Your Mind Matters – Earl Okin, Comedy, Nature Or Nurture

Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh, don't you know everyone wants to laugh? Haha, my dad said, be an actor, my son, but be a comical one. They'll be standing in lines for those old honky-tonk monkey shines. Now you could study Shakespeare or be quite elite, or you can charm the critics and have nothing to eat. Just slip on a banana peel, the world's at your feet. Make 'em laugh. I think we all, those of us who love old movies, will remember that with our very famous Judy Garland and the other man who I absolutely adored whose name has totally escaped me, and I'm sure Earl will put me right. There are many theories about humour from philosophers to psychologists. Freud wrote his book in 1905, namely Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, He knew how important humour is in life and amongst friends. From ancient Greeks until the early 20th century, the vast majority of philosophical comments on laughter and humour focused on scornful or mocking laughter, or on laughter that overpowers people, rather than on comedy, wit, or joking. Plato, the most influential critic of laughter, treated laughter as an emotion that overrides rational self-control. A similar explanation of laughter from the same time is found in Descartes' Passion of the Souls. He says that laughter accompanies 3 of the 6 basic emotions: wonder, love, mild hatred, desire, joy, and sadness. Although admitting that there are other causes of laughter than hatred, in Part 3 of his Book of Particular Passions, he considers laughter only as an expression of scorn and ridicule. For Freud, the joke was more important than the comic. Understanding the joke technique is essential for understanding jokes and their relation to the unconscious. However, these techniques are what make a joke a joke. Freud also noted that the listener laughing really heartily at the joke will typically not be in the mood for investigating its technique. Today, humour is an important part of our lives and essential to our well-being. But what about the comedian? The flexibility of the comedian is also essential, as they have to adapt their material to the audience. In other words, comedic performance staged in this kind of setting is not entirely predictable. The outcome depends on the combination of particular audience and the comedian's persona. The persona is the first impression the Comedian makes on the audience, his appearance, his accent, his social class, and what first appearance he chooses to show to the audience. It's very conscious at times, and at times unconscious. Aristotle said that what is funny is a mistake or unseemliness that is not painful or destructive, but people have joked about problems as great as their own impending deaths. As he approached the gallows, Thomas More asked the executioner, 'Could you help me up? I'll be able to get down by myself.' On his deathbed, the story goes, Oscar Wilde said, 'This paper is— this wallpaper is atrocious. One of us has to go.' I would like to welcome to the program— this is Your Mind Matter, and I'm Dr. Maria Kempinska. I would like to welcome my actually good friend and wonderful performer Earl Oken. Earl has been on the comedy, comedic stage for a number of years and is a very famous performer. He has a wonderful following and I'm delighted to have him on the program today. So welcome Earl and thank you for joining me. Thanks for asking. So, um, do you think that your transition from actually going into philosophy and then changing your mind, you became a performer. Which drew you first? Were you drawn into the world of entertainment? No, no, you've got it in the wrong order. I was singing on stage when I was 3, 4, and 5 years old, right? So I started off, all I wanted to do was be a singer. In fact, from the age of about 6 to the time when my voice broke, what I really wanted to to do was be an opera singer because I started collecting opera records when I was 6. I was a strange child. And, well, I've got 10,000 78s now and it all started then. But singing is what I wanted and when my voice broke, it was not a bad voice but it wasn't suitable for opera and by that time I'd also discovered jazz, Duke Ellington, Peggy Lee, all those people. That's what I wanted to do. And I used to perform in the real— what I think was the beginning of what we later called alternative comedy. I think it started in folk clubs, and there were people who were hilarious. And there was a gentleman called Mick or Mike Elliott who came from the northeast who I don't remember singing at all. He just rolled his sleeves up and talked for 20 minutes. And sort of what happened to him that week sort of chat. And then there was another fellow who was basically a banjo player, but he was quite funny too. His name was Billy Connolly. And, you know, that was where I think it started. And I discovered performing in folk clubs that if I just, like some people did, just did song, song, song, song, song, and didn't do anything else, then however good I might or might not be, the audience tended to fall asleep. So I used to talk in between, and if I could make it a little bit funny as well, I always used to talk about my attempts at comedy as being the piece of cheese at a wine tasting. You haven't gone there for the pieces of cheese, but piece of cheese makes the next wine more interesting. It refreshes the palate. So that was my entrance into any sort of comedy, except for the fact that during World War II, my late father, who was then in his 20s, ran a variety show and wrote comedy sketches for all the people who were in the show, two of whom became famous. One was called Harry Worth, whom I met, and the other one was called Dick Emery. So there was a lot of pun competitions over cornflakes in the morning. Terrible puns, but that was, that's how it's, and of course then as a kid we listened to the radio and what did we have? We had the best comedy program of all time in the '50s, and it was called The Goon