a fine humour

Well, cer­tain­ly the com­e­dy class is good fun! But I must say, and I hope this will fall on the ears of my British read­ers with all the Anglophilic affec­tion that infus­es it, it’s like liv­ing in a, dare I say it, for­eign country.

By this I mean that a lot of the time, liv­ing in Lon­don, car­ry­ing on one’s dai­ly life as a sort of stranger but a sort of per­son who belongs here, it can seem as if our two cul­tures, Amer­i­ca and Britain, are quite sim­i­lar. Actu­al­ly I say that when in point of fact, I make an absolute fetish out of notic­ing and get­ting to the bot­tom of all things that are dif­fer­ent between us, so I don’t know why I would go all aston­ished when it comes to the com­e­dy class. Think of it: from morn­ing to night, dai­ly life is fet­tered with ways in which one can either fit in, or not. Bacon on your morn­ing sand­wich? An Amer­i­can will, as I’ve observed before, have to ask for “streaky” to get what you expect, and even then it will be already cooked and sit­ting in the refrig­er­a­tor sec­tion: none of that greasy, fresh­ly-grilled stuff that so delights or repels the New York deli patron. Then do you get on the sub­way or the Tube? It’s enough to give you a headache. You could pos­si­bly tod­dle into the drug­store (although you’d best call it a “chemist”) and ask for aceta­minophen, but “parac­eta­mol” will more like­ly get you what you want. Now, do you offer to help the lady strug­gling up the steps to lift her child’s stroller up to the side­walk? No, because with­out illus­tra­tive hand ges­tures she would­n’t per­haps under­stand. Best to car­ry the “pushchair” up to the “pave­ment.” Lunch is no eas­i­er. Ask­ing for “tuna sal­ad” will get you pre­cise­ly that: tuna, and some sal­ad. You’ll have to say “tuna may­on­naise” to get what you expect. By the time you’ve shopped for a zuc­chi­ni and an egg­plant for your din­ner, only to find you need to ask for a “cour­gette” and an “aubergine” instead, you’ll sim­ply want to whack your head against a lamp­post and cry. So it’s best just to learn the ropes and fol­low them.

It real­ly is not the same lan­guage. And dig a lit­tle deep­er and you’ll find out how much more you don’t know about your adopt­ed coun­try. That’s what the com­e­dy class is doing for me.

For one thing, writ­ing com­e­dy, and talk­ing about com­e­dy, seems to take peo­ple back to their child­hoods, and lots of cul­tur­al ref­er­ences come up that I sim­ply have to ask about, or write it down intel­li­gi­bly and come home and google like mad. This week’s class was no excep­tion. Now, you’d have to be liv­ing on Mars in this town not to have heard of the Jade Goody-Shilpa Shet­ty con­tro­ver­sy on “Celebri­ty Big Broth­er. Briefly, it’s this: Jade Goody is say­ing nasty things that peo­ple are inter­pret­ing as anti-Indi­an racism, to Shilpa Shet­ty, who is a huge star in the Bol­ly­wood galaxy. It’s got­ten so con­tro­ver­sial that var­i­ous spon­sors of the show are back­ing out, and even the Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer (and would be next Prime Min­is­ter) Gor­don Brown is hav­ing to address it dur­ing his vis­it to India. I hope he still has time to nego­ti­ate between India and Pak­istan over their nuclear ambi­tions. But first things first, obviously.

So the tutor, Guy, decid­ed our task was to come up with a sketch com­bin­ing the sit­u­a­tion with anoth­er, hav­ing estab­lished already that com­bi­na­tion was one of the three keys to writ­ing com­e­dy: putting two things togeth­er that don’t osten­si­bly belong, and mak­ing them work. I was so pleased that my two ideas were received gra­cious­ly! Actu­al­ly I was glad to be able to say any­thing to con­tribute at all, the con­ver­sa­tion and sug­ges­tions were fly­ing so fast and furi­ous, but I real­ly want­ed to keep up. So my ideas were to com­bine “Big Broth­er” with the pro­gramme “What Not To Wear,”, and turn it into “What Not To Say,” or to com­bine the Big Broth­er House with the House of Com­mons (where believe it or not, the issue is being debat­ed) and have “Big Broth­er House of Com­mons,” where the Jade-Shilpa dra­ma could be played out with the sup­port of var­i­ous cab­i­net min­is­ters. Whew. It was exhaust­ing! So we broke up into small groups and tried des­per­ate­ly to flesh this out.

While dis­cussing it all, my pen was fly­ing as fast as ever­ly it could to cap­ture every­thing that was going on, among the class­mates who all spoke the same lan­guage. For exam­ple, one girl want­ed to intro­duce “Mal­let’s Mal­let” into the Big Broth­er house, which ref­er­ence turned out to be from a chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion show where kids get bopped over the head if they can’t think of a word fast enough. Then Guy sug­gest­ed that we go with my basic idea, and then flesh it out, or as he expressed it, “put a lit­tle Mec­ca­no around it,” which after I slunk over to him dur­ing the break and asked, turned out to be a kind of kids’ scaf­fold­ing game! Too fun­ny. We had a great time, but I’m not sure any great com­e­dy was turned out. Not yet.

