow. Not literally, but sometimes, depending on where he stood.
God I’m sick of Tuesdays how many more are we going to get? It’s just one after another after another it never ends. Maybe I don’t like them because Charlie died on a Tuesday, or at least I found out on a Tuesday. I remember it was a Tuesday but I don’t remember the date it was because I thought it was a Sunday and I forgot to go into work and I was told it was a Tuesday but I’d already missed work and then I got a call from Charlie’s mum saying he’d drowned and now every time Tuesday comes around, I think of him and feel a little bit sick.
I never went to university. I applied for three. Got into one but I was too nervous to turn up I just stayed at home.
I think I got into the biz because I grew up loving insult comedians but when I tried out my set on the other kids on the street, I’d get beaten up so I realised that if you insult dead people instead you can’t get beaten up. Or maybe it was nominative determinism, yes, my real name is John Mort. I wonder how many Smiths become breadsmiths (wait, bakers? Oh shit that’s a surname, that’s probably a better ).
The early days of my comedy career were pretty rough. I tried my hand at normal standup comedy, I did the circuit for a few weeks. Open mic nights (poor mike!) and that kind of thing. But everyone was really mean to me. A lot of people said I wasn’t funny or if I was funny, it wasn’t ‘haha’ funny it was just strange. One guy (who I didn’t think was very funny either, all his jokes were about his children who I personally didn’t know so I couldn’t really relate) he said that my jokes were depressing and that I shouldn’t joke about death and that maybe I’d have better luck trying stand up at funerals.
So that’s what I did.
To begin with most of the gigs were done for free (on a pro bono basis!), you know, to make a name for myself. Often though the bookings weren’t coming in, I think people see the words, “Free Funeral Comedian” and they get turned off, they just think well if he’s free he can’t be any good. So initially I’d turn up on the day, time my entrance so it would look like I was just an unknown family member making a speech.
Talking of speeches, I did a killer speech at my wedding. Wait, before I tell you that I should really just say that I love my wife.
I love my wife.
Now, I had to say that out of context because people get upset when you follow a sentence like that with ‘but’ so I’m not going to so you can’t get mad at me. Here’s a few more sentences like that and I’m just going to say them as statements now because they are true even if sometimes I say ‘but’ after them so when I say them again you can say, ‘oh, no, that’s true even without the ‘but’ I read him say that without a ‘but’ once in a book so he means it’.
I am not a racist man.
I like Charles Dickens as much as the next guy.
I love women. Some of my best friends are women.
I’m all for inclusivity.
Call me out of touch.
I’ll be the first to put my hand up and admit that I’m all for better working conditions for children in Malasia.
Ok, so now that’s out of the way. I love my wife. I love my wife and notwithstanding that fact… she never believed in me. I love her but she always says that I have a stupid occupation. I like to say, she's the main bread winner and I'm the main DEAD winner. But she doesn't find that funny. Maybe I do it to spite her. Maybe I do it to spite everyone who never believed in me. Like my mother, my father, my three older sisters, Mr. Oban my PE teacher when I was 11, my therapist, God (probably), most of the women I've ever met, particularly Debbie Polton from Leeds who went on one date with me and said that I would never amount to anything if I kept profiting off other people's grief, my wife's dog walker who she keeps talking to although we haven't had a dog in three years, my step father, Rebel Wilson, and the bus driver of the number 83 on Tuesday 28th September 2013 who wouldn't take my change because I didn't give the exact amount even though it was legal tender and I was late for the gig and I bombed because I was stressed and it was all his fault.
I’m blessed to be financially independent and I really put a lot of my success down to that because honestly if I had to leave the house for a job or something stupid like that, I don’t think I would be even ten times less productive than I am now. Now I know it’s not for everyone but when people ask for career advice, I always recommend that other people marry rich like I did. I’m not a gold digger but if I was, I would have struck gold (so to speak!). You see my wife is very wealthy and she supports me financially and although I don’t always have her emotional support, I know that I have her financial support. She inherited a lot of her money but then she’s also an espionage lawyer which is cooler than it sounds she’s a corporate lawyer who specialises in litigating corporate espionage but I tell everyone she’s a spy lawyer but she gets very annoyed and says she’s not which honestly just makes her seem more like a spy lawyer. She’s very happy with me not working so long as I do the house chores which is ideal because it gives me a lot of time for creativity to write jokes and come up with new punchlines and bits and sketches and humorous scenarios for my book which I’m writing at the moment.
