Infrequent Bulletin – September 2023

Dear Friends of German Comedy,

I hope you’re all well and making the most of the sunshine!

Sadly I’m still writing to you in my capacity as German Comedy Ambassador rather than manager of Germany. It feels as if I’m being overlooked for the role once again. Say what you like about Hansi Flick and Jogi Löw before him, they made watching Nationalmannschaft more exciting than ever. Every game is a nail-biter as we can lose to absolutely anyone.

Moving on, this August I got more than my usual share of good weather as I wasn’t at the Edinburgh Fringe for the first time since 2004. Well, there was the Boris and Nicola enforced break in 2020 but let’s try and forget about that one.

Just like last year, this year’s Fringe has been a battleground of the ‘culture war’. Whereas last year Jerry Sadowitz’s run got cancelled after one show, it got even more ridiculous this time round when Father Ted writer Graham Linehan’s one-off appearance got cancelled before he even got up there. From what I understand it was over his opinions on men in skirts, a very delicate subject in Scotland at the best of times.

Bemusingly the cancellation was celebrated by a good number of performers. As a rule of thumb: cheering when someone isn’t allowed to sell tickets when your business model relies on being allowed to sell tickets is rather short-sighted. For all you know it’s you next.

I said as much on social media, which led to an avalanche of replies. Half the people tried to convince me that if a man puts on a skirt they must be a paedophile and the other half informed me if a man puts on a skirt they become a woman. There wasn’t a single reply along the lines of “If a man puts on a skirt, they’re a man who has put a skirt on and that’s that”.

But let’s move on from the most politicised to the most entertaining weeks of the year: party conference season!

Labour and the Greens are at home in Liverpool and Brighton, the Tories have a tricky away fixture to Manchester, and the Liberals play on neutral ground in Bournemouth.

There’s little better than watching thousands and thousands of people giving standing ovations for speeches full of half-baked ideas! It’s like being back on tour!

Joking aside, we must be grateful to every single one of those attendees for giving up their time to be politically active. Be that at national, regional, local or Sunday league level. Because being accountable to and voted for by the general public can’t be fun. For starters: 50% of voters are of below average intelligence.

We rarely hear it said but it’s undoubtedly true: MPs are underpaid if anything. As we learned during the Huw Edwards lark, the geezer reading out what MPs do at work is paid five times as much as the MPs doing the work. That just can’t be right. Since 2016 two MPs got killed doing their job. That’s a higher fatality rate than amongst deep-sea divers who are being paid a lot more and get to breathe purified air. In addition, deep-sea divers risk their lives for only six months of the year rather than every minute God sends.

Talking of working… I am back in action and have a few previews at the Betsey Trotwood coming up, which I am looking forward to immensely!

Following an unbiased look at charity, an unbiased look at immigration, an unbiased look at Brexit and an unbiased look at Covid, “Acid Wehn” will be an unbiased look at climate change and party conferences. Right now it’s still a shambles. But I’m on it!

Have a great rest of (what still feels like) summer

Henning

Please find below a list of upcoming gigs. It would be great to see you at one of those.