Show. Oh, and The Goon Show was, if you can name everybody, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, yeah, and the guy who wrote most of it, Elegan. And who was the fourth? Ah, that was, uh, what's his name? Michael Bunting. Well, later on I actually spoke to him over the phone because People forget this, they remember the later one he did called Potty Time, but he had a 1950s children TV show which was called The Bumblies, and he sort of understood what made 3-year-olds laugh. And there were 3 sort of strange creatures from outer space that you would rise and slept by floating up to the ceiling. And they all spoke like Eccles. And I remember the first time it made me laugh when he said, 'Apple tree is in the garden, apple tree, apple tree, what have you got in store for me?' Upon which about 3 tons of pears falls on him. At the age of 3, I thought that was absolutely hilarious. But the comedian I used to watch the most Probably the most famous man the world has ever seen. He's still, I think, the most famous man the world has ever seen, 30-odd years after he died. And doesn't matter which country you go to, or whomsoever you talk to, they will have heard of him. Who am I talking about? His name was Charles Spencer Chaplin. Chaplin, yes, Charlie Chaplin, absolutely. But he was really the silent movie star, wasn't he? Yes, but it's funny, you know. It is funny, and I think there's a quote here actually from Buddy Bregman about you, and he was the producer/arranger of Ella Fitzgerald's songbook, and it says, "You are quite a genius." I like this quote, so I'm going to say it again: "You are quite a genius." 'You have managed to find a niche in cabaret I have never seen or heard before. You are simply brilliant. Hard to categorize, musician, comedian, or what? I guess you are anything the audience wants to categorize you.' So it doesn't matter how the audience wants to categorize you, regardless you are brilliant and a genius. How does that make you feel? Well, I wish it was matched by some more success. It's funny, that phrase, difficult to categorize, or similar phrases are always being used. I mean, I quite like it for this reason: I don't want to be the second anybody else. I sing a lot of the Great American Songbook. I do not want to be called the second or third Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, or one of my favorite singers, Mel Tormé. I want to be the first Earl Oaken. But as I say, if you are not like anybody else, it can cut both ways. It can mean that if you do break through, then you'll be a superstar because, as we've just said, there's nobody like you. But by the same token, if they can't compare you to anybody, they don't know what to do with you. I haven't been on television even though I've been on the comedy circuit for 40 years because there's no program into which I fit. I don't do stand-up. I'm told that Live at the Apollo, for instance, has actually got a rule. If you're not a stand-up, doesn't matter how funny you are, you can't be on the program. That's right. So that actually, Earl, comes from the production house very often. But you were on, uh, the cabaret from Jongleurs all those years ago in the early '80s, where when, uh, Jongleurs was actually in its infancy, it had very many more versatile performers, and you were one of those. And why you were successful was because you didn't fit into a niche. You were innovative. And you're still innovative today. As you say, you are unique. People cannot mimic you, they cannot be the same as you. But you have been on Australian television, haven't you? Well, I've been on quite a few TVs, but mainly years ago. I mean, I, I was on Michael Parkinson, for instance. That was— I'm still friends with the lady who booked me. She's long retired from being involved with TV, but what happened was I was friends with a legendary jazz singer who at that time was about 80 years old, and she had sung with Duke Ellington in the '20s, had been part of the Harlem Renaissance in the '20s, and then she had made records with Fats Waller, and then she got married to a West Indian, moved to England, and became pretty much British. And maybe she was officially British. I would think she would have been, yes. And her name was Adelaide Hall, and she was a generation before Ella Fitzgerald. And she's, you know, one of the founding mothers of jazz, right? And nobody seemed to— I mean, she was working still right through her 80s, but she— I didn't think she was as famous as she ought to have been. So I contacted the Parkinson Show because it was the sort of show that they had people like Duke Ellington on. In Fred Astaire and said, why don't they have her as a guest? While that was going on, my then manager was writing to the Parkinson's Show saying, why don't you have her, Logan, as a guest? And this lady saw both letters and said, one minute, who's this Earl Logan? He's asking about somebody else, and then there's somebody else who's asking about him. So in the end, I think it was 1981 or so, We both ended up on the show. Michael had actually seen me in the late '70s because I ended up opening on tour with Paul McCartney and Wings. Because I, I'd already been involved with music for some time. I recorded my first pop single at Abbey Road in 1967. And, and then, and I was signed to the same company as the Beatles. But stupidly, I wanted to finish my degree rather than being available to the gentleman who ran the company. He was called Dick James, and I wasn't there, and he couldn't sit around for 2 years waiting for me to finish. So he used another person to launch his company, somebody who was called Reg Dwight. Yes, as we know, Elton John. So he's got my fame and fortune, really. And he's, he's in your place. He's your doppelganger, can we say? Yeah, only my songs are much better. But did you make the right decision? You were going to— you decided to go and study philosophy? No, it's a complete waste of time because all it does for me is get me into lots stupid arguments with people