A national joke

“My ultimate goal as always is World Humour Domination. I thought last year's show My Struggle might have got me there but I couldn't secure so much as a book deal," says affable, straight-talking standup and self-styled "German Comedy Ambassador" Henning Wehn.

"Particularly not a book deal, in fact. But I have learned that success in comedy is, like everything else in life, down to determination and efficiency. That's why Germans are best suited to do it.”

He doesn’t need a second invitation to playfully prod at our notions of Ze Germans. He’s leaned on them for back-to-back Fringe shows now, delivering well-observed bon mots and parodying UK life through the wide eyes of a German expat. He’s lived here for nearly a decade, and his speech is an attractive hybrid of Brit colloquialisms (“all right, mate?”) and loopy German lilts. And his material (“what makes me tick? My stopwatch”), which has gone down like a stein of cold, crisp Bremen beer in his adopted home, is assuredly self-aware.

“Generally speaking, Brits receive me very well. And I certainly can't and won't deny where I am from. I would describe myself as a social commentator in the style of classical/political cabaret. Most of my jokes are blunt statements which I subvert with a twinkle in my eye. You have to pick people up where they are. In Britain, that’s 1945. Humour is a brilliant way to turn stereotypes on their head.”

Or reinforce them? “You can make jokes about anything. Nothing's off limit as long as it serves a purpose. If it doesn’t it’s just malicious.”

Patrick Monahan—a refreshing antidote to the standup's apparent obligation to be cynical, self-destructive, egotistical and confrontational in the pursuit of laughs—is another to be plucked from a multicultural melting pot. Born in Iran (“right on the Iran-Iraq border where the revolution kicked off!”) to a native mother and an Irish welder father, he eventually wound up in Teesside, where he picked up a throaty northern accent and made his first chit-chatty forays upon the comedy circuit.

As a budding young comic, such an exotic heritage was always going to prove a potent weapon: “When I was starting out, it was amazing to have that difference. You weren’t just another northern act: you could be on a bill with 12 comics and no one would be Irish-Iranian. People would be like, ‘Wow, where did that come from?’ and you’d be away.

"The only problem is that you can get pigeonholed. So do you want to be a really good standup? Do you want to be Richard Pryor? Or do you want to be a black comic, an Asian comic, a disabled comic, a foreign comic, whatever. Don’t get me wrong, it is good. This year, for example, I can do 15 or 20 minutes on the Middle Eastern uprisings, because I live with it, my family talk about it. Everyone everywhere knows Ireland, everyone knows Iran.”

Does it ever become self-defeating? Is there an industry-generated pressure to play up to audience expectations of a foreign comic?

“Oh god, yeah. I don’t think it’s the comic’s fault, though – it’s the way any profit-making industry works. It’s not just about being funny, it’s about ‘how do we sell this next thing? Who’s going to front this?’. That’s great for the comic short-term, but long-term it’s horrific. You can’t rely on your badge, your niche, forever. How can you still be talking about that stuff 20 years down the road?

“The best advice I was ever given was: as soon as you get something that works, put it aside; don’t throw it away, just keep it back. When I began, I was talking about general stuff, which was all right—not great, but all right—and then when I started talking about my Irish-Iranian stuff, oh my god! It was a 100% improvement, bang, bang, bang. I could’ve kept going with that stuff, but I wanted to develop beyond a stereotype. I still use it, but use it too much and you’ll put people off.”

Monahan's are sentiments, echoed by Fringe debutante Nimmi Harasgama, whose extraordinary creation Auntie Netta is unleashed, live and (very) loud, upon Edinburgh audiences this year. “A mixed heritage old dingbat from Sri Lanka,” Netta is more rooted in everyone’s batty old auntie than in any Asian typecast, but does satirically skirt some proper issues—repatriation and asylum-seekers, mainly—as she regales her bawdy tales of wrestling with the peculiarities of a life away from home – stiff upper lips, Skype, Hadrian’s Wall and, er, a "Venezuelan bikini wax".

“‘I am fully gassed and excited, child!” squeals Netta. Nimmi, her creator, is somewhat more reflective: “My heritage [Tamil/Sinhalese] has a strong impact on my writing, as does my upbringing. I spent a lot of my childhood growing up in a small village outside Peterborough, living in a cosy thatched cottage literally watching lambs being born from the bathroom window. We were the only Asian family there. My dad was a local at the Royal Oak pub and my mum attended yoga classes at the village hall. Then, at boarding school, I learnt how to speak ‘proper’ and tackle Paki-bashing.

“Nationality and culture are delicate issues. We can and should be proud of who we are, but stereotypes can and do lead to divisions. Through comedy some of these issues can be broached. When I came back to the UK after 10 years, I noticed how people had become more ‘used’ to people who are not the same as them. I was relieved to feel that actually I could fit into this new Britain.

"But the underlying racism has not gone away – it is not as overt, but it is still here. Through comedy, these issues can be addressed, in a comfortable forum, because in Britain, humour, unlike many other countries, allows us to laugh at ourselves and see ourselves in the ‘other’. I have belief in what I am doing, I am not trying to change the world, there is always risk involved, but we must give the audience its dues – they are smart people! As Auntie would say, ‘I am fully sensitive so I don’t want to be hurting people!’”

So, national differences are as valid for material as whatever you saw down the pub last night. But lest we get a little po-faced and puritanical here, Monahan will keep us grounded: “It’s comedy! If it’s a lecture, that’s different, but this is comedy. No one’s there to learn.

"Comics are good at talking and entertaining; if we had the answers to everything we wouldn’t be stood in a room full of people full up with alcohol, asking them to laugh at us. You have to talk about what you know – if it is your background, if it happened to you, it would be stupid not to talk about it. If people get offended, then they shouldn’t be coming out of the house.”

Henning Wehn, as you might expect, is more bullish: “I'm the only one that should be allowed to use my place of birth as springboard for material. All others are simply copycats. No surrender!”