Ben Elton

Last Tuesday evening Davie and I went to see Ben Elton at the Pavilion. Unfortunately James couldn’t come because he had an important meeting at the hospital about Grandma, so Davie kindly stepped in to accompany me at the last minute. The interesting thing was that Davie had no idea who Ben Elton is, so I wondered what he would think of him. Although very well-known in the 1980s and extremely successful since then at all sorts of ventures including writing comedies such as Blackadder, Ben Elton has never quite had the wider appeal of some of his contemporaries such as Rik Mayall or Stephen Fry. Perhaps that’s because Elton is more edgy and has a strange combination of earnestness as well as comedy. He could be very funny and then the next minute a bit uncomfortably intense. I have always liked him and was looking forward to seeing how his stand up seems nowadays.
I’m glad to say that he is still very sharp and funny at 60. His comedy was very much aimed at his age group which includes me and indeed the huge majority of the audience on Tuesday night. His routines about teenage children and music for the elderly were spot-on and hilarious. And the way he went from jokey to serious to ranting and back to jokey seems to me exactly the same as I remember him. If anything, I would say that he was a little too careful about what he said. He was clearly aware of the offence-taking atmosphere of 2019 and was careful to justify and qualify his comments a bit too much. David agreed with this but also pointed out that Elton contradicted himself from time to time, for example by proclaiming that all men have a collective responsibility regarding historical discrimination against women, but later saying that you can’t generalise about people’s reasons for supporting a particular political party. It was interesting listening to Ben Elton trying to make sense of politics today compared to what he understood in the 1980s.
He was full of energy and entertained us for more than two hours without so much as a glass of water to sustain him. And although some of the ranty parts of his routine sat slightly awkwardly with the more traditional stand up comedy parts, I thought it was a great evening and that he well deserved the standing ovation that he received from the audience.