who don't understand what I'm saying. And so they go, "But everybody knows that now." And I have to say, "Well, everybody used to know the Earth was flat, but they were wrong." So it's good for my clear thinking, if you will. Although, I mean, in terms of career and anything, complete and utter waste of time. I could have been, you know, a contender, as I think somebody once said in a film. Yes, but, um, can we step back a little bit into your childhood before we sort of step forward from that point, uh, which was the pivotal turning point? We always have turning points, don't we? Decisions that we made, we went to the right instead of the left, or the left which should have been straight ahead. And I think without question We've all done that at certain points in our lives. But when you were growing up, do you have brothers, sisters? Do you have siblings? No. You're an only child? Yes. And your father was in the entertainment industry? No, he was a schoolmaster. Ah. But, ah, I mean, my father was like the 20th century equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci. There wasn't anything he couldn't do. The only thing I could do better than my father music. I mean, he did— not only did he play the guitar a bit, but he didn't really, you know, do it seriously. So I've got recordings of him when I can hear him not really playing the right chords for songs. I mean, they're okay, but it's, you know, as a musician I can hear they're not quite right. But in the daytime he taught woodwork, metalwork, and technical drawing. In the evening he taught drama I know that he was a calligrapher, a calligraphist and an artist. I'm looking right now at a chair here that he reupholstered. He made most of the furniture in my flat. If you didn't know anything this week, don't come back next week because not only has he learned how to do it, but he's invented a new way of doing it. So he was one of those people, and he thought that sort of there was nothing abnormal about this, that anybody could do that. So that is such a— can I just ask you about that as a way of being? Because that is truly frowned upon today. So your father, Leonardo da Vinci, that approach, maybe because, let's face it, the entertainment business is the hardest business to be in to make money, isn't it? It's what— it's the hardest. And yet there's your father, super talented, fast thinking, very gifted man. Was he a teacher because he felt that he wanted, you know, to do the right thing, to raise his children, you know, you have a family, and that gave him the stability? He qualified to be a teacher before the war. He didn't really get into the showbiz thing until he was in the RAF during during World War II when he ran this variety show. So he was a schoolmaster at the beginning, so that's it, started off like that. I mean, he came from immigrant stock. My grandfather was a cabinetmaker, which is no doubt where my father picked up his woodwork skills. But he used to hang around like a lot of Jewish kids in those days before the war with a bunch of friends, one of whom had a father who was a tailor, which is quite a common thing for Jewish men back then. And my father used to watch him as a kid, you know, he would have been 12, 13, and just watch this man. And during the war, when you couldn't get clothes, they found a hank of material in the loft where he lived, and my father said, "Oh, I know, I know how this is done, I've seen it done," and he made himself a suit. He was that sort of person. I mean, he was ridiculous, but again, he never saw himself as being out of the ordinary. He just thought that, you know, old people could do that. But of course he was wrong about that. You've taken some of those attributes on yourself, but before we get into that, tell me about your mother. Ah, well, she was a different sort of— she was one of these people, her thing was words and literature and also amazing memory. During the '30s, during the time when we had the big sort of depression, people had no money. And in those days when we didn't have some of the facilities we've had since, since 1945, The one thing that out-of-work people could afford was a penny a week. They could join a private library because they— we didn't have the libraries that we have now. So they paid a penny a week and then they could take books out because that's all they could afford. Remember, there's no TV. Maybe people couldn't afford to have a radio, who knows? But anyway, they could afford to take books out. And my mother's job as a very young woman in her 20s, was to go around the country and to open up new branches of these libraries. And to the end of her days, you could throw any village at her in the country and she would immediately tell you which county it was in. This is into her 90s. She was also a person— she was like a walking Roger Spasaurus. You know, I'm sure you've been in the situation. I often do. There's a word I'm trying to get, and it's not right. Well, what is the word that means, you know, and you go mad, it's on the tip of your tongue. And I'd say to my mother, what's the word that means da da da da da? And it would come back like bing, and the word would— she'd always know immediately. I mean, immediately. So those were my parents. And you're a little bit of both, aren't you? Well, I wish. Well, in your performance and your ability, you're very adept verbally, but coming back, what was it like to be in England? Do you know, did you talk to your parents about being Jewish in England during the war, what that must have felt like? You know, I didn't really. I mean, they were— my mother was born in Germany, but came here just before World War I. So neither of them had any experience of the Nazi regime. They knew about it, obviously, in the press and everything, but they were here. They were just like anybody else during World War II, trying to avoid them. I mean, my mother actually was with my father throughout the war because they had married quarters. So I used to call her the camp follower. So