Weekender: Interview: Geoff Norcott – ‘I can crack a few jokes about Remainers’
TheBusinessDesk.com spoke to the only openly Tory comedian on the circuit ahead of dates in Leicester and Nottingham.
What’s your show about?
Politics and social attitudes are changing at a dizzying rate. I’m like a lot of people in the middle: I want to hold modern views, but the labels we use are changing so fast it’s almost impossible to keep up. If you go out of the country for a month you come back and something else is now deemed offensive. I got called a ‘dinosaur’ for the first time recently. Well just like dinosaurs I hear men like me are soon to be extinct, I might as well have a laugh about it be-fore the meteor strikes.
Are you a traditional sort of bloke?
I guess my relationship operates on a very gender typical basis. I think a lot of people’s still do, yet the chattering classes are en-gaged in fervent debate about gender neutrality. I think male and female characteristics are slightly more innate than that. Having a baby brings issues like this into focus. Right from the start my son was visibly more at ease with my wife around. And why not? She could feed him with her body, I couldn’t even do it with a spoon.
What’s the most radical thing you’ve done?
Being a Conservative and Leave voter in the world of stand up is reasonably out there. Those views are pretty common in wider so-ciety, but in a comedy dressing room it’s the equivalent of a Scientologist giving Mass.
Why are there so few comics on the right?
Historically the alternative scene was a reaction to the stand-up of the day. Even though that was ages ago, some lefties cling onto this view that any right-wing comedian must be unpleasant (so un-like the left to get their big ideas from the seventies). If anything, me not turning out to be a totally evil git seems to annoy them more.
Why do you think that Tories are ‘shy’?
It’s a learned behaviour. You try to have grown-up conversations, but when the very act of voting for a mainstream political party is called ‘murdering’ or ‘facist’ it makes you more likely to keep the discussion to less contentious subjects – like Israel or the inevitability of death.
Have you got any ties to / memories of Nottingham?
I had one of my scariest situations at the old Jongleurs in Nottingham.
I’d been having a running battle with this one drunk punter. He threat-ened to knock me out. I said I’d call the bouncer. The bouncer turned out to be his brother in law.
Brexit. That’s it! That’s the question!
Well I voted Leave and I’d like to say that yes, I did realise it would be this complicated, and I absolutely thought through all the ramifications of a hard border in Northern Ireland and…look I don’t regret my vote, but it’s tricky. I might not be able to make jokes in support of Brexit, but I can certainly crack a few at the expense of certain Remainers. You know the ones who developed this lifelong love of the EU the moment the vote went the other way. And they go on the marches, but only if it’s on a Saturday and they can factor in brunch at Browns.
Do you ever get adverse reactions from audiences?
Sometimes people get triggered. Corbynistas cannot take jokes at Jeremy’s expense. I was at a gig in Bristol and remarked that Cor-byn looks like a pensioner at a service station who thinks he’s lost his coach party. One lady got up and said ‘STOP BEING MEAN ABOUT JEREMY!’ Which was fine, but the previous comic to me had been making jokes about Theresa May’s appearance and she’d laughed throughout. I made that point and she stormed out, ironically no-platforming herself.
Geoff Norcott’s UK tour of his new show, Traditionalism, runs from February 8 – March 25, 2018
