Funny Talk: Craig Campbell

Headlining the monthly Hardy Har Comedy Club on Thursday, March 24th, Canadian-born, Devon-dwelling stand-up Craig Campbell is a force of nature.

As a quick read below, as Craig lists his comedy heroes, will prove.

Making a name for himself in his native Canada – sharing a stage with the likes of Jim Carrey on Just For Laughs, and a TV studio with the likes of Dennis Miller – Campbell’s move to England saw him quickly appear on the likes of Russell Howard’s Good News and Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, whilst live, tours with the likes of Frankie Boyle and Al Murray have helped spread the good news. And the naughty words.

Outrageous.

Ahead of his Bray debut, we asked Craig to list his comedy heroes. And his choices explain so very, very much…

Grandpa Bill Butcher
The guy who first inspired me comedically was my grandpaw B. He was a general bs-er, consummate non-truth teller and all-round ginner-upper of things.
Lying to kids is a blast and I do it as often as I can now as it gets the same suspicion and rise to humour as my grandpaw’s balderdash did with me. He lied also to his wife (less funny), my mom, mom’s sister, pilfered my g’maw’s jewels against the implicit wishes of her spoken-voice and the legal binding of her written-will, and spoke to me only once in the last ten years of his life (touchingly and very randomly on the phone as I was in my apartment in Amsterdam, a city poignantly to me, he had visited as a soldier).
Still, as well as providing me with my earliest memories of laughing, grandpaw B took time out from his childhood to wrestle Hitler’s goons from Sicily through France and Belgium (port of Antwerp), and took part in Operation Market Gardens before headlocking my angelic, cookie-baking, Scottish grandmother back to Canada so.
I cut him A GARGANTUAN amount of slack…

Peanuts
Once I was able to read I was all over Peanuts comics like an allergic rash. I liked the subtlety of the humour to the point it’s detractors might say is near non-existence, and the philosophical tone it would often take. I realise now it was also up past its eyeballs in nationalistic, wholly unnecessary, anti-German propaganda, but I was a kid, not an expert on revised foreign history and pre-WW1 global imperialism, you judgemental f’in animals – so, back the feck off!

Mad and Cracked magazine
Peanuts led to some Herman, Andy Capp, to The Far Side, all leading, of course, a cynical, budding conspiratorially-minded child to the obvious destination – Cracked and Mad magazines. These had longer more in-depth parodies and pun headlines with darker digs at more realistic scenarios. By this time I was more aware of the fact that the world around me was lying, overwhelmingly through U.S. TV advertising, and that most pristine beaches had a dog turd or ten buried – sometimes intentionally – in the sand..

Alan Alda, M*A*S*H
It seems to me after that – and perhaps why I have such an aversion to it today – I became addicted to TV. Haven’t had one in my living space – where I hope to “think” – for going on 20yrs.
That addiction flourished through my teen years as, looking back, most likely a form of escapism. Thankfully, one of the fantasies I could escape to was the masterpiece of Liberal ideals balanced within the insanity of war that was M*A*S*H. I always identified with Hawkeye Pierce’s black OR (Operating Room) humour and gin-still-induced nihilism – maybe related to my own experience at the time of “helpless madness”.
When I was first invited onto the Fox Studios lot in Hollywood following a successful Montreal festival appearance by a casting director who, looking back, clearly just longed to imbibe my eager young chode (or perhaps the reverse??), the receptionist, as I was waiting in a separate room, stuck her head ’round the corner to mention that perhaps it might be of interest for me to know that the noticeably almost inefficiently large space I was waiting in was “Alan Alda’s dressing room for the entire filming of the series. I could’ve happily waited till eternity for that over-running chicken hawk to finally get around to disingenuously fawning over my plump, ripe, naive package.

Carroll O’Connor, All In The Family
For the last year of high school I watched All In The Family religiously, every single afternoon, for the unguarded, poisoned gems that would spill from Carroll O’Connor’s bigoted gob. The program finished at 1pm, exactly the time my typing class (provide your own jokes here) began, so consequently I was late for every typin class, every single day, and was constantly warned of “grave consequences” (namely, being removed from typing class – which I cared about as much then as I do now).
Unfortunately, for the providers of equipment for repetitive-use-strain-injuries and the wider world of typing at large, All In The Family continued to press on with its 12.30 programming slot, and I was given my final “don’t be late OR ELSE!” warning, which I, on my honour, the next day tried to uphold, forgoing Archie Bunker’s undoubtedly hilarious denouement to shuffle dejectedly away from guaranteed fun and toward school like a tranquillised ruminant. It was on this long walk that a desperate call went up from the school’s Track and Field equipment sheds! A fire had broken out and hands were needed. I fought flames with a bucket that day, to rescue school property and was turned away at the door of my typing class by an incensed man screaming incoherencies at a community-minded child blanketed in soot.
There was another Campbell in that class, and to my shame, I can’t remember her name. She was hyper-intelligent and a demon on the keyboard; there was a mix-up, I received her mark, she received mine. I still remember her crying, wailing, and how it struck me that someone so sharp in so many ways couldn’t quickly piece together what had obviously happened. I took a 95% (for the semester!!) typing score home to my far-from-genius private investigators family. The family of a boy whose average across the board in all subjects hovered right about 66% – in subjects I WAS GOOD AT!?? – DIDN’T SUSPECT A THING!? What a family…

Craig Campbell headlines the Hardy Har Comedy Club on Thursday, March 24th. You can check out the Facebook event page here.