because wherever he was, she was with him. So it wasn't, you know, they were, you know, she was on an RAF camp with him. Uh, that's what she did. That was, that was their war. Um, they went to Scotland, they were in Lytham St. Ann's, and quite a lot of the time, uh, in a place called Wendover, which is just in the Chiltern Hills, just north of London. And that's where he put on his shows. So yeah, I mean, and I was— the other thing that's quite unusual, I suppose, I thought was perfectly normal. I don't remember my parents having any serious arguments. I mean, they had wonderful arguments that I used to watch because it was like a sitcom. Okay, my mom did most of the cooking, but every now and then my father would appear in the kitchen and like some sort of diva, that he was going to make one of his dishes, you see. And my mother was pottering around trying to help him, but in fact was getting in the way and not doing what he wanted. And an argument would break. No, I don't do that. Look, would you sit in there? I don't want this. Don't do it now. Go in the other room. Let me get on with it. And it was hilarious. I mean, it's difficult to put into words, but you had to be there. But I used to sit there sit and wait for those arguments because they were very fun to watch. So do you think having parents that get on is an advantage or a disadvantage to the relationships? I've often met people that say, my parents got on so well and I've never found the relationship to match that. Precisely that. I wanted something as good as that or not at all. I don't want I didn't want— a bit late now— I didn't want some woman that I'd be potty about for a year and then we'd fall out and then we'd divorce or whatever. Um, no, I wanted— I mean, I thought that, um, actually a lot of Jewish couples stayed together for decades and you didn't have a lot of— I mean, it happened but you didn't have a lot of Jewish divorces, it seemed to me. Well, that was my perception anyway. I mean, I've got cousins, yeah, that their parents stayed together for 50 years. I mean, it was, it was sort of the norm. And to me, people who divorced, that was the exception, and a rare exception at that. So I just thought that's what marriages were. And in order to make that decision, you wanted to have the golden marriage, which is what your parents had. Yeah, well, it never really got to anywhere anyway, because whenever I found someone I fancied, they didn't really fancy me. And on the rare occasions when somebody fancied me, I thought, oh God, not under any circumstance. So, uh, it sort of never really happened. And so now let's go back to that moment, that Dwight, that Reggie Dwight moment. Oh yeah, you decided to go into university, and is that— do you regret that enormously, or do you think— I was halfway through the university. I went to university '65 to '68. I was actually first year ever at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Um, there have been one or two other comedians who went to my uni much later, but when I did the top single, Abiura was 67. So I did that, but I still had another 18 months to go. And I think you'll find that Dick James music, the DJM label, started around '67, '68 when I wasn't there. And then by the time I got back in '68, '69, it was sort of too late. Also, I was teaching, and I won't go into boring details, but because of where I had to teach, I had to overuse my voice, and once or twice my voice went on me. So it took me about 3 or 4 years before I was really fit to start again. By that time it was too late. I mean, Dick James died in 1971. I'd sort of missed the boat. And then I started throughout the '70s, I started singing at folk clubs because it was the only place if you didn't have a band, and I never had a band, where could you perform if you were a solo performer? Well, folk clubs were really acoustic music clubs. You didn't have to sing folk music. You did, the ones who did were known as tradies and the other ones were known as entertainers. There were, there were, there were all sorts of funny people. The Norman Chop Trio, which was unusual in the fact that there were only two of them, were people who specialized in old musical songs. Which again I heard about and enjoyed. That's a different form of comedy, which is all in song form. I mean, you remember in around 1900, 90% of comedy was done in songs. That's right, because the old-time music hall was where it all began. Max Wall? No, no, oh no, that's modern. I'm talking— Oh, he's much more before that. I'm talking about 1900. George Formby, not George Formby that you know, but his father, the original George Formby, who died in 1921. Those people, and Mari Lloyd, all those sort of people. And everything was that— I've got the record, they're hilarious, but they're all songs. And that's It's funny because a stand-up was— there were very, very few stand-ups around 1900. It was mostly songs, and then later on it's now sort of switched the other way around. And now particularly it's verbal, as you've just said, with Live at the Apollo. But do you think with— you went to university, and do you think your philosophical background helped you in the entertainment world? I know a number of comedians were teachers. And obviously people like Ben Elton went to Manchester Uni and so on. There were a number of people at various universities. Universities seemed to be a springboard. In fact, Paul Merton, when he first came to Jongleurs, gave me a tape of his when he was still at university. I believe he was at university rather than college, and gave me a tape that he had performed at university. So it was almost for some people a great sort of breeding ground for up-and-coming comedians. Yeah, is that your recollection? Uh, no, because there wasn't a lot of comedy at my— I went to a university that just opened, so there was no tradition of anything there, literally, because it, you know, there was no back— there was no back history. It literally started the day I walked into the building. So I did write