Adam Ramsay urges comics to take a smart look at independence

Dear comedians coming to Scotland,

This year, as ever, Edinburgh hosts the biggest arts festival in the world. It'll be largely the same as usual – drunken revelry and crazy street performers, bizarre venues and innovative acts. Some shows will be roaring successes, some, whimpering failures. Careers will be made and hearts will be broken.

One thing, though, will be different. This year, as the festival kicks off, thousands of performers will stumble into the climax of the most exciting mass public debate in the UK in decades – the final full month before the independence referendum.

If you get your news from the London press, then what you've heard about the vote was quite likely written by a journalist who has barely ever been to Scotland, parroting a line given to them by Labour or the Tories. If you repeat it north of the border, then your audience might well laugh you off the stage.

More importantly, by repeating the messages fed to you by the powerful, you will be dragging the debate backwards. Comedians are some of the only people we take seriously in modern politics, so that matters. Having spent the last few months writing about the referendum in my day job with OpenDemocracy I thought I'd compile a few quick tips.

1) Only people who live in Scotland will get a vote, but only dicks think that means that only Scots should get a say. If your act is political in any way, not mentioning the referendum would probably seem a little weird – like if your friend had just got a really exciting new job, but you didn't say anything coz you thought it wasn't your business. Don't feel you can't have a view just coz you aren't Scots.

2) A vast swathe of the Scottish population have spent the last year learning about the referendum in huge detail, educating themselves on everything from Nordic social policy to how bond markets treat new countries. Do talk about independence, but expect your audience to be smarter than you. Read. Read everything you can.

3) In particular, the London press repeats the messages of the no campaign endlessly, but almost never the arguments of the yes campaign. If you want to hear them, Bella Caledonia and National Collective are good places to start, or the site I work for, openDemocracy.

4) It might seem funny to talk about Braveheart, but literally every comedian who ever came to Scotland before you has done it already.

5) In fact, there are a whole bunch of platitudes which, well, we've kind of heard before. And, over the last few months, the London papers have taken that to a whole new level. It's not that they weren't funny the first time, it's just that, well, they aren't new anymore.

I brainstormed a quick list on Facebook. My friend Andrew pretty much summed it up: 'Bannockburn, Braveheart, deep fried anything, haggis, jimmy wigs, hating the English, bagpipes, tramps, tartan, subsidy junkies, heroin, dying in your fifties, drinking yourself to death, any attempt to do a Scottish accent not undergirded by professional voice coaching, the Loch Ness monster...'

Alternatively, if you want a quick guide, Stewart Lee has a whole sketch taking the piss out of this phenomenon. If you fall into this trap, he's taking the piss out of you.

6) Pretty much every possible funny thing you could say about Alex Salmond has been said before. And if you must talk about him, the whole dictator thing gets a bit tiresome. Scotland elected him, which is more than can be said for David Cameron.

7)The referendum isn't about nationalism vs not nationalism. If it has to be about nationalism, it's about Scottish nationalism vs British nationalism. For many, probably most, it's not about nationalism at all, but other things. Like Westminster being a clusterfuck.

8) 'Scotland has more pandas than Tory MPs' literally everyone in Scotland has heard this line a billion times. This adds up to a staggering 529,500,0000,000,000 mentions of this joke to Scottish people alone.

9) If you make some joke about how independence will leave England with perpetual Tories, expect to be heckled by someone pointing out your historical inaccuracy: there have only been 24 months ever in which Britain had a Labour rather than a Tory Prime Minister because of Scots MPs.

10) If you make a joke about England subsidising Scotland, expect someone to point out that the opposite is true.

Scots have been talking to each other about independence for a solid year now. Some new voices will be marvellous, but if you just parrot whatever you read in one of the London papers... well, you're not stupid enough to believe that nonsense, are you?

Published: 3 Jul 2014