That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

Amid the recent Wayne Rooney debacle (this is the one where he sarcastically applauded a referee rather than the other 17 which will no doubt immediately follow), Sir Alex Ferguson was heard to remark that ‘He has a chip on his shoulder, like everyone from that City’. Cue an onslaught of po-faced indignation from Liverpool’s chief whingers at the very suggestion that any Scouser could be criticised openly in the press. In a passing comment. At a private function.
Liverpool ‘Business Representative’ (read stall holder) Frank McKenna immediately chimed in with that well-worn chorus, ‘People in Liverpool have a sense of humour and can take a few jokes made at our expense’. Could have fooled me Frank! Let’s look at the evidence…
October 2004 – Boris Johnson accuses Liverpool of ‘wallowing in misery’ following a three hour silence and commemorative dinner plate to mourn the loss of Ken Bigley, who once got on the X5 bus. Liverpool’s outrage is incandescent, and copies of Johnson’s Spectator article are burned in the street. April 1989 – The Sun publishes a characteristically incorrect story about Liverpool fans urinating on corpses and picking their pockets during the Hillsborough Disaster. The resulting bile on Merseyside lasted for over 15 years. Now I’m all for Sun-bashing, even when there isn’t a good reason, but 15 years? Not exactly characteristic of the easy-going live and let live Scouser we’ve been assured is the norm, is it now?

Where did this idea of the Funny Scouser come from? Was it simply an exercise in spin? An attempt to overhaul the old image of the thieving druggie Scouser with a bubble perm and someone else’s benefit book? The evidence for this Funny Scouser myth seems to be scant at best. Any lexicon of Scouse comedians tends to turn up the same half dozen names- Les Dennis, Ken Dodd, Ted Ray, Tommy Handley, Robb Wilton, Arthur Askey. So that’s one who has started his career within the last 30 years, and four who are dead. Hardly a Who’s Who of side splitting.

In 2002 there was a Liverpool City Council motion to open a Comedy Hall Of Fame in the Empire theatre. The plan only stalled when the list of probable inductees was read out and included, er, Les Dennis, Ken Dodd, Ted Ray, Tommy Handley, Robb Wilton and Arthur Askey.
Seeing as these are the Comedy Greats to whom Liverpool owes it’s genetic funny bone, let’s examine them a little more closely. Dodd made his name by making up words such as ‘tattyfilarious’ and brandishing a duster. I can almost hear you pissing yourselves at the memory. Les Dennis, the cuckolded Mavis impersonator whose shelf life ran out about the same time as Dustin Gee’s left ventricle. Thank God that woman said ‘my cardigan’ when asked to name something blue on Family Fortunes, otherwise we might never have heard from him again. Ted Ray was actually from Wigan and died nearly thirty years ago, and the last time Tommy Handley was cracking gags we were still mourning Queen Victoria. Robb Wilton was dead by the advent of television, which leaves Arthur Askey as the man chosen to shoulder the Comedy Greatness of Liverpool. I don’t know why all Scousers don’t visit his grave more often to pay their respects to the Godfather of that irrepressible Scouse wit. Maybe because he was buried in London where he escaped to almost immediately after leaving the womb.

Far from being the UK’s chuckle machines, there are few more humourless peoples than Scousers who have been slighted, or disagreed with, or looked at. Heaven forfend you don’t find their unique brand of loudmouthed ‘comedic’ water torture amusing – they’ll continue regardless. I had the deep misfortune of sitting behind a table full of Scouse holidaymakers on their way to bargain flights out of Gatwick a few months back. They had descended on a student who was getting off the train at Crewe (actually, I have my suspicions she had a ticket to London Euston but feared she might kill), and mocked her incessantly for the twenty minutes she was on the train. In any other town in the world, this would have been considered rude and worthy of a sharp slap about the ears, but the Famous Scouse Sense Of Humour dictated that the poor girl sat there and endured the constant howling of “What do you study den? Psychology!??!! Psychology??! You reckon we’re all fuckin nuts den do ye? Where you from? Crewe?!?! Crew?!!? I wouldn’t admit dat love! Crewe!?!’. And so on ad nauseum, which may as well be Liverpool’s new Latin motto.

The minute the put upon woman left the train, the lead ape began to assess their performance. “Aw, she enjoyed that bit of banter didn’t she eh? I bet we made her day.’ He seemed blissfully unaware that she would tell everyone she met that day of the morning she spent on the train with the Scousers. And that everyone would nod and groan in sympathy as they remembered their own Morning With The Scousers, from which they are still recovering. If you ever want someone to roll their eyes and groan for any reason, ‘Some Scousers were talking to me on the train’ will illicit that response immediately. The international code for ‘I was bored shitless by some wannabe Ken Dodds’.

This year, a poll was conducted which seemed to bear out the Scouse humour myth, as Liverpudlians were reported to be the funniest people in Britain. What escaped the headline writers was that the respondents were asked to name the people who made them laugh the most, which is not really the same thing. I’d wager that, rather than giggling away at their Best Of Les Dennis DVD, the people in question were actually swapping Scouse Train anecdotes in the pub, and laughing at how one city can breed a people who substitute timing and clever word play for ‘Hitler bombed our chippy’.

Face it Scousers, you’re no funnier than anyone else in Britain, and have no right to the role of Britain’s court jesters. Strange how any other Liverpudlian stereotype brings about much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but that some Scousers are happy to wear a permanent daft grin when outside the City limits, as if they are wandering 17th century clowns looking for a tavern to entertain in return for lodgings and meat. Scousers who are trying to be funny are as exhausting as any attention seeking toddler, without half the comedic skill. Just look at Stan Boardman. Could you spend more than eight minutes in a room with him without trying to claw your own ears off?
It will take a national effort akin to that of the Industrial Revolution to change people’s perceptions now, but wouldn’t it be nice to hear people say ‘You know what, Scousers just don’t make me laugh’. More than that, wouldn’t it be fucking funny?