“It doesn’t work,” said Al Murray the Pub Landlord. “People pay you to dominate them, so you’re doing what they tell you to do. It doesn’t work.”
I considered explaining that this wasn’t the case and that Pro-Domming is rather more complicated, but he had the microphone and – more importantly – is a fictional stage persona, not a real person. Arguing would have been something of a fruitless task.
This was last year at a rehearsal gig, in front of a small audience in the back room of a pub, one of many I’ve been to over the past decade or so. Comedy is my rock and roll. I have nothing but respect and admiration for anyone who can get up in front of an audience and alter the collective mood, whilst also communicating a message that is often profound and inspiring (if you’ve never seen Richard Herring’s hilarious and thought-provoking routines on racism, masculinity, religion and a host of other subjects, book now – he’s previewing his current Edinburgh show “Christ on a Bike” at pubs and theatres around the country at the moment).
I’m friends with a lot of people on the comedy circuit, and my job is common knowledge. On the night that Al Murray benignly addressed the contradiction of the paid Dominatrix, there were four other male comics on the bill, all of whom included me in their routines, and two female comics, who didn’t. I kept quiet throughout. When a comedian engages with an audience member, especially at a small gig, I’m aware that they are not looking for banter or heckling, just for a starting point for their own joke.
However, the headline act (I won’t name him) got up onto the stage and began his set by pointing at me, shouting: “if you ever try to spank me, I’ll punch you in the face!”
“I wasn’t offering,” I replied with a sigh, “but thanks for keeping me informed.”
He continued to mime punching, along with some kicking, in case I was confused as to his intentions.
It was not the first time this had happened. Some strangers, for whatever reason, find out what I do for a living and choose to take it personally. I’ve had a lot of men approach me to describe the most graphic and gruesome things they would do in order to teach me a pre-emptive lesson, just in case I ever had designs on dominating them.
“Hey, Dominatrix,” said another well known male comedian at a gig a couple of weeks ago, gesturing into the audience. “I could scalp you with a claw hammer! I’d rip your skin off and use it as a rug on my floor!”
“Yeah, I get that reaction a lot,” I replied.
After the show, I found him in the bar and told him that, although not personally offended by his act, I was genuinely intrigued as to why his response to a stranger’s profession could be so extreme. I told him about how I’d had tongue-in-cheek threats of rape, disfigurement, murder and a whole range of other delights thrown at me by men I’d never seen or spoken to before, and how several had also been comedians. I asked him what had driven him to react to my mere presence at his gig in such a way.
His reply was both enlightened and enlightening. He told me that, when in stage persona, a comedian often reverts to his most primitive instincts, fuelled by nervousness and adrenaline (and often booze). He feels that he has to assert his own dominance to remain the alpha-animal in the room. If he perceives any potential challenge to his own kingship, however slight, his attacks are magnified and made all the more extreme by the precariousness of his position of power. A Dominatrix in the audience is still a rival of sorts – even if she hasn’t actually said or done anything and he only learned of her existence because someone else mentioned her. He was refreshingly honest about his own insecurities, as well as talking about the insecurities of men in general, of comedians and – unexpectedly – of Canadians.
Much of what he said is paraphrased here, and I can’t vouch for its accuracy as I’d had a couple of beers by that point. I asked if he could put something in writing for me to use in this article and he agreed, but I don’t begrudge the fact that I haven’t heard from him since. He has to retain his bad-boy persona, just as I have to retain my air of unruffled dominance, so I haven’t named him here. After all, who would hire either of us professionally if they discovered a thoughtful, sensible and surprisingly kind individual under all that trademark vitriol?
