Viewing Thread:
"Surrealism is an excuse for not being funny"

Inspired by RPC. Discuss.

Eddie Izzard is a fantastic comedian, superbly intelligant humour. Not like mother other stand-ups like Lee Evans and such. Lee Evans isn't bad but its the same thing over and over. They complain about obvious things in life, they just moan and make jokes about every day occurences.

Izzard relates to history and topics of an interesting nature, eg. His theory on how dinosaurs were created (God smoked opium)

Shame you can't get his older shows on Region 2 DVD.

Bill Bailey is great, and half of his set makes no sense. Eddie Izzard goes on surreal flights of fancy that are superbly funny. Contrastingly, a lot of the people you see on programs like the Comedy Store, and on BBC2 when the Edinborough Festival are taking place, are crap.

For bad surrealism check out the bain of all comedy, Harry Hill.

Oh and that Bo Selecta programme on Friday nights, absoloute toss.

Spaced was great and it's surreal nature was indicitive of the intelligent thought that went into writing the script.

Well, I think we're in agreement then - surrealism done good (ie Chris Morris) IS good. Surrealism done by kids is BAD.

Deadpan is usually good though.

It can be; surrealism is often trotted out as an excuse for lazy 'comedy'. But listen to Derek and Clive ('My first job' for example) and then tell me that surrealism isn't funny.

Good surrealism is better than anything (in my opinion). Bad surrealism is just too cackbone awful for words.

People who try too hard to be obscure and funny just aren't funny at all. I find people who are deadpan and don't feel the need to announce their humour with exclamation points are the funniest, because it's not patronising me, informing me that what I just read was a joke.

Having said that, Meka's !!!!!!1 thing still makes me laugh.

It CAN be funny, like Brass Eye when they said they launched a paedophile into space then they 'revealed' that an 8 year old boy had been sent as well and it was the "worst thing that could happen"

But you get people walking around with those t-shirts that say "I'm not crazy, but my camal friend monty is" - or whatever! - just isn't funny.

"Are you kidding me, your being 'zany' for the sake of it?"

Ah missed that, loving Bill Baily though, I think thats his name?

I saw an old one, with Mark Lamarr, and it was awful. But last Monday's Buzzcocks was great.

"I'll have your eye out!"

Again, a terrible conflict of interests.