For that we had to be con­tent to lis­ten to an audio tape of a tele­vi­sion pro­gramme Guy actu­al­ly wrote him­self, for an episode of a won­der­ful-sound­ing show called “Not The Nine O’Clock News,” which was lat­er devel­oped in Amer­i­ca as “Not Nec­es­sar­i­ly the News,” some­thing I remem­ber from my child­hood. In the episode we heard (which made it to #2 on the LP charts in 1970-some­thing!), Guy com­bined two total­ly odd ideas and came up with a com­plete­ly hilar­i­ous sketch, but again, only if you under­stand British cul­ture. Remem­ber my short-lived crush on Bam­ber Gas­coigne? Host of “Uni­ver­si­ty Chal­lenge,” which is tru­ly one of the most enter­tain­ing pro­grammes on tele­vi­sion, even if Bam­ber has retreat­ed to green­er pas­tures upon retire­ment. Any­way, Guy com­bined the set­ting of “Uni­ver­si­ty Chal­lenge” with two teams of prison inmates who were study­ing with the Open Uni­ver­si­ty, and had them quizzed on the his­to­ry of crime and crim­i­nals. Total­ly hilar­i­ous. Oh, we had fun.

Bam­ber notwith­stand­ing, off course I have returned to my Matthew roots, with a slight detour into Daniel Craig land. I rent­ed “Lay­er Cake” this week, and my, I can cer­tain­ly pick ’em for doing unap­peal­ing vio­lent films, can’t I? I have to say I enjoyed it any­way, and he’s mem­o­rable for all kinds of things, name­ly his incred­i­ble blue eyes and love­ly pecs, and… he can act. And there is just noth­ing cuter than Sien­na Miller in this film, even if she isn’t giv­en two words to string togeth­er. What on earth she was doing still orbit­ing around Jude Law after her lips were allowed to lock with Daniel Craig’s I can­not fath­om. As for the divine Michael Gam­bon, well, he is perfection.

Speak­ing of fine act­ing, our home­work this week is to watch as much com­e­dy as pos­si­ble. So we’re track­ing down a very fun­ny show called “Spoons,” star­ring one of my favorite occa­sion­al actors, Tom Good­man-Hill; I mean I see him in things occa­sion­al­ly, among them just one let­ter off, “Spooks.” Per­haps his next role will be as a seam­stress in an edgy dra­ma called “Spools.” Then he can do a send-up of it and call it “Spoofs.” Stop me, already.

Well, Avery is off at her class­mate Francesca’s wall-climb­ing birth­day par­ty in West­way, and I’m get­ting ready to under­chef one of our favorite “we don’t have to feed her” din­ners. Give it a try. It’s loose­ly adapt­ed from one of my favorite Asian cook­books, Mrs Chi­ang’s Szech­wan Cook­ing, giv­en to me lo these 20 years ago (can that be true?) by my moth­er in law. I have to tell you what hap­pens to me and recipes. My dear friend Jeanne com­plains that I can­not leave a recipe alone, and as soon as I make some­thing once, from a recipe, I imme­di­ate­ly launch into a spec­u­la­tive dis­cus­sion as to what I could do dif­fer­ent­ly next time. “It does­n’t need gar­lic!” she scolds. “And no, leav­ing out the corn­starch would not be an improve­ment.” But I do tinker.

In my defense, as far as meth­ods go, I have had to adjust my think­ing. Back before I had a child and I had all the time in the world to cook din­ner, I real­ly dot­ed on what I would call “pre­ci­sion under­ch­eff­ing.” I would have lit­tle porce­lain dish­es all over my coun­ter­tops with elab­o­rate­ly pre­pared ingre­di­ents, just wait­ing for the final flour­ish of the actu­al cook­ing, and I was inor­di­nate­ly fond of the dif­fer­ent stages of the prepa­ra­tion. Through the years of hav­ing a very small child crawl­ing up my leg as a scor­pi­on might do, as I han­dled hot oils and chili pep­pers over her gold­en head, I devel­oped a trun­cat­ed method of cook­ing that skipped every unnec­es­sary hand motion. For­get the lit­tle dish­es of scal­lions. Just throw them in any­old­how. To these depths I have sunk. So the fol­low­ing recipe is much less elab­o­rate than Mrs. Chi­ang’s orig­i­nal instruc­tions. I assure you that if the fla­vors suf­fered, I’d go back to her wish­es, but as it is, I’m hap­py. And the scor­pi­on on my leg still gets atten­tion for her homework.

Szech­wan Red-Cooked Shrimp
(serves four)

3 tbsps peanut oil
1 lb uncooked large shrimp, shells on, heads off (call them prawns in England)
3 bunch­es green onions, sliced thin (white part only)
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
1‑inch knob fresh gin­ger, minced
1/2 tbsp coarse sea salt

4 tbsps soy sauce
2 tbsps Japan­ese mirin (rice wine)
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp chili paste or sauce

1 cup bas­mati rice

Arrange your shrimp in a sin­gle lay­er on a plat­ter and scat­ter the gar­lic, gin­ger, green onions and sea salt over them. They can sit there, thaw­ing as mine will have to from the freez­er, while you do every­thing else.

Mix all the rest of the ingre­di­ents except the rice in a bowl and set aside. Put your rice on to sim­mer with a lit­tle under 1 1/2 cups water. Now, in a wok over high heat, heat your peanut oil. It has a very high smok­ing point, so you can get it good and hot. I find the shrimp are more ten­der if they’re cooked hot and short. Throw in the shrimps with their gar­nish, and toss very quick­ly until the shrimp turn pink. Take them out with a slot­ted spoon and place them in the bowl you intend to serve in (no sense mess­ing about with extra bowls!). Pour the liq­uid mix­ture into the wok and bring to a boil, mix­ing in the gar­lic and gin­ger left behind in the wok. Boil high for two min­utes, then throw the shrimp back in and toss for 30 sec­onds. Serve with rice.

Now gath­er up a bunch of paper nap­kins and start pulling their lit­tle legs and shells off. This din­ner is messy, spicy, and glo­ri­ous. Thanks to Mrs. Chi­ang and my moth­er in law!