We invited Midlands comedian Rich Spalding to write about turning death into comedy.
My dad lives in the past. Which is more fun than saying dead
The first joke I ever wrote was about my dad, and it has never worked onstage. Not because it’s a bad joke. It’s not. It’s also not a great joke. It’s a fine joke. The joke is this…
“My dad lives in the past. Which is more fun than saying dead."
I’ve tried it quite a few times over the years I’ve been doing comedy. From open mic nights to big comedy clubs to, this year, an Edinburgh show. It’s a joke that gets a reaction, but not the right reaction. Some audiences gasp, some make sympathetic noises, some tut in disapproval at my decision to make a joke about my own dad’s actual death. Some will laugh nervously, not sure whether I’m telling the truth or joking. The truth is… both. I am joking. And my dad is dead.
The problem isn’t the joke, I don’t think. Not structurally. The joke works. It sets up a familiar premise and then subverts the audience’s expectations with a dark twist. The problem with the joke is the information that the twist delivers. I know that my dad’s dead. I’ve known for ten years and have come to terms with that fact enough to be able to joke about it. The audience are learning that information for the very first time and, even though they probably were less attached to my dad than I was, having only learned tacitly about his existence when they learned about my existence a few minutes ago when I walked onstage, they’re still understandably unsure of how to react to finding out that this man they’d never thought about before is dead.
It's an annoying reaction, and a kind one. It’s a room full of people wanting to make sure I’m OK with them laughing, before they laugh. And I am. But I can only make that clear after I’ve delivered the line, otherwise it spoils the twist. So, in order to make the joke work I have to tell the audience that my dad is dead, and that makes the joke not work. Quite the bind.
I’ve been joking about death for a long time. As a comedian, I’ve written a lot about death, about dying, about the afterlife, and about my dad. My show is, at least in part, about death. As with any ‘art’ (I have to put art in inverted commas lest you think I take myself seriously) about death, it’s also about life, because the two can’t be separated. It’s about living with death and trying to find a way to be OK with your own mortality. And I’ve found that immersing myself in it, fronting up to it and looking it dead in the eye, has taken away the fear.
It's off-putting to a lot of people. It’s something we generally don’t want to think or talk, let alone joke, about. It’s difficult, it’s uncomfortable, it’s awkward.
For the last two years, I’ve co-hosted a podcast with my friend and journalist, Tom Gerken, called Our Dads Died, in which we’ve talked about the lighter side of death with a wide range of guests including comedians, morticians, neuroscientists and paranormal psychologists. And in those conversations, I’ve found myself in the same position I put my audiences in – struggling to know how to react. When someone is opening up about their own loss it’s not always immediately clear where their personal line is. I’ll find myself in interviews wondering, "Is this a joke? Am I allowed to laugh? Am I allowed to join in?" It is, sometimes, uncomfortable.
We’re all encouraged to open up in the modern age. To talk about our emotions and our feelings, and I wholeheartedly agree, but it is also worth acknowledging that talking about your emotions, about loss, about grief, about death… can be intensely awkward. And so, we often decide that it’s easier not to. But after the initial discomfort has passed, it almost always feels good. For both sides. The listener too. People want to feel useful. People want to listen. And if, after the emotionally wrought bits are out of the way, you can also crack a joke to relieve the tension – that’s a ten out of ten conversation that leaves everyone buzzing. Get one of those under your belt and you’ll spend the rest of the day feeling invincible (you’re not though, you will also die one day).
It's not easy. That’s the terrible secret. There are days when even I can’t laugh about it. I’ve made jokes about my dad and then got upset when people laughed. I’ve felt annoyed when other people made jokes about my dad. I’ve made jokes about my dad then immediately regretted them. People aren’t linear and there are days, even a decade on, when I’m suddenly not ready to joke about the fact that my wonderful dad is dead. But on the days that I can, which is most of them, I make jokes, and I get to remember him and share him and use my experience to make other people laugh at the inevitable end we’re all heading towards.
Because death is fundamentally hilarious. It’s a great joke. It sets up a familiar premise then subverts the audience’s expectations with a dark twist. You have this whole life, full of possibility and experience and it keeps going and going and going and it matters so much to all of us and then one day it just stops. It’s just over. And you don’t get to sum up, you don’t get to take anything with you, you don’t get a curtain call or an encore or a bow, you don’t get to choose how you’re remembered. You just die and then you’re dead. It’s a perfect joke. So we might as well laugh at it.