one or two sort of parodies. I remember, of course, Yesterday was the big song in 1965 from the Beatles, I think Help LP, and I rewrote the words about, you know, what we were doing at university. It was written for the other students, you know, it was all about what we were studying and what we didn't like and so forth. And that got a few laughs. But of course, the trouble with a song like that is you can't use it anywhere else because nobody knows what the hell you're talking about. It's always very advisable if you're going to write a comedy song to try and make it a universal subject, or else you can only use it sort of for 2 weeks and then it's— you can never use it again. So I tend to write songs either about sex in some form or another, or food, or something that anybody can understand anywhere. But at that time, yeah, you know, we, you, you know, I wrote this parody of Yesterday, um, all about the books that we've had to read and didn't understand and so forth. Uh, but did it help? No, because there was no Footlights Review or anything like that there. There was no— there's nobody who helped you get contacts. Well, the Footlights were very, very big when Edinburgh started in the late '70s. The Footlights had a really big influence. Yeah, well, they did. I mean, I didn't start doing Edinburgh till '83, I think it was. And it was really great then. And then in around— when would it have been? About 1990, faded. And when Dan Hawkes was able to play all the top versions out, and they had money to do all the PR, which we didn't. Could you— sorry, could you just repeat that? In the 1990s, because we were losing connection there. As I say, when I first went up to Edinburgh, it was really fun. It was still as it was originally intended to be, i.e. People who were famous, their own thing, and made themselves discovered. That's really what the Fringe was. But by 1990, uh, you know who the main comedy agencies are, and they started invading, and they were able with their checkbook to grab the best spots at the best things. One of them even produced an alternative fringe magazine that of course people who didn't know any better thought was put out, uh, which it wasn't. But, oh, so, so let me just, uh, clarify that because our sort of connection is fading slightly. But you're saying that the agents came in and they created the marketing which gave people the impression of the most popular performers? Yes, and couldn't afford to go to the best, so you either had to go at the big venues but some ungodly time of day or night when nobody was around, or you had to go and find a different venue and hope that people people could be coaxed away from that. I keep meticulous notes of my ticket sales, and the first year that the big three venues got together, they actually had a vintage coach which went from one to the other. All those venues were full of these comedians who were sort of working for these agencies. And that year I looked at the graph of my ticket sales and it was exactly the same shape, but everything went down 30%. Right. I lost ticket sales. And I then realized if I was going to be able to continue, I'd have to sort of cut down on things, not spend money on things I didn't need to. And I'm very pleased to say I did it 18 years in the end. I never missed a year, I never missed a day, and I think my proudest thing is not once did I lose money at Edinburgh. Well, that's amazing because I know comedians that have spent thousands upon thousands. The last— this is pre, um, the pandemic— that comedians were spending at least £10,000 on the show. Oh no, no, that they couldn't recoup. But that didn't happen to you? Well, the last one was £2,000. I made £3,000 profit on that last. And that shows the caliber of who you are to a great extent. But you're absolutely right. I also knew I'd learned all the tricks on what not to do and not what to waste money on, X, Y, and Z. And I got really lucky. I found a B&B that I stayed in year on year. They had a basement room that nobody— they couldn't hire out because they hadn't repapered it. And they also used it partly as storage. It was a huge room, but there might be two, you know, two piles of chairs in one corner or a couple of tables in the other. I didn't care. It's got a bed, it's got somewhere to wash, and it's got a cupboard for my clothes. Who cares? And they charged me— you won't believe this— it was £85 a week. No, including breakfast. Amazing. Added to which, where the front garden should have been, they had a sort of mini car park. So I wouldn't even have dreamt of doing Edinburgh without my car. Remember, I did my first Edinburgh when I was 36 years old and my last one when I was 53. I wasn't the young student, you know, most people do it when they're very young. I didn't. So Yeah, that was my— and I got so angry with what was going on, I actually got onto the Edinburgh Fringe Board and tried to persuade them that what was going on, that they should do something about it and, you know, even things up for those people who didn't have an expensive— see, what was happening was the people who worked for these agencies and for a friend of mine did a show for them once. They would sell out and then discover that they still owed their agent £3,000 or £4,000 because of the money that had been spent on PR. And then they had to spend the rest of the year doing shows for free to pay back their debt. So the agencies did very well out of it, but the comedians Didn't. Not so much. No. So, um, you know, one or two of them, yes, it may help them break through. And one of the agencies I know had connections with the TV company. Oh, but that was— and I always did a comedy show at Edinburgh, but I did, to help me make money on a Sunday, uh, I also did an afternoon show which was just jazz. Which is a completely different show, nothing like the one I was doing in the evening. So, and I thought, well, I'm here anyway, that's not going to cost me any more to do this, so I might as well do that as well. So that also paid a few