UK comic Sean Lock remembered by Australian performer Matthew Hardy

(Image by comedy news website Chortle.co.uk)

The British comedian Sean Lock died of cancer on Monday, aged 58. I remember him in the 1990s as highly intelligent, a very very funny stand-up and, most of all, a kind man unspoilt by any discernible ego. I don’t think he changed when he became successful.

Here, Australian performer Matthew Hardy pays tribute to Sean…

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(L-R) Matthew Hardy, Malcolm Hardee, Sean Lock (Photograph courtesy of Matthew Hardy)

Rising up the London stand-up comedy club ladder in 1993, I’d started to get paid gigs (after 12 months of poverty-stricken gradual improvement), many of which were ‘Door Splits’ (meaning the Promoter splits the door-take equally with the comedians).

I’d been living in Welwyn Garden City, way too far out of London (grateful though I was for anywhere at all, having landed from Australia without a clue) and needed a room closer to the city, quickly. 

I ended up staying with the most outrageous individual I’ve ever known (who became a great mate, the comedian Malcolm Hardee, pictured above in the middle, but that’s a whole other story) and that opportunity came about because I’d been telling anyone who’d listen within the comedy community (I didn’t know anyone else) that I was desperately lacking in both money and a place to live. 

After an early paid Door Split gig at a well-attended club I won’t name, another act (who I met for the first time that night) named Sean Lock, offered me a lift to Kings Cross station (where most changeover train routes threaded through: trains I couldn’t afford tickets for, so I’d be nervously watching out for inspectors the whole way in and back) and, having delivered a good show, I spoke excitedly to him about how awesome it was to be have been paid £20.

“TWENTY POUNDS!” Sean said, loudly and incredulously.

“Yes”, I said, “I’ve been doing open-spots (free 5 minute trials) for a year now and it’s great to have gotten good enough to get paid”.

“You told the Promoter you were skint and needed somewhere to stay, didn’t you?” Sean said. 

“Yeah – and they said they’d try to help me out if they could,” I replied, enthusiastically. 

“Help you out?” he said. “The rest of us got £120 pounds each!”

I’d been lonely and thought I was about to cry, at which point Sean pulled over, took £50 out of his wallet and shoved it in my hand.

“Now we’ve both been paid the same,” he said, with a smile. 

And then, “You’re not in the outback anymore, cobber. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. And, by the way, I loved your ‘Windy Day’ routine”.

He dropped me off and I recall this all concisely because I was keeping a daily diary back then.

People remember kindness. 

People won’t forget Sean Lock.

At the risk of repeating a good story… something funny happened one night at the Comedy Store in London…

After my blog yesterday about a famous comedian who accidentally told exactly the same jokes twice in one routine, comes a story of someone who did the same thing intentionally.

Tony De Meur aka Ronnie Golden Facebooked me:

“A good few years back, I was watching Lee Cornes compering the Saturday late show at the Comedy Store. He was bored, so said he’d open the second half with a straight repeat of a routine he’d performed earlier. The bemused crowd watched in total silence as he animatedly trawled through familiar material while all the comics at the back shrieked with helpless laughter!”

To which Michael Redmond responded:

“I remember that, too. He did his ‘tramps’ routine twice… bloody hilarious.”

And Brian Mulligan of the late lamented Skint Video was there that night, too. He says Lee Cornes was “a true comic displaying bravery and invention”.

In an interview in The Times last year, Sean Lock said of Lee Cornes: “He’s not very well known but he is my main influence… He’s the comedians’ comedian. He used to be very unpredictable, which is a great skill in a comedian, not knowing where to go next.”

Alas, like many other good comedians, Lee no longer performs as a stand-up.

Gags, foreplay, punchlines and the theory of male and female orgasms in British comedy

Yesterday, I went to a comedy conference at the British Library in London and learned a few things.

Lucy Greeves who, with comedian Jimmy Carr, wrote the book The Naked Jape: Uncovering the Hidden World of Jokes, used the interesting simile that a joke is like a knight’s move on a chess board – it goes forward, then there’s an unexpected sideways move. That’s the punchline.

And  Chris C.P. Lee (now a Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Salford, but previously a performer in cult musical comedy group Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias) claimed there were no comedy double acts until the 1920s for legal reasons – because two people performing on stage in the UK were legally defined as being part of a theatrical “play” and music halls were not licensed for theatrical performances at that time.

The most jaw-dropping claim, though, came from Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire who said research showed that, when a man tells a joke, 70% of the women in an audience laugh. But, when a woman tells a joke, only 30% of the men in the audience laugh.

There was no explanation of this.

But maybe it really is true that men and women laugh at different things.

Long-time comedy scriptwriter and performer Barry Cryer suggested that women laugh at life, whereas men laugh at gags.

And comedian Arthur Smith suggested, perhaps rather mischievously, that jokes are appreciated like an orgasm: men like an exciting build-up and a sudden release of tension – a gag with a quick punchline – whereas women prefer stories to gags – a slower, longer build-up.

But, as the old saying goes, to get a hit record you need a song AND a singer.

Back in the showbiz mists of the last century, I remember being at the Edinburgh Fringe and every night for three weeks standing in the balcony of the original Gilded Balloon – before the venue got burnt down – watching the end of comedian Sean Lock’s act. He used to try out a different new gag every night and, if I worked, he would add the gag into future shows and remove an old one.

There was one gag he tried – involving a fork and doggie style sex – which I was fascinated by because it was a very good gag but, as far as I could see from my very good vantage point looking down on the audience from the balcony, all the men laughed at it but none of the women did.

Unusually, Sean persisted with this gag fo three or possibly four nights – with no laughs from the women – until all the men AND all the women laughed. After that, ever night, everyone laughed. As far as I could hear, he had changed none of the words and had not changed the delivery. I asked him what he had done.

“I changed the way I said it,” he told me. “I made myself slightly more innocent. So it’s less threatening.”

I tried to spot this in future performances but, even after he told me, I couldn’t see what he had changed.

The successful result, though, was clearly there to see and the difference was dramatic.

The sign of a great comic. Which Sean is.

You need a song AND a singer to have a hit record.