A central section of Ben Elton’s new show addresses euthanasia, with the 65-year-old strongly asserting the right to die for those who feel they have run out of steam. Reader, that point has not yet arrived for Elton, who packs into his indefatigable touring set a volume of material to shame comics half his age. With Authentic Stupidity, he maintains the momentum of this second act of his standup life, having returned to the stage after 15 years away with 2019’s Ben Elton Live.
The thesis, as he would have it, is that our times are defined – and threatened – less by artificial intelligence than by “authentic stupidity”: our status as “homo halfwit”, a species rapidly squandering what little intelligence we ever had. Our movies are stupid: there’s a great riff on Daniel Craig’s aspiration to make “honest, gritty” Bond films, and what that might actually mean. Our language is getting stupider – cue our withering host on 21st-century therapy-speak. Our dining experience grows ever more stupid – witness Elton taking granny to her last meal before Dignitas does its business, a situation mined for the preposterous black comedy you encounter when life and death meets “how would you rate your restaurant experience?”
