Al Pitcher, Comedian ???

A couple of weeks ago I had the misfortune to tune into a Swedish stand-up comedy show on television. It wasn't the fact that it was a Swedish show which was the misfortune. Swedes are pretty good at television humour. A lot of stuff is a variation on shows already played out around the world, but they do find ways to add their own twist into things. It's not a straight copy, which you find a lot of times.

Nope, sadly enough this artist (for want of a better word) was not Swedish. Rather, Al Pitcher hails from my former country, New Zealand. Al is one of those people whom, in my opinion, if they have to be associated with your country, at least you take some comfort in the fact that they aren't living in the country. So why the hell did he have to pick Sweden to hide out in ?

Some people are genuinely funny, while some people confuse humour with stupidity. It turned out, after a very painful 30 minutes, that Al's entire repertiore consists of him demonstrating his complete lack of understanding of the Swedish language and society. And then trying to pass that ignorance off as humour. Al, like you, I'm a native English speaker living in Sweden, and I think it falls on me to try and help you out a little. Picking the rude words out of a foreign dictionary and then repeating them aimlessly for 10 minutes is really funny. When you're 13 years old. I remember doing the same thing with my French textbook at school. It wasn't funny anymore when we were 15. Is that the best that you have ?

Then there was the classic case of straight out ignorance. At some point Al started on about this marvellous Swedish word that he had stumbled across which solves a multitude of conversational problems. The word he plucked out was "Jaha". He then proceeded to parade the word around in a number of situations. Now, leaving aside that fact that half the time he was using it in completely the wrong situation and context, the word itself is relatively unremarkable. Simply put, it's an expression used to acknowledge that another person has said something, but without committing an opinion one way of the other. I was left with the feeling that maybe Al's grasp of the English language was somewhat flimsy, as there are several well known words available in English to portray exactly the same thing. As I would suspect there are in every language. For some reason Al decided that this word, not unique to one spoken language, was a source of fascination and wonder. For some reason. It was as funny as me pointing at a car, saying the word "bil" (Swedish word for car) and then trying to convince everyone that was the funniest word ever invented. Talk about trying to make something out of nothing. Desperation was the verdict.

Al, if you're going to have a crack at mocking snus, know your subject. That's the key to a good joke. First up, at least try to learn how to say the word. Maybe that was part of the gag, but it was lost on me. Then, if you are planning on wasting 5 minutes of everyone's lives by demonstrating how a person looks with snus in their mouth, make an effort to make it try to look like a person who has snus in their mouth. I'll give you a quick tip, it looks nothing like what you were doing. To be honest, I thought that you were doing a bad impression of a former NZ Prime Minister. Like we all haven't been there. Al's sad act, and it's apparent connection to snus (listen to the word, Al, it doesn't rhyme with the kiwi Bus) was about as clever as my donning a ballet tutu and doing an impression of a football player. Overall the act was at Keystone Cops/Benny Hill level. And I guess that's ok if you are easily pleased.

Now, in Al's defence (and it's a weak one), he's not the only person who has been fooled into thinking that he is funny. Actually, I suspect that he does know his limitations, which is why he isn't known back in his home country. Anyway, when people go to see a comedian, they are already convinced that they are going to be entertained by humour. They are already in that zone when the comedian comes out on stage. The artist only has to say Hello, and people are already rolling on the floor and wiping tears from their eyes. Really ? Stop and think for a moment. Was what he just said really that funny ? If the stranger next to you on the bus said the exact same thing would you react in the exact same manner ? So we don't really help these entertainers in showing them how effective or ineffective they really are. I think we need to show these artists that we are a little better than Pavlov's Dog. Remember, he's taking your money. How about he earn it ?

All that remains for me to do now is to publically apologise to the people of Sweden from the people of New Zealand. Despite what you may now belive, we are actually a pretty educated bunch and we've moved on a little from the status of Village Idiot. Al Pitcher was not have been considered funny in New Zealand. His biggest claim to fame was as co-host on a short lived Saturday morning television show aimed at the under 5s. He does not represent the country in any shape or form. If you think that Al is funny, then by all means go out there and support him. But don't accept mediocrity just because it arrives on-stage with a pre-packaged label.