bills. So that, that's what I would do. So you're actually— that ability that you do gain when you study philosophy is to be the observer, uh, as well, and to stand back a little bit. That's what philosophy does. Oh, I don't think philosophy had much to do with this. Philosophy is to do with things like epistemology and ethics and defining— But also it does help you observe the world, doesn't it? Put it into context a little bit. I know, does it? Maybe. But I mean, I think it's just sort of common sense. But it is, but it isn't for a lot of people. There's not many comedians that would have had your approach. So did you get your approach by observing your parents, do you think? No. By knowing the ups and downs of the world? Stole things from— he's my dentist now— there's a gentleman called Simon Godley, and he was also a comedian back then. And the third year I was up there, the venue that I wanted to perform in was no longer available, and right last minute he offered me a spot at midnight at this fairly outside the town venue. Called Marco's Leisure Centre. And I— he was doing very well, and I noticed all the things that he did to help sell tickets. One of them was to have a silly title. I believe the title of his show that year was A Back Passage to India. And so I decided the next year that my title would be Earl Oaken Does Horny Things with His Mouse. And I also nicked the idea. They had leaflets and posters. They didn't waste money spending money on wonderful colored posters which cost a fortune. They had black and, you know, just ordinary black ink posters, but this is the crucial thing, they printed it on Day-Glo paper. And that means when you put a poster on the wall, and it gets to be the evening and a car comes around the corner, it only lights up one poster on the wall and it's your one. Clever. So little things like that, and gradually I picked up one or two tips like that just from, you know, why are they doing well, what are they doing that I'm not doing. Then the other thing I did was the fringe and, um, Deviant Row, which is like a castle-like building. I don't know what it's called these days. And, but they used to have a late-night cabaret, and you could go up there, and if the audience liked you— I mean, if they didn't like you, you were in serious trouble. Oh dear me. But I— they always liked me. I sort of reigned up there. And I, I believe you once said that to some extent Jongleurs was based on that. Yeah, that's where I started because I was there in '82. I was promoting actually a scriptwriter, a poet who'd written his own play, and that's where the idea came from. And it's interesting because I met for the first time Arthur Smith up there, Brian Smith, now Arthur Smith, and I remember him saying once that The thing that he found a little bit anxiety-making, and this is a good question for you to answer as well, that he said whenever he goes to dinner or whenever he goes out, he's expected to make people laugh. Is that the case with you? And he found that a little bit disconcerting. He said, you know, you don't get doctors always being asked at every dinner table to make, you know, talk about their surgery or anything like that, but he was always on on form, he had to be on form, he had to be the entertainer. No, I never felt that, but then again I've always been a bit of a show-off, so maybe I do it naturally anyway. I mean, I'm a person that will literally to this day, if I'm sitting at a bus stop waiting for the buses to come, I will make some jocular remark. I mean, just 2 or 3 days ago I was walking down Portobello Road and suddenly have those little tiny dogs. And this dog was trying to pull— I mean, it's only the size of a six-month, but it's trying desperately to pull its owner along. It was straining at the leash. And I just said to them, I said, is it Duracell batteries? Is that what you've got? Is that what's going on? And it's the sort of thing I'll say, and it's just You know, I do that all the time. So now let me ask you this then, because there was a period of time when Ivo Denbigho did the Jewish joke, uh, events show. Yeah. And do you think— and I've often talked, as we know, you know, sort of Jackie Mason, Jewish, so many Jewish fantastic comedians— is it in your blood? Uh, There is Jewish humor which— I mean, I've had the benefit of two things. There's British humor, which is very linguistic, and it's to do with wordplay and things of that nature. Um, clever, clever, you know what I mean? I do, I do. And then there's Jewish humor, which is much more about people and you laugh because you've got an uncle like that. A good example is a one-line joke that I love, um, a Jewish— Jewish— two Jewish women, say, of a certain age, because there are no Jewish jokes about young people. I don't know why. You've got to be at least 60 before you have a joke written. Two Jewish women of a certain age go into a restaurant, have a meal, and afterwards the waiter comes up and says, "Was anything all right?" Not everything, but anything. Yes, was anything all right? Yes. And you laugh because you think, "Oh, I've got an Auntie Becky like that." And you recognize that temperament, that you know that that part of the world that is always going to be moaning, nothing is right, is part of you. I'm told that that works with Indian aunties and Irish grandmothers. I don't know. Actually, talking about Irish grandmothers, there used to be a performer, a comedian called Owen O'Neill, and his opening line— I recall this again in the '80s, '80s, '90s— he used to say, 'We were poor and we were very,' leaving a pause for everybody to think happy, and he said, 'unhappy.' And it was like, yes, it broke through that cliché. And of course he continued in his inimitable way, and he was very humorous. And I do think that humour has changed. Do you think, you know, we were talking about humour and universities, are we ever going to have universities creating comedians ever again? Well, it depends who goes there. If they're talented, they're talented. I