Going Down Like A Russian Sub

The Dead + Seven Days rule of stand-up comedy: For material about a dead person (or persons) to be deemed humourous, a duration of no less than seven days must have passed between the moment the deceased expired and the occasion of said material s inaugural public airing.

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, the most infuriating thing about unwritten rules has to be the fact that they re not written anywhere, with the result that you only ever find out about them once you ve broken them and are standing knee-deep in spilt milk with tears of remorse coursing down your cheeks.
Approximately five seconds into his Arsenal debut, for example, Nwanko Kanu infringed that one concerning itself with player etiquette on the occasion of the ball being hoofed out of play in order to allow a physio on the pitch to treat an injured player. As the game resumed, the Nigerian went after a ball that according to the unwritten rule in question he had no business contesting, only to set up a goal in an audacious move that was subsequently tut-tutted sanctimoniously by an entire nation, particularly those in certain parts of Sheffield. Luckily for him, Kanu s post match plea that he was ignorant of this peculiar footballing ethic was accepted and his faux pass was forgiven. Except in certain parts of Sheffield, of course, where they still think he s a bollocks.
Naturally, the very fact that the Dead + 7 Days rule of stand-up comedy can be seen in all its glory at the top of this article means that it is no longer unwritten, but it seems that when I recently broke it in a Hammersmith comedy club, it had yet to be officially set down on paper. I was performing what I presumed all going well would be my third and final 10-minute spot in one of London s bigger and better clubs before being officially welcomed into the fold of proper comedians who regularly play full length sets there in return for drum roll money. (That it had taken over a year to achieve such lofty status will provide some idea of what a grind it can be to get motoring in the Big Smoke. Then again, maybe I m just not as great as I think I am.)
Anyway, everything was going swimmingly, with the pleasantly pickled post-interval audience laughing and occasionally applauding in all the right places. Buoyed by the response I was getting, I decided the time was right to introduce some previously unaired topical material. Big mistake.
Trust the Russians to go completely over the top with their version of Big Brother, I mused, before pausing briefly to let the audience wonder what in God s name I was talking about. 117 men in a freezing cold, pitch dark submarine 500 feet beneath the ocean I m sure Amnesty International would have something to say about that.
The reaction to what I perceived to be my killer line was breathtaking. As one, my fickle public groaned in disgust before rounding on me. It suddenly felt as if I was standing before a lynch mob shouting boo at angry geese sitting on slowly deflating airbeds. Then, just when I thought it couldn t get any uglier, it did. Needless to say, it was my own fault.
Well, I said, once they d stopped barracking long enough to allow me get a word in edge-ways. That went down like a Russian submarine.
Jaysus. My attempt to lighten what appeared to be a genuinely angry mood served only to land me in it up to my eyebrows. Fearing a lynching, I quickly changed the subject and, three or four minutes later, walked off to moderate applause, instead of the heart-warming ovation I reckon I might have got if I d mentioned a less recent maritime tragedy. The sinking of the Titanic, perhaps. Or the portrayal of the Irish in the film of the same name.
In contrast, the other comics on the bill were fulsome in their praise of my apparent daring. Anvil Springsteen, the bizarrely monikered scouse compere, was so impressed that he bought me a drink on the strength of it.
Fair play to you Barry, mate, he laughed. The first comedian in London to mention the Russian submarine fantastic. You ll get major respect from all the rest of the comics for that. You showed a flagrant disregard for the old Dead + Seven Days Rule there. I suppose it s a hard one to call, because we don t know exactly when the poor bastards died!
What do you mean, the old Dead + Seven Days rule? I enquired .
Fuckin ell, aven t you eard of it? enquired Anvil. Purely in the interests of self-preservation, you don t do gags about dead people until they ve been deceased for at least seven days. It sort of became an unwritten rule after Diana died, because so many comics went down in flames in the immediate aftermath.
But she was Diana, everyone loved her. I was only making fun of Russians, I argued.
Doesn t matter, mate, shrugged my new guru. It was off limits tonight. Having said that, if you do it here next time, I guarantee you they ll piss themselves cos it s a crackin gag.
At least I can console myself with the fact that for me, there will be a next time. The unfortunate Russian submariners, on the other hand, have all reported for duty on the great nuclear u-boat in, er, the sky.
At least that one can t sink.