The inspirational Leicester comedy festival awards ceremony, which I attended on Monday in the ballroom of the refurbished Grade II-listed Mercure Leicester Grand, could only have been improved by a multimillionaire performatively punching another multimillionaire in the face. Nonetheless, my once-in-a-lifetime Legend of Comedy statuette win was overshadowed by the violent brawling of the Oscar attendeees, meaning my achievement remained unmentioned in all the major American entertainment trade papers. Bah!
It was almost a very different story. While I and the other Leicester winners were posing for our photos, I nearly stepped backwards off the 18-inch podium, briefly losing one of my hearing aids as it fell from my ear. This should have been one of the Leicester Mercury’s biggest stories of the year, doubtless going viral and helping me to sell as many tour tickets as being punched in the face has shifted for Chris Rock. But in the wake of mouthgate, no one was interested.
I can honestly say that, of the many I have been professionally obliged to attend, the Leicester comedy festival awards ceremony was the only one I have ever enjoyed. It was certainly better than the 2011 Baftas, where Michael McIntyre’s famously excited late manager got me in a headlock in a dark corner and said he would personally see to it that my career was destroyed, while his own minder struggled to free me from his employer’s chokehold. To this day, I have a psychosomatic reaction to the very mention of McIntyre’s name that leaves me gasping for air. Or is that a nut allergy?
I think the awards night felt exceptional to me because the Leicester comedy festival itself is uncharacteristically and inherently worthwhile and isn’t just built around selling booze and bribing executives. The accolades handed out reflected its commitment to encouraging new talent and to building a cultural profile for unfairly overlooked Leicester, previously only famous for being the home of the world’s fattest man, Daniel Lambert. The enormous cock-fighter managed to achieve the weight of 53st in 1805. Seeing his portrait in Leicester as a child, and realising the sacrifices he had made to become a legend, inspired me to follow my dreams. I wore my Daniel Lambert pin badge as I received my Legend award and considered my debt to him paid. The middle “has-been” phase of my career is now officially over and I am into the third and final “legend” act, a clear downhill bobsleigh run to an early grave and subsequent critical reappraisal.
Today, it has become necessary for most mainstream awards ceremonies, from the Oscars down to whatever the British comedy awards are called this year, to be archly hosted with the sassy contempt of a cocaine-addled Friars Club roast by a dutifully disrespectful, high-profile comedian for hire. Is this because even the people putting the events together suspect, deep down, that both the artists and the works they are supposed to be recognising probably aren’t really all that outstanding after all? An Oscar tradition that, in recent years, has not found space for Paddy Considine, Mark Jenkin’s Bait or my own King Rocker, yet rewards violent hooliganism and The Nutty Professor, is demonstrably worthless.
Rock is one of the world’s greatest standups, and his 1996 routine about the black community’s perception of itself is in the all-time top 10. Hosting the Oscars is quite frankly beneath him and they should have just let Ricky Gervais do it again, as he has no dignity to lose. Rock wouldn’t host a corporate Christmas gig for a logistics company and agree to mention the CEO’s wig and the time Sally from accounts was sick in a plant pot, so why is he whoring himself out in the same way to the Academy? Rock brings shame on the nobility of the standup’s profession.
Most of the put-downs Rock trotted out would have been prepared anyway, generated by hired hands in a packed Hollywood writers’ room, and which the Academy, desperate for publicity, had already approved and signed off on. Employing the controversial comedian is a risk cynically calculated to drive traffic. Don’t shoot the messenger. If Will Smith had run off and punched the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president, David Rubin, hard in his stupid Hollywood face, I’d have had more respect for him. Rock was just the patsy. Smith’s punches, justified or not, fell wide of the target.
Jada Pinkett Smith’s position on her husband’s chivalrous battering of Rock’s tiny face went unreported. In 1987, an observant builder extravagantly complimented my feminist girlfriend’s figure in no uncertain terms and my 11st, 19-year-old frame immediately plunged into battle, as fellow builders theatrically held their colleague back. My girlfriend immediately reprimanded me for a sexism, as it wasn’t for me to fight another man over her. Today, my feminist wife tells me that, although my girlfriend’s criticisms were correct, I would also have looked like a loser if I hadn’t reacted. It was a lose-lose situation. The builder, unlike Rock, was at least doing his own material and perhaps comes out as the winner here.
Smith’s awards night ended with violence, disciplinary proceedings and the threat of expulsion. Mine ended with Guinness, Highland Park and the kind of curious, regionally specific crisp selection I can’t resist, in a stained-glass-windowed backstreet bar full of vibrant local artists and standups, duty bound to indulge my reminiscences of the pre-podcasting cultural landscape. For once in my life, in this filthy business, I felt as if I came out ahead. Back in my hotel room, I realised I had spilled mango chutney dip from some poppadom snacks down my awards ceremony shirt, but my hosts had been respectful enough to ignore it. I was now officially a legend, even with all chutney all on me. And I wouldn’t have traded places with Will Smith for the world.
Rescheduled national 2022 dates of Stewart’s 2020 tour, Snowflake Tornado, are on sale now, as are Edinburgh fringe shows
