Guilt & Shame: Shameless Comedy

Written by: Gabriel Bisset-Smith
Published: Sunday 5th October 2014

Gabriel Bisset-Smith who, with Robert Cawsey, delivers the 'depraved comedy' of Guilt & Shame, discusses how it's important to have a comedy show that means something...

There are two types of comedy that I am most drawn to. The first is that kind of tragi-comedy; the stuff that comes when you have to laugh. Like when my grandma lay in her hospital bed during the last hours of her life, surrounded by her family... and was hilarious. Joke after joke. Dropping comedy bombs. We were rolling about the place. We had to be. Anything so we didn't have to confront the black hooded, scythe-carrying elephant in the room... the Grimm Elephant (sounds like a pretty fucking awesome CBBC show).

Some of the biggest laughs of my life have come during the most desperate situations, when I'm in the eye of an emotional storm. And, if you can create that kind of raw emotional comedic state for an audience, then you're gonna get some big LOLS. But this is only possible if your comedy is about something and means something to them.

Yes, you could do a show about a break dancing sparrow and it would connect but I want to go deeper than that when I write a show. I want to try and hit upon issues and ideas that are in our national and global conscious. That sounds a little grandiose, but fuck it. Why not go for it? If you're gonna be getting on stage and flailing around like a constipated baboon every night you may as well try to make it mean something. (Constipated Baboon. CBBC call me now. I'm on a roll).

And this brings me to my second favourite type of comedy - political comedy, or satire. The Daily Show. Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. Stuff that's bang on the nose about what it's discussing but doing it with such charm and wit you listen without realising. This stuff has real power. It's exciting. And for me it's at best when it's skating really close to the edge. This is when the laughs are bigger. Because they mean more. The stakes are higher.

That's what I wanted to try and do with mine and Rob's new show, Going Straight. Rob is gay and I am straight but the reason we're friends is because I don't think either of us fit into those worlds. I'm not particularly macho and Rob's not particularly camp.

We sometimes feel like we're surrounded by men pretending or trying to be 'men', a concept that I feel is best encapsulated within the show Top Gear. Something that, since writing our show, I have actually come to enjoy but still has a strange alien aspect to me. It's aggressively macho. And Clarkson & Co have that air of a group of blokes down the pub who, if you let slip that you weren't really into cars, would challenge your masculinity.

When most groups of men challenge each other's manliness they're usually questioning sexuality. As if being gay isn't the most macho thing ever... IT'S TWO MEN FUCKING! What's more manly than that?

Anyway, these might not seem like the most obvious topics for a comedy show - homophobia and masculinity - but they are important to me and Rob, as well as the perfect topics for a gay and straight man to explore on stage. But the minute we add Clarkson to the mix things start becoming a lot funnier. What if Rob and I use him as the template to try and become 'real men'? What if we take everything he says literally and actually start a cult based on his teachings? He's such a national buffoon (again CBBC) that using him as the lynchpin of our show allows us to wink at the audience and get away with a lot of shit.

Finding the right conduit for our comedy allows us to take more risks, make things edgier, mean more and, therefore, give the audience bigger and deeper laughs. As well as giving two constipated baboons purpose.

'Guilt & Shame: Going Straight' is at the Soho Theatre on 9th - 11th October and 16th - 18th October 2014. Info & Tickets