Tim Cornwell: Being a comedian is no laughing matter

Published on Wednesday 25 August 2010 14:15

Cambridge ethnographer Mark de Rond is driven by a fascination with high-achieving professionals at the top of their game, operating in situations where they are forced to go to the very edge of their capabilities, where they are both competitive and interpendent.

He spent two years living with his university's boat race squad, sharing rooms with 40 men including world champion rowers competing with each other for one of eight places on the crew, for his book Last of the Amateurs.

He's in the midst of a study of military surgeons, and plans to travel with them to Afghanistan, to watch highly trained, very bright people operating under the highest levels of emotional and situational stress. And now he's in Edinburgh, studying comedians.

It's awards week for the Fringe comics. Love them or hate them, the 30-year-old Edinburgh Comedy Awards are a festival-end ritual that only heightens the competitive nature of the comedy game in the city. Some affect to despise them, but the level of emotion may be reflected in the call from one furious agent yesterday. She complained that her comedy client, Mark Nelson, with Offending the Senses, had lost out because he offended one of the judges - sitting in his front row - by calling her a 'munter'.

Genuine anger, settling scores, or stirring it for attention, so the show goes on? That's always the question with comedians: between gags, how much of the truth are they telling us, about themselves, or us? But if de Rond's findings so far are anything to go by - his rowers' book was hailed for its controversially intimate insights into sports and even business success - they need a little sympathy at this time of year, as they court the critics and deflect the cat calls.

A reader at Cambridge's Judge Business School, de Rond has seen some 25 shows, but is studying two comics close up. They are Terry Alderton, a former Royal Variety show performer at the Pleasance this year, and at the other end of the scale Katrina Knox, performing in a pub at lunchtime with a free Fringe show. He has taped their shows daily for ten days, and will transcribe and digitally assess large and tiny variations in their gigs from day to day, as they respond to beery hecklers or drop the dud jokes.

De Rond aims to experience the world from the comedians' point of view, rather than the audience. "How do comedians reconcile themselves to having to compete with the very same people they rely on for moral support?" he asks. "There's an incredible degree of camaraderie with comedians because you stick your neck out and if the audience doesn't respond it's terrible. They are very smart, and go up every night, and go out in front of the audience and make themselves vulnerable." Forget what they're earning, even when shows sell out, he said. "You can really see that if things don't go well, they don't get the laughs they get, it affects them terribly personally."

Comedians may not have the same level of training as army surgeons, "but by gosh they are smart", he said. "The consequence is they may be reflective on what they do."

After several years covering the festivals, there are some memories that stand out. One is sharing a cab with Brendon Burns after he won the 2007 comedy awards, when he was churning with emotion, adulation, and artistic vulnerability. Whether or not his posters should be quoting The Scotsman stars three years later, his racism-reversing show, So You Think I'm Racist Now, was indubitably a case of someone at the height of their powers operating on the edge.

The American nominee Bo Burnham, who turned 20 this festival, includes his song and YouTube hit Art is Dead in his Edinburgh show. "Entertainers like to seem complicated, but we're not," he begins. "I want attention, I am an addict, but I get paid to indulge in my habit." Is it all a gag? There's the rub. But sometimes, perhaps, comics need to be taken seriously - though when you do it, of course, they'll turn the moment on its head.