So, if you’re wondering my daily routine I normally wake up around midday or one because it’s good to get a lot of rest if you’re creative. They say that you have your best ideas when you’ve just woken up so I have my breakfast and get straight down to writing my jokes for the day but by the time I’m ready for that it’s time for lunch so I’ll have lunch and write afterwards. After lunch I haven’t brushed my teeth yet or gotten dressed because I wanted to get straight to writing jokes so then I have a nice long shower to get the creative juices flowing because they say that’s when you have your best ideas. I have a waterproof notebook in the shower for all my good ideas I have in the shower and I’m looking forward to filling it at some point. After the shower and I’m ready to start my day it’s around three and I sit down and start writing after my warm up exercises which takes me to about five and then I only have a couple of hours to kill with all the usual distractions before my wife comes home and I have to lie to her about what I achieved today. Then I microwave a meal that I lie that I’ve cooked and we watch TV in different rooms and then go to bed and I do the same thing all over again the next day! Obviously if I have a gig on that day, it’s a very different day but that’s more of an outlier as those are quite rare nowadays but I’ll get to that in the next chapter!
Chapter Three: Advice For Any Aspiring Funeral Comedians Out There
“I don’t trust people who warn me they have a dark sense of humour.” – John Mort
Anyways….! So. My advice for any young comedians just coming up, I would recommend the funeral circuit actually, the thing about it is that they’re always happening, there are always gigs. And if you’re popular, you know, if you really kill it (not literally!) then people often ask for you back. Not to the funeral, I guess that only happens once, but if anyone else is having a funeral. People say, “Aw, John, you really cracked me up, I would love to have you at my funeral.” And they don’t always have a time and a place yet but you know you leave them a card and hope they request you in their will. I’ve not had that yet, but I would love to see that happen one day.
Dreams can come true if your job is your dream job. I don't get paid enough but some day it'll be my dream. Lord Christ there’s nothing thoughtful about what I do. I fear the day when someone calls me up on it and says, you have wasted your life. I will stand before saint peter and say yip. Yip I did. Soz boz. Feeling a little bit runny today. No hard feelings. Wanna high five? Legend.
So, I think the best way to learn is just to watch and learn from how a master does it. So, what I’d like to do (and you can make a little exercise of it if you like) is just lay out one of my classic (!) standup routines that I’ve written and performed over the years. And this has been honed to within an inch of it’s life so bare in mind that this isn’t going to be the kind of standard that you can expect from yourself straight out the gate, you really have to work hard in the trenches just to even begin to understand this level of comedy.
I’ve got a few standard openers, “Laughter’s the best medicine,” I say, “Can cure anything they say,” I say, “Well, maybe not anything,” I say and then I pull a very funny face and gesture towards the coffin.
Or sometimes I’ll open with a one liner, just to get people laughing straight out the gate like, “What do you call a trash can that lives in reverse? BINjamen Button.” That's a good joke. Never gets old.
Or alternatively (and I’m not necessarily recommending this because there’s nothing worse than listening to other people talk) you can start with an anecdote, for example: “I once offered my seat to a fat lady on the train. It was so embarrassing when I realised she was just pregnant.” That’s a classic opener.
I have a couple of stories a couple of really funny anecdotes I cycle through. Like the time I tried roller skates for the first time and I’d never worn roller skates before. It was hilarious my friend Aidrian who's not my friend anymore still tells me about it because I don't remember I blacked out.
So then if I’ve gotten this far into my spiel without being stopped (and by the way this is just off the dome, you know I like to play it fast and loose, you know how Morty baby be!) then I’ll go into the more personal roasting but normally I have some people interject at this point with is a great point to start doing some crowd work which might go a little something like this:
“So, where you from?”
[Through sobs of tears] “Please, stop, go away, we don’t want you here.”
“Ahh, so Glasgow then. No sense of hospitality.”
Obviously, you can insert where ever you want instead of Glasgow, but I like to put in Glasgow as standard because most people have heard of it and most people have heard of it.
Then you know once the crowds warmed up (and they should be nice and warm at this point!) then you can start getting personal with the deceased. And I mean PERSONAL. You see, the secret to good funeral stand up is research. Look it up first. Interview the bereaved. Was the deceased bald? Allergic to melons? All of this is crucial comedy research that you can use to pepper your set with a personal touch. A personal. Touch.
