As he heads to the Edinburgh Fringe, Archie Henderson - the musical comedian behind Jazz Emu – shares his Perfect Playlist of comedy favourites

The Pink Panther (1963)

I didn’t realise how much the Peter Sellers has impacted my comedy taste until I re-watched this film recently. He’s so unbelievably silly, but there’s such a precision to everything he does that makes me so jealous. His slapstick is so effortless and fluid that it ends up looking like a beautiful ballet. Heck, it’s enough to make a nerd get pretentious.  Find me anyone else who can convey three emotions, just through the motion of poking themselves in the eye with a truncheon…

I also love the script in this film, it’s so full of relentlessly stupid, surprisingly clever jokes, in the way that only big broad comedy films from the 1960s and 1970s seem to be. 

The character of Clouseau is my absolute favourite archetype - self-regarding, self-serious buffoon who is permanently on the brink of losing grip on everything and will never admit it. It’s so timeless and is such a juicy set-up for delicious skits and bits.

Other highlights that are profoundly influential for me: the crisply-tailored and sartorially bizarre 60s safari suits (also indelibly burnt into my head by Roger Moore as Bond) and the theme song and animated title sequence, which is completely timeless and far too classy for a film so dumb. It’s a very powerful concoction.

NB: This selection was hotly contested by every Austin Powers film, for obvious Venn-Diagrammatical reasons.

Andy Kaufman: Crying Bongo

When I stumbled across this video of Andy Kaufman on YouTube as a teenager, with no context of who he was, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He’s so grotesque and hard to watch, and always treading the uncanny valley line between completely impromptu and perfectly scripted. 

This first video I saw remains my favourite example of his work. The audience cackling with knowing confusion at a pretty convincingly-acted breakdown - pushed to the limit and then flipped on its head with this completely bizarre twist. It’s barely a joke, more just a kind of self-indulgent display of how comedy is just rhythm and rhythm is funny. 

The way it’s directed here with the slow zoom out to reveal the bongos – which you know must have been brought on either by him or a stage manager before his bit – is the icing on the cake for me.

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared

I am such a big fan of this series. The team behind it are untold geniuses. The first video was SO VERY viral, in that time of yore where comedy on YouTube was just starting to find its properly footing, and they just went from strength to strength as they expanded the idea over more episodes, and eventually into an incredible series on Channel 4. 

It doesn’t receive the credit its due for its comedy stylings - I think they’ve actually had a huge influence on internet humour generally over the last ten years. It’s so dark and twisty and clever and SO CATCHY - visually, dialogically, musically - everything.

It does that thing all the most stylish comedy does which is to be effortlessly and endlessly quotable. I haven’t watched the episodes back-to-back for some time, but I frequently find a quote from it delivered to me by my subconscious while I’m - for example - chopping onions, which I have to compulsively say aloud, loudly, to myself, to get it out of my system. It presumably drives my housemates insane to hear ‘DIGITAL STYLE!’ shouted in a grating voice from the kitchen for the fourth time this week, but it’s just an itch I have to scratch. 

More than anything though, I love how this show celebrates creativity in all its forms - so many different types of creating went into making the online series and the Channel 4 series. Art for art’s sake! Just classy as heck. 

Flight Of The Conchords

I can post no musical comedy content online without several people in the comments saying, ‘Wow, somebody used to watch Flight Of The Conchords.’ 

Fools! I did not just watch, I devoured. They became a very pure obsession for me and my friends around 2009, mostly via DVD rips of their songs on YouTube.

 Everything is to love: the lyrical mastery, the aggressively precise and yet always playful genre parody, the sheer variety of style and form and structure of the songs. And aside from the songs, the HBO show, particularly the first season, is just so well crafted - an insanely tight and funny and tonally unique script, somehow shaped around big-hitters from their stage show in a way which feels light touch and really not that crowbarred.

 Mainly because their performances between songs are so fun and likeable that you’re kind of willing to go anywhere with the characters, even to places that make no sense logically. It is no mean feat and speaks to their healthy lashings of whipped charisma. 

I went to watch their live show in 2018 at the Hammersmith Apollo, by myself (no distractions). It’s the recording that can be heard on streaming services. If you listen closely, you could probably hear me (genuinely) weeping at the realisation of how much they have inspired me over the years. Though I was, admittedly, drunk.

Salad Fingers

I watched this series by David Firth when I was 10 years old, gathered around a school computer with several other children, and it is difficult to describe the emotions it roused in me: a simultaneous utter disturbance, and realisation that it was going to change my life forever. I’ll never forget the mouse slowly moving itself to the red X in the corner of the browser, as the IT teacher stopped us watching this fundamentally unsuitable video from his weird remote-access computer policing system in the IT office. 

It inspired me to start making me own Flash animations - I actually started making my own FanFic Salad Fingers episodes. They were so badly written, but I spent so much time practising the drawing and animation style that my 11-year-old friends refused to accept that I’d made them because they looked too much like the real thing. 

It’s hard to describe exactly what it is that I love about this. It doesn’t make me laugh out loud so much as it loosens some knot in my brain, through it’s insanity, I think. There’s something so grotesque and rancid and yet human and sad and hauntingly beautiful about it. 

Salad Fingers is so creepy and lonely and loveable and repugnant. And aren’t we all? That’s true art.

Heidi Regan

Since I first saw her perform in 2017, Heidi’s shows have been something I’ve always sought out keenly in Edinburgh. She has what I believe they call in the biz a Beautiful Mind. 

Her bits are simultaneously accessible and relatable, but also have this delicious flavour of ‘why has she been thinking about this so much?’ They always develop to places you don’t expect, and Heidi has this beautiful knack for association which means she calls things back and ties them up in the most satisfying ways. 

But for all these cerebral games the way she delivers her shows is just so silly and playful and full of heart - always with this knowing wink at how silly it is to have spent so much time shaping this logic out of something so pointless. 

It’s so authentic and warm and everyone I take to her shows just has the best time in her company. She’s been a big influence on the way I write my live chunks and you should see her work in progress this year (Banshee Labyrinth, 13:10 from the 17th)

• Jazz Emu: Knight Fever is on at Pleasance Courtyard from July 31 to August 25 at 9pm.