How to Talk to Anyone (Junior Talker #5) by DeYtH Banger (old books to read .TXT) 📕

My husband is a Virgo, he’s like velcro, and no matter how many times I ask him to sleep in the park he always comes home. Lucky me.

Festival joke on Holocaust provokes outrage

An emotional row has broken out at the Edinburgh Festival over whether comedians should be allowed to make jokes about the Holocaust.

Nearly a quarter of the audience walked out of a show by the gay American comedian Scott Capurro on Tuesday night after he caused uproar with a gag that finished, "Holocaust Schmolocaust, can't they find something else to whine about?"

Last night he refused to withdraw the remark and said that because the "reaction has been so good ... I'm going to write more of this material".

Tension had begun to build right from the start of his performance in the Pleasance theatre as the San Francisco-based stand-up, known for pushing the boundaries, attacked the festival's organisers for not allowing a Jewish comedian to call his show A Little Piece of Kike because it was likely to cause offence.

Capurro, whose great grandmother was Jewish, had been rattling through a typically hard hitting routine which questioned why it was "OK to laugh at blacks and homos like me, but not OK to joke about Jews".

"I am Jewish, and I want to be a buried in a Jewish graveyard, but they won't let me because I have tattoos.

"Not the right kind of tattoo, eh?" he said, pointing to his arm. He then dropped the "Holocaust, Schmolocaust" line.

Several women in the front row walked out in protest. When a man in the audience told him he was not funny, Capurro tore into him, with the parting rebuke: "I hope you die of Aids." Further walkouts followed, and a teenage girl started crying.

Last night Capurro, who has previously got himself into hot water by questioning the cult of Anne Frank, was unrepentant: "OK, so I made a 15-year-old girl cry? What was she doing in my show anyway? I am an iconoclast, that is my job. I am paid to have no discretion.

"I have obviously hit on something here; I've hit a goldmine, and I'll have to write more of this material."

He claimed that a Jewish man who had been in the audience at the Pleasance, and who had lost all but two members of his family in the Holocaust, had come backstage to offer his support.

"I consider Aids to be a kind of Holocaust," said Capurro. "Our thinking has got warped, the pink triangle [the symbol the Nazis forced gays to wear in the camps] has now become a fashion accessory."

Ian Stone, the Jewish comic whose show title has been amended to A Little Piece of K*** in the festival programme, defended Capurro's right to "walk that fine line". He said: "I know Scott and he is a compassionate guy, and people should understand that this is comedy.

"His comedy is about challenging prejudices. He sees himself as an outsider and thinks Jews should reclaim words that have been used against them, as gays have done.

"The 'Schmolocaust' line will be offensive to a lot of people, although I would have laughed because of the shock. No one has ever really said that on stage before; it's off limits even for Jews."

Stone, whose own routine is much gentler in tone, has still run into problems for joking about the need of Jews to "marry out" for the sake of their looks.

His aunt, Irene, has refused to speak to him since. "Who needs anti-semites when you're around?" she told him.

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Scott Capurro on political correctness in comedy

The controversial comic examines pushing the boundaries

What can and can’t be said on stage? Fearless London-based US comic Scott Capurro has been asking that question on- and off-stage for years, performing challenging, shockingly funny stand-up. Here, he shares his thoughts on political correctness in comedy.

Many years ago, when I was a legitimate actor in San Francisco, I got the idea that audiences weren't listening. Maybe it was the tired tourist trade for which I was performing, or perhaps I, at the tender age of 28, was disillusioned, but theatregoers seemed detached.

I wanted to test audiences and see if words could change their perceptions, and the first opinion I was eager to alter was that homosexuals are all camp, limp-wristed, foppish clowns. I wanted to make people think differently about gay men.

This had to begin, obviously, in straight comedy clubs. I'd already successfully played the one and only gay club in San Francisco. Josie's, the vegan juice joint I called my performance home, had allowed my comedy skills to grow among likeminded homos, but I wanted to hone my craft in a wider world. The US seemed, especially then, obsessed with butch arrogance, so I flew to the Edinburgh Fringe and was nice on stage for three years while I searched for my true comic voice. I felt I was funnier, more clever and cunning off-stage than on. I had to transfer my guile from backstage to the fore.

Eventually, and oddly, I finally found the one item that audiences wouldn't tolerate, and that was making fun of Anne Frank. Women rule comedy rooms, and Anne is no exception. Let's take another example...