How they died is a great source of endless jokes. Let’s say the target died in a car crash. SO, in that case I’ll say things like ‘smashing’ over and over. Or maybe they passed away due to natural causes I’d make sort of vague hints that they were having an affair and they were killed in their sleep by a jealous lover. Or if they died of cancer and they were born between the 21st of June and 22nd of July well then, you’ve hit comedy gold my friend, you can say things like, “It was written in the stars,” and things like that.
Anyway, this is the sort of bitingly funny repartee you can expect from a seasoned veteran such as myself. Everyone will have their own standard set of jokes, not that there’s many of us, mind, because it’s a real skill so most comedians can’t do the advanced kind of comedy that I do. I mean, making people laugh when all they want to do is cry. That’s hard work. It helps that sometimes you can’t tell between laughing and crying. If it’s ambiguous I just chalk it up as a laugh. But often you really have to work for it. Really squeeze. I mean sometimes I’ll be riffing for a good couple hours before I get a single titter (heheh). Not many comics can do that, let me tell you.
But then other days you get a gig where everyone there hated the dead guy. That’s when I take the house down. Every joke you make is a zinger. Suddenly you’re more well liked than the dead guy. Suddenly you’re rallying everyone to your cause. Getting people on their feet. Getting them shouting cheering. JOHN! JOHN! JOHN! JOHN! JOHN! You’re asked to throw the dirt on the coffin (honour!) but you spit instead and everyone LOVES it because the guy was a real nasty piece of work or something that’s when you’re on top. That’s when your LIVING. Unlike SOME people. That’s not happened yet but I’d imagine that would be great.
But how are you supposed to capture a life in a single comedy routine?
Number 2: don't over think it. There's a flow, comedy is all about the flow. Easy breezy. lemons. When I get in the flow on the mic on stage and I'm just riffing off whatever anyone's throwing at me, I'm on another planet man I'm like Jesus and Buddha and Baal and one of the Hindu gods all rolled into one. I'm like a comedy ninja. I've got fire in my fists and I'm blind because I'm a blind ninja and I'm this killer blind ninja with fire in my fists and I've got this smoking hot girlfriend and she's really impressed and the jokes are coming and everyone's laughing and then I'm just sort of levitating like woah what the fuck how is this mother fucker just levitating like what holy shit this is the greatest day of my life. Wait pee break. Ok I'm back. That's the power of comedy.
I'm going to try an experiment in flow, I'm just going to hit the suggested word on my phone and see what it comes up with starting... now:
“I think it's too much to be added in this strange story as a co-writer to be a useful tool for my son who starts the next day off and will look at the time and place for a sitcom script I would be flattered for the BBC to see if it is intelligent and if so I will look into the other one and see what we have to do it for now so that I frequently ask you for the International tax refund.” (wow!)
You see that? Boom. That's it. That's PROOF that I live, breath, eat and sleep comedy. Even my phone knows I'd rather talk about comedy that anything else.
I'm always cracking wise.
Some people ask if I use humour to mask the pain but I've never been into that kind of tears if a clown thing like if you're crying then are you really funny you know? The whole job is about making people laugh not cry. And clowns aren't funny anyway I'm funnier than a clown. There was this one clown I remember my step dad had hired for my birthday and I know it was my step dad because I told my mum I didn’t like clowns and she wasn’t talking to my step dad at the time. So, this guy comes in like it was a big surprise reeking of alcohol or a least what I thought was alcohol I’d not really smelt it I was six. And he did a bunch of magic tricks which isn't even what clowns do that's a magician and I told that to him and I started crying and screaming and telling him he'd ruined my birthday party. So yeah, that's another anecdote I like to tell in my set.
