...says South African stand-up

The English comedy circuit is just too politically correct, a visiting comic has claimed.

South African Cokey Falkow says stand-ups in this country are overly concerned with not causing offence.

He said: "English comedy is too PC - you have to mind your Ps and Qs."

The comic now lives and works in Los Angeles, where he says "you'll have white guys saying 'nigger' on stage".

But he does admit that sometimes acts go too far. "I've pulled the mike off people and told them, 'we don't need to hear that.'"

Falkow, 27, is in a good position to judge comedy around the world, as one of South Africa's few international comics he has played in a handful of countries - and now comes to Britain as part of the Stand-Up South Africa showcase at London's Riverside Studios.

He is one of the early products of the still burgeoning comedy scene in his home country. "It's a relatively new scene," he told Chortle. "There was always pub comedy, but I grew up on The Goons and Eighties videos of Billy Connolly. I could quote them, but you couldn't really see that sort of comedy anywhere until the early Nineties."

The new comedy scene grew out of the National Arts Festival, and given a helping hand by Mark Lewis, who had worked with veteran London comic Malcolm Hardee at his club Up The Creek before emigrating.

"He formed a club chain called Hysterix. It gave everyone their break, and it really pulled up the old guard," Falkow explains.

South Africa has also been a magnet for visiting British comedians, and in the past three years the Smirnoff Comedy Festival has taken the best international comedy to South Africa's cities.

"We are influenced by the UK and US, and Australians," says Falkow, adding that the circuit is now well-established, with huge clubs like Cape Town's cavernous Comedy Warehouse turning away 200 punters a week.

But not everywhere has cottoned on to the new wave of comics.

"TV's Comedy Showcase is a stand-up show with both old school and new comics," said Cokey. "You get some people doing the same old jokes they've been doing for 20 years, then some guy who does balloon animals.

"And I've worked old-fashioned cruise ships, trying to do modern stand-up. One place was actually called the Starlight Rooms."

Cokey, a former roofer, began his career doing improv and character comedy after studying drama at Trinity College, Johannesburg.

"You have to learn by performing, you can't stand in front of a mirror practising," he says. "And you need to develop your own point of view, that'll make you a great comic."

Just when Falkow began to crack his homeland - with a couple of TV series including the award-winning Big City and the wacky extreme sports show 360XTV - he moved to Los Angeles.

"I though I'd try it while I had the chance," he said. "There's a lot of work in LA, but you don't get paid by the clubs. It's basically open spot after open spot, all the clubs promise is the slight chance that you'll be spotted.

"But I met an indie film director, and made a 35mm short with him, and - as Bill Hicks would say - I've sucked the cock of Beezlebub, and done some advert voiceovers."

Falkow says his act owes a lot to his upbringing.

"I hung out in townships at the time when you shouldn't, " he said. "I think it gave me an anarchic spirit.

"My best friend lived was black and I had to get smuggled though to the black area where he lived in the boot of a car. It was no big deal, it's just what we had to do.

"I didn't see race, didn't realise there was a problem - it was only later I realised it wasn't the same for everyone."

Published: 25 Mar 2002