Raymond Campbell School of Arts and Digital Industries University of East London Title: Comic Cultures: commerce, aesthetics and the politics of stand-up performance in the UK 1979 to 1992 Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. October 2016 Abstract This thesis represents the first Cultural Studies analysis of the 1980s entertainment form commonly known as ‘alternative comedy’, which emerged against the backdrop of social, industrial and political unrest. However, the use of the term ‘alternative comedy’ has obscured a diverse movement that contained many different strands and tendencies, which included punk poets, street performers, chansonniers and improvising double acts. This thesis goes some way to addressing the complex nature of this entertainment space by recognising the subtle but important differences between New Variety and alternative cabaret. Alternative cabaret was both a movement and an entertainment genre, while New Variety grew out of CAST’s theatre work and was constructed in opposition to Tony Allen’s and Alexei Sayle’s Alternative Cabaret performance collective. Taken together, alternative cabaret and New Variety comprise one part of the alternative space that also includes post-punk music, and were the cultural expressions of the 1980s countercultural milieu. Alternative cabaret and New Variety were the products of cultural change. Each genre has its roots in the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s and it was the knowledge that agents had acquired through participation in these movements that helped to shape their political-aesthetic dispositions or their weltanschauunng. As well as political activism, rock music influenced performers and promoters and contributed much to their art. In this sense, this was as much a post-punk avant-garde movement as it was a cultural intervention. This study charts the development of alternative entertainment in 1980s Britain and its transformation into the multi-million pound comedy industry that it is today (S Friedman, 2009). This study also analyses how the alternative space was constructed and how it was eventually destroyed by the internal and external pressures that acted upon it. I have used the written and oral testimonies of those who were involved in the space and used my own recollections from 14 years of performing comedy and promoting cabaret clubs. i Acknowledgements I would like to offer my thanks to my supervisory team Jane Stokes, Stephen Maddison and Angie Voela for their guidance and patience. I would also like to thank Andrew Foster for copying some of his collection of comedy DVDs for use in this study; and to Mark Hurst, and Roland and Claire Muldoon for their support and encouragement. This thesis is dedicated to my late parents Ray and Dorothy, and to my daughter, Lola, and my grandsons, Joshua and Nathaniel. ii Table of contents Abstract...............................................................................................i Acknowledgements……………………………………………………….ii Table of contents………………………………………………………….iii 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………1 2. Previous literature & conceptual framework………………………15 2. 1 Related academic work ......................................................15 2.1.1 A word about satire…………………………………..25 2.2 Fields……………………………………………………………..26 2.2.1 Habitus, capital and field: an overview....................26 2.2.2 Countercultural habitus and habitus clivé................3. 2.3 Spaces 2.3.1 Official and unofficial worlds....................................37 2.3.2 Alternative spaces and mainstream spaces............42 2.4 Popular cultural and youth cultural spaces............................46 2.4.1 Meditations on popular culture.................................46 2.4.2 Rock ‘n’ roll and the British cultural establishment ..48 2.4.3 Punk rock and post-punk .........................................50 2.5 The Thatcher Project....................................................56 3. Methodology………………………………………………………………61 3.1 The landscape........................................................................61 3.2 Study design...........................................................................61 3.2.1 Interviews .................................................................61 3.2.2 Selecting participants…….........................................62 3.2.3 Conversational interview technique...........................64 iii 3.2.4 Questionnaires..............................................................66 3.2.5 Case study ...................................................................67 3.2.6 Self-reflexivity as a method...........................................67 3.3 Self as subject.............................................................................68 3.4 Secondary data ..........................................................................71 3.5 Approaches to analysis...............................................................73 3.5.1 Transcription..................................................................73 3.5.2 Inductive Thematic Analysis..........................................73 3.5.3 Interpretative phenomenological analysis......................74 3.6 Ethics...........................................................................................75 3.8 Limitations....................................................................................76 3.7 The road from here.......................................................................76 4. Previous spaces………………………………………………………………77 4.1 Music Hall and Variety Theatre....................................................77 4.2 Working men’s clubs.....................................................................79 4.3 Commercial cabaret and Publand variety......................................81 4.4 Cabaret-artistique..........................................................................84 4.5 Political cabaret, agit-prop theatre and alternative theatre............87 5 New Spaces I: alternative cabaret…………………………………………..91 5.1 Overview of the findings.................................................................91 5.1.1 Performers’ habituses.......................................................93 5.1.3 Social relations of the space………………………………..97 5.2 Spaces in transition…………………………………………………….101 5.2.1 The death of alternative cabaret……………………………119 5.3 Alternative performers and countercultural practices......................126 5.3.1 Alexei Sayle.......................................................................126 5.3.2 Martin Soan, Malcolm Hardee & The Greatest Show on Legs…………………………………………………………………..131 5.3.3 Buddy Hell, art and politics................................................135 iv 6. New spaces II: CAST presents New Variety............................................161 6.1Preamble..........................................................................................161 6.2 Left-wing Rock ‘n’ Roll Kids versus ‘square’ left-wingers................161 6.3 The birth of alternative theatre........................................................163 6.4 The Road to New Variety................................................................169 6.5 Responding to Thatcher’s symbolic violence………………………..174 6.6 The birth of New Variety..................................................................179 6.7 New Variety and funding.................................................................182 6.8 Disseminating the message/educating the public...........................184 6.9 The Hackney Empire......................................................................191 6.10 The decline of New Variety circuit.................................................198 7. Conclusion……………………………………...............................................202 8. Bibliography…………………………………………………………………….214 Appendices…………………………………………………………………………240 Appendix 1 Left-wing politics as embodied cultural capital……………………………………………………………………….240 Appendix 2 Club types and political-aesthetic dispositions………259 Appendix 3 Cabaret A Go Go……………………………………………264 Appendix 4 Mini biographies of the participants…….……………...295 Appendix 5: Alt cab timeline…………………………………………….300 Appendix 6 Questions to the Muldoons………………………………327 Appendix 7 Interview question frame………………………………….329 Appendix 8 Pilot questionnaire…………………………………………330 Appendix 9 Cabaret A Go Go: first poster……………………………302 v Figures and tables Tables Table 1 - Post-punk and alternative cabaret comparisons………208 - 209 Table 2 – Club types………………………………………………………...259 Figures Figure 1 – Entertainment fields 1979 - 1982………………………………97 Figure 2 – Spatial relations………………………………………………….98 Figure 3 - El Lissitzky’s Red Wedge………………………………………112 Figure 4 - Alexei Sayle………………………………………………………127 Figure 5 – Alexei Sayle screengrab from OTT on YouTube…………….128 Figure 6 - Greatest Show on Legs………………………………………….131 Figure 7 – Hackney Empire poster, Joan Collins Fan Club (Julian Clary)186 Figure 8 - Hackney Empire poster, 1950s………………………………….186 Figure 9 - New Variety, Wood Green TU Centre flyer…………………….188 Figure 10 - New Variety, Cricklewood Hotel, flyer………………………….189 Figure 10 – Hackney Empire benefit poster…………………………………193 vi 1. Introduction Armalite rifle and the Holy Trinity Used against you like Irish jokes on the BBC ~Gang of Four, ‘Armalite Rifle’, 1979 The game of culture is not static. It is one which is inescapably changing, generating its own dynamism like an internal combustion engine Robbins, 2000: xxiv Culture and society are not