What else, shit I'm running out of things to say and I've got a whole book to fill. I really shouldn’t have written the introduction first. I feel like that really set me up to commit to it you know. In truth I wrote that like years ago and just sat on it for ages and felt guilty and angry and I’d always sit down to do it and then always give up and then hate myself then go get drunk or waste time doing something else and never did it but now I’ve got a phone and I just take a bunch of notes on my phone when I’m not busy which is a lot so I now have a bunch of note on my phone and I just copied then onto my computer and now I’m just editing them into the book and honestly I think there’s plenty here for something but I’ve run out of notes now so I don’t have much more fuel to keep this fire going you know and I’m literally just writing to fill up the word count hoping that no one’s going to check it they’re just going to look at the word (page?) count and think, yeah, that’s about as long a book needs to be we can publish that and they won’t read too much into it (the book that is) and they’ll give me a publishing deal maybe three or four books and a children’s series but at least the first one and then a guaranteed sequel if the first one does do well (which is guaranteed) so that’s two books straight out the gate that I could do and they’re pretty funny too and the writing bits the easy bit I could fill a whole book easy just writing like this!
Ok, how many words was that?
303.
Shit. That’s not even a thousand. That took me like ten minutes. At this rate I’ll be dead before I finish. Jesus Christ. Jesus. JESUS.
Ok, this’ll take up some pages, here’s a lil word search (answers on the back page):
F R T J P L F T B W M N
K L D F Y P N J K L B N
Q Q Q C V R T X Z L G H
P J L W R Y B M V H K L
F R T J P L F T B W M N
K L D F Y P N J K L B N
Q Q 5 C V R T X Z L G H
P J L W R Y B K V H K L
F R T J P L F T B K T N
K L D F M P N J K L F L
Q Q K C V R T X Z L D H
P J L P R Y B M V H K L
And here’s a suduku:
1 2 3
4 5 6
7
9 7
8 19 7
Shit wait, how do you do a sokuku, wait, here 1 4 6 no,
9 5 7 8 98 0 9 7 4
8 9 7 5 4 3 6 9
7 1 2 3 `1 7 8
And then I’ll take the numbers away
8
Shit, no, wiat. Ah, fuck it. Fine. No sudukue.
Crap. What else can I write? Um. You know what’s scary about this whole writing thing, and even comedy in general is it’s like opening up your brain and emptying the whole thing out on a page and then you look at it and there’s not nearly as much there as you thought you had. You start out thinking oh, yeah, I could write a book, how hard could it be? I have lots of thoughts I’ll just write them all down. If Jilly Cooper can do it then so can I! But then you get to it and you realise half the thoughts you have are the same thoughts, half the thoughts are really stupid and boring and the other half is fine.
Just fine.
You’re not saying anything new, you have nothing insightful to say but you’ve already put this much effort in so you might as well finish.
Not to be cyclical or anything but I only started writing this because the podcast I'm listening to at the moment was talking about this thing called passive income which is where you earn money by not doing any work like writing a book and I thought I'd try it but they lied this is so much work. I have pushed so many buttons already. Every letter. E. V. E. R. Y. L. E t t lord HOW MANY OF THESE BUTTONS TO I HAVE TO PRESS!!!! Ugh. Ok, nearly at the end of the page OK we'll just finish this page and then I'll call it. Maybe it'll be more of a pamphlet or something. JESUS christ what are you doing? Come on John, pull yourself together. You're going to give up now? This is easy. A thousand people write a book every day. Idiots do it. You're a comedian you can write you write jokes for a living. Just BE FUNNY. BE FUNNY. BE FUNNY. COME ON WRITE SOMETHING FUNNY. WRITE A JOKE NOW.
Ok.
Here's a joke...
My life.
There. That's the funniest joke I can think of. I mean look at me. I’m sat here and it’s dark because it got dark out and I couldn’t be bothered to get up and turn the light on. I’m overweight (but it looks way worse because I'm hunched over). My dressing gown smells and I’m wondering if maybe it's not my dressing gown it's me. There's a pile of cider cans beside me and I think one's dribbled a sticky puddle under my hand because I feel it each time I hit the spacebar . Ew. I didn't notice until now because I've only just started to sober up and it's fuck it's fucking 4:30 in the morning it'll be light soon and if my wife comes down and finds me still up, she'll ask what I've been doing but if I go to bed now she'll hear me and wake up and ask what I've been doing. Maybe I'll tell her the truth and say I'm wasting my life. Nah I think if she asks, I’ll lie and say I'm having an affair. Then at least in that story someone loves me.
Ok I'm going. Bye.
