It’s been a fun-filled couple of months at the Laughter Factory, with one comic act after another causing many a side to split. The run of rip-roaring gag-fests continues next week with a turn from Mitch Benn, a British funnyman who specialises in comedy songs. A regular contributor to various BBC shows, he’s penned tracks on everything from wanting to kill James Blunt to what would happen if he consumed the entire contents of a duty free store.
What can we expect from your show – will you be changing you material to suit Abu Dhabi?
I do travel around a lot, and I’ve often thought the notion that people have of different senses of humour in different places is largely nonsense. Funny is funny, as long as people know what you’re talking about – I mean, there’s no point being in Shanghai and going on about London’s tube strikes. Basically, it’ll be me singing songs and going on long, rambling spiels. That’s more or less what I do – a sprawling, rambling free flow.
Are you planning to write any songs about Abu Dhabi?
Yes, if I get a spare minute I might just pen a song about the Middle East. I like to write stuff when I’m abroad, just observational stuff about what I see on the ground.
Have you ever thought about choosing between straight music and comedy?
Well, sometimes I do just straight music. I try to sneak tracks on to my albums that aren’t funny to see if anyone notices… In fact, probably the biggest success I’ve had recently back in the UK was a song called ‘I’m proud of the BBC’. The BBC is really under the kosh at the moment, and that makes me anxious and indignant – we should be doing more to defend it as it’s a really great organisation. But that song wouldn’t be regarded as a funny song if anyone other than me had written it.
Some of your songs tend to be a little bit more negative than that, though…
Oh you’re probably thinking of ‘I may just have to murder James Blunt’. That was a good few years ago when ‘You’re Beautiful’ [Benn screeches the title] was on everywhere. At one point, I was trying to get some work done and it was on four consecutive channels, and I literally just said, ‘I’m gonna kill him.’ I had this murderous rage against him.
When you’re not writing songs, you seem to spend a lot of time on Twitter
When I first got into Twitter it was great fun, but if you’re in the public eye, it does give you an uncomfortable concrete barometer of exactly how famous you aren’t. I have 20,000 followers now, though.
You also post your four-year-old daughter Greta’s comments. Do you think she’s as funny as you?
We’ll I’m probably funnier on purpose, but she’s more naturally funny. Although as she grows up the funniness is getting thinner on the ground. I hope no one thinks I’m making fun of her – the Twitter feed is really just a celebration of her extraordinary thought processes. She’s completely confident in a way you can only be when you’re four. She’s just lovely and hilarious.
Who has inspired you the most?
My biggest influence has to be Tom Lehrer. He was a singer-songwriter who was amazingly ahead of his time. He did songs about nuclear testing and S&M in the late ’50s and early ’60s. It was really edgy, grim stuff. He was a maths lecturer at Harvard University who started off by writing funny songs to amuse his friends, who persuaded him to put out a few albums. Then he just went back to teaching maths. He had a fantastic way with a tricky rhyme, and, musically, his stuff was very good. I think to validate a musical joke, you have to at least be approaching the level of musicality of the person you’re having a go at. Otherwise you’re just sniggering at stuff you can’t do. That’s something I learned from him.
Dhs115. 9pm, February 8. Heroes, Crowne Plaza Abu Dhabi, Hamdan Street (02 621 0000)
