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David Longley A Joke is just a Joke – Tour 2008/09 PR
This superbly intelligent stand up show is now available to tour. Schedule: First leg: Oct – Nov 2008 Second Leg: Feb – April 2009. “There's no compelling reason as to why you should see this show above anyone else's. Strange as human beings are, we will pay money to see a show, and if it turns out to be a crap show, we'll still sit there Because “I've paid, so I might as well stay." It is this mentality I intend to address. It makes no sense. Like a lot of things, it makes no sense but we keep doing it. I don't really see any sense in writing this. I don't actually believe that reading this will make one iota of difference to your decision to see the show or not. Yet, here I am. Typing away. Just. Bollocks. Pointless. Bollocks. So what is my show about? Well, despite being en vogue, it is not a personal journey of self discovery whereby I somehow affirm our human existence by laying bare my soul. There are 6 billion of us. Get over yourself. There's no point dressing it up, I'm gonna rip the piss out of stuff. Not easy stuff, difficult stuff. You know, clever stuff so that people will be impressed and shit. I'm reluctant to tell you what stuff, because then I'll get a certain bunch of people in that already want to hear the kind of things I will say. Which is shite. There is no fun in preaching to the choir. The media, press, sensibilities, religion, love. All that bullshit. I’m gonna rip the piss out of that stuff. At the end of the day, I am not famous, and most people know who they want to go and see anyway. Which brings me back to the complete fucking pointlessness of this exercise! I assure you that I am funny. ALL of the shows at the fringe look good. That is marketing. Even a shit review will be chopped to make it sound good. Just go along to a show, and see what it's like. If it is crap after 20 minutes, get up and leave. Life is too short. Don't see any I sound like a twat. I know. Some people believe there are two ways to motivate, the stick or the carrot. Me? I am all about yin/yang balance. I get a massive carrot and twat people with it. Before I started comedy, a joke was just a joke. Then I started to do comedy, and joke was more than a joke. Now I understand comedy, a joke is just a joke.”
Press Publication: The List Writer: Tom Maxwell Published: 7th Aug 08
As intense and intelligent a performer as you're likely to see all summer, Longley is as angry with himself as he is at the rest of the world. The super-cynical comedian not only tells great jokes, but you sense that his rants on everything from sex to religion come straight from the heart. Publication: The Metro Writer: Mickey Noonan Date Published: 8th Aug 08
- THE METRO
Last year, a few days into his show, Dave Longley decided he didn't want to do the hour he'd written and sabotaged his festival stint as a result. This year, Dave becomes David and, seemingly, is all grown-up. A Joke Is Just A Joke stems from Longley's run-in with the press last year when a remark he made about Madeleine McCann, Rhys Jones and Everton tops caused a furore in a Liverpool comedy club. Longley apologised for his thoughtlessness, donated his fee for that night to charity and refused to cash in on the fact his name was everywhere. His actual theme is a side-step from the bandwagon-jumping that went on after that incident, as he trounces bad reasoning and bad thinking. He goes off on sizeable tangents to rant about Colin Fry, Scientology and Diet Coke among other things, but always returns to how obsessed people can get with backing up their belief, despite all evidence to its contrary. Longley's message is that comedy shouldn't have a message; a joke is just a joke - and that's a good thing. He's a clever bugger, though, and counters his own argument with an intelligent and considered show that proves comedy can say something important and, crucially, still be funny. Let's hope he doesn't cock it up. Publication: Festmag Writer: Paris Gourtsoyannis Date Published: 10th Aug 08 It’s Sod’s Law that, dispatched to a late Friday night standup gig—spiritual home of the undeveloped sense of humour, where a pint is a mandatory accessory—I arrive five minutes late. With the only available seat being in the front row, I duly prepare for David Longley gut me with his wit for the pleasure of the rabid mob. The blow never falls; Longley passes up the easy kill. It becomes clear that Longley is a different breed of late-night comic, whose intelligent, wellresearched material and confident, unhysterical delivery rebel against his time slot. The only reason he’s on at half eleven at night is that his set is unremittingly filthy: nuns don’t just get roasted in this show – they enjoy it, too. Longley is on a mission to expose substandard thinking, and the way in which society deludes us, or worse, we delude ourselves. His targets are somewhat predictable: religion, love, alternative medicine and the media are battered over the course of an hour. What sets Longley appart from lesser observational comics is the rigour which he applies to his deconstruction of fuzzy logic; his anecdotes are laid out with a detailed, measured assurance. If the Liverpool Echo hack who unfairly skewered Longley for an insensitive joke made at the height of the Madeline McCann saga had a fraction of the comic’s work ethic, the routine would be robbed of its most convincing
argument. Oh well, lessons have been learned; you don’t make fun out of tragedy – leave Everton alone, David.” Publication: Chortle Writer: Steve Bennett Published: 26th Aug 08 “Dave Longley has some big ideas, eloquently put, in this imperfect but intellectually ambitious hour. He is an out-and-out cynic, with a clinically unromantic attitude to love, a militantly atheist reaction to religion, and an almost pathological hatred of both psychics and alternative medicine charlatans selling demonstrably useless salves to body and soul. His vigorous scientific demolition of these is as thorough as it is entertaining, and he has a nice line in passionate rants. The theme that underpins every segment is his despair that so many people cling on to predetermined points of view, no matter what weight of unarguable evidence is presented to them. The themes are familiar once among the more enlightened practitioners of opinionated comedy: that celebrity culture is insidious, that new age voodoo is worthless, or that if there is a God, is he really more concerned with teenage masturbation than, say, Darfur? But the arguments are deftly put together , and his take on these subjects is always good, sometimes superlative. Set-piece routines suggesting modern medicine should take a more evangelical air, or the constant ridiculing of the ‘what she needs is a good seeing-to’ school of misogyny are artful and hilarious. He does have a disconcerting habit of avoiding eye contact during much of his set, however, fixing his gaze about the audience’s head. That people’s opinions can be so inflexible was brought definitively home to Longley earlier this year when he, as he understatedly put it, ‘made a mistake at work’. His schoolboy error was to crack a joke about Madeleine McCann and Rhys Jones in front of an audience in famously sensitive Liverpool. The gag died a painful death, Longley apologised and went home, embarrassed at his faux pas. Unknown comedian tells bad joke is hardly headline news, he thought, but that was to ignore the offended audience member who alerted the Liverpool Echo, which hyped up the outrage. It became the sick joke heard across the world. Today, he asserts that a joke is just a joke, a sweeping statement which is exactly the sort of argument Bernard Manning disingenuously used to defend his hateful material. Jokes, like any form of expression, can be genuinely hurtful and corrosive. This section of the show is a little self-serving, seemingly most concerned about restoring his reputation. But thankfully, he does wittily puncture this atmosphere as he crescendos towards his conclusion. But he needn’t worry about his reputation if he can build on this level of quality and incisiveness, perhaps without that one nagging bee in his bonnet, he could very well find himself becoming a festival must-see.”
Dates (updated 1st Sept)
Date 2nd November 9th November Venue The Frog and Bucket, Manchester Details www.frogandbucket.com
Hilarity Bites @ The Waiting Room, Eaglescliffe
Contact: Lee Martin @ Gag Reflex 0161 228 6368/07974 685 267 lee@gagreflex.co.uk www.gagreflex.co.uk