Vanity: On the nature of camp comedy and the sudden rise in pearl-clutching

I keep seeing posts that draw attention to, amongst other things, President Zelensky's "All the Single Ladies" routine and his "playing piano with no hands" skit...

I watched both routines and thought there's really nothing there that would've looked out of place on a 1970s (British or European) prime-time variety show... that tame kind of stuff wouldn't cause offence if we stuck it on children's television these days, so what's the big deal?

European and Russian camp has always been more edgy than America's.

We had Hinge and Bracket. Apart from the occasional mild double entendre, it's a snooze-fest. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=get7UPCe3I8. Apparently the gin-drinking horse-mad Queen Mother liked this stuff; I suppose SOMEONE had to. But to me it's about on the same level as Liberace and Rip Taylor.

But behind that we had a very long tradition of far more edgy comedy. Even "Round the Horne" from the BBC in the 1960s was very edgy for its time. Two smutty, caustic old queers doing an innuendo-ridden version of Waiting for Godot, is how you can sum it up. That show was based on a long tradition (some say even going back to Shakespeare), and we've had far ruder interpretations of "Julian and Sandy" since. Like the sitcoms "Bottom" (mostly physical comedy and slapstick routines based on cartoon violence), and "Gimme Gimme Gimme" and "Vicious" (caustic queers).

Kenny Everett was one of Britain's first independent radio DJs and was years ahead of other DJs with creative use of jingles. He was a surrealist, a comedian, and was prone to outbursts that'd get him banned from radio. On one occasion he quipped, "When England was a kingdom, we had a king. When we were an empire, we had an emperor. Now we're a country, and we have Margaret Thatcher." The funny thing is, he was a Tory, and Margaret Thatcher actually thought he was brilliant, and so invited him to a Tory Party conference where he said things like "Let's bomb Russia!" and "Let's kick Michael Foot's stick away!". (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-g1exgkHsU). You can see her laughing.

So, even our esteemed Iron Lady loved that stuff.

Long before edgy left wing comics were getting all sweary and crude on late night TV, Everett had an early evening sketch show which included a drag character called Cupid Stunt. (Somehow, the prudish BBC censors didn't spot the nom-de-plume was a spoonerism of "stupid *unt"). If you think Zelensky's a bit too rude for telly, just watch this...

So, there he was on BBC 1 at about 8pm on a weeknight, with Thatcher a fan, at a time when you couldn't even say "bloody" before the 9pm watershed without getting into trouble, Cupid Stunt did this sketch with esteemed talk show host Parkinson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkqxagJglaI

Julian Clary and Paul O'Grady (aka Lily Savage) carried on the tradition and upped the outrage, but both have dialed it down by at least a hundred notches in recent years, and both have turned into extremely soft-spoken "national treasures" more well-known for tame family-friendly Sunday radio shows and promoting animal rescue charities than comedy.

Anyway, compared to the sheer rudery of Bob Saget's "Aristocrats" joke (especially the Gilbert Goddfried version) I get the impression that if it's alright for people to find Comedy Roasts and that joke funny BECAUSE THEY'RE PART OF A TRADITION, then why can't other people find Zelensky doing the Beyonce dance funny when that's just as much part of a long standing comedy tradition?

And compared to a lot of other comedy acts, Zelensky's campest moments often look to me to be done in the Best Possible Taste, made all the funnier by him playing it completely deadpan. The funniest thing in the Beyonce skit is, he pulls an O-face in such a way that he looks the spitting image of Jensen Ackles.

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