I first encountered Jeremy Hardy during a brief flirtation with Radio 4 back in the early 90s. He was presenting a lecture titled "How To Know Your Place" which had me doubled up with laughter but which was the last episode of his series; Radio 5 became 5Live shortly after and I didn't listen to Radio 4 again until the new Douglas Adams adaptations aired.
Consequently, to me, Jeremy was a vaguely familiar face who appeared occassionally on the They Think It's Quite Buzzcocky For You circuit until, a couple of years ago, I discovered BBC7 and the full glory of Jeremy Hardy Speaks To The Nation was revealed to me.
Speaks to the Nation was the series that early lecture came from and is possibly the most consistently hilarious radio series I have ever encountered; I was therefore with excitement and a little trepidation that I set out to see the wee guy live.
Trepidation only because I've now got all seven series (that's about 18 hours) of Speaks to the Nation constantly present on my Rio Carbon; would I have heard it all before?
Not a bit of it. Jeremy presented two straight hours of unthemed stand-up to an appreciative, if slightly reserved, sell-out crowd. Subjects ranged from the expected right-on stuff about homophobia and racism to parenthood and music festivals (I went to Glastonbury. A bloke in his forties in a field in a tent. I felt I should be judging leeks).
He touched on current affairs (The police should be allowed to strike - just imagine them hunched around their brazier, burning their truncheons, and a hundred former miners arriving on horseback) and stuck up for Amy Winehouse, pointing out that she's probably a lightweight in the contolled substances stakes compared to the Keefs and Lemmys of a world so keen to criticise her.
His political rants were as confusing as ever - Jeremy wants to protect people from themselves and doesn't try to reconcile his support for bans with his more liberal tendancies (thus alienating himself from both the libertarian and authoritarian camps).
Labour, the political party he fell out with many years ago, came in for some well deserved stick over all the right-wing stuff (ID cards, PFI, fuelling the credit boom) and corruption (cash for honours); Don't they understand? When we said, "You're the same as the Tories" it wasn't a challenge, it was just something to say.
Departed friends (Alan Coren and Linda Smith) were paid tribute to, Jeremy suggesting that I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue contestants seem to have a longer life expectancy than those on The News Quiz. His observation that his fanbase comprises largely of Radio 4 listeners and one harsh winter might see them all off raised many nervous giggles.
He threw in a few bars of a song or two - unaccompanied he doesn't sound half as bad as he does on ISIHAC; he can carry a tune, just not one he's been given - and demonstrated a previously unknown (to me, anyway) talent for mimicry; his John Reid Lanarkshire accent was spot on - I could've been visiting family.
He left us with (in his words) some real jokes which had come to him from his old friend, the late Alan Coren. Under any other circumstances they'd probably be derided as stereotypical, even anti-semitic; but they did come from Alan...
A Jew, an Englishman, a Frenchman and a Russian were crossing the desert. Obviously the Englishman, Frenchman and Russian might've been Jewish as well but, for the purposes of this joke, that's unimportant.
- The Russian said, "I'm hot and I'm parched; I must have vodka"
- The Frenchman said, "I'm hot and I'm parched; I must have wine"
- The Englishman said, "I'm hot and I'm parched; I must have beer"
- The Jew said, "I'm hot and I'm parched; I must have diabetes"
A flasher opened his mac to an old Jewish woman in the park.
She said, "That's a lining?"
A comedian's agent called him and said, "I've got you a great charity gig - be careful, you mustn't blow this one, it's with the Paranoia Society."
He hung up and the comedian's phone rang again; "Hi, this is Steven, I'm the secretary of the Paranoia Society".
"Oh, hi there. I was just talking about you..."
Mighty fine show.
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