RULE NUMBER THREE OF COMEDY:
3. Keep it light! There's nothing worse than a downer comic. Anyone coming to a gig is there to laugh! So, make them laugh. They are not there to think about their own stupid lives and if they are they are there to have their lives poked fun at. Made fun of. Punctured. So they realise that hey things ain’t so bad mate! Now in my line of work as a funeral comedian it's triply doubly important to keep it light. The whole idea is to make them think about something other than death for a few hours. To take the sting out of it you know. Death takes the sting out of life and people like me take the sting out of death!
4. Don't talk back to hecklers. If you heckle back to a heckler you're no better than them. Anything you think you can say as a comeback just isn't going to be as good as what they say so just leave it. Blank them. Or here's some advice I got from my comedy mentor (more on him later!) do the opposite. Don't blank them but stare them down. I wouldn't recommend this technique for everyone because it takes balls let me tell you. You just stare at them eyes as wide as possible and keep doing your set. Then if you get another heckler, bam!, stare them down. That first person heckles again, bam, back to them. And you just keep going, heckler to heckler, bam, bam, bam. Now this technique can be real hard when you've got a few dozen people all heckling you to leave their grandfather's funeral but they are the hecklers, they are in the wrong. Always. Always remember that.
5. The standups stage is a sacred space and it should be protected. This is basically the previous point I was making but when you're up there no one can touch you not even god. Always remember that. Don't forget where you came from, don't let the bastards grind you down and don't ask rhetorical questions in your set it shows weakness and leaves you open to heckles.
6. I think the previous point covered a couple of points so that can be number 6 too.
7. There isn't a 7.
8. Drugs can be a useful implement in some situations, I find that particular drugs can really enliven a performance but I can't name any here I think for legal reasons.
9. Improv is for cowards.
10. Thou shalt not covert your neighbours’ ass.
11. Comedy is not a career it's a way of life a state of mind you have to live breathe eat shit then eat your shit then shit out again comedy. Day and night. Make jokes even if no ones laughing. If you don't you'll never make it in comedy so give up if you can't reach my level.
Shit I don’t even know if I like comedy. I can’t remember the last time I properly laughed. Apparently if you smile even if you don’t feel it you’ll start to feel happier. Do you think if I write, hahaha, I’ll start to find things funny again? I don’t know if I ever enjoyed comedy. I liked laughing at people but I never liked being laughed at. Why did I ever want to make a fool of myself like that? It’s so humiliating degrading myself for other people’s pleasure. And what do I get for it? A black eye and £46 in debt? I should have listened to Charlie. Fuck, Charlie would have known what to do, I miss that son of a bitch (his mum was really nice though).
Chapter Four Some Pretty Funny Anecdotes From On/Off The Job
(think of a humouros quote later to put in here something maybe about comedy?)
Probably my best response was when I did a joke so good it woke the dead! I am not even kidding, I told a joke, I don’t remember which, I think I had just finished a set, or maybe I wasn’t on stage yet, I don’t know but whatever I did it was so funny we heard a groan from the coffin and everyone freaked out and then rushed to the coffin and prized it open and the guy inside was still alive! Amazing. I know, it’s unbelievable but you hear stories like that so I guess it’s possible, I’ve not had that happen but I would love to see that happen one day.
Have you ever been to a Mormon funeral? Its kind of interesting, it's the same as any other funeral except they really don't respond to well to the bit I do on god letting people die horribly. In fact, that’s most religions... I’m trying to collect all the different traditions/religions which is hard when mostly it's just white protestant around where I live but I'm burning through the funeral places pretty quick so I guess I'm moving further afield anyway I'll have to start heading abroad at this rate! I wonder what a French funeral is like, 'uuuuh excuse moi, le person la il es morir!' Hahaha. I might have to change my bit about the French. It's really funny it starts like, 'what is a French boxer's go to move? Pari.' (that one doesn’t really work written down try saying it out loud (note probably don’t say this bracket bit out loud in the audiobook version)). And then it keeps going like that and if the audience/ mourners are into it I get really into it and start talking about a school French trip to Paris when I was 11 and Mr Oban insisted we still did PE every morning but we couldn't complain or object because none of us spoke French well enough and he insisted we had to speak French the entire trip even when I needed the toilet but I didn’t know the French word for toilet and I knew he’d shout at me if I asked in English so I just wet myself but luckily you couldn’t see the pee mostly because the trousers were already black so they just looked more black not wet but I was still really worried someone would smell that I stank of piss and when we were sat on the bus and Charlie looked at me completed disgusted and said, “Uggghhh, you sink of shit,” I was so relieved because he didn’t say piss.
