December 2008

Dear Friends of German Comedy,

It’s Britain’s riskiest comedian sending you this email.

I recently got a weekend of gigs moved to next year as the promoter feared complaints and violence if I was on in front of his drunken Xmas audience.

Jawohl, take that Brendon Burns, Steve Hughes, Jim Jeffries and all those other self-proclaimed hard men of comedy! How many gigs did they ever have cancelled because a promoter feared crowd trouble weeks before their appearance?

Those pussy cats can spend all day trying to be outrageous – they will never be able to compete with the offence a German passport can cause.

Coming back to Britain from a short trip to Berlin for a meaningless friendly (ok, ok, yes, England fully deserved to win) I realized why London is so attractive to us foreigners but so exhausting for locals.

It hit me when I was booked for Five Live’s Fighting Talk and was made look a right idiot when not knowing who John Sergeant was.

But I didn’t feel guilty because when I left that Monday the gutter press wanted to hang everybody to do with Haringey Council for what his mother did to Baby P. It was only on my return four days later that the baying mob demanded the scalp of reality TV judges who said someone called John Sergeant wasn’t good at singing.

What might at first glance look like a sad indictment of celebrity obsession and superficiality is in truth proof that Britain is the most welcoming place in the world. One needs to be in the country only a few days before one will be able to back some hysterical campaign and feel a fully-fledged part of society.

What makes life hard though is sustaining this high level of outrage about non-events. It’s especially hard in a big city such as London as life in a big city ideally requires a certain degree of apathy and perspective.

But don’t worry! Once you start slacking there will always be a free paper and its aggressive distributor to make sure you don’t miss the next bandwagon.

So, that’s enough Sauerkraut for one newsletter. Talking about Sauerkraut – I highly recommend my Christmas shows (yes, my links get better every time) at Betsey Trotwood in Farringdon from Dec 8-10.

In addition to my finest stand-up there will be renditions of Germany’s most favourite Christmas carols such as ‘Oh Tannenbaum’, ‘Stille Nacht – heilige Nacht’, and ‘Klingglöckchen klingelingelingelingelingeling’. Jawohl, I have ways of making you laugh and sing!

Tickets: http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=xxx&query=schedule&promoter=henningwehn

Alternatively you can wait until next May and see me at Lee Hurst’s Backyard Club.

Have a great December and a good start to 2009 and don’t complain about the NHS to me – Whittington Hospital did a great job on my hernia!

Auf Wiedersehen

Henning