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Tony Allen has a unique place in modern stand-up.
He played the Comedy Store in its earliest days, and is credited
(wrongly, he maintains) with inventing the term 'alternative
comedy' by insisting on performing confrontational, challenging
stand-up.
Yet while many of his contemporaries found fame and fortune,
he stayed true to his staunch, radical conscience and has spent
a lifetime performing at low-key comedy venues, spoken word nights,
counter-culture festivals and Speaker's Corner - forging a niche
as a self-proclaimed 'mixed ability shaman'.
Clearly the voice of such experience should have something
to say.
And Attitude: Wanna Make Something Of It, is a decidedly personal
take on the state of stand-up. While that's entirely appropriate,
given that the message running through every chapter is 'be true
to yourself', it can be a little frustrating to read tracts about
subjects for which you don't share his passion.
Part instruction manual, part autobiography and part history
book, the brief is wide, and it can jump around a bit, with reviews
and assorted pieces of writing sitting amid the main thread.
It's almost as if he dropped part of the manuscript on the way
to the publishers and hurriedly reassembled the pages in the
best order he could. Despite that, there's plenty of advice,
insight and analysis in those pages, which is well worth seeking
out.
Part one ambitiously claims to reveal the secret of stand-up
comedy. Which turns out to be timing. And attitude. And experience.
And repetition.
In fact, it's an invaluable, if all-too brief, run-through
of all the tools comedians should have at their disposal. His
tips are pretty much the universally accepted ones - mainly that
the key is to 'find you voice' - but succinctly and convincingly
put. He also includes a couple of specific exercises to help
find that stance, which could prove very useful to an aspiring
stand-up.
Part two is a history of stand-up, from tribal behaviour,
through commedia dell'arte and music hall, and right up to Allen's
comic hero and inspiration, Lenny Bruce. In truth, this has been
tackled before and this book doesn't really add anything. Along
with a later segment relating to the role of the clown, these
essays seem more about Allen justifying his personal 'shaman'
approach within the traditions of the fool, rather than revealing
anything more universal.
Then it's onto the history of alternative comedy, a first-hand
account from one of the key participants, and a useful companion
to previous tomes such as Didn't You Kill My Mother In Law, and
The Comedy Store. This more personal approach, while less comprehensive
than the previous books, is a fresh angle, and his insights on
the nascent movement are fascinating.
Part four, The Edge Of Stand-Up Comedy, traces Allen's career
as a clown, mixed with a rag-bag of reviews and opinions of the
circuit as it stands - which are pretty much bang on the money
about what makes a truly great comic stand apart from the hack.
The book ends with a transcript of his monologue which, like
all stand-up, looks decidedly odd on the page. Though there are
several great gags among the diatribe - a reminder that behind
all the analysis, and whatever the comic's agenda, the whole
point is to make 'em laugh.
Steve Bennett
 An alternative view
by Ivor Dembina
It's a bad time for live stand-up. The audience is voting
with its feet, sponsors are beginning to desert and listing magazines
cut their column space. Acts who'll never swim clutch for an
oar of the Jongleurs lifeboat and 'political comedy' means gags
about September 11 in the cappuccino atmosphere of the Edinburgh
Fringe.
Even the most cretinous of TV producers recognise that stand-up
doesn't work on the box and a small army of PR people consider
the dole queue amid the collective realisation that good publicity
doesn't make you funny. Here on Chortle the idea of a comedy
news item is Johnny Vegas marrying his 26 year-old girlfriend
from Leigh-on-Sea in Essex. What do we do? Send rendered pottery
as a wedding present?
It's prescient to ask where did it all go wrong? Tony Allen
doesn't give us an answer but in his book Attitude Wanna
Make Something Of It you'll find one man's journey through the
last 25 years.
The strength of this outpouring of history notes, diary fragments,
insights and profundities is it reminds us of what stand-up comedy
could be; vital, challenging, passionate and painfully funny.
His account of the creative bedlam around the Comedy Store's
inception will baffle the younger reader who's perception of
the venue is mediated by hack-of-the-day highlights seamlessly
scheduled between the soft porn and other crap on late night
Channel 5. To his credit, Allen only tells it like it was. He
never sentimentalises or tells you it was better in the early
days. He doesn't have to, it leaps out of the page and smacks
you in the face.
His anecdotes don't just inform, but give a frontline view
of his war with his own confidence, the delusion brought on by
unexpected success and the self-coruscation that follows public
failure. His critique of why everyone loved Morecambe and Wise
is as persuasive as his analysis of why Terry Alderton will always
be a banker act but never a star. Were his assessment of some
of his recent associates not suspiciously gentle, there would
surely be a role for Tony Allen as Britain's leading comedy critic.
Not that I think he'd want it. My guess is that Tony Allen
wants to be what he is still capable of being, a truly outstanding
stand-up comedian. Why isn't he? The clue lies in a brilliant
misprint halfway down page 74. A sentence that should have read:
'Too many agendas spoil your concentration' opens with the word
'Two'. I'm sure it wasn't deliberate and, even if it was, it
doesn't weaken the point: Tony Allen suffers from a syndrome
of compulsive distraction. A childlike quality which makes it
impossible for him to dwell on anything for very long. Tony Allen
will take this as a compliment, sadly its not intended as one.
Stand-up requires a curious balance of relaxation and discipline.
Frank Skinner has it, Tony Allen doesn't. Frank's book has it,
Tony's doesn't. The irony is, Tony Allen has more interesting
things to say in five minutes than Frank will ever have in five
careers. The extended section of Tony Allen's material at the
very end of the book left me breathless with its excitement,
imaginative possibilities, intelligence and humour.
This book is a glorious shambles and Tony Allen should never
look at it again. He talks a lot about the secret of comedy but
I think it's this: It's never too late to become a successful
stand-up comedian.
Tony Allen should start work now. I always used to cringe
when I heard him described as the 'Grandfather of Alternative
Comedy'. It would be to his benefit and ours if he turned out
to be its grandchild instead.
Ivor Dembina
October 10, 2002
Click
to buy from Amazon.co.uk
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