Charlie always had that way about him and I wonder if now I feel that… I dunno…
Last Tuesday I came back from work (my wife (or the missus if you will!) insisted I get a job to get me out of the house or at least she says that why but I know it’s really because she just wants me to start pulling my weight which I already do but now it means I have much less time to work on my jokes and I’m just shattered on my days off. It’s just doing admin in an office and it’s not that mentally taxing but that’s not the point, it’s the principle) anyway I came back from work and I was just so tired and miserable because I hadn’t done a gig in months and I’ve been putting off this book and I hadn’t written a single joke in weeks and the ones I came up with in my head I tried out on my wife when I came home but she was busy on the phone so she didn’t laugh so I went upstairs to have a shower and I had it on really hot and I haven’t got round to cleaning out the plughole yet and I will do it, I said I would she doesn’t need to keep reminding me. So, the water currently fills up to your ankles pretty quickly. And then I was so tired I just couldn’t hold myself up anymore, I just couldn’t take even standing, so I laid down in the tub (we’ve got one of those bath-shower hybrids, I know, very posh) and I kind of curled up like a baby and I just stared forward thinking about nothing and everything at the same time. And the water’s filling up but I don’t care, if anything it feels nice, like being hugged all over very slowly. At first, it's at my ear and all I can hear in one side is the deep drone of the shower pump humming through the tub. Then the water comes up to my eye but it doesn’t really matter if I can see or I can’t. my mouth is just open so I can feel the water come into my mouth and just sit in my cheek and I can feel the water line inside my mouth slowly raising, getting closer to my throat. And then it creeps up to my nostril and at first the feeling’s like a blocked nose but then it goes all the way to the back of my nose and hurts like hell but at least I can feel something, I’d rather have that than go through the effort of moving. Now the water’s in the back of my throat and I can’t breathe, not that I’m trying to breathe, I know I can go for longer than most without a breath. I guess I’m holding it but I don’t really realise as the water covers my other nostril and my nose kind of does a weird cough-sneeze-splutter that I can’t help underwater and snot shoots out but again, it doesn’t seem to matter. Now my eye is covered and I’m completely submerged in water and the deep, loud drone fills my ears. Maybe in another time it would be quite peaceful. Like a quiet day when nothing matters but the silence. But right now, it’s not peaceful. My mind is not peaceful. My mind’s thinking about everything I haven’t done and wanted to do. My career. Romance. This book. And instead all I have is stifling regret. Nothing but a storm of thoughts swirling into one another and repeating the same despair over and over, dragging me down into a depth that floods my mouth, my nose, my ears, my ears.
Finally, I break. I start to cry. I sob like a child, convulsing in the water and the dirt and the snot. My body snatches for a breath but all it gets is hot water and pain and I choke and try to fight it but my body won’t let me and it rips me up and I’m coughing and spluttering and sobbing and I can’t see but I can breathe. And I just sit there like that for a bit. Dripping, drooling, leaking. Feeling pathetic. Then I pull myself up, get out, dry, dress and go make dinner like it never happened.
Chapter four: Musings on death (might be good for a title for the whole book instead come back to this before finalising)
[Chapter unwritten]
Afterword:
The following is an addendum added after John’s death by his widow.
When it came to John’s own funeral, myself and those entrusted with organising the affair struggled to know how best to proceed. I believe most of us thought it would be appropriate for ‘comedy’ to play a large part in the proceedings. John, however, was himself very protective of his work and at once I could imagine my late husband laughing at the irony of someone else performing a sort of comic eulogy to the man but so too could I see him deploring the work of another, ‘lesser’ comic, as he might put it. So, it was decided that there would be no such eulogy. The affair was small, short and private.
John leaves behind a stunningly simple yet compellingly complicated legacy that, no matter the small effect he had on this world, warrants respect. And so, I felt compelled to publish this, his unfinished manuscript for what would have been perhaps an ill-advised memoir. Whilst I may have my own personal reservations about this work, know that though these are small pieces of a whole life it is, in my view, an honest portrait of the mind of the man I once loved.
John sought immortality by the means at his disposal, now I hope that through his words he might have achieved some part of that and may at last be laid to rest.
- J., October 23rd, 2019
ANAX
