The spring tour of the band I’m in is winding down: Glasgow, Edinburgh, Winchester, Brighton, and back to London. The next time we get out there, things will be different. There will be new songs, and some long neglected tunes will be resuscitated. But the chat between the music – the jokes and anecdotes and wordy introductions compiled and adjusted over the course of the tour as part of the necessary grease to keep things moving – all that will get binned.
Most of the jokes have done a year’s service, and been around the country once. The pockets of the clothes I wear on stage are stuffed with scraps of paper covered in notes. One scrap contains a banjo joke allegedly written by AI (it’s not; I made it up). Another holds a long-winded explanation of why the aforementioned AI joke is funny (it isn’t, and neither is the explanation, according to the bass player). On a good night I might not need to resort to any of it, but if somebody breaks a string, I’m ready.
There is, however, one joke I have prepared and never used, partly because I feel the world is simply not ready for it, and partly because it requires the assistance of a willing comic foil. It goes like this …
Me: You know, they said I would absolutely love that spicy, spreadable Calabrian sausage that’s so trendy right now.
Comic foil: ’Nduja?
Me: I can take it or leave it, to be honest.
Now, I am aware of the many problems this joke presents. It can only work if the balance of your audience knows there is such a thing as a spreadable Calabrian sausage called ’nduja, and – crucially – that its correct pronunciation could be mistaken for someone saying, “And do ya?”
Nevertheless, I remain devoted to this joke, which I invented more than a year ago, and for that reason I’ve never risked telling it. For a while I convinced myself I was just biding my time, waiting for ’nduja to become more mainstream – and so it has; it is at Pizza Express. But the truth is, I lacked faith.
I don’t even have the nerve to tell the rest of the band this joke until just before the very last show of the tour at Cadogan Hall in London. The immediate reaction is a blend of silence, confusion and hostility. Only the accordion player laughs, and it’s the sort of laugh you reserve for someone slipping on ice and breaking their collarbone.
“The thing is,” I say, “if that joke doesn’t work in London, it won’t work anywhere.”
“True,” says the guitar player.
“So should I tell it tonight?” I say.
“No,” says the bass player.
“No,” says the fiddle player.
“Go for it!” says the accordion player, with an enthusiasm that suggests he would like to see me break my collarbone in front of more people.
When we take the stage at 7.30pm, I have made no decision. Early on an opportunity to tell the AI banjo joke one last time presents itself, but the moment passes. It feels as if the tour is coasting to its end on rails.
Then, in the second half, with only four songs to go, the guitarist begins to tune his flat B string. A silence blooms, and I am seized by determination.
“So I have a new joke I’ve been working on,” I say. The audience gives a low murmur of encouragement – in retrospect, a trap.
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“Would you like to hear it?” I say. There is an actual cheer of assent.
I launch the joke, taking care not to rush the opening line, which contains a lot of important information. Then, after an exquisitely long pause, the guitar player looks my way.
“‘Nduja?” he says.
“I can take it or leave it, to be honest,” I say.
What follows is the sound of 700 people being simultaneously nonplussed, punctuated by the accordion player laughing as if I had fallen off the stage.
Half an hour later I am picking my way through the dwindling crowd in the foyer, looking for my wife. A few people reach out to shake my hand or clap my back. A woman stops me.
“I didn’t understand your joke,” she says.
“Well,” I say. “I figured if it didn’t work here, it wouldn’t work anywhere.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” she says.
But back at home, as I’m putting the scraps of paper from my pockets into the recycling, I think: Come on! It’s in Pizza Express!
