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Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough

October 19th, 2008 · Posted by Skuds in Life · 1 Comment · Life

One of this month’s offers from Amazon’s Vine programme was So I Said To This Bloke – a DVD of comedian Tim Vine performing in London. Here is what I thought of it:

Tim Vine famously held the world record for the most jokes told in an hour, when he told jokes at a rate of one every seven seconds or so, which is how it feels in this live performance.  His jokes are almost all one-liners and many of them feature puns which range from the truly inventive to the groan-inducing. For some reason the ‘groaners’ can also be the funniest.

I knew all this before watching the DVD, and had seen Tim in various TV appearances where he rattles off a dozen or so of his jokes in rapid succession and I always enjoyed seeing him. Even if a joke misses it doesn’t matter because there he is already halfway through another one.

What I did not realise is that his live show is punctuated by lots of musical interludes and short comic songs, or that there are quite so many props involved.  I’m still amazed that somebody should take the time to fabricate the word ‘truth’ in foot-high letters just so he can fumble it and say he “can’t handle the truth”.  What a lot of work for a punchline!

The little songs do break the show up a bit, and that might be a good thing. I don’t know if a whole hour of one-liners might leave an audience feeling punch(line) drunk. The jokes themselves do draw as many appreciative groans as they do laughs and I can’t fault the bloke’s work rate and sheer profligacy.  I’m sure that many comedians would get five minutes of material out of an idea that Tim Vine just uses for a throw-away line.

And that is where I have a slight problem: I like the more narrative and rambling stand-up comedy rather than just relentless joke-telling, certainly over the long haul.  For me this sort of thing is is great in small doses but wears thin after 15 minutes.

Maybe not for me, but I can see this having great appeal to anyone who likes straightforward comedy without the dubious racial or sexist humour of the old school comics or the bad language and sexual subject matter of most modern comedians. It is old-fashioned joke-telling that you can happily watch with the whole extended family without the risk of offending anybody.

A quick example of his material:

I used to go out with an anaesthetist. She was a local girl

I watched a DVD the other day. In the extras there were some deleted scenes. I went to watch them and there was nothing there.

Velcro, what a rip-off…

The other day someone left a piece of plasticine in my dressing room. I didn’t know what to make of it.

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One Comment so far ↓

  • skud's sister

    Exit signs – are they on the way out?
    (Sounds like it could be one of his….)