mean, there was one more famous comedian who went to my university, but 20 years later, and he became known as Jonathan Creek. Oh, of course. Yeah, Alan Davis. And he— Alan Davis. And Alan Davis was exactly the same time as an Australian comedian, or a comedian who now lives in Australia, Geoff Green. And they both— Alan had blonde curly hair, Geoff had dark curly hair. Well, yeah, but I mean, what I remember, the big hit was towards the end of my time at Edinburgh were 3 lunatic Australians who were absolutely wonderful. I'm trying to think of their name now, but they just took the place by storm for several years, and you didn't try and heckle them. You're in serious trouble if you And it was because 3 of them, they would get you somehow. And they had with them as a sort of opening act my favorite Irish comedian who I first saw at Jongleurs, and I can remember his first line. And he now lives in Glasgow, I understand. And this is what he did. He appeared looking like a sort of flasher in a sort of an old Mac. And his droopy mustache, and he says no hello or anything. And he stood there in silence, which was dangerous at the best of times at Jonglers. And he said— and he finally said, much more slowly than I'm going to do it— he said, like, like most Irishmen, he said, I was born a Catholic. This came as a great surprise to my parents because they were Jewish. Do you remember who that was? Yes, I'm trying to think of his name. Uh, he's in Father Ted. What was his name? Um, he's still around. He's wonderful. He's still got a moustache, but it's white now. Yeah, I think, I think the tragedy is that there's, uh, you know, the reason I mentioned university, because it's become very woke and it's become criticizing anybody for saying anything. And although, you know, humour has expanded globally, which it hadn't at that time, really the real humour actually, the stand-up comedy club, came from New York with Lenny Bruce when he was— but he wasn't a stand-up comedian, he was much more the agent provocateur, if you like, actually was a disruptor. Well, the one I like was before him, uh, and was— he used to perform in jazz clubs, but he was really, you know, before his time. And he was called Lord Buckley. You know about Lord Buckley? Tell me, tell me your memories. Oh, I, I didn't see him. I discovered— obviously I wasn't around then, but I've heard recordings of him, and he did hip talk, you know, jazz slang versions of Shakespeare. I think one of them started, hipsters, popsters, and finger-popping daddies, which is, you know, the beginning of the Julius Caesar speech, and he did it, he did it in jazz talk. I remember the one little nice little thing I remember He's talking in 1947. This is pretty early on for stand-up, and it must have been the beginning of supermarkets. Until then, you know, there were stores where you went in, somebody was behind the counter, and you ordered it, and they went and got it for you, and you bought it. All of a sudden, there were these supermarkets, and he describes it. He says, you get a trolley, go down the trolley, you put your things on the trolley. And then you go down another aisle and there's another. You put some more things in your trolley and you look around and you spend 20 minutes and you go out. And then he stopped and he said, you're working for them. And it was, you know, his first reaction to this thing, which we all accept now as being the norm. But he said, one minute, they've got you working for them for nothing. And that's so true still, though, isn't it? We're even more so like that because we're doing our own packing, we're doing our own payments. I actually refuse to use those machines. I want to have the person doing it. Absolutely. So coming back to your writing and your own ability to create that, where does that come from, do you think? How does it happen? Does it happen randomly? Is as you said, at a bus stop and you see two dogs and something funny comes to mind. Is it as random as that? Is it intuitive? It's different. I haven't written much comedy for years now because it's not my main focus. I've got enough material that I can do comedy clubs and etc., etc. Every now and then something will come into my mind and I'll put it in it'll be a little ad-lib, if you will. Um, first of all, there's a song in my case, and what you do with the comedy song is you have to think of the basic idea, what it is. And then having thought of the— it's a bit like if you compare it with the classical music of, say, Mozart. And you have— I'm sure if you ever studied music at school, they say this is the first motif, and you go diddle diddle dim, whatever it is. And then you take that motif and you put it in another key and you put it upside down and you play it around, and that— and you get the end up with a piece of music. With a comedy song, you take the basic idea, uh, and then you The other words are different examples to demonstrate basically the same joke. So that's what writing a lyric to a comedy song is, and it's the opposite of writing a normal song, because in a normal song the important thing is the music and the words are just something to stop you having to go, "Duh-duh-duh-duh," when you sing it. But with a comedy song, the words are what makes it funny. I suppose it's possible to imagine something which— where the music makes you laugh, but in general it's the words which make you laugh, right? Then my most successful song, "Funny Enough," have been songs where there's nothing inherently funny about the words at all. And this goes back to what you said in your introduction today, and it's the persona that you present. My persona, as you know, is a sort of— people don't know me better, they see me going down the road, they either think I'm a lawyer or possibly an accountant. And so now I'm always introduced as musical genius and sex symbol, and they don't know what they're going to see, but they get this bloke in a suit and pair of spats looking not at all like a sex symbol. And so then I double-cross