Two years ago I was in Covent Garden telling a joke about a girl who's missing. Her parents are Brits and she's probably dead, but one person's hope is another's punchline. An audience member stood up, lifted the collar of her tweedy overcoat and announced to her workmates, 'I don't have to put up with this from some sad fucking queer.' No one wants to see a gay man abusing a woman, but the bitch was coming at me so I punched her in the side of her head.

Now, I know I sound sad, but that's mostly the fat talking. The woman 'came at me', meaning she passed too closely to the stage and I took a swing at her with the palm of my hand. I batted her right temple, enough to make her head bob.

'Oi,' she barked, 'I just had head surgery.' 'Well it didn't fucking work,' was my response. I should've won the argument earlier with words, but I'd had lots of coffee that day and verbal abuse all my life.

I've got a blind spot where the word 'queer' is concerned (unless I'm paying someone £50 to whisper it into my ear). When my sexuality is used as a weapon, the comedy club becomes a schoolyard and I'm 14 again, tall and skinny and mouthy, a huge ego and a low self-esteem - the constitution of a serial killer or hairdresser or yoga teacher or brain surgeon. To hide my attraction to my male friends I was funnier and smarter than everyone else. I dressed well as camouflage. I hated myself for hiding, the way a comic hates himself for brutally putting down a heckler.

Bigotry sets me off, so I beat the crowds to the punch by being outrageous. In Amsterdam I reminded the Dutch of their complacency in 1939, and their responsibility for little Anne's death. I was not invited back to Amsterdam for 12 years.

When I did my Frank shtick in Edinburgh, Cambridge Footlights members stormed out, in tears. I was upset too: Surely, by 2001, someone had covered Anne Frank in their act!? However, it seemed Anne remained virgin territory, and as the walkouts increased, so did the number of subjects one could discuss onstage.

I received death threats, and when several comics stopped talking to me I knew I was doing something right. Taboos kept getting smashed because I had less left to lose. I saw the confusion and angst in the front row's eyes. Finally, we were getting somewhere - the audience didn't know what was coming. How exciting for them! I fed off their sweat and steam.

In central London, a few years later, a comedy club booker - an old hippy with a Jewish wife - threatened to ban me for being a Holocaust denier. My response, on stage: 'What Holocaust?' Oops. That club closed eventually anyway. Sorry, it was purged. Cleansed? Whatever.

In Australia, I was asked to do a set on live television to promote the Melbourne Comedy Festival. I sent them the set in outline form. When, during my performance, I eroticised the Christ figure, complaints were lodged. Who knew Jesus could still cause a buzz? I was accused of improvising, of varying from my script. I'd like to say, in a revolutionary sort of way, that I had, but I hadn't.

Still, my Festival show was banned by the Catholic Church on Easter, although one wonders what an Orthodox Catholic is doing at my show, especially during Christ's erection, other than procuring among my younger fans... TV producers were apparently fired for letting me experience the joys of freedom of speech, and the Festival, in feigned outrage, removed their support from my show.

Though it's been made clear to me many times, even within the last few days, that I'm not invited back to work in Australia, I've become a showbiz myth, and 'Don't pull a Capurro', meaning 'don't go rogue and do relevant material', is the warning given to most comics before stepping in front of an Antipodean TV camera.

Not too long ago, in the cellar of a Soho gay club, when I diplomatically suggested to a Chinese-American woman that her driving might suffer because of a lack of periphery, a lesbian chucked ice at my temple. In self-defence, I flipped the lesbo table, then other tables were turned. Later the Chinese woman apologised, and stated, in quirky grammar, she didn't require the 'lesbian's aids'. I said, 'If only lesbians did get Aids, we'd all be equal.' That joke suffers in print...

For telling incest jokes about my own father the Daily Mirror stated I was evil and should be forced to leave the country. For telling jokes about the Daily Mail's slobbering coverage of Goebbels's - sorry, the Queen's - Jubilee, a promoter told me I was evil and should return to the US. For telling jokes about Obama to a middle-class, white, cross-armed crowd in my hometown of San Francisco, I was told by a 'fan' that I was autistic and practically British.

Comedy clubs have, for a long time, been a female's safe space. Not on-stage, because of the pure misogyny of stand-up, but off it. A husband won't win that fight about offensiveness, so he keeps quiet, while women determine what's appropriate. And even more than 'queer', the word 'inappropriate' rushes me into a rage. I mistrust authority, and anyway who draws the boundaries? After all, not every comic wants to be a hackneyed TV presenter. If I'm not worried about taste and decency on the BBC, then why be limited by arcane rules at a live performance?

Because most people have no sense of humour, stand-up comedy