them again. My first words are always, I say nothing, and then I say, "Hello, ladies." And that is a double cross, and it's already funny because there's something funny inherently about things that don't fit. There are things, a juxtaposition. Yes, I mean, I remember on Round the Horn and Beyond Our Tent, they would make up names that didn't sound right because, I mean, that one of them was Dame Sybil Shapiro, was one of them, I seem to remember, because You know, you don't get people called Shapiro as a name. So in the same way, they're seeing me and then all of a sudden I am the sex symbol and it doesn't fit. And in fact, if you watch me sing, you know, the song I'm talking about is called My Room, and I've got certain movements I do with my lips. I don't know whether you've noticed that. I have. Where did I get that from? Yeah, where did you get that from? Actually, for anybody listening, it's such a wonderful song, you must watch it, and Earl performs it actually brilliantly, and it is, it is just, you must storm every show with it, it is exceptional. It's a great opener, and it means that I know I've got a good, because the opening of an act is very important because the audience who don't know you They've got to decide whether they're going to like you or not. So you've got sort of 30 seconds before they make that decision, and you've got to make it pretty damn quick, pretty damn quickly. That mouth movement I stole from Marilyn Monroe, who does it all the time, and I just thought it would really be really funny if a man did it to a woman instead of the other way around. And of course it looks completely ridiculous on me, so that's why I do it. But it works, doesn't it? So you do a lot of that song, as you're saying, through the movement, through your physical expression, and as we said, the persona that is disarming, because you do look like everyman, and you know, the man that goes to work every day, and yet here you are perhaps with maybe the inner thoughts of most men. I don't know. I mean, it's— I mean, the whole fact, as I've told you before, I've never really had very many girlfriends, so I'm the absolute opposite of, of a sex symbol. So saying that I am is already funny. But it's interesting, isn't it, because you actually do open the door to that thought for so many men that perhaps feel that they are not able or aren't the best, whatever that they feel may not be true, but you've actually opened the door for everybody to show that humour can actually change your life. Maybe, and the other thing is, I mean, I could never do what I do on stage in real life because I've always got the excuse. I mean, there might be some gorgeous woman in the front row and I can sort of serenade her with this ridiculous song She's laughing and everything. In real life, I would never even have thought of going up to her in the first place. On stage, I can do what I want because I've always got the excuse of, "Oh, it was only an act. It was only part of the act. It wasn't me really trying to chat you up." So is it a way to hide a part of you, the comedy? No, it doesn't. No, I'm not hiding anything. Or if anything, if anything, it's the opposite. I'm showing things that I don't normally show. So it gives you a form of being able to express that side of yourself? I suppose so. I've never really analysed that, but I suppose that's true, yes. I always feel that when I go on stage, some people, you know, adopt a completely different character and they're nothing like what they are on stage. With me, I feel it's me on stage, but how can I put it? It's as if there's, as soon as I walk on stage, there's a sort of a halo or an aura that now exists around me, and I'm slightly bigger than I normally am. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. And it sort of, does it protect you? No, it's just, no, it's just this is I'm sort of suddenly shining, and I feel very safe on stage. I mean, the only audiences I don't like are obviously, you know, stag nights, drunks, because what I'm doing is too sophisticated for them, and they don't— they want four-letter words, and they want fucks, and they want to exchange insults, and that's not what I'm there for. I think hopefully that that— there was a time around 1990 or so when I think that audiences came to comedy clubs with the belief that the whole reason of it being there was that they could insult the comedians and then they would have a comeback and that with how you judged. Yeah, the whole point of comedy was at one point they did a big article about the heckler that became so powerful and so important. We had to— I mean, I always stepped in to stop hecklers at the Jongleur shows unless they really engaged with the comedian. But Earl, we're coming to the end now, and do you, as just very quickly, because you've got just 30 seconds to say Do you, as the song says, have the world at your feet at the end of your shows? Is that how you feel? Usually I do pretty well. I've probably over the years had more encores than most people in comedy, but the reason for that is because I've got a song, there's one more of something that, you know, when you're just doing talking for 20 minutes, there's no— if you have a routine you know, like occasional comedians have, like, you know, the driving instructor routine. Okay, that's fine. But most people who do stand-up, it's sort of amorphous. But when you've got songs, they can actually ask for one more song. And they do. And they do, because there's something to have one more of. So I do A lot of encores, yes. That's amazing. And Earl Oken, thank you so much for joining me in the discussion of Your Mind Matters. This is Dr. Maria Kamprinska. And Earl Oken, when you get a chance, please go and see him. He is an absolute sensational performer and also great to talk to afterwards. Can I give you my website? Yes, it is earlokyn.com. And you can see my gig list there and where I'm performing. So that's EarlOkin.net, and for his gig list, and please say hello to him afterwards. Indeed.